Fact checkers say he lied or intentionally misled Americans more than 30,000 times during his four years in office.

He lied about his taxes and his wealth. He lied about the size of his inheritance from his father. He lied about his golf scores. He lied about shady business dealings by the Trump Organization that got its CFO imprisoned. He lied about Trump University and was ordered by the courts to pay substantial fines to the students who were cheated. He lied about the Trump Foundation, which the courts found violated IRS rules and was shut down. He lied about sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll. He lied about trying to fix the 2020 election, which he lost. He lied about classified government documents, including 21 labeled “top secret,” that he illegally kept at Mar-a-Lago. He lied about Jan. 6 and his role in urging the insurrection. He’s been impeached twice, indicted twice by the federal government, and faces additional charges and trials at the state level.

In brief, Donald Trump is a pathological liar, a cheat, a fraud, a grifter and a showman. Scarier still, he regards government as a personal business that will execute his orders.

“What’s not to like?” asked the 74 million Americans who voted for him in 2020. Do these millions of Americans know that Trump is, by most surveys, the second-worst president in American history, bested only by James Buchanan (1857-1861) who defended slavery and supported its continuation? If they knew, would they care?

This is the real mystery behind Trump’s rise in politics – why so many decent Republicans continue to support the disgraced former president. Why would so many conservative, family-oriented, hardworking and God-fearing folk support an amoral, twice-divorced, lazy egoist and likely irreligious TV personality who has repeatedly made clear that he cares only about himself, not rural Americans or urban Americans – not even about his base?

And now he is the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination in the 2024 race just six months away from the Iowa caucus. This pleases more than half of all Republicans. They feel they know Trump, they admire his wealth and his take-no-prisoners language, and they seem to thrive on his self-proclaimed victimization by the Biden Justice Department, forgetting perhaps that it was Trump who used former Attorney General Bill Barr as his personal defense attorney, thus weaponizing Justice.

But who are Trump’s erstwhile supporters? Older white men, who lack a college degree, call themselves “Christian,” live outside of cities and earn a modest income. In brief, they are not representative of the wider American population. Conservatives I have talked to say they prefer “Trump’s policies to Biden’s,” yet they are unable to identify which policies.

Trump should be imprisoned for his crimes. If he somehow escapes justice, and the undemocratic Electoral College repeats what it did in 2016 – sends him to the White House, despite his losing the popular election by millions of votes – much of Biden’s good work will be scuttled.

What this scary scenario could produce: 1) The U.S. abandons NATO, withdraws military support from Ukraine and lets Putin reassert control; 2) Trump seeks revenge against any Republican who opposed him or who supported Biden policies and uses his Justice Department to handle the miscreants; 3) Trump joins Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who was recently reelected despite being under indictment for accepting bribes, and bombs Iran’s nuclear facilities, 4) and climate change becomes irreversible.

Nothing in the Constitution would prevent such outcomes, unless we count that part of the 14th Amendment that bars holding high office for “engag(ing) in insurrection.” That a divided Congress can pass legislation barring a convicted insurrectionist from high office is highly unlikely.

The only certain path to keeping Trump out of the White House rests with voters. Our nation and the wider world depends on us Americans who appreciate having someone in the White House who understands how democratic government works.

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