Alan Zendell, July 3, 2023

As celebrate the 247th anniversary of our independence from the British monarchy, let’s look at the state of our nation. We’re seven months away from the first primary election in the 2024 presidential campaign, over a year from the major party conventions, and sixteen months from the election. Yet, in the ongoing circus that our political process has become, we already have fifteen announced candidates in the two major parties. We also may be approaching a new high in campaign hypocrisy.

Twelve candidates are Republicans, and three, including incumbent President Joe Biden, are Democrats. Given the legal jeopardy Donald Trump is facing, it’s significant that only one candidate in the field has addressed his problems directly. That candidate is on record saying a president facing a federal indictment on felony charges would cripple the operation of our government and result in an unprecedented constitutional crisis. The same person warned of an impending catastrophe if the nation elected someone under a federal indictment that resulted in a criminal trial of a sitting president and suggested that anyone guilty of mishandling classified documents should be sentenced to a long prison term.

No one who is familiar with my feelings about Donald Trump will be surprised that I heartily agree with those statements. What’s most interesting is that the candidate who made those statements to cheering supporters was not Joe Biden, Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, or even Chris Christie, who in his latest incarnation is belatedly focusing on why Trump is unfit to run again. The person who uttered them was Donald Trump himself, running against Hilary Clinton in 2016, while he was egging crowds on to chant, “Lock her up!”

On this issue alone, the hypocrisy coming from the Trump campaign is likely to grow in magnitude and importance. Thus far this year, in addition to his federal indictment for refusing to return and illegally exposing highly sensitive government documents, a New York civil court ordered Trump to pay five million dollars to E. Jean Carroll for sexual assault and defamation, and his company was convicted of fraud and tax felonies. And the worst is yet to come, as the State of Georgia appears on the verge of charging him with attempting to undermine the result of the 2020 election, and the Department of Justice is wrapping up its investigation of the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U. S. Capitol and giving every appearance that an indictment for seditious conspiracy will soon follow.

You want more hypocrisy? Trump’s Vice President, Mike Pence, is campaigning on two issues. One is his commitment to outlaw abortion everywhere in the United States, and the other is that he stood up to defend the Constitution on January 6th, despite pressure and threats from Trump and his supporters. Pence deserves full credit for certifying the results of the 2020 election as the Constitution required, but note that he did so only after prominent conservative attorneys like Michael Luttig advised him that any other course would be a violation of federal law that could land him in prison. And the sharp disapproval he presently expresses about Trump’s actions as President only began with fourteen days left in Trump’s term. He was a submissive lapdog during the first 1,448 days Trump was president.

Speaking of lapdogs, I give you former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who sucked up to Trump from the moment he announced his candidacy on 2015, and carried his water despite continually being pushed aside and ultimately shut out of Trump’s administration. Has he only seen the light about Trump’s true nature in the last couple of months? Why weren’t he and Pence speaking out when Trump suggested we ingest bleach to protect us against COVID, or when he repeatedly undermined our commitment to NATO and our traditional allies? Why did they remain silent when Trump read love letters from Kim Jong Un and spoke of Vladimir Putin in adoring terms, even calling his disastrous invasion of Ukraine an act of genius?

Why did the candidates who profess to be devoted Christians not speak out when Trump used the bible as a prop in an attempt to stop protests against police violence in the District of Columbia? Why did former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley not stand up for NATO and the EU while she was part of Trump’s administration? And how can Ron DeSantis, who described the war in Ukraine as a regional dispute we should stay out of while Biden was in Kyiv meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky now claim he supports defending Ukraine?

We’ve always known candidates often don’t tell the whole truth, but in this age when everything is recorded, when every outrageous comment made by a politician can be found on You Tube and the archives of every media organization, we may drown in hypocrisy before we ever get to vote.