DOES IT MATTER TO YOU?

The mainstream media’s obsession with Donald Trump seemingly knows no bounds.  Whether the story is positive or negative, true or false (in my view, mostly negative and false) he drives their ratings, and they apparently can’t get enough of him.  The tweets, the Russia collusion issue, the sexual innuendoes and escapades, tasteless jokes and U-tube videos, you name it, they cover it.

The latest example is the “shocking” and “existential” news that candidate Trump may have known about Don, Jr.’s meeting with the Russians.  Wow! Stop the presses!  According to the fake news analysts on CNN, MSNBC and other cable news networks we now have incontrovertible evidence of Mr. Trump’s collusion with the Russians.  Even worse, he lied to the media by denying such knowledge.  According to these analysts these are definitely impeachable offenses.  President Trump is toast.  Hallelujah!  We got him!  The world is saved!  I say…. not so fast.

Never mind that the source for this latest tidbit is Mr. Trump’s scurrilous former lawyer, Michael Cohen.  Never mind that the Clinton campaign actually paid a foreign national to dig up dirt on Mr. Trump, which produced the now disgraced fake Trump dossier, which, in turn, was the basis for the FISA warrant that led to the Mueller investigation, which has dragged on for nearly two years without having turned up the “smoking gun” that Trump-haters desperately want.

Never mind that “dirty tricks” have been associated with politics and elections forever.  For example, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley was notorious for getting out the vote, whatever it took, giving rise to the expression that “people in Chicago vote early and often, even if they’re dead.”  Some of you may recall that there was evidence that his tactics may have swung Illinois to JFK in 1960, which, if true, swung the election to him.  More recently, we had the “hanging chad” issue in Florida in 2000, which, ultimately, was decided by the Supreme Court, a controversial decision that gave us President Bush 43 rather than Al Gore.  Significantly, the country digested these events, shrugged its collective shoulders, accepted them, and moved on.  Dems and Trump haters would do well to follow these historical lessons, but, of course, they won’t, because few of us know or care about history any more.

Whether or not Cohen’s accusations are true is beside the point.  I ask you: does it really matter?  Do you really care?  Will it affect your life significantly one way or the other?

The economy is booming; do Cohen’s accusations really matter?  Unemployment is at record lows, even among AAs, Hispanics, women and teens; do Cohen’s accusations really matter?  Trump’s tax cut has put real money in your pocket; do Cohen’s accusations really matter?  Jobs are returning to the US; the stock market is booming (how’s your 401k doing?); ISIS has been defeated;  North Korea has ceased “testing” nuclear weapons and may be dismantling its nuclear arsenal; do Cohen’s accusations really matter?

Of course, those were rhetorical questions.  The answer is “of course, not.”  They appear to matter only to those who live in the NY-DC-LA bubble.  Well, hello!  There is a whole country out there inhabited by people who simply don’t care.  They are more interested in feeding their families, affordable healthcare, getting a good job and feeling safe.  They are tired about reading and hearing about what Trump may have done in his personal life.  Like comedian Bill Murray famously intoned in the movie, Meatballs, “it just doesn’t matter.”  They are much more interested in the above issues.

The most recent survey conducted by Pew Research disclosed that most Americans view immigration as the number 1 issue for the 2018 mid-term elections, followed by healthcare and the economy.  Russian collusion was not even in the top 20.  In May a CBS poll disclosed that 53% of Americans now believe that the Mueller investigation is politically motivated.  Voters’ minds are made up, one way or the other.  It is tearing our country apart, and it needs to be concluded.  Enough is enough, already!

CONCLUSION

This may come as a real shocker to some, but our history is chock full of examples of political leaders, business executives and entertainers who have committed questionable moral acts.  Off the top of my head, Eisenhower, JFK, Johnson, Clinton, Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Tiger Woods and even MLK come to mind.  We overlooked all of them because of all the good those people had accomplished.  So, how can one justify the fascination with Mr. Trump’s personal behavior? I could write an entire blog about this topic, but you get the point.

Most Americans are not interested in President Trump’s past peccadilloes.  They don’t care about Stormy Daniels, Cohen or if ten year-old Donny Trump may have bullied someone on the playground.  We didn’t elect Donald Trump for his moral character.  We elected him to shake things up in DC, improve the economy, make us secure, drain the swamp, etc.  We didn’t want another cookie-cutter politician.  I say, so far we got exactly what we voted for.