Friday, July 17, 2020 | 2 a.m.
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President Donald Trump picked the wrong nickname for Joe Biden. Biden’s not Sleepy Joe, he’s Sleep at Night Joe.
In a Biden presidency, Americans could sleep at night knowing that a madman is no longer in charge … that dedicated and competent leadership has returned across all areas of government ... that Vladimir Putin isn’t secretly controlling the White House.
Americans could sleep at night knowing that someone is in office who takes the job of governing seriously ... that a crook and con man isn’t using the Oval Office for corrupt purposes ... that the coronavirus pandemic is being fought at the highest levels of the federal government.
Americans could sleep at night knowing that someone is actually bringing manufacturing back to this country … that racial injustice won’t be tolerated … that the hysterical drama of an unhinged president is just a memory.
Americans could sleep at night knowing that the environment will be repaired ... that science and research will be respected … that economic decisions will be made in the best interests of all Americans and not just those at the very top of the income bracket.
Americans could sleep at night knowing that the attorney general no longer functions as the president’s personal lawyer ... that the rule of law has survived … that a march toward authoritarianism has been halted.
Americans could sleep at night knowing that migrant children won’t be pried out of their parents’ arms and sent hundreds of miles away ... that the government won’t lose track of those children ... that adequate nutrition and health care will be offered at the border.
Americans could sleep at night knowing that the president wasn’t hiding incriminating information from them on his tax returns … that the president wouldn’t sign an order allowing nursing animals to be slaughtered in their dens … that he wasn’t secretly plotting to conduct a nuclear bomb test in Nevada.
Americans could sleep at night knowing that the president wouldn’t defend Confederate monuments and names on military bases … that the president wouldn’t refer to peaceful protesters as thugs and criminals … that the president wouldn’t spend a third of his days in office at his own properties, where the Secret Service spends hundreds of thousands of dollars to protect him.
Americans could sleep at night knowing that the president wouldn’t refer to nations with large populations of minorities as “sh*thole countries” … that the government would protect women’s rights and health care protections … that the president wouldn’t hold public rallies with complete disregard to exposing participants to COVID-19.
Americans could sleep at night knowing that bans on cancer-causing chemicals wouldn’t be lifted … that Dreamers would no longer have to worry about deportation … that the government had stopped pouring billions of taxpayer dollars into an ineffective border wall.
Americans could sleep at night knowing that the president wouldn’t use chemicals and helicopters to disperse peaceful protesters for the sake of a photo op … that the president wouldn’t encourage law enforcement officers to rough up suspects … that the president wouldn’t retweet conspiracy theories and false information from alt-right sources.
Americans could sleep at night knowing that school lunches wouldn’t be cut off to hundreds of thousands of at-risk children … that the president wouldn’t endorse questionable or even dangerous cures for COVID-19 … that white men wouldn’t be nominated overwhelmingly for judicial vacancies.
Americans could sleep at night knowing that the president wouldn’t encourage violence against perceived enemies … that the president wouldn’t demean the office by getting into petty Twitter wars against celebrities … that the president would know enough about history not to think there were airports in the Revolutionary War.
Americans could sleep at night knowing that the president would understand that COVID-19 wouldn’t disappear if testing were eliminated … that the president wouldn’t make threats to take actions beyond his authority, like sending federal troops into cities without local authorization or eliminating federal funding for schools … that U.S. farmers wouldn’t face the devastating fallout of U.S. tariffs.
Americans could sleep at night knowing that the president wouldn’t hesitate to wear a mask to protect others … that the president understands the value of foreign aid in protecting America’s interests and global leadership status … that international students wouldn’t have to worry about losing their visas and being sent home.
Americans could sleep at night knowing that the president would support gun safety legislation that would protect them and their children … that the blatantly racist mistreatment of Puerto Rico over hurricane disaster funding had ceased … that the White House would stop purging government watchdogs and supposed enemies of the president within the federal government.
Americans could sleep at night knowing that patriots like Alexander Vindman wouldn’t face retribution for telling the truth and upholding their duty to defend the Constitution … that stability would return to the Oval Office’s staff after four years of a revolving door … that the president wouldn’t order photographs and documents to be doctored to feed his narcissism and revise history.
Americans could sleep at night knowing that a president who is enraged at God knows what no longer has his finger on the nuclear button … knowing that the president’s closest advisers are policy professionals and not Fox News TV personalities … knowing that the president isn’t turning the Voice of America into a right-wing propaganda tool by replacing objective editors with Breitbart types.
Americans could sleep at night knowing that the White House was no longer serving up hundreds of thousands of acres of pristine public lands and miles of ocean sanctuary to the fossil fuels industry and property developers … that the nation would re-enter the World Health Organization and the Paris climate accords … that the president won’t encourage the military to shoot immigrants who throw rocks at the border.
And maybe best of all, Americans could sleep at night knowing that the process of rebuilding this nation shattered by Trump would be underway.
The Trump nightmare keeps jolting America awake. What we need is a president who ensures that we can all sleep at night. Sleep at Night Joe, indeed.
