As everyone voiced their opinions in the aftermath of the Biden-Trump debate, our grandkids (ages 4 and 5) were coming over to spend the Fourth of July holiday week with us, so we were careful about talking about the debate within earshot of them, and we definitely didn't listen to the TV commentators who, as we later learned, had spent much of the last week mocking old age and justifying rampant lies.
Are these the American values we're teaching our kids these days?
Joe Biden is 81. Donald Trump is 78. This is not new information. Before the debate, didn't we all just assume that younger candidates should have been considered? Does this point even make sense?
According to CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale, Trump has at least 30 Lies During the debate, a lie comes out every three minutes of the 90-minute program — a minor detail in the news cycle, given Biden's advanced age.
In his July 4th speech, Trump said: It reads, in part, “Those who seek to erase our heritage seek to make Americans forget our pride and our great dignity, and to lose sight of who we are and our American destiny,” and “My fellow Americans, now is the time to speak out loud, strong and powerfully to defend the integrity of our Nation.”
Would you teach your children and grandchildren that honesty means lying every three minutes? And how should we interpret his comments about “our heritage”?
A few weeks after Trump dismissed the white men who marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 carrying tiki torches and chanting, “The Jews will not replace us!”, saying, “They're very fine people on both sides of the aisle.” Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote in The Atlantic: It is important to remember that Trump is the first president to have never held public office before taking office.
Coates writes, “It's mind-boggling to imagine a black man extolling the virtues of sexual assault on video (“If you're a star, you can do it”), fending off multiple accusations of such assault, being embroiled in multiple lawsuits for allegedly fraudulent business deals, encouraging his supporters to commit violence, and then strutting his way into the White House. But that's what white supremacy is about: enabling white people (especially white men) to achieve with minimal qualifications what everyone else achieves with maximum effort.”
A lot has happened since then, including Trump being charged with dozens of criminal offenses and convicted of sexual assault. To say the bar has been lowered (and lowered again) since Trump first came down the escalator and announced his candidacy in 2015 is a gross understatement.
He still hasn't admitted that he lost the 2020 election, something we say so often that it loses meaning. He continues to claim that the last presidential election was stolen (it wasn't), that the election was rigged (it wasn't), and that there was massive voter fraud in 2020 (there was no fraud).
Lies, lies and more lies.
In his July 4th speech, like many of his previous bombast, Trump made what at first glance seemed like a minor lie: “I'm here to be your president,” he said.
As I write this, I try to imagine President Barack Obama in a public speech a few years from now claiming to still be president, and we might suspect he fell and hit his head.
So many of our historical norms were shattered by one old white man, and that old man's name isn't Biden.
It should be remembered that, contrary to tradition, the Trumps did not invite the Bidens to the White House during the transition period.
Remember, Trump did not attend the 2021 inauguration. NPR headlinesHat Day: “For the first time in 150 years, an outgoing president will not attend the inauguration.”
Remember, due to substantiated threats, Washington DC could not hold a public inauguration in 2021 unless it was fenced off and sealed off.
Recall that on January 6th, President Trump sat for hours in the White House, watching on television as his supporters ransacked the Capitol and struggled with police, while venting his frustration and anger at Vice President Mike Pence for refusing to cooperate with the illegal overturning of a federal election.
What have we been teaching our children under Trump?
Biden is old. He's a lifelong public servant who often stammers and slips up. Should we question his competence? Of course.
But Trump is also elderly, has been rambling on for years, has posted angry, vile rants on social media almost daily, and entered politics at a time when birtherism was a catalyst for him gleefully spreading racist lies about America's first black president.
Looking past the irony, Trump’s Republican Party has staunchly defended its own old white Democrats, even as it loudly called for the annihilation of the old white Democrats, repeatedly asserting that the first black president was illegitimate (while he was in office), and even having the audacity to falsely declare that on the Fourth of July 2024, “I’m here as your president.”
Do you have to be a racist to support Trump? No. But you have to be used to his felonies, his lies, his hatred and his racist dog whistles. You have to be used to Charlottesville and January 6th and the destruction of norms. You have to be used to a leader who started from the roots of racism and continues to live in those roots.
Where is the competency test for that?
If the Republican Party had any of the pride, integrity and dignity that Mr. Trump spoke of on the Fourth of July, they would have called for his removal from office a long time ago. So why didn't they? Because, my friends, that is something worth teaching our children.
