Perceptions by Gerry Warner

Op-Ed Commentary

Finally, it’s over! Or is it?

As former US President Richard Nixon once famously said: “You won’t have Richard Nixon to kick around anymore.”

When Nixon said this, the disgraced president was speaking to the media in 1962 after he lost the California gubernatorial race and promised to never seek office again. Well, we all know what happened after that and the only thing I’d worry about now is that in 2024 Donald Trump will try to pull off the same stunt and become president again like “Tricky Dick.”

He may try. However, being the eternal optimist that I am, I doubt that he’ll succeed because the horrible memory of the Trump interregnum will still be fresh in people’s minds and they will have none of it. But then again, 74 million votes is a hell of a pile of votes and if people don’t learn from the Trump nightmare it may very well happen again.

If it does, the nightmare will return and the United States of America may very well explode and become consigned to the “ash heap of history” as the charismatic former Russian politician Leon Trotsky once famously said to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets Oct. 25, 1917 as the Russian government collapsed.

And before you go calling me a communist, let me remind you that former US President Ronald Reagan once famously said to the British House of Commons June 8, 1982 that “freedom and democracy will leave Marxism and Leninism on the ash heap of history.” It’s a great quote and true to the events we have been witnessing in recent days.

So, what now?

To put it crudely, I think Trump has blown his wad. He’s a pricked balloon and rapidly running out of air. Did you hear him Thursday, tweeting to the “fake media?” “There will be an orderly transition on January 20.” Yet he calls the domestic terrorists that smashed their way into the Capitol rotunda “patriots” and insists the 2020 election was “stolen” from him. Maybe the nightmare is over, but with toxic rhetoric like this, don’t hold your breath because Trump also tweeted “this represents the end of the greatest first term in presidential history; it’s only the beginning of our fight to Make America Great Again.”

Does he ever learn?

Obviously, a demented narcissist never learns and President-Elect Joe Biden is in for a hell of a bumpy term with Trump tossing howitzers at him from the sidelines, possibly with his own TV network, and 74 million Trumpsters cheering him along on Fox News.

In light of this, I wouldn’t give a bent penny for the chances of other Republican presidential aspirants like Mike Pence, Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley. Or Trump might form his own “Patriot Party” and try to destroy the Republicans too, a fate the party richly deserves.

I’m sure the Trump dragon will continue to spit fire, and in a country as pathologically polarized as the “United” States of America, that fire won’t need to look far to find tinder to burn. I wish this wasn’t true, but I fear we’re in for a hell of a ride.

God bless America!

– Gerry Warner is a retired journalist, who after more than 30 years of reporting, has never seen such a bizarre political spectacle as this.

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