As much as this writer admires President Donald Trump and likes what he's doing for the country, and that's a lot, I nevertheless wish more of these essential achievements were being accomplished through congressional legislative actions as intended by our Founders, versus "shotgun" executive orders by leaders of both political parties.
Nevertheless, as recently witnessed globally, a strong executive elected by the people is still preferred over yielding top level authority to invisible ghosts manipulating the White House autopen, faceless teleprompter scripting phantoms, and use of "spook" agencies to haunt political opponents.
But to hear some of his ardent political adversaries tell it, President Donald Trump is a dangerous tyrant who is destroying American liberty.
Former President Joe Biden labeled Trump, then his Campaign '24 rival, as an existential threat to the country's system of government during an August 2022 Philadelphia campaign fund raiser, ominously telling donors, "The other day he said he wants to be a dictator only on one day, wipe out the civil servants and a whole range of other things.
"He embraces political violence instead of rejecting it. We can’t let that happen."
Biden chose to misrepresent a comment Trump had made during a Fox News town hall that he "did not intend to become a dictator if he wins the presidency again except 'on day one.'"
Further clarifying this meaning at a New York Young Republican Club annual gala, Trump declared, "And you know why I wanted to be a dictator? Because I want a wall, right? I want a wall and I want to drill, drill, drill."
During a Sept. 22 interview regarding her new book "107 Days," former Vice President Kamala Harris told MSNBC host Rachael Maddow, "Right now, we are dealing with, as I called him at my speech on the Ellipse, a tyrant. We used to compare the strength of our democracy to communist dictators."
"That's what we're dealing with right now in Donald Trump," Harris added.
Then there's Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., a guy with suspected '28 presidential ambitions of his own, who accused President Trump of "the acts of a dictator" for deploying National Guard troops to quell violent protests in Los Angeles which he characterized as "inciting and provoking violence," "creating mass chaos" and "militarizing cities."
Trump had ordered the June 8 deployment of 2,000 Guard members to provide what the U.S. Northern Command said was to provide "safety and protection of federal property and personnel."
More recently, former FBI Director James Comey has called President Trump a tyrant in blaming him for two federal criminal indictment charges lodged against him by the Department of Justice, one count for allegedly making false statements and the other alleging obstruction.
Both indictments authorized by an independent Virginia grand jury relate to allegedly false sworn statements Comey made in Sept. 2022 Senate testimony regarding FBI "Crossfire Hurricane" spying on Trump campaign officials.
This was premised upon unsupportable accusations of collusion with Russian agents to influence the 2016 election as a political distraction from more than 30,000 unauthorized emails former Secretary of State Hillory Clinton deleted on her private server.
Although reportedly entirely fabricated as opposition research paid for by the Clinton campaign, and allegedly known by the FBI to be false, those Russia collusion accusations dogged the entire first term of the Trump presidency and beyond, leading to a lengthy investigation by special counsel John Durham that found no evidence to support the assertion.
Comey, now portraying himself as a Trump DOJ victim, stated on Instagram, "Somebody that I love dearly recently said that fear is the tool of a tyrant and she's right but I'm not afraid and I hope you're not either."
Defiantly, Comey said, "My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump. But we couldn't imagine ourselves living any other way. We will not live on our knees."
He then added, "My heart is broken for the Justice Department, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system. I'm innocent so let’s have a trial."
No one should question James Comey's right to trial in a fair justice system, one very much unlike the partisan DOJ the Comey FBI was part of to allegedly get Trump impeached on phony Russia collusion charges.
Comey shouldn't have to experience a weaponized DOJ like the one presided over by then-U.S. Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland who authorized the Aug. 8, 2022, armed FBI raid on Trump's Palm Beach, Florida Mar a Lago residence in search of classified documents, while showing no interest in classified documents found in multiple Biden properties including an unsecured garage next to his antique Corvette driven by his drug-addicted son.
Nevertheless, as Garland has repeatedly implored regarding President Trump, "No person is above the law.."
Let it now be so as we also reject demagoguery in all its forms, face and discuss problems which divide us with honesty, and seek a spirit of fairness and national healing benefiting all.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.
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