It's not OK. 

Where we are is not OK. 

While most, but not all, have made up their minds on this election there are still many who need to know the facts and truth of where we are today before they vote. These are those facts. The powers of the Presidency are limited. The Founding Fathers saw to that. However, the damage the President can do is unlimited. That should frighten all of us because that's where we are right now. 

This IS NOT an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris. I don't know what kind of President she can be and neither does she. As Vice President she was showcased almost never and it helped create a lack of confidence in her now. 

This IS AN INDICTMENT of President Trump. I guess that's number five. 

On January 20, 2025 only one person can take the oath of office. For the sake of all of us that cannot be Donald Trump. 

The oath reads... 

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Those words are about America not about the President — not about a single person in that office. The office is bigger than any man or woman who occupies it. That's why it works and has been the envy of the world until Donald Trump. 

He never got it. He never tried to. 

The list of disqualifiers that should have kept Trump out of this conversation is very, very long. I've cut that list down to just 12. 

If these times were normal...never mind...these aren't normal times. Individually each of these should end any candidate's run. Collectively, these dozen items should be enough to forever banish Trump to some uninhabitable spot that no one should go to like...Mar-A-Lago. 

Each of these items is based in facts and truth. The same truths I've told about Trump since he came down that escalator in 2015. 

Let’s begin: 

12) ITS NOT DEMENTIA, HE'S JUST WEIRD: 

Trump has always done ridiculous long rallies with endless non-sequiturs mixed with constant bragging, and tired, whiny rants about how badly he's treated. But now he's gotten even more odd. The most obvious example is his stop down at one event where he directed his DJ to play music while he danced. 

If you didn't see it, it's even worse than it sounds and it's a primary example of his wheels coming off faster than ever. 

11) HE'S DANGEROUSLY DUMB: 

He doesn't understand what tariffs are and what they do to the economy. He admitted not knowing what NATO is and why it matters so much. And...in a word...BLEACH! 

Remember the movie "Animal House"? If Dean Wormer were still alive he'd say, "fat, dumb, and drunk with power is no way to go through life" Don. 

10) HE IS THE IMMIGRATION PROBLEM: 

NO — Mexico didn't pay for his wall. YES — we have an immigration policy that must be fixed. YES — Trump stopped the first significant border bill because he wanted the border to be a huge campaign issue. 

That bill was negotiated and pushed to conclusion by the very conservative Senator James Lankford. It wouldn't fix everything but it was a HUGE step and Trump killed it just so he could say Biden/Harris failed on the border. 

Hear that. Donald Trump didn't want to fix the problem because it would hurt his campaign. 

9) HE TRASHES OUR INSTITUTIONS: 

Donald Trump has dumped on the media non-stop, and slammed the FBI and our intelligence agencies since he took office. 

He also has viciously attacked the courts. More specifically he blasts judges who hold him accountable - you know almost like he's subject to the same rules as the rest of us. Imagine that. 

Most offensively he has called our war dead "losers". He's said the wounded should be hidden from view. And he said Sen. John McCain was not a hero because he got caught. 

Strong words from a coward who happily took 5 draft deferments partly with a fake diagnosis of bone spurs arranged by his father. 

8) HIS INCREDIBLE UN-PRESIDENTIAL BEHAVIOR: 

His juvenile name calling is sad. His public cursing is bad. But nothing is worse than the grift. It may not be illegal but shaking down regular Americans for campaign donations he uses for himself should be. He has no shame and it shows with the long list of Trump products he sells for more personal spending. 

Those products include; 

• Gold sneakers 

• Products featuring his mugshot 

• Superhero cards featuring Trump as characters like an astronaut or a cowboy 

• Trump cologne and perfume (which must smell like oranges, right?) 

• Bibles ..made in China 

Oh...and a nonpartisan firm estimated his family (including him) made/took more than 640m dollars in his first term alone. 

There are unwritten rules former Presidents have adhered to as laid out in the great book, The Presidents Club. Trump has blown off all of that because he has no honor or respect for the office. 

7) THE LIES: 

Trump was not a good student but he learned a lot from a very bad man, the legendary Roy Cohn. Lying was always part of his lesson plan. Cohn was the right hand to Sen. Joseph McCarthy and all the damage done by the Red Scare (mostly) in the 50s. The Washington Post documented over 30,000 lies in his first term. He's averaging more than 50 lies/day in this campaign. 

