NOLL: President, nation on trial

Published 9:00 am Saturday, February 1, 2020

To Trumpists it doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter what John Bolton has to say.

It doesn’t matter what senior members of the U.S. Foreign Service like William Taylor and Marie Yovanovitch have to say.

It doesn’t matter that Robert Mueller’s report did anything but exonerate the President.

It doesn’t matter that our intelligence community agrees that it was Russia and not the Ukraine that interfered in the 2016 election.

It doesn’t matter that he insulted veterans and gold star families, or that he described the traumatic brain injuries of U.S. soldiers in Iraq as mere “headaches.”

Would it matter to them if Trump stood in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shot someone? I am afraid not.

Like it or not, the result of the impeachment trial has been all but certain from day one, and soon headlines like “Trump Acquitted” will dominate our media. Such headlines will stand in stark contrast to what we saw last December, when the U.S. Congress passed two articles of impeachment: Article One (abuse of power) and Article Two (obstruction of Congress).

Depending on what ideological side you belong to, you will either seethe at Trump’s acquittal, because you believe that our system of checks and balances has failed us, or you will celebrate, because you are convinced that your side has been exonerated.

But what do words like “exoneration” even mean these days, or for that matter words like “truth”?

We are living at a time when everyone can create his or her own “facts,” when conspiracy theories and fears of “socialism” are used as smokescreens to distract us from the realities of our times, and when too many are busy screaming at those they don’t agree with.

And all of these aspects undermine our ability to carefully listen, to objectively analyze, and to honestly self-reflect.

I have lived in the U.S. for more than three decades and have never experienced our society as deeply divided as it is today. On certain days I can only shake my head in horror, hoping to wake up from the nightmare I find myself in. What happened to our society?

In some ways it appears that the laws of physics and mathematics no longer apply and that words like decency, morality and veracity no longer have any meaning. What used to be down is up, what used to be wrong is right, and two plus two no longer equals four.

Add to this predicament that the “A” in USA seems to stand for “Amnesia” and it is no wonder that our society is in such poor shape.

Thus, amid all the noise and chatter occupying our air waves and distracting our minds, it is important to again highlight behaviors our 45th President has displayed over the years:

In 1989, Trump placed advertisements into New York newspapers to call for his state’s adoption of the death penalty. What inspired these ads was the alleged rape of a jogger by the Central Park Five. Thankfully, the five men were only sentenced to five to 15 years in prison, because in 2001 it became clear that someone else was responsible for the crime. The convictions of the Central Park Five were retrospectively vacated. Trump, however, never apologized.

In 2005, Trump was on his way to film an episode with “Access Hollywood” when he bragged about his ability to grab women by their —–, right in line with the attitudes of men like Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein. Since then Trump has added a long list of insults to women by describing them as fat and ugly, or by comparing them to pigs and dogs. Clearly, the late First Lady Barbara Bush had valid reasons to wonder how any self-respecting woman could vote for Donald Trump.

In 2006, Trump had an affair with a porn star and at a time when his current wife was pregnant with his youngest child. Ten years later, in 2016, “Stormy Daniels” was paid $130,000 to remain silent about this relationship. Candidate Trump wanted to make sure that his run for the U.S. presidency was not damaged by any publicity regarding his adulterous affair.

In 2018, Trump reached a $25 million settlement with former students of his now-defunct Trump University. These students successfully proved that Trump University used false advertisements and unscrupulous sales techniques to run a sham institution from 2005 until 2010.

In 2019, Trump was forced to pay $2 million to charities as part of an agreement to end a lawsuit. This lawsuit established that Trump and his family had misused funds from his charitable Donald J. Trump Foundation to promote his run for the U.S. presidency and to pay off personal debts.

And the list goes on and on.

Meanwhile, our national debt has reached record heights, Russia continues to threaten our electoral system, anti-Semitism and xenophobia are on the rise, and our standing among traditional allies has been severely diminished.

How can anyone still trust Trump to “faithfully preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States” and all the fundamental principles it contains? Do you truly believe that he is not capable of abusing his power and obstructing those who want to shed light on his actions?

As Adam Schiff put it: “If right doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter how good the Constitution is. It doesn’t matter how brilliant the framers were. It does matter how good or bad our advocacy in this trial is. It doesn’t matter how well written the oath of impartiality is. If right doesn’t matter, we are lost. If the truth doesn’t matter, we are lost.”

Trump’s record shows that he does not deserve our trust or our vote. The question is, just how lost are we?

By the time this column comes out, the Senate may have already “absolved” Trump, but come November, the American people have a chance to show the world that the truth and right still matter in this nation.

Dr. Michael G. Noll is a resident of Valdosta.