The Real Reason Trump Wants a Trial in the Senate

Posted by [email protected] | Dec 10, 2019 | Politics | 0 |

President Donald Trump recently said he would like a full Senate trial if the House votes to impeach him:

“I want a trial,” he said, and “I want Hunter Biden and Adam Schiff to testify.”

Dear readers, don’t be bamboozled. Trump wants a trial but it has nothing to do with getting at the truth of Ukranian corruption and the two Biden’s alleged involvement. He wants a trial because he is tired of trying to function as a real governor of this nation’s affairs.

Here are a few fun facts: Trump has spent 91 days at Mar a Lago. He has spent 75 days at Bedminister. Altogether, Trump has visited his golf clubs once every 4.7 days since his inauguration. The projected number of visits to his golf clubs in four years will be 313, or 626 in eight years. (The total times Obama played golf during his eight-year Presidency was 306.)

Forbes July 10 2019

Moreover, according to a report in The New York Times Trump spends at least 4 hours a day in front of a TV, and sometimes spends as many as eight hours watching television.

The NYT reports that “Trump begins each day around 5:30 a.m. by turning on CNN before quickly flipping to Fox News’s “Fox & Friends.” He occasionally watches MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” because it works him up.”

Here’s the bottom line: Trump doesn’t want to govern. He never did. He wants impeachment because it gives him an excuse to be distracted, uninvolved in the day to day affairs of being president. That and it’s all about him. What could a narcissist of his caliber enjoy better than that? It’s actually a perfect scenario for him. He loves television and he loves to see himself on television. A trial in the Senate will be the ultimate television spectacle with his favorite character front and center as the whole world watches. Given a license to be all consumed by impeachment matters, he doesn’t have to work at the grind of being POTUS; he just gets to sit back and watch others defend him or tear him apart. Either way, it’s pure, unadulterated entertainment that feeds into his insatiable ego. If he is ultimately convicted, Trump can play the scapegoat card and walk away from the job satisfied that he doesn’t have to do it four more years (he never really wanted to be POTUS in the first place). If he is victorious, he gets to ride the wave of adulation that comes with vindication and can claim he was never given a chance to accomplish the goals he set forth in his campaign (i.e., immigration reform, fixing health care, getting us out of the Middle-East, raising wages, fixing trade, and more.) A win-win for him and a major loss for the nation. What else is new?

About The Author

[email protected]

Welcome to Talker of the Town! My name is David Kramer. I have a Ph.D in English and teach at Keuka College. I am a former and still active Fellow at the Nazareth College Center for Public History and a Storyteller in Residence at the SmallMatters Institute. Over the years, I have taught at Monroe Community College, the Rochester Institute of Technology and St. John Fisher College. I have published numerous Guest Essays, Letters, Book Reviews and Opinion pieces in The New York Times, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, the Buffalo News, the Rochester Patriot, the Providence Journal, the Providence Business News, the Brown Alumni Magazine, the New London Day, the Boston Herald, the Messenger Post Newspapers, the Wedge, the Empty Closet, the CITY, Lake Affect Magazine and Brighton Connections. My poetry appears in The Criterion: An International Journal in English and Rundenalia and my academic writing in War, Literature and the Arts and Twentieth Century Literary Criticism. Starting in February 2013, I wrote for three Democratic and Chronicle blogs, "Make City Schools Better," "Unite Rochester," and the "Editorial Board." When my tenure at the D & C ended, I wanted to continue conversations first begun there. And start new ones. So we created this new space, Talker of the Town, where all are invited to join. I don’t like to say these posts are “mine.” Very few of them are the sole product of my sometimes overheated imagination. Instead, I call them partnerships and collaborations. Or as they say in education, “peer group work.” Talker of the Town might better be Talkers of the Town. The blog won’t thrive without your leads, text, pictures, ideas, facebook shares, tweets, comments and criticisms.