Will he or won’t he? That was the question on people’s minds as news broke last month of former president Donald Trump suggesting he has made up his mind on running for president again.
Grover Cleveland first won the presidency in 1884, and won the popular vote in the 1888 presidential race against Benjamin Harrison, but fell short in the electoral college. But thanks to the Populist Party’s 8% draw in the 1892 rematch, Cleveland went on to win re-election and remains the only president to serve non-consecutive terms. For Donald Trump to accomplish the same feat, he will need to do more than rely on a third party to siphon votes from his opponent.
According to reports, Trump and his allies plan to overhaul the government and fire thousands of government employees should he win re-election. This sounds incredibly reminiscent of his 2016 promises to “drain the swamp” of Washington DC, a feat which proved too daunting of a task the first time around. Will a second Trump administration somehow achieve those political goals and make good on the promises that the first one failed to? The fact of the matter is Trump is a known commodity. With four years on the books, Americans have the tale of the tape, and below are four of the biggest reasons not to vote for Donald Trump in 2024.
Right alongside the famous (or infamous) slogan of “MAGA” (Make America Great Again) were the claims that a Trump presidency would result in the “draining of the swamp,” or otherwise a significant reduction of the bureaucratic state and the career politicians who revel in it. Unfortunately, the candidate who ran on a platform of draining the swamp brought in three guys that would make Shrek blush.
Take John Bolton for instance, Trump’s third National Security Advisor and the man responsible for talking Trump out of the Iran nuclear deal. The same John Bolton who has enjoyed several decades of warmongering under multiple administrations, railed against the UN’s attempt to enforce the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention which would have applied inspections of suspected weapons sites to the U.S. in the same manner as the U.S. advocated for nations like Iraq or Iran, and whose only issue with George W Bush’s “Axis of Evil” speech was that it didn’t name enough new targets. More recently, Bolton had this to say in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper about orchestrating coup d’etats:
Not only does Bolton flippantly admit to interfering in sovereign nations across the globe the way you or I would say we’re out of mustache cream, but he also sounds like his only problem with January 6 was how amateur it was. Hey, you leave the insurrections to the professionals!
Next up you have Mike Pompeo, who served as Donald Trump’s Secretary of State. From where did the Great Swamp Drainer find this appointee? Why, he was only working a small desk job…as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Trump acolytes have blustered since his political rise about meeting the Deep State head on, yet the former president appointed the veritable king of the deep state to one of the most important positions in his administration.
Just last week, Pompeo suggested a buddy-cop duo with Nancy Pelosi in regards to her Taiwan junket political stunt:
“Nancy, I’ll go with you. I’m banned in China, but not freedom-loving Taiwan. See you there!”
Many believe it was his deference to Trump and his “America First” rhetoric that won him the position in Trump’s administration. He may have “talked the talk” with the America First crowd, but it’s hard to say you’re putting America first while also courting World War III.
Last but not least you have Trump’s attorney general and everyone’s least favorite Keebler Elf, Jeff Sessions. The same Jeff Sessions who has made a career out of being a War on Drugs stalwart, seeking to destroy lives over marijuana, as well as strengthening the government’s use of civil asset forfeiture, also known as stealing the private property of citizens who have not been found guilty of a crime.
The Trump Administration added more than $7 trillion to the national debt. Now, before you go blaming Congress since it is they who have their fingers on the purse strings, know that Trump signed every spending bill put on his desk. There was never any serious challenge or veto offered. And before you go blaming the unspecified virus of unknown origins (or more aptly the lockdowns and mandates associated with it), he had one of the biggest annual budget deficits ever, $984 billion in 2019, a year before the pandemic.
Speaking of the pandemic, it was Trump who supported lockdowns long before he ever opposed them, even criticizing state governors who he felt “opened up too quickly.” I can’t imagine where he got all of those ideas from…
Which brings us to the pardons. A blowhard like Dinesh D’Souza managed to get a pardon.
But there were no pardons to be had for the likes of Ross Ulbricht, serving consecutive life sentences for building a website, or Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, who helped to expose the crimes of the American Empire and its Deep State that Trump was presumably elected to combat.
The point I’m trying to make for all you infected with MAGA-pox is this: if the only reason you have left to vote for Donald Trump is you want to “own the libs,” then don’t wait for the general election to make your voice heard. Vote in the primaries and nominate a better candidate before it’s too late and you’re left with another situation like this.
This is a partial transcript taken from the opening monologue of the August 3, 2022 episode of the It’s Too Late podcast. It is reprinted with permission.
