{"id":1424,"date":"2020-12-08T08:57:27","date_gmt":"2020-12-08T08:57:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=135198"},"modified":"2020-12-08T08:57:27","modified_gmt":"2020-12-08T08:57:27","slug":"americas-dark-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/08\/americas-dark-side\/","title":{"rendered":"America\u2019s Dark Side"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

When I was in high school in the Bronx, there were round colored spots on the floor of the gym that showed us where to stand. The bigger, older kids would demand we pay a quarter for the spot, for which the school charged nothing. That\u2019s what\u2019s called a scam or a con, a racket.<\/p>\n

Dwight David Eisenhower, or Ike, was president then, a Republican and a former general who led the war against Hitler. He played golf, had a heart attack that scared everybody, built the Interstate and warned us of the military-industrial complex. No scams, no cons; he played by the rules.<\/p>\n

More than half a century later blew in a tornado named Donald Trump, wrecking the country and its institutions. And with him came the scams, the confidence games \u2013 the Dark Side.<\/p>\n

Trump has raised $495 million in donations since mid-October for an election fund and another one for himself in something called the Save America PAC, according to The Washington Post<\/em>. The many appeals for money were all based on a series of lies about a fraudulent election that wasn\u2019t a fraud.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrump has discovered that running around claiming the sky is falling is a money-making proposition,\u201d wrote Timothy L. O\u2019Brien in a column at Bloomberg.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Most of the money came from small-dollar donations in response to such emailed pleas as \u201cWe cannot afford a Joe Biden presidency. We must FIGHT for the future the American people TRULY support: FOUR MORE YEARS OF PRESIDENT TRUMP,\u201d the Post reported. And, \u201cWill you allow the CORRUPT Democrats to try to steal this Election and impart their RADICAL agenda on our country? Or will you step UP and DEFEND your Country?\u201d<\/p>\n

One way to defend the country is to ignore these appeals.<\/p>\n

Fully 75 percent of the donations will go to Save America, which Trump can use as he pleases. Trust a guy who was fined $2 million for illegally using his family foundation? Trust someone who was forced to make a $25 million settlement for duped Trump University students? His business partner paid it.<\/p>\n

And Trump still is raking it in from his campaign and related committees, the Post said Friday. They spent more than $1.1 million at his properties in the final weeks of the campaign and \u201chas converted $6.7 million from his campaign donors into revenue for his businesses since taking office, new campaign finance filings show,\u201d it reported.<\/p>\n

Taxpayers have paid Trump\u2019s businesses more than $900,000 since he took office, as of Aug. 27, the Post reported then. At least $570,00 of the total resulted from his travel, it said. Tacky, eh?<\/p>\n

He\u2019s still bellyaching, whining and throwing tantrums over his loss to Joe Biden. And he\u2019s firing people, spitting on them and the country for wronging him and stirring up a maelstrom with a 46-minute video ranting that he would have won the election if not for \u201cmassive\u201d voter fraud.<\/p>\n

\u201cI very easily win in all states,\u201d he said in the video. It marked the biggest of his more than the 23,000 lies the Post has tracked over four years.<\/p>\n

We know Trump\u2019s obsession with his defeat has gone too far in the face of certifications that Biden won 81 million votes to the president\u2019s 74 million and 306 electoral votes to the incumbent\u2019s 232. And Attorney General William Barr ruled out massive election fraud, verifying the results, thus contradicting his boss.<\/p>\n

Yet just 27 of the 249 Republicans in the House and Senate acknowledge that Biden beat Trump, according to a Post survey published Saturday. Two said Trump won and another 220 won\u2019t say who won, it reported.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the shame of Trump\u2019s power.<\/p>\n

The danger beneath Trump\u2019s unceasing claims of a fraudulent and rigged election is that he is undermining and delegitimizing Biden\u2019s victory and sowing doubt on the electoral process, the cornerstone of our democracy.<\/p>\n

And creating a shadow government is precisely what Trump intends to do, his former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, told New York<\/em> magazine\u2019s Intelligencer. Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison but is serving it at home because of pandemic concerns in prison.<\/p>\n

He said the Save America PAC \u201cwill be the base from which he establishes an entire parallel system of government. I call it the Republic of MAGAstan.\u201d Its capital will be Trump\u2019s Florida estate of Mar-a-Lago, he said.<\/p>\n

A new Jefferson Davis in the South, Biden as Lincoln in the North?<\/p>\n

Cohen acknowledged Trump \u201ccannot accept losing\u201d and that \u201cin his mind, the only way Biden could have won is through fraud.\u201d But he said the show Trump has been putting on since the election is \u201call a shameless con job.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe sees his claims of fraud as driving up donations \u2013 there\u2019s nothing behind it but greed. Trump is using the moment to raise money.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis money is not going to his Election Defense Fund; it\u2019s to keep him relevant in the GOP and launch his media brand. It\u2019s all about money and power, and you need one to get the other.\u201d<\/p>\n

The battle for the soul of America \u2014 which I interpret as the vision of making a more perfect union with everyone truly equal \u2014 is far from over. With Trump probably vying with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McDonnell of Kentucky for control of the Republican party while slamming and mocking Biden from the peanut gallery, it\u2019s going to be a rough four years ahead.<\/p>\n

Life at the school gym? Of course, if another guy approached demanding a quarter for your gym spot, there was no way to prove you already bought it. These guys didn\u2019t give receipts.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair When I was in high school in the Bronx, there were round colored spots on the floor of the gym that showed us\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1424"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1424"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1425,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1424\/revisions\/1425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}