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It’s NOT the economy, stupid!

It was when James Carville coined the phrase that it was the economy for Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, but it isn’t now.

Don’t get me wrong. The economy is being gratuitously tanked by an incompetent president suffering from malignant narcissism, and will likely get worse as long as his economic insanity prevails.

But I think it is essential for all of us to understand that the economy is not the most urgent issue we are facing as Americans.

No, the primary threat is Donald Trump’s disregard for the rule of law.

The current state of the Union is that we have a president who is betraying all of us by betraying his oath of office, making all the other problems we have pale in comparison.

The only good thing about the first 100 days of his second term is that more and more Americans now have a negative view of both Trump and his presidency.

The not so good news is that it took a threat to their pocketbooks to get their attention. We can be glad they are turning on Trump, but they hardly deserve praise for it.

The fact that they are just now taking seriously his threat to the principle of the rule of law on which our nation was founded is itself a warning that their opinions could quickly change if Trump backs off his foolish policies and stops the economic chaos he is causing.

That should worry all of us. The economy could be going gang busters and it wouldn’t matter in light of Trump thumbing his nose at doing what is legal by issuing executive orders and implementing policies that have already resulted in 127 court cases and 37 nationwide injunctions against them, more than all the nationwide injunctions issued against all the presidents in the entire 20th century.

But Trump has gone further and decided to ignore the 9-0 decision by the current conservative Supreme Court that ruled everyone – citizen and non-citizen, someone charged with a crime or someone not charged – is entitled to due process.

As bad as his assault on the rule of law is, equally stunning is how many Americans continue to support what he is doing. The arrest of Hannah Dugan, a Wisconsin County judge, is a telling case in point.

She’s the Wisconsin county judge Trump’s FBI arrested last week for supposedly helping an undocumented individual avoid arrest by ICE. Her first court appearance is not until July.

But that hasn’t stopped members of a Facebook group called The Tea Party Community from pronouncing her guilty as charged.

“Suspension is not enough,” one wrote. “The woman committed a crime and as a judge she, of all people, knew she was committing a felony. No excuse.” Another one opined, “She should be disbarred and prosecuted.” Yet another wrote, “Fire her and take license away.” One went so far as to call her a traitor, adding, “Treason deserves prison time.”

These are examples of literally pages of comments by Trump supporters that reveal an appalling disregard for any concern for or commitment to due process, as if they are taking their cue from Trump himself.

It’s so typical of Trumpers. They speak as if they know the facts when in truth what they say is based on the propaganda they’ve heard on Fix News or elsewhere, as if they are trustworthy sources when the whole world knows they aren’t.

Even retired conservative judge Andrew Napolitano said after reading the charges against Dugan and reports that contradict the FBI story that in his opinion she shouldn’t have even been arrested.

That didn’t stop Attorney General Pam Bondi from going on Fix News to support the FBI’s action, an appearance that violated Justice Department Policy and may have violated the law.

So let’s be clear. Not only is Trump’s assault on the rule of law the critical issue our country is facing, so are the views of people like the members of the Tea Party Facebook Community that are both profoundly un-American and anti-American.

According to polls, they are now a decided minority and we can be glad for that. But we cannot allow the growing resistance to Trump to diminish our alarm over what is happening.

The hard truth about our nation is that enough Americans chose to reject the economy they now wish they had back to elect a man they knew, contrary to what they may say, had no regard for the rule of law.

That is where the problem started in the first place, as Rep. Jasmine Crockett recently said:

“The problem is that Americans thought it was okay to take a full-fledged criminal and make him the President of the United States and then they want to act aghast when he does criminal things. Let me tell you, we have a thug in charge of the United States and if we don’t wake up we may not have a United States.”

I am hopeful that many of these same people are waking up to the kind of man we have in the White House, waking up to the truth that when it comes to Donald Trump, the biggest threat he poses is NOT and never has been the economy.

It’s about what he is doing because he believes he rules America and rules the world (his own words).

We just have to make sure he understands just how stupid that kind of thinking is.