by Lynn Mandaville

Several years ago, while Barack Obama was president, comedian Seth Myers of Saturday Night Live fame hosted the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner.  At the time there was gossip about real estate tycoon Donald Trump, proponent of the birther movement against Obama, seeking the presidency of the United States.

In his remarks, Myers said, “Donald Trump has been saying he would run as a Republican, which is surprising because I thought he was running as a joke.”

So when Trump rode down the escalator to his formal announcement of his candidacy, there were those who blamed Myers for goading the reality TV personality into actually doing it.

In our house, we viewed it as a joke.  A self-proclaimed millionaire with a questionable moral character and no valid credentials to hold any public office, let alone the presidency, was running to be elected, that is, actually chosen by popular vote, to be the leader of the free world.

We laughed and laughed.

But the laugh was on us.  On all of us.

According to detailed citations in the book “American Carnage” by Tim Alberta, Republicans themselves didn’t take seriously the Trump campaign.  They ignored the signs we all ignored, that there was a significant segment of the American population who believed Trump spoke for them and would keep the promises he made to them.

Except for those who early on endorsed Donald Trump, Republicans didn’t believe he was electable.

When Trump made public ridicule of a physically disabled reporter, they believed like we did that it was Trump’s undoing.

When he spoke so terribly about Mexican immigrants, they, like we, were sure it was his end.

When he behaved so badly at the Republican debates, deriding and calling names of his opponents, they, like we, knew the people would reject him.

When the Access Hollywood tape was revealed, they, like we, were absolutely, dead on sure he was finished as a candidate.

But he endured, and the Republican Party granted him the nomination, in spite of their own professed disdain of him.  (The actual citations of specific pols like Lindsey Graham can be found in the book or by Googling the negative testimonies by Republican leaders at the time.)

Since then there have been so many opportunities lost by Republican leadership to call the president to account for his outrageous behavior and rhetoric.  (Reluctance to lower federal flags to half-staff after the death of Senator John McCain is but one example.)  But for whatever reason, Republicans have been entirely without motivation to correct the president or try to pressure him into conforming to civil comportment as president of the most powerful nation in the world.

And now, though Donald Trump would have you believe, on one hand, that he is a tough guy who will punch back at his critics, and on the other hand that he is the victim of an unfair witch hunt, he has no one to blame but himself for the situation in which he finds himself.

If the president is innocent of shaking down the president of Ukraine for political gain, he has acted like a guilty man, obstructing at every turn attempts to uncover information and testimony about the incident.

He has admitted to making the phone call revealed in the summary released to the press in which he asked “for a favor though.”

He has clung to the notion that that call was a perfect call, but he won’t allow investigators to corroborate the “perfect” motives behind it.

Despite being the confessor to his guilt, he rails on about “impeachment light” and being the most persecuted president in the history of the world.  He claims that victims of the Salem Witch Trials had more due process.  He claims that Democrats, by taking Trump to task for violating his oath of office, are destroying the country by conducting impeachment hearings and approving the articles that accuse him.

If he wants due process so badly, why will he not allow that to happen fully, completely, and transparently?

Republicans continue to blather that there has been a conspiracy by the Democrats to impeach Donald Trump since before he was inaugurated.  They claim that it is an attempt to reverse the will of the electorate, to undo a legitimate election.

Nothing could be more untrue.

Since he was inaugurated Trump has committed many missteps that could be construed as grounds for impeachment.

His missteps have finally caught up to him in this blatant instance of soliciting election interference by Ukraine.

Trump is not a victim.  He is a perpetrator.

And though his trial seems certain to end in acquittal, in the end the joke is on Trump.

For it is his name that will, along with Bill Clinton’s, for posterity, bear the asterisk that denotes the stain of impeachment.