Trump lies constantly and without any remorse. Some of the best psychological minds in America have said he is a malignant narcissist, a sociopath, and an absolute danger to America. 

Think about it. Do you know anyone else who never laughs and has no obvious friends? That whirring sound you hear is Freud spinning in his grave. 

6) HE LOVES DICTATORS: 

Trump has always seen himself as a tough guy. He's not and never has been. Yet his love of thug-life has shown us he truly wants to be a dictator and will act like once if he wins. The danger here is bigger than his little fantasy. He is easily manipulated and thinks creeps like Kim Jong-Un love him. If he hasn't already given secrets to Putin he likely will. 

Think about that. 

Remember, if Trump wins he will have no guardrails and will act in his own interest only. He won't have the strong cabinet he had in his early first administration. He will surround himself with people who will say yes to him and jump as high as he tells them to jump. Those people will do the job he never really wants to do. They will shape policy. They will drive his agenda. Project 2025 will just be the start. 

5) HE'S A BULLY: 

Donald Trump is mean. He shows it daily in how he talks about women, migrants, the disabled, and more. 

He fired FBI Director Comey for not ending the investigation into him. He also got rid of whistle blowers for telling the truth of Trump's behavior. 

Trump mocked dead politicians who had stood up to him including Sen. John McCain. 

His lies about migrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio caused death threats and closed schools. His lies about FEMA support to storm ravaged North Carolina halted aid workers in doing their jobs and victims suffered. 

He did all that even in the face of Republican reps and Republican Governors saying publicly those stories were not true. 

4) HE'S A CONVICTED FELON: 

Trump was found guilty of falsifying business records in his N.Y. hush money trial. 34 felony count convictions are just part of the story. 

He lost a huge judgement with an amended verdict of millions of dollars owed to writer E. Jean Carroll. Even after the sexual abuse/rape conviction he continued to trash his victim as he has all women who have accused him in the past. 

Trump also must still stand trial in Georgia for trying to fix that state's election. He's had his lawyers play games and shift focus to the prosecutors romantic relationship with her top attorney. That charge has nothing to do with Trump's guilt or innocence. 

The most serious of all of these cases is the January 6th insurrection trial. That too has been stalled by constant legal maneuvering for now. 

Note that Donald Trump never tries to prove himself innocent. He simply has his attorneys look for more loopholes to grind all this to a halt. 

3) BAD MANAGEMENT KILLS: 

Multiple experts agree that Trump's horrific management of the pandemic cost thousands of lives. 

If he had asked us to come together and follow medical advice as we knew it at the time many, many people would not have died. 

Multiple independent health commissions have determined that nearly 160,000 may have survived with better crisis management and less concern by Trump about his "numbers" of infected Americans. He constantly said we should test less so he would look better. 

If he had urged us to socially distance and yes, wear masks, it would have helped. If he had been a leader who worked with Governors and not against them lives would have been saved. 

Trump's pandemic incompetence cannot be forgiven because it never had to be so bad. 

Now he has pledged to turn over HHS and USDA management over to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and have this most prominent vaccine denier be in charge of American's health. 

It's more than a bad idea. It's dangerous and threatens lives again. 

2) HE LOST AND HE KNOWS IT: 

Trump's election denial and his ongoing refusal to concede to Joe Biden is unprecedented. 

Multiple sources say Trump admitted he lost behind closed doors but would not admit defeat and still won't today. 

That is pure Roy Cohn. He taught Trump his 3 rules: 

1.  Attack, attack, attack 

2.  Admit nothing, deny everything 

3.  No matter what, claim victory, and NEVER admit defeat 

Sound familiar? 

Trump's court challenges failed and state election officials have said there was no fraud. 

Keep in mind Trump only challenged results in states that he lost. 

If he truly believed the election was rigged ask yourself why he would run again? The infrastructure didn't change. If the system was broken why even try? 

1) AND THEN THERE WAS JANUARY 6th: 

In the ultimate act of treason, Trump used social media and every microphone and camera he could find, to crank up his most crazed followers to come to D.C. and stop the certification of Joe Biden 's win. 

It doesn't matter that he wasn't one of the rioters. They were there for him and followed his marching orders. 

And it took hours before he finally spoke to tell them to leave. 

That mob would have killed his Vice President and Speaker Pelosi as well. 

Let that sink in. The President of the United States sat and watched his mob chanting hang Mike Pence. He watched the whole of Congress under siege. He watched the building that is the symbol of our democracy be attacked live. And he just sat there. 

