Seth Wenig / AP
Former President Donald Trump imitates the shooting of a gun with his finger while talking about gun violence in Chicago as he speaks at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., Wednesday, July 7, 2021.
Saturday, Oct. 9, 2021 | 2 a.m.
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Former President Donald Trump has become toxic to the Republican Party. He should step aside and make room for another to lead the party, or the Democrats are likely to keep control of the House and the Senate in the midterm elections of 2022 and possibly beyond.
Some of Trump’s accomplishments during his term in office were laudable. He enabled the passage of the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act, which reduced our corporate and individual taxes; he reduced governmental regulations and facilitated creation of a historic number of jobs in the United States, which benefited all segments of our population; he confronted China for violating our trade agreements and curbed them to some degree; and he launched the funding of Operations Warp Speed to develop vaccines for the COVID-19 epidemic.
But as the adage goes, one “aw, shucks” wipes out a thousand “attaboys.” This is what happened and forced Trump from getting reelected in 2020.
Trump’s handling of the pandemic was atrocious. He ignored the pronouncement of the efficacy of the vaccines developed by scientists and advocated against taking them. His public remarks and defiance against wearing a mask in public created confusion and delayed the wide acceptance of the vaccine.
The most important thing to Trump is, and always has been, Trump.
Trump was obsessed with getting continuous coverage by the media, indiscriminately answering all sorts of questions from the press. As a result, he cheapened himself. He later became a captive of Fox News and incessantly criticized other media organizations as fake news broadcasters, thereby turning himself into their enemy. The other channels portrayed him as a bully, confrontational and crude. Instead of diplomatically attracting them like flies to honey, he alienated them and became a target of attacks.
This also led to a whistleblower leaking Trump’s official telephone call with the president of Ukraine, in which Trump allegedly threatened to withhold military aid authorized by Congress, eventually leading to his first impeachment.
His behavior after losing the 2020 general election was atrocious, even though many irregularities in voting were reported. Instead of cleverly handling the irregularities, his confrontational approach of alleging widespread fraud in voting aggravated the government officials who administered voting.
His behavior of pressuring his vice president to vote in the joint session of Congress to overturn the results of the Electoral College certified by the states was an act of desperation and beyond reproach.
Trump lost his credibility. He is now being an obstructionist by continuing to lead the GOP and threatening to run again for president in 2024. With this stance, he is preventing the GOP from allowing new leaders to emerge and reshape the party.
Trump will do a great patriotic service if he steps aside and makes room for another candidate. If he fails to do so, all Republican candidates will continue to be attacked by the Democratic Party and liberal media outlets. We witnessed a taste of this when a little-known Republican candidate ran in the election to recall California Gov. Gavin Newsom and lost. The opposition mercilessly painted him as a candidate of the Trump Republican Party.
Trump’s effort to campaign for 2022 Republican Senate candidates and the secretary of state in Georgia may not bear fruit. His leadership has become an impediment to the election of his party’s candidates in the off-year election.
Trump’s claim of a massive fraud in voting in Arizona’s Maricopa County in the last general election has been proven to be wrong in an audit conducted by his own party. Trump should quit the audit game in Texas and states where he lost the 2020 election.
If Trump were to continue to lead the GOP it would be a setback to right-leaning and middle-of-the-road Republicans which would take generations to recover from. America cannot afford such a calamity.
T. Rao Coca is a retired corporate executive and intellectual property lawyer. He resides in Henderson.
