On September 7th, Trump wrote on “Truth Social,” (the Trump company that has now lost more than 70% of it’s stock value for investors, including $4B for Donny):

“WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again. We cannot let our Country further devolve into a Third World Nation, AND WE WON’T! Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials. Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country”

Uhm…WOW!

I find all of this completely baffling, especially to those of his supporters who continue to say that Kamala is “leading us into Communism” or turning us into a Third World Nation.
Is there anything MORE resembling a third world nation dictatorship than jailing those who oppose you? 

I admit to being completely flummoxed by those who know better, namely those who once called him out for being the insane “wanna-be-dictator” that he is.  I mean, holyfreakinshirt! He doesn’t even TRY to hide is base aspirations. But FLOP and FOLD they have. Over and over again.

In an excellent article in “The Atlantic,” by Mark Leibovich, Trump laid out his disdain and contempt for elected officials who would dare to deride him.

“They might speak badly about me now, but they won’t later,” Trump said. They like to say they are “public servants,” he added, his voice dripping with derision at the word servant. But they would eventually submit to him and fear him. They would “evolve,” as they say in politics. “It will be very easy; I can make them evolve,” Trump told me. “They will evolve.”

Like most people who’d been around politics for a while, I was dubious. And wrong. They evolved.

None is as obvious as Marc Rubio, whose own parents fled the dictatorship in Cuba, and is now seemingly supporting  dictatorship in the United States. The following quotes are from the same Atlantic article, but are easily “Googled” to find the source quotes.

MARCO RUBIO
2016: “Donald Trump is a con artist.” He is “the most vulgar person to ever aspire to the presidency.”
2024: “The only way to make America wealthy and safe and strong again is to make Donald J. Trump our president again.”

But “liddle Marco” isn’t alone.  The number of “Name Politicians” that have Flipped and Folded is voluminous.

LINDSEY GRAHAM
2015: “You know how to make America great again? Tell Donald Trump to go to hell”; “he is a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot.”
2016: “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed … and we will deserve it.”
2024 [To Trump]: “I love you.”

TIM SCOTT
2016: “If Donald Trump can’t take a stand against the KKK, we cannot trust him to stand up for America against Putin, Iran, or ISIS.”
2024 [To Trump]: “I just love you.”

TED CRUZ
2016: Calls Trump a “pathological liar” and “a narcissist at a level I don’t think this country has ever seen.” Also says, “Donald, you are a sniveling coward.”
2024: “God Bless Donald J. Trump.”

KEVIN MCCARTHY
2016: Likens Trump to Benito Mussolini.
January 6, 2021: Trump to McCarthy: “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.” McCarthy: “More upset? They’re trying to fucking kill me!”
2024: When asked if the Republicans should nominate a convicted felon, he says: “The answer is 100 percent yes.”

JD VANCE
Quoting again from the Atlantic article, “In 2022, J. D. Vance proved himself a master. Although the Senate candidate from Ohio had previously dismissed Trump as “noxious,” “reprehensible,” and “cultural heroin,” among other things, he worked to convince Trump that he was reformed. Trump may or may not have believed him, but he very much relished the grovel of it.

“J.D. is kissing my ass. He wants my support so bad!” Trump bragged at a campaign stop with Vance in Youngstown in 2022. He also claimed that Vance had fallen “in love” with him. If anything, this is the fun part for Trump: showing off that he has snapped up another politician like a distressed condo asset. He had made another Republican candidate—a rich Ivy League ex-Marine, no less—self-emasculate on his behalf.

MIKE JOHNSON
2015: “The thing about Donald Trump is that he lacks the character and the moral center we desperately need again in the White House … He is a hot head by nature, and that is a dangerous trait to have in a Commander in Chief … I just don’t think he has the demeanor to be president.”
2023: “I’m all in for President Trump.”

Finally from the same article, “They all knew better—the Rubios, the Ted Cruzes, the J. D. Vances, the Doug Burgums, the Nikki Haleys, the Mitch McConnells, the Vivek Ramaswamys, all of them. They probably still know better. But they are all expedient, to their political core. “If you don’t want to get reelected,” Graham once told me, “you’re in the wrong business.”

So, I guess I get it.  If you are going to be a spineless sellout, it is mostly due to “job security” in a time when the electorate is so insanely jaded, lazy and siloed, that fear of rejection on election day outweighs repercussions to your eternal soul.

What is most troubling to me about all of it, is that the electorate, so many of the “Cult of Trump” followers, are supposedly good, God-Fearing, caring, people who love their country…and are clearly absolutely fine with abject ambiguity and hypocrisy of following a potential dictator and pathological liar like Donny.

I guess we’ll see come November 6th, how it all shakes out. In the meantime, I am going to continue to try and understand how this horrendous man’s words, seemingly have no residual consequence.