By Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier
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Along with the rest of the world and tens of millions of Americans I am hoping that the nightmare called Trump will be over on November 3.
Fortunately, Trump just announced that if he loses the election, he will leave the United States. That is the best thing he has said in four years! He probably is worried that he will go to jail after he loses the election for the multiple crimes he has committed both during and after holding office. The only problem is which country would be willing to give him refuge; maybe Turkey or Azerbaijan. Or maybe Israel.
I know that some Armenians will not be happy with my position. But I have always strongly expressed my point of view as honestly as I could. I sincerely believe that Trump has been a menace to the United States and the world! Hopefully, with Trump’s defeat on Nov. 3, we will all breathe a big sigh of relief. We will once again live in a free democratic country without the fear of a dictator ruining our health and our lives.
There are not enough negative words in the dictionary to describe all the wrong things Trump has said and done in the past four years. This must come to a stop. It will take a long time for the next U.S. President to undo the damage that Trump has done to America and the world.
The Washington Post meticulously kept track of Trump’s lies and exaggerations. As of May 2020, Trump has lied over 20,000 times since becoming President. He is a serial liar. You cannot trust a word he says. He says one thing in the morning and the opposite in the evening. When confronted, he says he did not say it, even when it is proven by a tape recording of his own voice. He said in a speech in 2018: don’t believe what you are reading or what you are seeing! In other words, ignore the facts and trust his lies.
The only thing you can trust is that Trump will do what is in his self-interest. As President he has directed business to his hotels and golf courses around the world. He owes $400 million to unknown individuals and entities, but will not reveal their names. Could it be that some of the dictators he embraces are the ones that lent him these funds. And that could be the reason, among others, why Trump adamantly refuses to make his tax returns public.
Turning to the coronavirus pandemic, Trump’s incompetence and ignorance has caused the deaths of over 220,000 Americans as of now, with the count going up every day. He never took the deadly virus seriously, describing it as a Democrat hoax and said on Feb. 27, 2020 at the White House that “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.” Regrettably, many more will die before this pandemic is over. Trump has held large political rallies around the country and several events at the White House with most attendees not wearing masks and no social distancing. Many of them, Trump’s own voters, were infected and some died. Trump and his family were also infected, but he seems to have learned no lessons from his reckless behavior.
Trump has confessed that he is in love with dictators and against traditional U.S. allies. Trump told journalist Bob Woodward in a taped interview: “I get along very well with Erdogan, even though you’re not supposed to because everyone says, ‘what a horrible guy.’ But you know, for me it works out good. It’s funny, the relationships I have, the tougher and the meaner they are, the better I get along with them. You’ll explain that to me someday, okay? But maybe it’s not a bad thing. … The easy ones are the ones I maybe don’t like as much or don’t get along with so much.”
It is therefore not surprising that Pres. Trump has not lifted a finger to pressure his good friend Erdogan to stop arming and encouraging Azerbaijan in the attack on Artsakh. He is not even interested in telling Erdogan to stop flying terrorists from Northern Syria to Azerbaijan, because Trump does not have anything personal to gain from the Artsakh conflict. Meanwhile, young Armenian soldiers are dying every day. If Trump wanted to, he could have stopped the war with one phone call to Erdogan. But, as Trump confessed to Breitbart News Daily in 2015: “I have a little conflict of interest ’cause I have a major, major building in Istanbul. It’s a tremendously successful job. It’s called Trump Towers — two towers, instead of one, not the usual one, it’s two.”
On Oct. 18, after noticing a group of Armenian protesters in Orange County, California, at a rally in Reno, Nevada, later that day, Trump praised Armenians and said he liked their flag. Even though he made no reference to the Artsakh War, he said, “we are working on something.” Trump may be alluding to the Oct. 23 planned meeting in Washington, DC, of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo with the Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan. As Trump often says, “let’s see what happens.”
Many books have been written in recent months by either Trump’s relatives or his White House staff, revealing his multiple flaws. Recently, former White House Chief of Staff retired General John Kelly said about Trump: “The depths of his dishonesty are just astounding to me. The dishonesty, the transactional nature of every relationship, though it’s more pathetic than anything else. He is the most flawed person I have ever met in my life.”
One of the amazing things about Trump supporters is their blind following of Trump as their cult leader, no matter how despicable his actions or statements are. How can evangelicals and other decent people ignore his immoral practices and his lies? He has had many illicit sexual affairs with prostitutes and paid them hush money. He has probably not entered a church in his life, yet he is worshipped like a God! This is very sad and regrettable.
Trump has also ruined the United States’ reputation around the world. According to a Pew poll, Russia’s Putin is more respected than Trump and he is just one point ahead of China’s Xi Jinping (29% to 28%) among world leaders. The Trump administration has also violated several international agreements signed by the United States.
To conclude, a vote for Biden is a vote to get rid of Trump. I am not naïve to believe campaign promises, but one thing is sure, Trump must go. So regardless of what Biden promises to do, he cannot be any worse than Trump for Armenian Americans, for Armenia, for the United States and the world. We have seen four years of Trump’s inept governance and that is long enough for me and many others. No wonder many analysts have said, “Trump is unfit to be President.” It is time for sanity to return to the White House! Imagine the damage Trump could do in a second term if uninhibited by concerns for reelection!
