Donald Trump chicanery- Republicans fall victim to former guy's fake news and false accusations

 Echo opinion published in the Orlando Sentinel newspaper:

You cannot fool all of the people all of the time by David McGrath: 

Trump trickery!

Reading one of the many postings written by the former guy Donald Trump on his Truth Social network, he had (fakenews❗) seized upon the phrase “lethal force,” commonly used in FBI (agent safety❗) paperwork, authorizing searches, to falsely accuse Joe Biden of sending agents to “assassinate” him at Mar-a-Lago. 

That, of course, is classic Trump chicanery: to dangle an outrageous accusation in a Truth Social post, in order to distract voters from focusing on the alleged possession of classified documents in his Florida home (found hidden in a bathroom).

Likewise, a couple of weeks earlier, he claimed that he was not allowed to testify in his own defense during the Manhattan jury trial, because of the gag order imposed by the judge. 

This, too, is a falsehood, obvious to any fan of the TV show “Law and Order,” but intended by Trump to obscure the fact that he was avoiding the witness stand, and he didn’t want to be perceived as “chickening out” by his supporters. (Stormy Daniels alert: In a tweet perceived to be aimed at former guy Donald Trump, which has since garnered significant attention, Ms. Daniels wrote, 'Real men respond to testimony by being sworn in and taking the stand in court. Oh...wait. Nevermind'."

Stormy Daniels-American pornographic film actress, director and former stripper. She has won many industry awards and is a member of the NightMoves Hall of Fame

Predictably, for the previous six weeks, whenever a court session in his hush money trial was adjourned for the day, Trump walked up to the media microphones to introduce conspiracy theories. He said the judge was a “devil,” his indictment a “sham,” and the trial a “persecution” by President Biden. He wanted to flood the airwaves with baseless accusations, in hopes that voters would forget the signed checks, witness testimony, and audio tapes that manifested his felonious falsification of business transactions.

And while there certainly may have been people in the jury who liked or even voted for the former president, they were intelligent adults, not 11-year-old children. So it did not take long for them to issue 34 guilty verdicts after careful deliberation, while withstanding efforts by Trump’s attorneys to cast doubt on the facts by vilifying and seeming to put Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels on trial, in order to occlude their client’s crimes.

And though the verdict is in, and the sentencing is July 11, the distraction and decoying persists, as Republican leaders, either loyal to Trump or fearful of him, criticize his conviction as “persecution” and a “kangaroo court,” while excusing the crime Trump committed to fool voters into electing him president. Such a level of hypocrisy is astonishing, even for politicians.

In fact, the 12 adult jurors in New York who were not bamboozled have set an example going forward for the rest of the country on how to stand up for truth and the American justice system.

David McGrath is a former English professor at Florida Southwestern State College.