“I went to the best schools; I got good grades.”
So said Donald Trump, with clenched teeth, on CNN some years ago.
Yes, Fordham, which Trump attended for two years, and Wharton, to which he transferred for two years, are perfectly fine schools, which provided him with his B.S. degree, though our president-elect has always possessed more than a fair share of B.S. that has nothing to do with those two institutions.
We all know that Trump has to go to court later this month due to a lawsuit against Trump University, a sham school, which preyed upon attendees to the tune of some $40 million. In a scam operation, Trump and his university ripped off students, including some veterans, charging them tens of thousands of dollars for a worthless piece of paper and the false promise that they would get jobs in real estate.
The trial is set for November 28 in San Diego federal court, a class-action lawsuit that represents defendants from New York and Florida as well as California, three states where the Donald ran his fraudulent academic enterprise.
According to an article in the New York Daily News, Trump is attempting to delay the Nov. 28 trial until after his scheduled Jan. 20 inauguration.
Why?
Because he knows that some of the presidential electors, members of the Electoral College, might actually be so disgusted with Trump’s fraudulence that they might change their votes by December 19, when the formal tally of the Electoral College occurs.
We all know that many Americans wish we could graduate from this so-called college.
That is to say that many of us want the electoral system to graduate forever to the ash heap of history, just like butterfly ballots and hanging chads.
But wait a moment.
As I recall, students don’t actually graduate from college unless they flip that tassel on their mortarboard from one side to the other, right?
What if we could all wake up from our national or international nightmare and see that Donald Trump has not received his Masters in B.S. from our country!
What if a sufficient number, say 50 or so, of the presidential electors of our national political college refuse to confer a new degree on the Donald and instead confer it on Hillary Clinton!
In other words, Lady Gaga, who has helped sign up more than 3 million Americans at Change.org, is absolutely right to try to persuade electors of our national political college to switch their votes by December 19.
I don’t claim to know the esoteric boilerplate of election law. But I do know that there is precedent for electors to change their support from the candidate, for whom they made a pledge, and give it to another.
Professor Robert M. Alexander of Ohio Northern University documented the history of defections and attempted defections in our Electoral College in a recent piece on CNN.com.
As he pointed out, there have been rogue or “faithless” electors in 9 of the past 17 presidential elections.
Here are some of the highlights: In 1960, a Republican elector from Oklahoma, who had pledged support for Richard Nixon, cast his vote for a Democrat. The elector voted not for John Kennedy but for Virginia Senator Harry Byrd.
In 2004, an elector cast his vote for John Edwards, not John Kerry or George W. Bush.
Trump’s fraudulence regarding his university is just one example of why we should use the Electoral College to our benefit and transmogrify the hideous results of November 8 into a victory for Hillary Clinton!
Donald Trump has already taken to Twitter as it concerns our system.
The hypocrite, who just this morning praised the Electoral College as “genius” in one of his tweets, is the same hypocrite who bashed the Electoral College four years ago after then-Republican nominee Mitt Romney lost the 2012 election to President Obama.
My response to our president-elect is not to say that our genius system of higher learning is flawed.
We all know that it is.
My response is to say that “the Electoral College giveth, and the Electoral College taketh.”
Or, to put it more bluntly, “Live by the Electoral College. Die by the Electoral College.”
As so many commentators and others have noted, Donald Trump burned down our country’s house.
But he can’t simply turn off the igniter after eighteen months of inflammatory, indeed flammable, rhetoric and think that there won’t be embers or ashes floating around.
The country is charred, raw, even incinerated right now. And so much of that rawness is due to Trump and his hateful, searing language, not the “best words,” as he once proclaimed.
I would ask Republican presidential electors from Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, one of the homes of the discredited Trump University, and other states if their constituents will truly have a better chance of getting jobs under B.S. artist Trump than they will under Hillary Clinton.
Electors should remember that Trump not only ripped off the graduates of his sham university, who got no jobs based on their degree; he also famously stiffed many of his own employees and contractors out of their paychecks.
As Trump said at one of the debates, “That’s because they didn’t do a good job.”
Lest anyone doubt how Trump will run our nation, consider that he is already trying to get security clearances for four of his family members, which violates the spirit if not the letter of any specific anti-nepotism laws or guidelines.
He wants the best jobs for his family, not for our country.
To conclude, we all know that Hillary Clinton is well ahead of Trump in the popular vote. She may end up with roughly 2 million more votes nationally than Trump received.
I understand why President Obama is trying to smooth things over with Trump and to suggest that the “public has spoken.”
But the public has spoken for Hillary, not Trump, and if we can’t abolish the Electoral College, if we can’t graduate from it, we can at least use it to our advantage.
We can try to persuade electors from Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida and other swing states to use the genius of the Electoral College to reverse the results of November 8 and confer a presidential degree on Hillary Clinton, not the B.S. artist, Donald Trump.
The electors, who are anonymous, unknown to most of us, can change their votes legally.
Yes, some may face a fine, but, to quote Ted Cruz, the electors should “Vote their conscience.”
On December 19 or sooner, vote Hillary!