"I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters."
-- candidate Donald Trump in January 2016
When the most unprecedented president in U.S. history made his comment, months before he collected enough electoral college votes to claim the White House, he signaled that he knew something about the political landscape many others failed to see.
Donald Trump declared that his personal behavior simply didn't matter. And to an astonishing degree, voters within the Republican Party and beyond have spent the last several years confirming his theory. If Ronald Reagan was the Teflon president, Donald Trump would have to be something like the Kevlar president.
In the BT (Before Trump) era, any candidate subject to even 10 percent of the controversies that have surrounded Trump's behaviors typically crashed and burned in the intensity of presidential politics. Voters had some level of standards and candidates had some sense of shame. Think back to the "monkey business" with Donna Rice in 1987 that forced Democratic front-runner Gary Hart to suspend his campaign for president. Today, it seems downright tame against the backdrop of Trump's repeated acts of immorality, meanness, crudity and ethical shortcomings. Add a rap sheet of criminal accusations, including a federal indictment, and it's astounding he has any capacity to even consider a run for president, or to be considered a desirable candidate.
But he's bold and brash. He denies when an admission would do him better. He doubles down on false information. And he continues a lifetime of declaring that nothing is his fault, ever. Donald Trump behaves as though he's a law unto himself, and there are people within the Republican Party more than willing to let him have that as long as their fundraising keeps going strong.
His style of politics has made it seem that people either "Stand with Trump" or "Can't Stand Trump." It's not that simple, though. Whether you love him or hate him, the questions to ask are more akin to whether Trump can be trusted, whether a second term for him would be about advancing U.S. interests or pursuing a personal agenda of retribution and whether Donald Trump is really the best form of leadership the Republican Party can muster for the nation.
My answers: He has proven he cannot be trusted. He's already pledging to use another term in office for revenge. And there are unquestionably better standard-bearers for conservatism, GOP policies and leading this nation than Trump.
Republicans can find much better leaders capable of more effective governing, but they don't seem to have a desire to do it. Rather than condemn a man who is extraordinarily condemnable, GOP leaders have shown themselves more likely to use his infractions as fundraising opportunities, casting him as a victim of something beyond his own failings as a human being and leader.
Trump has now been indicted by a grand jury on charges he retained classified papers that should have never left the custody of the U.S. government. It's important that everyone grasp that the evidence of his law-breaking -- of his putting his own desires and interests ahead of national security -- comes directly from him and people who formerly worked on his behalf, not radical liberals he and others want to blame.
The United States cannot and must not be a nation, and the Republican party cannot and must not be an organization, that excuses illegal behaviors that do harm to the nation and, if allowed, stands for the premise that Donald Trump, and eventually the GOP, will believe they can be a law unto themselves.
I hope sanity and sacrificial service to the nation prevail in 2024. That's not possible if Donald Trump remains in charge of Republicans.