Bad Faith Walking

By Calvin Hill

The United States is on the precipice of realizing the total evisceration of the term, “good faith belief,” as it is served and consumed in our political and judicial discourse. A number of the 2024 Republican presidential candidates have proposed that they will pardon Donald Trump in an effort to “heal the country.” More than half the country believes that the former President committed crimes for which he should be prosecuted. When asked how pardoning him would heal the country, Republicans go on a tirade accusing “the corrupt Department of Justice (DOJ)” and the Democrats of weaponizing the DOJ.

These Republicans and their candidates have no good faith belief that a pardon would heal this “divided country” and they have been a legion of bad faith walking since Election Day 2008 when their party, en masse, decided that no policy that President Barack Obama proposed would get their votes.

While celebrations the world over heralded America’s election of its first black President, the GOP overtly and undercover, reverted to the belief adjudicated by Supreme Court Justice Roger Taney that, “the Negro has no rights that the white man is bound to respect.” Thus, the Republicans in Congress decided there would be no cooperation of any kind to any Obama policy initiatives – the public good be damned. The previously unanimous extensions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act has basically been filibustered into extinction along with a blindfolded Lady Justice as she is repeatedly petitioned by white men, sans white sheets.

Perhaps more disturbing than pardoning Trump, 6 of 8 GOP candidates proclaimed they would support him for the presidency even if he were convicted of the crimes for which he has been indicted. Despite Trump admitting unlawful behavior, the leading GOP candidates would back him knowing his intent to pardon and release the hundreds of potential cop killers and political assassins responsible for the January 6^th carnage at the Capitol. Notwithstanding mounting criminal jeopardy, Donald Trump remains glued to social media appearing to order CODE REDS against judges, prosecutors, grand jurors, witnesses, election poll workers, “disloyal” Fox News Channel personnel and Congressional Republicans under the guise of First Amendment free speech. Is there anything Trump won’t do?   

Republican officeholders from coast to coast are on the record, that it is noble and patriotic to take up arms to knowingly defend the most egregious lie in American history. They have no good faith belief that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. Even with all the lies that walked the country one step back each time it took two steps forward, not one lie, or series of lies, threatened the existence of this democratic republic as has Donald Trump’s lies. The threat to end the 236 years of American democracy since the signing of the Constitution is now being endorsed by a major political party. It does not matter to the GOP that these lies have been exposed in courts of law after teams of licensed lawyers filed pleadings tantamount to childish declarations that “the dog ate my evidence.” 

Their overt dismissal of the charges brought by New York City District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, clearly indicts the Republican Party as a walking bastion of bad faith. Illegal, covert payoffs to a porn actress and a former Playboy Playmate opened the door to the White House run and gave rise to Vladimir Putin’s infiltration of the Trump campaign. It mattered not that Mr. Trump was already listed as a defendant in hundreds of civil cases. Sexual assaults on almost two-dozen women did not matter. Moreover, the intelligence community had reason to believe that Russia had cultivated The Donald as an asset and had been doing so since it was the USSR.

Another clear example of their bad faith lies in the Republicans’ refusal to defend Rep. George Santos’ lies to obtain office with the same fervor that they defend the defendant Trump. Certainly Mr. Santos’ lies and violations of the law are just as serious as Trump’s porn payoff that sent Michael Cohen to jail. Straight lines can be drawn from Donald Trump paying Stormy Daniels $140,000, to giving campaign information to a Russian operative; to attempting to blackmail the President of Ukraine; to fomenting lies and executive incompetence during a global pandemic; to staging his “wild” rally that injured over 140 police officers, and caused a gullible Air Force veteran to being shot and killed leading an unruly mob on a mission of political assassination. 

There is absolutely nothing that Donald Trump will not do to advance his will. There is no lie he will not tell. There is no person he will not use to commit a crime for his benefit. And sadly, he has many in the conservative media relying on the bad faith of Congressional Republicans to validate his diabolical romp toward a Trump led fascist America once he takes control of the rule of law, and gets democracy out of his way.