Donald Trump is apparently now saying that the attempted assassinations directed at him occurred because Democrats have labeled him a threat to democracy, and that Democrats should tone down their rhetoric.

Given what Trump has done and said already, his own words and actions demonstrate that he is a threat to democracy. The Democrats didn’t incite the January 6th attempted coup. Trump’s lies and acts did. Then he compounded those acts by failing to call off his supporters for hours, and when he did, he said he loved those who created the uprising.

In the meantime, just in the last week, Trump and Vance’s bald-faced and totally refuted lies about Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, have spurred bomb threats, as well as forced the closure of two colleges and several schools, and created wide-spread and still on-going disruption for the entire town. Yet Vance went on to say that he’d continue to lie if those lies brought issues to public attention

Trump doesn’t give a damn about what happens to others so long as he gets his way. He incited the January 6th insurgency, but walked away from the situation and the ensuing carnage that not only injured 140 police, but hundreds of his own followers. That kind of single-minded narcissism is more like Hamas than traditional U.S. Republican behavior.

And that behavior identifies Vance and Trump as threats to democracy.

One of the great weaknesses of democracies is that they too often fail to restrict the unchecked flow of falsehoods from demagogues and would-be dictators, largely because restricting speech on any grounds is the beginning of a slippery slope that can lead to tyranny. The problem, unfortunately, is that not restricting blatantly false assertions can also bring down democratic government – and has done so time and time again, because those who lie blatantly and repeatedly to gain power won’t stop there.

And people who will willingly accept lie after lie because those lies reinforce their beliefs deserve the hell that will ensue if those fallacy-followers become the majority. Unhappily, the rest of us will suffer the same fate, if not worse, given what “true believers” usually do to non-believers.

Recent comments (and I won’t say “the latest,” because there’s always something else) from Donald Trump include the discredited statements that Haitian immigrants were eating pets in Ohio, a comment later changed to eating geese from the parks, and that Kamala Harris had tiny receivers in her earrings at the debate. Both claims are preposterous, for differing reasons, but they illustrate Trump’s mentality.

In his mind, he’s the greatest, no one greater, and what he says is the “gospel truth,” even if actual facts refute his words. If he doesn’t come out on top, whether in crowd size, funds raised, poll results, or actual ballots cast, that’s because someone else played unfair or cheated. And of course, when he wins, it’s a legitimate result.

Corporations and corporate types have spent millions on his behalf, perfectly legally, as a result of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, but now that Harris has raised more money, her fundraising is “dirty money,” obviously because Trump believes that no one else could honestly raise that kind of funding, and that must be because his opponents are somehow cheating.

He’s been found guilty of business fraud in a state court, one that has no legal ties to the federal judiciary, yet he claims that the present Administration in Washington, D.C., “weaponized” the state legal system against him, despite the total lack of evidence, because he couldn’t possibly be guilty, and the fact that he was found guilty proves the state was doing something illegal.

He been found guilty of sexual assault and defamation – twice – again by a state court, and he claims that he never knew the woman. And then he has the nerve to say that the women he assaulted weren’t his type, that they couldn’t be the “chosen one” (his words, not mine), as if being chosen to be sexually assaulted by Donald Trump was some great honor, like Zeus defiling Leda. Not that honor has ever been reliably associated with Trump.

Donald Trump has touted his tariffs as making foreign nations and manufacturers pay billions. The fact is that tariffs are and were paid by the importer of the goods, the eventual U.S. consumer.

According to the Tax Foundation, “his proposed tariff increases would hike taxes by another $524 billion annually and shrink GDP by at least 0.8 percent, the capital stock by 0.7 percent, and employment by 684,000 full-time equivalent jobs.”

“A worldwide 10 percent tariff and a 60 percent tariff on Chinese goods proposed by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump would lower average after-tax incomes of US households in 2025 by about $1,800, or 1.8 percent, according to a new analysis by the Tax Policy Center.”

The Peterson Institute for International Economics calculated that Trump’s “tariff proposals would cost the typical American household over $2,600 a year.”

Trump claims that his income tax cuts benefitted the average family, and they did slightly, but not so much as the very well-off. While the top 1% of households received on average a $61,000 tax cut, the top 0.1% each got $252,000, the bottom 60% of families benefitted by less than $1.25 per day.

And his new proposals will repeat the same pattern, where households with incomes in the top 1 percent will receive an average tax cut of more than $60,000 in 2025, compared to an average tax cut of less than $500 for households in the bottom 60 percent, according to the Tax Policy Center.

So, if you put the figures together, Trump’s proposals will give average families a tax reduction of $500-600 and cost them between $1,800 and $2,600 in the higher price of goods, and, of course, the well-off will pay a lot less in taxes, $60,000 to $250,000 less.

All that doesn’t take into account that, since the government is already running massive deficits, those millionaire tax cuts will also lead to increased inflationary pressures, which will erode the purchasing power of all Americans, except the top one percent, whose tax cut savings will outweigh the inflationary costs.

Although most observers believe that Kamala Harris “won” the debate with Donald Trump, she never answered one of the key questions: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago.”

One of the reasons she likely didn’t is because the question is, underneath the simple words, a variation on the old trope question, “Have you stopped beating your spouse?”

Another reason is that no matter what the nostalgia buffs think, we can’t go back to the situation of four years ago, when what worked economically then would have different impacts now.

But Harris missed a great opportunity to defuse the whole “better off then” conceit, because most people regard the past as somehow better, except for the few times of world-changing disasters.

The answer Harris should have given is:

That’s the wrong question. What matters is what policies will make your life better from here on out, not what happened four years ago. The United States needs a leader and policies that address today’s challenges, not selective memories of the past. Here are my policies to improve life for all Americans, not just the wealthiest Americans, but all Americans.

From there she could have launched into her listing of policy proposals.

The state of the economy is one of the great worries for most Americans, and until she addresses it head-on, she’s going to have trouble beating Trump, and the fact that she’s only slightly ahead illustrates the lack of faith in her ability to handle the economy, despite the fact that Trump is a lying, misogynistic, bigoted, hate-mongering, and often incompetent bully.

And like Harris, we all need to ask the right questions for today and tomorrow.

Donald Trump has nasty nicknames for almost everyone. Why hasn’t anyone come up with one that sticks to him? After all, he’s lied about everything, and his supporters not only don’t care, but many of them revel in his various “capers,” from stiffing workers and contractors, to conviction of sexual assault and character defamation (twice, no less), and conviction on thirty-four counts of business fraud.

Donald, aka Boy Orange and pseudo-billionaire, already has multiple crime convictions, and that doesn’t count all the other charges, including an attempted coup, and continuous out-and-out lies (not exaggerations or misstatements, but bald-faced lies), not to mention even implying that his vice-president ought to have been hung by the mob that Trump unleashed on the U.S. Capitol, a mob he left to its own devices and violence for hours while gloating in the White House. But none of these seem to stick in the public memory, which means people don’t even seem to understand the extent of his cons and crimes.

So little sticks to him that he almost seems to be made of Teflon, but calling him that would be so unfair to Teflon, because it has honest uses and practical purposes… and yet he needs a suitable nickname that sticks to him.

The best I can do is MultiCon Don.

What about you?