A Message from Alexandra Chalupa as to a choice to be made, and a warning as to "normalcy bias" and the consequence of waiting for 2020

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America is becoming authoritarian under Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell, with Putin’s backing as they help him build his global mafia empire for a generous cut of money and power, yet we’re operating as if this is a hiccup that will resolve itself at the polls. It won’t.

All the top authoritarian experts have warned that democracy is dying before our eyes. All the signs are in plain sight:

Republicans allow their leader in the White House to call journalists the enemy of the people; they threaten to imprison political opponents; refuse to safeguard our elections from foreign interference while Trump openly invites foreign interference; they support dictators as they rise to power while attacking our allies; fuel divide and hate to encourage American-on-American aggressions as they steal from our coffers and rape our planet; encourage law enforcement brutality; they attack the intelligence community; they’ve done unimaginable damage to weaken our institutions; they continue to build concentration camps that they promise to fill; blatantly lie to us every day, as they strategically try to exhaust us and hurt morale. 

So many Americans understand that the US is quickly transitioning into an authoritarian regime yet these same people are focused on the 2020 elections. 

Reality check: authoritarian regimes don’t hold free and fair elections; they rig them. Tyrants steal power, they don’t earn it, and the ones we’re dealing with have unlimited financial backing and support from Moscow.

In 2016, McConnell and other Republican leaders of the Republican controlled Congress were warned by top national security officials that Putin was attacking our democracy and trying to help Trump. What did they do? They declined to take action. They enjoyed the benefit and were greatly rewarded.

That same summer, the FBI warned Trump and his campaign that Putin was targeting our democracy and especially trying to help his campaign. What did the Trump team do? Nothing. They lied and failed to report the high number of communications the Trump team had with proxies of the Kremlin. Trump continued to praise Putin and openly called for his help after emails Russia stole from the DNC were released at the Convention. He lied about his business dealings with Russians, including an ongoing Moscow Trump Tower project he claimed did not exist, all while hiding his tax returns that his son said would show the disproportionate amount of Russian business deals.

US institutions are being tested. Despite ongoing attacks and character assassinations against them, national security officials and federal prosecutors confirmed that Russia’s interference was alarmingly severe and that Trump was not innocent; he and his associates went to such great lengths to obstruct justice that it impacted the investigation and therefore is up to Congress to act on these multiple counts of crimes. 

We are in a more dangerous situation today than we were in the 2016 presidential cycle. The stakes are much higher for Trump and Putin to win now, than even before. As over a thousand former federal prosecutors made clear in a letter they co-signed, if he were not a sitting president, Trump would be indicted today for his crimes. 

We must start impeachment hearings and wake up America to the dangerous predicament we are in. It’s a code red national security emergency and every elected official has a duty to warn despite whether its politically beneficial to do so. This isn’t about politics it’s about national security and the threat we face is an enemy from within. 

Tonight, at his Orlando rally, one statement Trump made regarding his re-election campaign jumped out: 

“We did it once, we will do it again. This time we will finish the job.” 

For those normalizing the crisis our nation faces by convincing yourselves and others that we have the luxury to focus on 2020, remember those words the day after Election Day. You’ll understand them well, but by then it will be too late.