Trump feels at home with deviants and crooks

MIAMI – One thing I know for certain is that Donald Trump has a bad habit of surrounding himself with deviants and corrupt individuals. His, so far, two year stay as president bears witness to this. His campaign swing through Miami on Presidents Day, where he spoke at Florida International University, demonstrated that he continues to draw the same type — perverts and crooks. 

He was here to announce that “a new day is coming to Latin America” and that the “days of socialism and communism are numbered.” 

We’ve seen this act before, numerous times, starting with President John F. Kennedy in the early 1960s, after the disaster known as the Bay of Pigs invasion. These days, any historian worth his or her weight will tell you that Trump’s disaster is existential and is defined as his stay in the Oval Office. 

At this point, Trump will do anything to win reelection in 2020. He will fabricate a Bay of Pigs, but in Venezuela, or a fake national emergency on the Texas border. The man is an illusionist desperate to divert the American public’s view from the mess he’s already created. 

He knew the Miami crowd Marco Rubio and Mario Diaz-Balart put together at FIU would not let him down. If you looked carefully you would have seen many of the same old Cuban faces there, cheering him on, chanting: “USA, USA”. Also present were the new replacements for the thousands of dying Cubans of the 1960s, 70s and 80s — the “exile” Venezuelan community from Doral and other neighborhoods in the Miami area. 

As I stared at the crowd on You Tube one thing came to mind. The Venezuelans I saw in the crowd reminded me of an earlier time here in Miami — decades ago — when a large group of mostly rich, white Cubans had fled another Latin American leader they despised. Safely here, they then begged “los americanos” to solve their problem. 

As for Trump, he and his people have determined that there is no way to reelection without a win in Florida in 2020. And taking a page from previous Republican presidents, Trump has decided that if he whips the hard right Cuban community into an anti-communist frenzy, along with their new Venezuelan replacements, there’s a chance he might put together enough votes to squeeze out a win. 

Will the game plan work? It’s still too early to tell.

Speaking of elections, though, most dangerous, I believe, are the Democrats themselves. With the exception of only a few, Democrats from Nancy Pelosi on down have fallen for the Venezuela trap and are suddenly in lockstep with Trump on this issue. A plan devised by political thugs like Elliott Abrams, found guilty of lying to congress and of approving death squads in Central America, and John Bolton, another cipher for U.S. imperialism who helped sell the non-exist weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. A plan then steered through the congress by Rubio and Diaz-Balart.  

Democrats, especially here in South Florida, are helping drive voters to Trump. And it is why the president was here on Presidents Day. The truth is, Donald Trump does not care about Venezuela, Cuba, or Nicaragua.And to him, socialism and communism are just words he can manipulate to create fear, and steer voters towards his false view of an “exceptional” America that’s never existed. Which, by the way, does not mean Donald Trump would think twice of invading Venezuela.  

But let me finish with the deviants and crooks. Normally when presidents visit and speak before an audience, those who sit and stand behind him are usually being rewarded for loyalty, raising money, or both. On Monday at FIU while watching the president speak I quickly spotted two people in the crowd I recognized.

One was a man I knew back in the 1980s when I worked in Hialeah. This man was standing to the right of the president excitedly trying to draw Trump’s attention. I could not believe it! Here was a person that while running for city council back in the 80s (probably in his late 20s at the time) had been caught trying to seduce the daughter of a high ranking politician from the city. The girl was 12 or 13 at the time… 

Nothing came of it, thank goodness.

To the president’s left was a serious woman with perfectly coiffed, dyed-blonde hair. She is a regular at these things. And a big Trump supporter. In the late 1990s this woman, a pillar of Miami’s Cuban society, pled guilty to fraud, tax evasion and other crimes. 

There’s a saying in Spanish that goes, “God creates them and the devil unites them.”

Ain’t that the truth.