Dirty Old Man: On the whitewashing of Trump's behavior by people who should know better

The convicted rapist, and dirty old man, Donald Trump, arrived at yet another courthouse Thursday morning, in yet another rumpled blue suit, for yet another trial about cheating on America, and subsequently one of his wives.

Let’s stop there for a second and consider all that, because it is a helluva lot.

At least it should be.

This is the presumptive Republican nominee for the most powerful job in the world, the President of the United States of America.

This is the nuclear-powered liar, who led a failed coup that resulted in the death and beating of law enforcement officers, the first attack on our Capitol in more than 200 years, and completely ruined the lives of hundreds of patriotic Americans like election workers Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman all so that he could stay in power, out of court, continue to take a blow torch to our democracy, and reap the rewards from assorted murderous dictators around the world for the privilege.

This is who Republicans think should be in our White House.

Trump’s latest appearance in court occurred toward the tail end of yet another week among hundreds recently where people who should know better tried to normalize all this with the revolting both-sides-ism that is running amok across our divided country.

Right, Jon Stewart?

The venerable comedian, Stewart, made his much-ballyhooed return to late-night TV Monday night, only to show us how little he’s been paying attention since his retreat to relative obscurity in the horse farms of Central Jersey in 2016. Those were the innocent days when the gracious Barack Obama was bowing out, and complete and utter holy hell was about to blow in.

Stewart’s departure from the scene at such a crucial time in our history can be rationalized, his tired comedic return Monday night simply cannot. Essentially, Stewart spent the bulk of his 30-minute window bemoaning the old men who are running for the highest office in the land, and scolding America that she can do better.

Golly, such an original approach.

The stakes are simply too high to just laugh away the fact that one old man wants to protect our democracy, the other wants to attack it; that one old man wants to defend women’s rights, the other wants to eliminate them; that one old man wants to protect our environment, the other wants to poison it; that one old man stands with Putin and against our allies, the other loathes Russia’s murdering dictator and protects our friends.

Look, I’ll be the first to raise my hand and shout that we’ve never needed laughs more. Hell, I wrote the book on that six years ago, but have evolved to understand that the possibility of another Trump presidency is simply no laughing matter, and hasn’t been since around the time white supremacists marched on Charlottesville with the orange racist’s tacit approval.

Millions of people’s lives and the future of our country are at stake. If you still don’t understand that, then you are flying a banner of ignorance. And if you are using the moment to go for laughs and make money, you are already flat-busted.

Sure, it’s healthy to laugh at ourselves, and at his best, Stewart gives us the runway to do that, but using his satirical skills to unmask the evil on the Right, and the abysmal job our working press is doing right now, is where he can do the most good for his country.

If he just wants to laugh it all off, and normalize what is happening inside the criminal enterprise which is Trump’s Republican Party, then he’s lost the ability to read the room.

I’ll give Stewart another try, but if he keeps this up, it’s proof he has decided to become another part of the problem, and I have heard more than enough from people like that.

Three days after Stewart’s reemergence, Trump was back to stumbling into another court room. Something the man he will be facing in November has never done even once before.

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This appearance actually snuck up on a lot of us, including me, because of Trump’s tsunami of illegal activity. This trial, which will begin on March 25, is about the high crime of election fraud, and to determine whether the traitor broke the law when he allegedly used campaign money to keep a stripper quiet, who he had sex with shortly after his third wife delivered their baby.

Maybe we should pause here, too, so we can take that paragraph in, because the least grievous thing Trump did here was act like a heartless, horny pervert. As Manhattan Attorney General Alvin Bragg has asserted “(The case) is not money for sex. We would say it's about conspiring to corrupt a presidential election and then lying in New York business records to cover it up.”

Trump is facing 34 felony counts, that could result in significant jail time.

Trump wrote the stripper, Stormy Daniels, a check for $130,000 to keep her quiet. This is not disputed. Why he did it, is — but come on, does it really matter at this point?

When you cut through all the crimes, and attacks, and both-sides clattering from the press, the only thing that matters right now is which man should helm the United States of America the next four years:

-The traitor, or the man who has faithfully served his country for 44 years?

-The filthy man who defends Putin and attacks NATO, or the man who will stand up to dictators and for America?

-The convicted rapist who attacks women every single chance he gets, or the man who consistently fights to uphold their rights?

As always with criminals, they can’t wait to give themselves away, so it was completely predictable that when the disheveled, burnt-orange dirty old man entered the courthouse Thursday, he was asked about his strategy for defending the indefensible.

He said this: “We want delays, obviously. I’m running for election again.”

This isn’t normal. Stop treating it that way, dammit.

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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. Follow @EarlofEnough and on his website.