The 2016 Trump joke that sparked a national reckoning

On Tuesday afternoon, I clocked into my Facebook page and it proceeded to pester me about things I was going on about 10 years ago to the day — or about the time Donald Trump began taking up space in my life.

I still wasn’t taking him seriously as a man, much less a presidential candidate, because I lived comfortably in a haughty world where America was above electing someone that unqualified and disgusting to our highest office.

He was the punchline of all of my jokes. In this particular post, I was admonishing people who were comparing Republicans’ creation of Trump to Dr. Frankenstein’s creation of his monster, saying, “Hey, at least one of them had a heart …”

By now, Trump was regularly insulting women, NATO, the disabled, war veterans, Blacks, Mexico, the working press, and common decency. He was openly asking Russia for help, bragging of assaulting women because he could, and had filled his campaign staff with social outcasts, political wannabes, and known racists.

The KKK was on the record as absolutely loving the guy.

GOP candidates like Jeb Bush, who was insulted off the 2016 debate stage, had started to go silent, deciding to let the voters handle the dirty work he helped produce, but would no longer touch with his upper-crust, lily-white fingers.

Phonies like the late Sen. Lindsey Graham offered up his last known proof of life when he infamously tweeted this on May 3, 2016:

“If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed……and we will deserve it.

By the end of that year, and after Trump had won the election, he called Graham “a little boy” … “nasty” … and “a dumb mouthpiece” … prompting South Carolina’s finest to dutifully become Trump’s little errand boy in their service to hell, instead of America.

Real damn irony then that it’s Graham who beat Trump to their ultimate destination.

I reckon they’ll be reacquainted soon enough …

The summer before the November blast that would shake America to its core, was the last time I felt sure about anything.

I haven’t been the same since.

I take no real pride in admitting that, but when Trump won that election, the country I had served with my life looked very, very different to me. It was darker, and never to be trusted to do the right thing again.

Not a day goes by that I don’t give all of this abundant thought. It stays with me and fills up too many of those empty spaces, where I once could find peace of mind, or consider absolutely nothing important at all like why my N.Y. Giants don’t win more ...

Because here’s the deal: Ten years ago, it was never about the Republican Party for me — at least not at first. If John McCain or Mitt Romney had beaten Barack Obama, I wouldn’t have liked it one bit, but it wouldn’t have rattled me, and knocked me into despair.

I once occasionally voted for Republicans many years ago, depending on the person and the issues. As a journalist, I was never a party guy, but rather than explain all that again, I will say I have not voted for a single Republican since that abominable 2003 Iraq War, because if you are capable of lying so spectacularly about something as heinous as that, what else are you capable of?

Well, in November of 2016 we got our answer.

Before that, and odious things like Citizens United, and the Internet, politics didn't dominate my life, because I naively believed that if one party had gone too far like W. Bush and the GOP in 2008, the voters would correct that.

For the most part, politics operated like a pendulum. Too far one way, then back to the other …

I never thought for a minute that any president in my lifetime before Trump would attack our vote with a vengeance, and then violently attack our country. And I promise you there was no way in even my wildest dreams that we would reelect the traitorous monster who attacked us the first time around.

Trump broke something in many of us, and awakened something evil in others.

I am blessed that my family saw Trump for everything he was the minute he came on the stage and started with all his hurtful, and sickening insults. It shocks me to this day that a lowlife like Trump got within 10,000 miles of the White House and that even 10 percent of the population supported him.

I feel foolish typing that after all we’ve been through, but it’s the truth. He’s a horrible man and the people who elected him are worse.

No them, no him.

I really did think we were better than that ...

And while I didn't lose any family over this mess of a man, I lost tons of friends, a few of whom I considered family. How could I have missed what lurked inside them? How, even after he attacked us, were they STILL supporting him???

Did they really think that little of America?

I used to bang my head against the wall, and ask them what they saw in Trump, until I stopped asking at all. Turns out, he hated the same human beings they did.

The man’s a bigot, and I don’t abide bigots and people who align with them. I certainly don’t call them friends.

I doubt those old friends will ever come back into my life, but even after all that’s happened, the door’s always open. I’d love nothing better than to have a meaty discussion about the last 10 years, why they finally saw the light, and the way ahead through the darkness.

I have stopped holding my breath that those talks will ever happen, and it saddens me to no end. There will be no meeting in the middle because there aren’t two sides to bigotry, misogyny, the destruction of our environment, and pure hate.

And you want to know what the truly mind-blowing part of all of this is?

They are winning.

I mean, they are heartless losers, sure, but authoritarian regimes like the one in the White House are winning the political fight here, and in many places around the world.

They have the Executive, the House, the Senate and the Supreme Court, and are putting a terrible beating on us.

Clean air and water … women’s rights … voters’ rights … affordable healthcare … animals … food, clothing and education to a fast-growing number of our nation’s neediest are all under attack.

It is getting worse every day. Trump is somehow getting worse every day, as he effortlessly proves he has the ability to always go lower, and drags millions of people down with him.

But I’m not dead yet, and have come to understand I was put on this Earth for this fight. I’m a cantankerous, old white guy, and hundreds of millions have had it worse.

Still, sometimes these things need to be written because they are real. Our heartache and sorrow are real. Our helplessness is real. And when MAGA reads this, and many will, their contempt for me (and you) will be real. I have learned these past 10 years that they really get off on the hurt, because no matter how bad things get in their lives, my tears will sustain them.

I believe these things need to be talked about, and a lot more often than they are, because people like us cannot be trivialized, nor forgotten. We have the courage to wear our hearts on our sleeves, and to take a punch and get back up.

That’s what real patriots do. That’s what people who have fought for our civil rights for centuries have done.

It would be easy to just say the hell with it all, but the history our Republican friends and family want to readily erase instructs us to push on and take that beach no matter the cost … or even just that seat on the bus.

We have been beaten up pretty good, but there is not one of us who has contemplated throwing in the towel and surrendering to these heartless maniacs, because it is not how we are built.

A lot is being asked from us, for so little in return. The 2020 election and subsequent attack on our Capitol should have been the beginning of the end of this madness.

Incredibly, it was only the beginning.

And even with all that … deep in our wounded hearts we somehow know that better days are ahead, but only if we keep pushing onward, and lifting people up, instead of holding them down.

We can see the high ground through all the hurt, but sometimes we need to rest, gather our wits, lick our wounds, and talk about the hard journey we’ve put behind us, before we can keep resolutely marching ahead.

It’s been a hard decade, and it’s OK to acknowledge the pain and anguish. We don’t do enough of that.

Sometimes, it just helps to know that you are not alone …

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.)