Well, the unthinkable has happened. Donald Trump is actually the president of the United States. While I may not like it, I am slowly accepting this painful fact.
All during the campaign, he would do something outrageous, then he’d say that we shouldn’t worry, soon he would be “so presidential you will be so bored.” Or “I think if I act very presidential I’ll be dull, but that will be fine.”
Well, we haven’t been bored because he hasn’t been presidential. He reminds me of a little kid playing president, dressed in clothes a little too big, his tie too long, talking about his great victory and spouting catch phrases from the election.
But he is the president, which means that he has the power to reinstate the Mexico City Policy. That is the ban on giving federal family planning funding to international reproductive health groups that provide abortion care, refer patients to abortion providers, or provide women information about abortions. And his version of this rule will not only harm women’s health, it will also jeopardize the progress that has been made combating HIV/AIDS in Africa.
And since he is the president, the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines have a much better chance of going forward. Cities that have decided to protect all of their residents by becoming sanctuaries have been targeted. Mexico is going to get a wall, but I think we are actually going to pay for it.
These were promises Trump made when he ran and I can’t fault him for doing what he said he would do. Elections have consequences. In our republic, the winner of the Electoral College is the president even if he or she loses the popular vote. He won the office.
These kinds of policies, and others that we know are ahead, mobilized millions of women and men to rally across the globe to say that they will not be silent in the face of global warming, xenophobia, misogyny and endless war.
Its not enough for the little boy playing president to have the office. He wants to have the win. He has to claim that three to five million votes were cast illegally – that’s the only way that Hillary Clinton could have won the popular vote.
And Trump had the biggest crowds ever in history at his inauguration – the media is lying and he is in “a running war with the media. They are among the most dishonest human beings on Earth.”
No one stole the popular vote from Trump. It is preposterous to imagine that three to five million illegal votes could be cast in an American election. Our elections are run by the states and administered by local governments. Our neighbors and friends check us in to vote and count the votes and the end of election day. Anyone can observe an election as it is conducted, including the count. Those local officials are the heroes of our democracy, not the villains.
The biggest threat to free elections are attempts by Republican legislatures to suppress the votes of African-Americans, Latinos, poor people and anyone else that threatens their majority.
And the press, the “most dishonest people on Earth”? They are the other heroes of our democracy. Free and fair elections rely on information sources that are not controlled by the White House or the Congress, by the Statehouse or by City Hall, by Wall Street or the Kremlin. Instead, Trump’s adviser told the media to “keep its mouth shut.”
We have been through many elections and suffered through some pretty bad presidents. But they all accepted the fundamental rules of the game. They make terrible policy choices and we hope that we can change them when our gal gets into office.
But this is different. This play-acting president is very dangerous. He wants to blow up those rules. He wants us to distrust those people that run our elections and question the outcome if it doesn’t go the way he wants it to. He wants to discredit the press or better yet, muzzle it. These actions are part of his plan to delegitimize our democratic form of government.
This is not normal.
Clare Higgins, of Northampton, a former mayor of the city, is executive director of the nonprofit Community Action! of the Franklin, Hampshire and North Quabbin Regions.