Trump’s way: Change for the worse

I didn’t need a cup of coffee to get the juices flowing this morning. I checked the Internet and there was my caffeine. “Some of Donald Trump's allies are assembling proposals to curtail the Justice Department's independence and turn the nation's top law enforcement body into an attack dog for conservative causes, nine people involved in the effort told Reuters.”

I suppose it was inevitable and I shouldn’t be shocked, but the fact that Donald Trump has plans to take control more directly of the FBI and the Department of Justice if elected is frightening. I shudder at the thought of J. Edgar Hoover on steroids going after individuals for their personal decisions on having an abortion or Trump playing a personal game of “get even.” The article said, “It would also mark a dramatic departure for the department, which identifies independence and impartiality as core values.”

That is not democracy. It is a banana republic with a vengeance. Trump has shown no special interest in the Department of Agriculture or the Department of the Interior. They don’t let him punish anyone or pardon someone. They are just about our lives, and he really doesn’t care.

When J. Edgar was at work in the 1940s and 1950s, we had a real enemy in the Soviet Union, and there were a few Commies among us. There were major crime families at work, stealing bribing, casually murdering. The FBI didn’t need a president to sic them on suspects. They knew their job and sometimes, in my eyes, went too far. But they didn’t track abortions as they might if Trump gets his way.

Havoc is his habit, and even if he loses, he will be a political wrecking ball.

He has said he won’t necessarily accept the outcome of the November election if Joe Biden is declared the winner. Any American who cares about the future of our democracy should be outraged and Sen. Grassley, as a member the Senate Judiciary Committee, should object loudly, clearly, and now. Silence now is acquiescence to future sedition.

If Trump does get back to the Oval Office in some way, he has said he would pardon Jan. 6 insurrectionists. He said red states would be able to monitor women's pregnancies and criminally prosecute women who obtain abortions.

He said he would deploy the National Guard to American cities as he sees fit.

In a speech in Minnesota, on the day the court gave him a day off to attend his son’s high school graduation, Trump acknowledges that “people” say he doesn’t pay his bills and then explains because the contractor has done shoddy work. Their work is not a presidential issue. His behavior is.

People who would not vote for a guy like Trump to be president of their Kiwanis or Rotary club or head of their Farm Bureau chapter, are somehow prepared to vote for him to be President of the United States.

I’m hoping that Grassley finds the courage to rise above his party to his Sunday principles and speak up. He could guarantee himself a footnote in history as a solid Republican who stood up for our country in a time of need, in a time of danger — in the time of Trump.

Norman Sherman of Coralville has worked extensively in politics, including as Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s press secretary.