It's not my intention to constantly write about Trump. I have a different nuance here, as I reflect on USAF veteran Ashli Babbitt's quixotic devotion to Trump, it reminds me of a favorite Connecticut female cousin who annoyingly gushed with her affection for Trump in Facebook comments replete with heart emojis. I just have never understood Trumpkins. I was still a young college professor when the dude started mentioning his Presidential ambitions. The guy has always come across to me as a shady used car salesman, a self-absorbed, transparent narcissist, a little too full of himself, obviously insecure in the need to constantly hype himself versus letting his actions speak for him, no sense of his own limitations, thinking himself qualified for the highest political office with literally no public service experience.
Now I'm sympathetic to the idea that outsiders can make a difference with outside-the-box thinking, like how a cookie salesman turned around IBM's fortunes. I see nothing of that in Trump's politics. I do think he was a political opportunist who ran in a change election year, against a fractured opposition, and then running against the most unpopular Dem nominee in decades who had won a divisive primary campaign. One could argue in Pennsylvania and Michigan he narrowly won states few of his primary opponents could have carried, that he had tapped into blue-collar angst like few Republicans since Reagan. I do know his GOP opposition had been flustered. At first, he was clinging onto a quarter to a third of the vote while other more conventional rivals could barely reach double digits. It seemed like their "strategy" was a conviction that his candidacy would inevitably implode and they were refraining from attacking him in the hopes of wooing his supporters. That was a miscalculation; Trump knew that most of his opponents wouldn't survive financially through the early primaries without top finishes. All he had to do was hold his own in the early Southern primaries and any conservatives that survived would go nowhere in his home base of the more liberal GOP Northeast.
There were times I thought Trump stumbled badly, like the time he whiffed on a simple question of describing the nuclear triad (a cornerstone of American Defense strategy) and ludicrously tried to accuse the moderator of playing gotcha. And then there was the time Marco Rubio mocked Trump's tiny hands, and Trump, in front of a national audience, felt the need to reassure them about the (implied) size of his prospective Presidential penis. I wasn't crazy about Rubio's childhood playground taunt, but I thought he had successfully exposed Trump's superficial character, that a childish insult could get under his skin and that he lacked a Presidential temperament, that he sweated the small stuff. But I wasn't the key demographic: I think his cultists saw it as a feature, not a bug: maybe they liked the fact he stood up to Rubio and/or channeled back to their own childhood experience with bullies and identified with him.
I think Trumpkins bought off on his purported "expertise" as a "job creator" in the private sector and the unchallenged assumption he could replicate the same in the national economy, not to mention as a rich person, unlike his non-billionaire opponents, he was "incorruptible", didn't need political contributions. I think it part the whole illusion was supported by his portrayal as a "successful" businessman on a long-running reality TV show. Let me say, as an MBA, I was never impressed by Donald "Six Bankruptcies" Trump, his tendency to take on too much debt for his operations. He also put his surname brand at risk on all sorts of unlikely brand extensions, even on potato vodka, even thought he was a well-known teetotaler. (Trump has often played up having attended the prestigious Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania), but he never enrolled in the graduate business program (which is the focus of prestige), unlike two prior nominees (Bush, Romney) who had earned Harvard MBA's. I was far more impressed with Romney's record with Bain Capital
On the other hand, political connections are notoriously involved in the world of real estate development, Trump's niche, whether we are discussing zoning restrictions, property tax or other regulations:
The [Grand Hyatt] project set the pattern for Trump's New York career: He used his father's, and, later, his own, extensive political connections, and relied on a huge amount of assistance from the government and taxpayers in the form of tax breaks, grants and incentives to benefit the 15 buildings at the core of his Manhattan real estate empire.
Since then, Trump has reaped at least $885 million in tax breaks, grants and other subsidies for luxury apartments, hotels and office buildings in New York, according to city tax, housing and finance records. The subsidies helped him lower his own costs and sell apartments at higher prices because of their reduced taxes.
