Trump and other Republicans have dropped the pretense that truth matters, or at least used to matter, in our political life.
Republished with permission from Lucian K. Truscott IV
The state of Missouri killed an apparently innocent man on Tuesday. His name was Marcellus Williams. He was put to death by lethal injection even though the prosecutors who handled his case and the family of the woman he was accused of killing thought him innocent and asked that he be spared the death penalty. That didn’t happen because the Republican governor of Missouri, Mike Parson, was in a hurry to kill him. Also in a hurry was the Supreme Court, which refused 6 to 3 to stay his execution even though serious issues involving the racial makeup of the jury in his trial were at issue. Also at issue was the lack of evidence in the case against Williams. There was no physical evidence linking him to the killing; no fingerprints; no hairs; no footprints; and no DNA from Williams was found on the weapon used in the killing. Additionally, witnesses against him were promised leniency in their own criminal cases as well as reward money.
A total of five people were executed during the week, three of them Black. The other states where prisoners were executed were Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama, and South Carolina. In Missouri, Williams was the third death row inmate executed this year.
As we all know, the Supreme Court this year handed down a decision that would give the President of the United States immunity from prosecution for anything he does as part of his official duties. It was widely noted at the time of the decision that if Donald Trump is elected in November and is inaugurated president, he could use a military unit such as Seal Team Six or Delta Unit to kill someone by giving them an order to do it. Since the military unit is under his authority as Commander in Chief, the order to kill someone, including political opponents he has regularly threatened to jail, would be an official act for which he could not be prosecuted while in office or even after he leaves office. This was the same Supreme Court, led by the same six Republican-appointed justices, that refused to hear appeals by death row inmates like Marcellus Williams.
Donald Trump has been going around the country holding rallies during which he accuses Vice President Kamala Harris of “sending” immigrant criminals into small towns to commit crimes such as drug dealing, seizure of homes and other property, rape and murder. Today, Trump told a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, that Vice President Harris is “mentally impaired.” “Lyin’ Kamala Harris…honestly, I believe she was born that way. There’s something wrong with Kamala,” Trump said.
On Tuesday, Trump wrote on his social media platform, “If Kamala Harris wins this election, she will flood Pennsylvania cities and towns with illegal migrants from all over the world, and Pennsylvania will not be Pennsylvania any longer.” Trump charged that Haitian migrants who are in this country legally are “taking over” the Pennsylvania town of Charleroi, where many were hired by a plant that packs sandwiches and other lunch staples into small boxes, low-paying factory-floor repetitive jobs that local residents have not taken. The town is in a Republican area of western Pennsylvania where even the borough manager of the town spoke out against the idea that Haitian were “stealing jobs” from local citizens. State Senator Camera Bartolotta posted on TwitterX, “They’re here legally,” Bartolotta said of the Haitian immigrants, calling them “good, hard-working people.”
You can’t turn on cable news, you can’t pick up a newspaper, you can’t check your own email inbox without being deluged with the lies and outrages of Donald Trump and JD Vance and North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson and other Republican candidates around the country. I was watching an NFL football game this afternoon when a Trump ad came on accusing Vice President Harris of promising “amnesty for the 10 million illegals she allowed in as border czar, making them eligible for Social Security.” It’s a lie, of course.
Trump’s SuperPacs, funded by right-wing billionaires, will blanket the country with similar and even worse lies between now and November 5.
Our politics didn’t used to be this way. Even spurious political attacks like the “Willie Horton” ad against Michael Dukakis had a factual basis. Horton was released on a Massachusetts prison weekend furlough program while Dukakis was governor, and during the time he was free, raped a woman and pistol-whipped her fiancé.
Trump and other Republicans have dropped the pretense that truth matters, or at least used to matter, in our political life. They realized that they can open their mouths and say anything at all, and because they utter the words, some people will believe them.
It feels more and more that we live in a lawless country. Guns and mass killings proliferate because the Supreme Court that decided the president is above the law also decided that the Second Amendment confers a “right” to own firearms that did not exist for more than 200 years in our country. When Donald Trump’s Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, they made it legal for states to outlaw abortions with legal language that has led to the deaths of dozens of women who sought help for pregnancies that were in extremis and were denied proper care.
We are executing pregnant women just as we execute innocent prisoners. Laws do not mean anything when they are written for the purpose of making murder legal. It is essential that we vote for better people to make our laws, a better and less cruel way of living, and a better country. We don’t have to live this way.
Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He has covered stories such as Watergate, the Stonewall riots and wars in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels and several unsuccessful motion pictures. He has three children, lives in rural Pennsylvania and spends his time Worrying About the State of Our Nation and madly scribbling in a so-far fruitless attempt to Make Things Better.
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