No, Donald Trump isn’t “getting away” with anything
With things as bleak as they are in America right now, pessimism and dread are more than understandable. But lately I’ve been seeing a resurgence of the wildly inaccurate assertion that Donald Trump is “getting away with it all” – and it’s as important as ever that we push back against this false thinking.
If you’re a student and you’ve been negligently screwing around all along, and your grades are such that you’re going to get expelled at the end of the semester, you’re not currently “getting away” with anything just because the semester hasn’t ended yet. You just haven’t yet been handed your punishment, and when it does happen, it’s going to mess up your life.
Similarly, Donald Trump has spent his entire presidency negligently screwing around, and it’s landed him the kind of severely underwater approval rating that gives him very little chance of reelection. And we all know that if Trump loses the election, he’ll go to prison for the rest of his life. That’s the polar opposite of “getting away with it all.”
Yes, our system sucks. Yes, Donald Trump should have been gone a long time ago. Yes, the two entities that could remove Trump right now – Mike Pence and the cabinet, and the Republican Senate majority – are being criminally negligent by refusing to remove him. And yes, what’s happening in America right now is tragic beyond words. But none of that adds up to Trump “getting away” with anything, unless you sit on your hands and let him win in November. Trump is in the worst position for reelection that any modern U.S. presidential incumbent has ever faced. All you have to do is put in the work in support of Joe Biden, and he’ll win, and Trump will be “getting away with it all” in solitary confinement.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report