One year without darkness
Remember the number 30,573. That’s the number of lies Donald Trump told over the four years he spread his stench while squatting like a poison toad in the Oval Office. Think about that for a minute. That’s an average of about 20 lies a day, or 7,300 lies in his first year alone. And those are just the lies that we know about. After all, the camera wasn’t on him 24 hours a day.
Remember the number 261. That’s the number of times Trump played golf over the four years he spread his stench while squatting like a poison toad in the Oval Office. His first year alone he went to the links 91 times. That’s an average of one game every 4 days.
Remember the number 25,000. That’s the number of times Trump tweeted over the four years he spread his stench while squatting like a poison toad in the Oval Office. Most of those tweets were full of hate. Many of them actually contained derogatory personal references and slanders aimed at American citizens, real human beings specifically named, putting their lives in danger from gun-toting, Trump-licking morons. Many were aimed at groups of people, often disadvantaged minorities.
Then there were the thefts, the obstructions of justice, the tantrums, the insults to our allies and praises to murderous dictators, the impeachable offences and hence the two impeachments, the bigotries, the slanders, the inability to stand the smallest insult, the constantly referring to legitimate news outlets as “fake news,” the constant Goebbels-like and Stalinist lie that the press is “the enemy of the people,” often tweeted in ALL CAPS, the constant self-congratulations, the endless and inevitable and humourless inability to tolerate the tiniest insult.
Trump’s four years wasn’t a presidency, it was an occupation, a takeover, an interregnum of infamy. Trump wasn’t merely the worst president in history, he was almost the worst president possible. Had his time of stench been a novel nobody would have bought it, nobody would have believed it.
And yet when it came to the end of his first year in office, at his State of the Union address many in the press dared to call him “presidential.” It was part of the sick-making hypocrisy of the normalisation of Trump’s criminal tenure. We were a nation so in shock many of us didn’t even know what was good and what was bad anymore. We had been gaslighted and abused and lied to so much it became difficult for many of us to know what we were.
But forgive me. I come not to bury Donald Trump but to praise Joe Biden. But in order to do that I feel I must first remind some Americans what we are missing, what a fifth year of infamy could have been like. It’s shameful, really, because Joe Biden’s first year in office stands alone. It doesn’t require comparisons and contrasts with the most horrible man to ever usurp the presidency. Joe Biden was and remains a great President all by himself.
What was largely a punchline in the four years of Trump’s “presidency” — infrastructure week — became a reality under Biden. It was a transformational piece of legislation that will reshape America. If Biden did little else for the rest of his term, the enactment of the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act would be enough to cement his reputation as an effective President.
But there’s more. Biden promised to get 200 million Americans vaccinated in his first hundred days. He hit that goal with a week to spare. Biden created more jobs in the first eight months of his administration than any President in American history. Meanwhile Biden has walked the razor sharp line between encouraging Americans to get vaccinated against Covid and forcing them to do it.
As the focus shifts to the Build Back Better plan and voting rights legislation, the media narrative has largely given the Republican Party’s unanimous obstruction little blame. While Joe Biden works tirelessly to save democracy, Republicans work tirelessly to destroy it. I believe Biden will ultimately pass this legislation successfully because I believe in Biden. He achieves what he sets out to do.
So at the end of his first year I say, thank you Mister President, thank you and well done. You are a great man and it has been a privilege to call you my President. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.