Donald Trump’s trail of evil
Monday I twice passed on my morning run a pile of rubble that used to be the home of Dawn Sturgess. Before the building was destroyed last week it stood empty for more than two years after Dawn had been poisoned there by novichok, a deadly binary nerve agent from the nefarious Soviet labs of the early 70s. She received her life-ending dose from a perfume atomiser her boyfriend found. The building had become so unusable due to fear of contamination and infamy that the local counsel finally took the decision to have it demolished.
It was a small reminder from a history of ignominy writ large by an evil man named Vladimir Putin. Putin ordered the smuggling of novichok into the south of England by two despicable murderers who tried (and failed) to use it to kill a Russian defector. Putin missed and killed Ms. Sturgess instead, an innocent.
Vladimir Putin, unrepentant murderer of dissidents and journalists and innocent bystanders, oppressor, dictator, thief and evil genius behind the new corrupt Russia, is, thanks to his limitless venality, probably the richest man who ever lived. It’s little wonder Donald Trump admires him.
Indeed, Michael Cohen says as much in his book, “Disloyal.” He notes that Trump’s fealty to and fascination with Putin is no mystery. It comes, Cohen claims, not because Putin has any compromising information about Trump, but because Putin is everything Trump admires. Trump loves the fact that Putin has more money than Trump could ever dream of, unlimited power and near immunity from criticism by his own people. And if that’s not enough to convince you how unfit Donald Trump is to lead a nation “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” Michael Cohen is currently incarcerated, along with several other Trump loyalists. Trump doesn’t just love corrupt people, he surrounds himself with them.
In running past the ruin of Dawn Sturgess’ house, I was struck by how evil sometimes ripples through everything, right down to the ground I was running on, and how much of it originates with Donald Trump and his despicable friends. Trump’s evil is so vast and extensive that evidence of it is littered on the ground in the very rubble I ran on Monday morning.
So many people have permanently poisoned their careers and ruined their lives because of their associations with Trump. Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Roger Stone, and George Papadopoulos have all faced criminal charges and are all (or were) friends of Donald Trump. The evil dictators Trump admires include (along with Putin) Recep Erdoğan, Kim Jong Un, Jair Bolsonaro and Rodrigo Duterte. These are the friends and objects of admiration of Donald Trump, president of the United States.
Meanwhile, Trump has repeatedly offended and insulted and belittled America’s allies over the course of his misbegotten presidency. The trail of Trump infamy is made poignant and impossibly sad by the 244,448 (as I write this) Americans who have died from coronavirus, thanks to Trump’s neglect. Like the novichok that killed Dawn Sturgess, Donald Trump is deadly poison.
There are a million reasons why Donald Trump is unfit to be president of the United States, this has been another one. Very soon and thanks to you, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, the malignancy that is Donald Trump will be excised from the sacred People’s House, and the West Wing of that hallowed home will once again be occupied by a man and a woman, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, who love their nation and care about its people. Congratulations, thank you and stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.