It was the worst attack on our Capitol since the war of 1812. That attack was by our enemy, the Brits. This attack was by Americans. Donald Trump lit the flame and deserves the blame. 

For these and many other reasons Donald Trump must go. 

He sees the most important office in the world as a means to an end to serve his needs and not the needs of 346 million Americans. He only wants to be President to exploit the job for personal and financial gain, ego gratification, and legal protection. 

If Trump wins he will likely do the following and much more:

• Pardon himself pending more legal challenges 

• Deport migrants and open internment camps 

• Criminally prosecute his percieved enemies 

• Destroy any/all media critics 

• Use soldiers against citizens who protest against him 

• Abandon our allies and give up Ukraine to Vladimir Putin 

• Continue to play politics with disasters 

• Punish women and health care professionals over reproductive rights 

If you still need convincing read the words of those who served most closely with him while he was in the White House... 

• VP Mike Pence — “Anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States.” 

• Gen. John Kelly — “He certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure. He's unhinged and an idiot.”

• Gen. James Mattis — “Trump has the understanding of a 5th or 6th grader.”

• Natl Security Advisor, John Bolton — “To be a fascist, you have to have a philosophy. Trump's not capable of that. Trump "hasn't got the brains" to be a dictator.”

• Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson — “Trump’s understanding of global events, his understanding of global history, his understanding of US history was really limited. It’s really hard to have a conversation with someone who doesn’t even understand the concept for why we’re talking about this. He's a moron.”

• Homeland Security Advisor Tom Bossert — “The President undermined American democracy baselessly for months. As a result, he’s culpable for this siege of Jan 6, and he is an utter disgrace.”

• Natl. Security Advisor HR McMaster — “He's a dope.”

• Economic Advisor Gary Cohn — “He's dumb as shit.”

• Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci — “He is the domestic terrorist of the 21st century.”

• Attorney General Bill Barr — “He’s like a nine-year-old, a defiant nine-year-old kid, who’s always pushing the glass toward the edge of the table, defying his parents to stop him from doing it. And he’s a very petty individual who will always put his interests ahead of the country’s, his personal gratification of his ego, but our country can’t be a therapy session for a troubled man like this.” 

SO, I'll end where I began. This is not an endorsement of Kamala Harris. She may well be a great or even a very good President. She might even be bad at the job. But what we don't yet know about her, we do know about Donald Trump. Harris can do a mere fraction of harm to this country compared to the mountain of damage Trump WILL DO in a second term. 

In 2016 there was a landslide of irrational hatred of Hillary Clinton. A lot of white water under the bridge. She made it worse by running a terrible campaign who's slogan could have been, "It's my turn". Hillary was in fact one of the most qualified candidates ever but that didn't matter. Ultimately that vote was not for him. It was against her. 

This time the roles are reversed. I believe this vote will be one against Trump, not for Harris. I believe she will win. Trump will keep up his streak as a loser. 

As always in politics it comes down to turnout. And while you may not like either of your choices for President you must exercise your right and privilege to vote. And if you don't like either candidate — so what. 

In Congress there are 34 Senate races and every member of the House to be elected or rejected. Around the country there are 11 Governors races, your state legislatures, and the incredibly important local school boards. In many places there are local referendums that will affect your life in very personal ways. 

So care enough to show up. Bitch less and do more. 

One election won't fix everything but you have to start somewhere. It's time to raise the standards back to what we all deserve. 

A President who doesn't spend every minute of every day bragging about things he claims he did, and whining about how everyone is out to get him. 

We need a President who isn't setting impeachment and indictment records. 

We need a non-arrested, tried, and convicted President who respects women, immigrants, wounded vets, the disabled, non-Christians and so many more. 

We must elect a President who quells violence and doesn't incite it - let alone a riot on the U.S. Capitol Building. 

We need a President who honors the oath of office who will lead the nation and not one bent on revenge and being a dictator. 

We must raise the standard of the office and the person in it. 

But here's the good news. What ails America is curable. NOTHING gets fixed without you. Remember a campaign is a job interview...the biggest job interview. Who are you going to hire? The one who could ruin your business or the one who won't and could be great. 

Every day doesn't have to be a first fight. We're better than this. We have to be. 

Thank you for voting. 

Please share this piece with everyone who's willing to listen. And speaking of listening check out and subscribe to the podcast, Live From My Office, wherever you get your podcasts to hear material like this and things that are way more fun as well. 

Thank you.