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ALPERN AT LARGE - Two big quotes summarize so very much:
1) Donald Trump, while signing his first executive orders, and asked about Biden’s pardons of his family, Dr. Fauci, General Milley, and the January 6th Committee headed by former House Leader Nancy Pelosi:
“Well, I’m not going to discuss it now. I think it’s unfortunate. There’s plenty of time to discuss it.”
2) Former Senate Major Leader Chuck Schumer (now Minority Leader) to former President Biden, prior to Schumer’s breaking down in tears as he urged Biden to drop out of the 2024 Presidential race, and eight days before Joe Biden did drop out of the race:
“If you run and you lose to Trump, and we lose the Senate, and we don’t get back the House, that 50 years of amazing, beautiful work goes out the window,” the Brooklyn Democrat told the oldest-ever president at Rehoboth Beach, Del. July 13. “But worse — you go down in American history as one of the darkest figures.”
History will again and again review this extraordinary, chaotic, soap opera-like era, which perhaps started with the Bush-Gore 2000 presidential race, and went into high gear from 2015 (when Trump entered the presidential race) to the present day.
But perhaps two overarching tendencies will be acknowledged:
1) Biden had very little media savvy, and need propping up by a media overwhelmingly supporting the Democratic narrative…and Biden said whatever he felt like (and required a media/political shield to minimize his speaking).
2) Trump also said whatever he felt like, but had much more media savvy, and made darned sure that he got the media, with a gamut of new/old media outreach to support him, to cross a finish line on November 5th, 2024 that NO ONE could have predicted when he left office on January 20th, 2020.
After all their bloviating, the two men (Biden and Trump) met with cheers after Trump’s victory—which, because he won the popular vote, and got record-setting numbers of black, brown, and Jewish voters to support him—pretty much ended the 2024 Presidential race as decisively as any race seen since Ronald Reagan won in 1984.
Fast forward to today, when President Biden said to the incoming President Trump merely two opening words: “Welcome Home”.
It was a play on words from when Biden first welcomed Trump to the White House after smashing Vice President Kamala Harris during the November 5, 2024 presidential election (and most Americans who stayed up late knew precisely who won that election).
Biden had two words as well: “Welcome Back.”
Enter the conspiracy theories, but also a new way forward for an angry but exhausted America, and these theories are considered FACT by many Americans, rightfully or wrongfully:
1) Biden never forgave the Obamas, Pelosis, Clintons, and all the other big donors and Democratic behind-the-scenes puppet-masters for abandoning him in 2024.He and his wife quite possibly may have voted for Trump.
2) Biden perhaps never could have won in 2020 without South Carolina Rep. Clyburn, a behind-the-scenes effort by Obama and the other aforementioned Democratic puppet-masters, the economy-shattering COVID-19 pandemic, and a media placing its undeniable thumb on the scale to get an aging, deteriorating Joe Biden into office.
3) Biden WAS a crook all along, and pardoned his son Hunter and the rest of his family all the way back to the Ukraine scandal (which Trump was impeached for, despite now being proven right about Biden’s crooked Ukraine dealings).In other words, Biden in effect pardoned HIMSELF.
4) Biden WAS, always has been, always will be, and IS a consummate liar, and adept at enriching his family but supported by the Democratic Party all the way to the White House…because his antics were so successful at belittling and painting Republicans into a corner as racist, evil, Nazi-like fascists.
5) Fauci, Pelosi, Milley, Lynne Cheney, and the like ARE guilty of something, with abuses of power and destroying critical evidence that was illegal and immoral all along. This doesn’t take away from Trump’s incalculable baggage and legally inappropriate behavior…but it does suggest that his opponents were just as bad if not worse.
6) The dynasties of Clinton, Obama, Bush, Biden, Cheney, and Harris, and a host of others to boot, are as deceased as the one last living president who WAS a decent man, and despite his flawed presidency…one Jimmy Carter.
7) Trump will now own and pursue his personal HISTORICAL NARRATIVE, with a different media approach that allows for both Democrats and Republicans to speak without fear of reprisal or cancellation.
8) And the old guard of Democrats owning the moral high ground, from LBJ to FDR and perhaps Wilson? That old guard is quite likely potentially going down in flames as history takes a major, major turn.
9) But the nation wants to move on, and the “lawfare” (as some call it) against Trump by no means will occur against the Bidens. Arguably, the nation didn’t want it against Hillary Clinton, they don’t want it against Joe Biden…and they probably (most of the nation, at least, if the election results mean anything) didn’t want it against Donald Trump.
10) There WILL be hearings, and those pardoned can either plead the Fifth or testify honestly about issues that they’re free from prosecution (if Biden’s blanket pardons without formal charges are even constitutional)…lest they be guilty of perjury before Congress.
So…bring on the censures, but no jail time for the high and mighty!
Because Donald J. Trump feels he’s got a nation to run, and to restore, and if he gets the narrative and a nation united behind him (who knew?), then he will win the most fulfilling victory of all:
That he was right all along in the eyes of so many, if not the majority in the U.S. of A.
On a final note, I always thought that Senator Amy Klobuchar would have been a better Democratic candidate to promote had the Democratic Party wanted to get SOMEONE to knock Trump out in 2020. She could have been, and should have been, our first female President.
But as for Biden’s last-second pardons? Well, they give us all a “do-over” that might benefit us all.
And they certainly benefited the newly-returned President now residing in the White House, one Donald J. Trump.
(Kenneth S. Alpern, M.D, is a dermatologist who has served in clinics in Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside Counties, and is a proud husband and father. He was active for 20 years on the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC) as an At-Large and Westside Village Zone Board Member focused on Planning and Transportation, and helped lead the grassroots efforts of the Expo Line as well as connecting LAX to MetroRail. His latest project is his fictional online book entitled The Unforgotten Tales of Middle-Earth, and can be reached at [email protected]. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Dr. Alpern.)
