This past week Mr. Trump has shown that he is no longer able to contain himself and continue to present this fake public image of who he is.  Instead, he has displayed his true colors by publicly defending the white supremacist movement and all of those groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, that are a part of it.  The elected leader of the United States of America who is supposed to be representing all of the people of the United States has made the decision to publicly champion the cause of white supremacists above that of the will of the majority of the American people.  He has chosen to expend his political capital in leading America back to the days when discrimination was rampant and African Americans were treated like farm animals and, in many cases, less humanely than those animals.

It has been no secret to most people, at least to most people of color, that Mr. Trump has always felt this way.  We were very well aware that his personal traits reflected signs of misogynistic, Islamophobic, anti-LGBTQ, anti-middle class/non-rich and anti-people of color feelings.  But in an effort to give him the benefit of the doubt and allow him the opportunity to recognize the gravitas associated with the person in the high office that he was elected to – the highest office in the land, and rise above his personal feelings and represent all Americans; the majority of Americans were willing to swallow hard and give him a chance to lead America despite our doubts about his ability to do so.  This was due in no small part to most Republican elected officials, especially U.S. congressional Republicans, urging us to support him and allow him the opportunity to grow in his job.

Unfortunately, after Mr. Trump took office, he remained the same.  He showed no signs of a willingness to learn how the government operates from those seasoned politicians in office, no desire to gain any knowledge of American and world affairs, no interests in learning and understanding the art and intricacies of diplomacy and no desire to learn how to effectively work with the legislative branch of government.  He has shown no signs whatsoever that indicate that he has the capacity to grow into his job as the leader of the free world.  Instead, he has continuously publicly expressed his expectations that his cabinet and congress do his bidding and that that is their purpose for being there.  And up to this point, despite the fact that many of these congressional Republicans had said during his campaign that he was unfit to hold the office of president and that since he has been in office he has done myriads of things to demean it and thumbed his nose at congress and the American people while doing those things, Republicans have continued to support him.

But it is possible that Mr. Trump’s actions during the weekend and the early part of this week, to use a well-worn phrase, could prove to be the straw that broke the camel’s back.  Many of those pseudo statesmen who have been hiding in any dark corner that they could find for the past almost seven months are beginning to come into the light and quote the boilerplate talking points that they have all likely been given.  They are starting to say that members of their own party should not only publicly and plainly say that Mr. Trump is wrong in supporting the white supremacist movement but that they should call him out on this.  I hope that they will do this now because it is something that they should have done a long time ago.  Weighing their political survival against the survival of our democracy and/or irreparable damage to America’s solid reputation in the eyes of the world, whether those of our allies or enemies, and choosing the former over the latter is beyond shameful.

Those elected officials who have chosen to enable Mr. Trump over the past almost seven months without challenging his actions and his leadership should definitely step up now and be counted.  Although their effort to hem him in and contain him and the damage that he is doing to America may be late, it is better that they step up late than never step up.  Mr. Trump has already done severe damage to America and the American people and it is incumbent upon our elected officials to address this problem immediately.  I have said before that Mr. Trump has hijacked the Republican Party and is bullying real Republicans of all stripes into doing his bidding, which includes taking America backwards at a breakneck speed.  I have also said that there are too many real conservative Republicans with far too many good ideas about how America should be governed to allow so-called Republicans whose sole purpose is to wreak havoc and bring down our government to oust true conservative Republicans and achieve their goal.

Although I am among those Democrats who would likely disagree with many of those conservative Republicans and those ideas, because they have something to offer besides chaos and gridlock there can be reasonable discourse, problems can be solved and agreements can be reached.  It is likely that neither side will be completely happy with the final outcome but this is how democracy can and should work.  We will all still gripe, complain and lay blame but we will make progress and we will improve as a nation.  Wouldn’t that be much better than the mess that we find ourselves in now?

Eulus Dennis – author, Operation Rubik’s Cube and Living Between The Line