By now it’s an old story. Donald Trump has gotten away with countless transgressions, any one of which would have doomed any other politician. With that, he has been rewarded by a plurality of voters for a second term as U.S. President, the most powerful and influential man in the world--once again.

Fomenting an insurrection aimed to overturn the 2020 election, with insurrectionists attacking the Capitol Police, invading the Capitol, scaring the hell out of lawmakers of both parties, and constructing a gallows on the Capitol grounds intended to execute VP Pence. After promising retribution on his political adversaries, he was reelected and gave the insurrectionists full pardons.

He carted off a carload of classified documents and refused to return them after insisting that Hillary Clinton be locked up, or worse, for sending a couple of low level classified emails.

He has been Deporting and/or incarcerating foreign-born nationals, many of whom have been here for many years doing work that native-born Americans are not willing to do in sufficient numbers, or even at all.

Taking a wrecking ball to the White House, something that most of us believed could never happen without support of congress or the general public. Add to this, taking over the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and ordering the Smithsonian Institution to re-write American history.

A publishing house or Hollywood producer would have rejected such a script as being too far-fetched.

The mainstream media have played a major role in making this unbelievable script reality. PT Barnum is famous for alleging “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Many media nitwits were among the suckers responsible for making this snake oil peddler, who never made a deal in his life in which he didn’t hold the power, into the “great deal maker.”

Republicans, with the aid of the media, have raised more hell about President Obama’s wish to improve the Capitol bowling alley, and wearing a tan suit, than they have over Trump’s destruction of the White House.

Trump has lived his life boasting of his prowess with women—ok the media understand money and power and let it go But Biden gives a woman a hug, and it’s a front page scandal. If that’s an exaggeration, it’s not by much.

The media stenographers pass off his lies and public profanity as “OK, that’s just Trump.” Joe Biden, who has struggled to overcome a youthful stuttering problem, stumbles over a couple of words, as we all do on occasion, and to Republicans and the media it “proves” that Biden is unfit for office.

Under the Obama administration, Secretary of State Kerry and unsung heroine, Asst. Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, and multiple diplomats and nuclear experts worked for 20 months with other nations, including China, Russia, Germany, France, and the UK to form the JCPOA to limit Iran’s progression toward nuclear weapons. The deal included rigid provisions for international inspections to insure compliance.

Republican lawmakers couldn’t stand giving Obama any credit — never mind it was not just “Obama’s deal,” it was an international deal including allies and even adversaries Russia and China. Rather than give Obama any credit, the mainstream media, under “both sideism” idiocy nit-picked it for not solving every Iran issue forever.

Trump complained that it was the “worst deal ever made,” and if elected in 2016, he would rip it up and make a much better deal. After he was elected, he was advised by appointees, including top military flag officers, to leave the deal intact. It was working and Iran was holding up its end of the bargain.

But as Trump believes he knows more about military strategy than flag officers, and more about foreign policy than career diplomats, he followed through with his threat to unilaterally rip up the deal. That unwise and dangerous act was treated by the mainstream media with a big yawn, while celebrated by Republicans as “Trump keeps his promises.”

What was obvious to anyone paying attention was that ripping up that deal would lead to a more dangerous world with some predictable as well as unforeseen consequences. It was surely predictable that it would unleash Iran’s ambition to become a nuclear power.

Fast forward to 2026. We are now at war with Iran; it still has its nuclear material, numerous U.S. military members have been kill or injured, the Strait of Hormuz is restricted, if not closed. U.S. inflation is experiencing inflation exacerbated by tariffs and the widely unpopular war against Iran.

At last, the con artist who always got away with what only he could is facing tanking polls. What did it take to get those numbers tanking? Of all things, it was higher gas prices. But wait; he still has a substantial minority of voters believing Trump to be the best thing since sliced bread.

The media clones are correct that other things contribute to Trump’s unpopularity, including the Epstein files and breaking his promise to “reduce prices on day one.” Never mind that such a promise was ridiculous and impossible to keep—and would have been impossible for any Democrat to keep as well. But he slick talked voters into believing the impossible.

Republican policies are reducing access to Medicaid, closing rural hospitals, imposing tariffs that increase prices, and making enemies out of our allies. However unpopular the Democratic Party at large, Democrats have been winning elections. This, along with Trump’s reduced numbers, has Republicans running for office worried. But they are in a trap. They want Trump’s campaign money, but they play muddled word games to dissociate with him while not angering him.

How do Republican campaigners disassociate with unpopular policies in place while they held both the Presidency and the Congress? They are following Trump’s orders to just suppress the Democratic vote.

First they tried, at Trump’s orders, mid-decade redistricting. But to redistrict to favor Republicans, you compact the Democrats into fewer districts while spreading the Republicans into Democrat-leaning and toss up areas. This process risks losing marginal Republican districts in a wave election.

A flagrant, however illegal, tactic is to control and purge the voting rolls as Trump is attempting through the use of the U.S. Postal Service. Another tactic that has been used is to close, or limit, polling places in Democratic-leaning areas. Long lines making it take hours to vote have been used in the past and again for 2026. Terrance County Texas has proposed closing 92 polling places, causing angry protests.

Texas has long been “fool’s gold” for Democrats. Senator John Cornyn, very popular in that red state, and having vigorously supported Trump and his policies, once annoyed Trump. Conyn’s past total support wasn’t enough, so Trump endorsed the scandal-plagued Ken Paxton in retribution. Texas Republican voters obeyed Trump for the primary, eliminating the popular Cornyn. The effective and astute Democratic State Representative Talarico is doing well enough to force Republicans to spend money on a race that would have been a shoe-in had Trump not weighed in endorsing Paxton.

If Talarico turns that Texas Senate seat blue, Trump will at last have suffered some consequences of his over-reach and belief that he is invincible. But he’s still there for over two more years, attempting to illegally suppress the Democratic vote — in plain sight.

— John Waelti of Monroe, a retired professor of economics, can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net. His column appears monthly in the Monroe Times.