AN EPIPHANY is that moment in the story where a character achieves realization, awareness, or a feeling of knowledge, after which events are seen through the prism of this new light in the story.
Are we there yet, Filipinos in America? Or are we still blinded by the glaring prism of fanaticism?
I would like to look at the glass half full and will not stop believing that the truth will eventually free us and help us make better-informed decisions. This is if we remain relentless in putting the spotlight on the facts rather than a fabricated alternate universe maliciously created by conmen for their own political expediency, power, fame and self-aggrandizement.
As the truth comes out, such conmen try even harder to suppress the facts from coming out. This cannot be denied in how the 45th president of the United States manipulated his cohorts in government and his adoring fan base. On January 23, 2016, as a presidential candidate, Donald Trump boldly, proudly and brazenly stated the following during a campaign rally in Iowa: “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” Has he proven himself right through you?
Former First Lady Michelle Obama said in a speech, “Being president doesn’t change who you are, it reveals who you are.”
Indeed, we get to know a person‘s true character not only when he has nothing, but perhaps more so when he has all the power at his disposal.
From the illusion that Trump the business “mogul” and reality star will be “presidential” and will live up to the oath of upholding and defending the Constitution and the democracy of the nation, more and more Americans are now seeing who the real Donald Trump is during his chaotic first two years in office.
Delusional President Trump could not live with the facts that are not favorable to him, even if they come from his own internal polling, so much so that according to a report by the Washington Post, his “campaign is cutting ties with three members of his polling team after grim numbers showing him trailing former Vice President Joe Biden in several battleground states were leaked to the media last week, according to several officials with knowledge of the matter.”
The report further stated: “The news follows reports — first by Politico and later by the New York Times — on a 17-state internal poll conducted by Fabrizio. The data, later reported by ABC and NBC, show Trump trailing Biden by double digits in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida and Michigan, where Trump narrowly edged out Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016. The poll also found Trump behind Biden in several other states that were key to the president’s win — Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio and Georgia — while holding a narrow edge in strongly Republican Texas.”
Trump, as expected, called this “fake news” because it just did not support his own narrative in his alternate universe, even if the survey was commissioned by his own campaign.
“Those polls don’t exist. But I just had a meeting with someone who’s a pollster, and I’m winning everywhere, “ Trump claimed.
In fact, this is so very Trump: he refuses to listen to reports and studies that are not favorable to him and his own agenda, that his staff has been so daunted to bring them up to him from fear of falling out of grace and favor.
Trump and his ardent supporters contend this is all politics to bring down the president, but wait. This news about Trump trailing behind Biden has been corroborated by the poll commissioned by Trump’s favorite Cable news channel – Fox News!
According to the results of the Fox News polling, “the president is currently lagging behind as many as five of the Democratic candidates for the 2020 presidential election. The latest poll, conducted between June 9 and June 12, found Democratic frontrunners — former Vice President Joe Biden and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders — each garnering 49 percent of the vote in a hypothetical head-to-head against the president.”
Newsweek reported that “Biden fared slightly better against Trump, beating the incumbent by ten percentage points, while Sanders had a slightly smaller gap of nine points over the president.”
“The remaining three Democrats who could possibly unseat Trump were Senators Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, and Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana. Warren, who was the first of the Democratic hopefuls to publicly call for Trump to be impeached holds the slight edge in this trio, beating the president by 43 percent to 41 percent. Harris — who has also since called for Trump’s ouster — and Buttigieg each came out on top against the president, but only by a single percentage point.”
Trump’s reaction on Twitter? More lies. “Polls are always bad for me. They were against Crooked Hillary also. Something weird going on at Fox. Our polls show us leading in all 17 Swing States.”
This is the real Donald Trump. The presidency cannot change the man. You cannot change the man. But we can change ourselves by being better informed, having more critical thinking and a discerning heart and the quest for the truth so we can make better decisions for our families and our nation come 2020.
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Gel Santos Relos is the anchor of TFC’s “Balitang America.” Views and opinions expressed by the author in this column are solely those of the author and not of Asian Journal and ABS-CBN-TFC. For comments, go to www.TheFil-AmPerspective.com, https://www.facebook.com/Gel.Santos.Relos