One of my personal favorite tweets was when I reflected on Trump's claims that he had bought off his competitors for the GOP nomination. Paraphrased, "it's like a john arguing at least he isn't a whore." There are 2 sides to a corrupt transaction, and neither side is blameless. In fact, Trump did try to use his position for personal gain: a well-known example was his aborted attempt to host a G-7 conference at his Miami Doral resort. There's a long list of ethically dubious transactions of foreign governments and companies under regulatory scrutiny doing business with Trump properties. Oh, of course Trump had self-serving excuses, saying he had lost business during his Presidency, etc.
This is not the first time I've blogged or tweeted about Babbitt's death: see here. What triggered this rant? There was a Twitter trend of an internal investigation of the Capitol Police which formally cleared the unintended policeman who shot Babbitt as she made her way through a shattered window in the Capitol. One of the leftist trolls said (paraphrased), "Good! She was a domestic terrorist; she knew she was disobeying the law. She had it coming to her." There was no inkling of compassion here, no understanding of the unreasonable use of deadly force, no recognition of the fact that Babbitt was unarmed and did not pose a threat to the unidentified policeman.
Whitewash: "to gloss over or cover up vices, crimes or scandals or to exonerate by means of a perfunctory investigation or biased presentation of data".
When I read Washpo's brief writeup of Babbitt's life and career. She supposedly was a registered Libertarian. (Don't get me started on that topic; I've written multiple posts about a weird grip that Trump had on a large number of libertarians, although he was the poster child for corruption and unlimited Presidential authority. I think part of it had to do with an alliance against leftism and his empty rhetoric against Bush's wars. Not to mention many in the libertarian fold advance crackpot conspiracy theories, including Ron Paul.) Don't ask me to explain or rationalize how she got caught up in QAnon rubbish.
But the issue for me had more to do with the abuse of mortal force. I'm not arguing that what Babbitt was doing was lawful. But there is no doubt the police were outnumbered and in an untenable position because of the lack of reinforcements. This doesn't excuse firing into a crowd as if to make an example of one of them.
But really officers are often given, unreasonably in my opinion, the benefit of the doubt. Let me quote from the closed Justice Department case into Babbitt to make the point:
The investigation further determined that Ms. Babbitt was among a mob of people that entered the Capitol building and gained access to a hallway outside “Speaker’s Lobby,” which leads to the Chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives....As members of the mob continued to strike the glass doors, Ms. Babbitt attempted to climb through one of the doors where glass was broken out. An officer inside the Speaker’s Lobby fired one round from his service pistol, striking Ms. Babbitt in the left shoulder, causing her to fall back from the doorway and onto the floor.
The focus of the criminal investigation was to determine whether federal prosecutors could prove that the officer violated any federal laws, concentrating on the possible application of 18 U.S.C. § 242, a federal criminal civil rights statute. In order to establish a violation of this statute, prosecutors must prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the officer acted willfully to deprive Ms. Babbitt of a right protected by the Constitution or other law, here the Fourth Amendment right not to be subjected to an unreasonable seizure. Prosecutors would have to prove not only that the officer used force that was constitutionally unreasonable, but that the officer did so “willfully,” which the Supreme Court has interpreted to mean that the officer acted with a bad purpose to disregard the law. As this requirement has been interpreted by the courts, evidence that an officer acted out of fear, mistake, panic, misperception, negligence, or even poor judgment cannot establish the high level of intent required under Section 242.
The investigation revealed no evidence to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that the officer willfully committed a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 242. Specifically, the investigation revealed no evidence to establish that, at the time the officer fired a single shot at Ms. Babbitt, the officer did not reasonably believe that it was necessary to do so in self-defense or in defense of the Members of Congress and others evacuating the House Chamber.
Babbitt was one person, unarmed, who was trespassing into the lobby. She was not confronting or threatening anyone, a legislator or officer. Arguing that the burden of proof is on the victim to prove that the policeman acted out of intentional disregard for human life over and beyond bad judgment is frankly absurd; what do they want? A transcript of the murderer admitting the cause was lost, but "let's make an example of one of them"?
