Column: Good riddance, President Trump

Donald Trump speaking at a rally in Las Vegas.

By Steve Lopez

Columnist

Nov. 7, 2020 11:16 AM PT

The Lakers win, the Dodgers win, Trump loses.

I’m not sure this year can get any better.

Does Los Angeles have any fireworks left?

Thank you, Philadelphia and Pennsylvania.

Thank you, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Joe Biden is not the best politician to ever play the game, and the challenges in front of him are enormous. That’s especially true if the Senate holds its majority and stymies every attempt by Biden to get something done.

But the people have spoken, and they chose class over crass.

They chose decency, humility and grace over bluster, lies and buffoonery.

They chose compassion over contempt.

They chose racial unity over blatant appeals to our worst instincts.

President Donald J. Trump, who began his presidency inflating his own inauguration day crowd and whining about the press coverage, ended election week moaning about the outcome and insisting without evidence that he was robbed.

It’s as if the meanest, worst-behaved child in history was put in charge of the country, and for four nightmarish years, we had to endure one tantrum after another.

If a story wasn’t favorable, the news was fake.

When he didn’t deliver on his wall, or better and cheaper healthcare for all, or a national infrastructure program, it was the fault of Nancy Pelosi, or the radical left or all the Democrats who ever lived.

He mocked the appearance of women, insulted Sen. John McCain’s heroic Vietnam War service, attacked the Muslim parents of a U.S. serviceman killed in Iraq, insisted for years that President Obama was from Africa.

Ding-dong, the Donald’s gone.

What must it have been like for the man who claimed he was the best thing for black people since Abraham Lincoln to watch his presidency disintegrate as huge turnouts of black voters in Georgia and Pennsylvania turned a Trump victory into a Trump defeat?

It’s over, and I’m betting what we’re looking at is two months of Trump doing two things:

Playing golf, and playing the bad loser.

Actually, that’s not much different than what we’ve gotten from him the last four years.

Today is a good day for those who believe that a global pandemic is something to take seriously.

We voted for the guy who wears a mask instead of the guy who was airlifted to the hospital, and still didn’t get it.

Trump turned the White House into a super-spreader convention that just keeps going. Now, it’s his chief of staff who’s fallen ill.

This is the man who wondered if you could inject disinfectants under the skin to cure the virus, and called the public health experts idiots.

This is a good day for Dr. Anthony Fauci, who deserves a medal for putting up with the worst man in the world to have as president in the middle of a pandemic that has claimed more than 235,000 lives and is surging as Trump cries about the tally, unable to see the connection between the two because his ego is the size of Jupiter.

This is the man who insisted he only hired the best and brightest, and when they turned on him or he fired him, they were the worst.

The lies and mistruths count stands at 25,000.

Read it again. The man who couldn’t stop blabbing about fake news made fake claims TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND TIMES!

And never flinched.

So this is a good day for truth, and a very good day, finally, for science.

It is in fact a great day for those who have dedicated their lives to understanding the alarming degree to which the planet is in peril, even as Trump attempted to obliterate and repeal nearly 100 sensible environmental protections and climate change initiatives.

Today is a good day for the planet because there is no hope without an international strategy, and Trump walked the United States out of the conversation, but Biden will lead us back to the table. And it is a good day for California, which has had its strategies for dealing with climate change repeatedly nixed by the Trump administration.

Today is a good day for social media, because in two months, some of the most outrageous tweets won’t be coming from the White House.

“I WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT!” Trump tweeted just before Biden was declared the victor.

Of course you did, Donald. Keep repeating it.

“My IQ is one of the highest…and you all know it,” he once tweeted.

Yes, Mr. President.

“Nobody has more respect for women than Donald Trump,” he once tweeted.

Yes, Mr. President.

“I am the least racist person there is,” he tweeted.

Yes, Mr. President.

Today is a good day for teachers and for parents because they will no longer have to explain why it’s wrong to call people names.

Today is a good day for actually draining the swamp, because after claiming that he would, Trump has watched multiple close allies get charged with crimes and go to prison for them.

The jig is up and the con is gone because 75 million Americans were exhausted by the greatest abomination in U.S. political history.

He was not defeated by his perceived enemies, or by the media.

He engineered his own demise by dividing, by failing to lead in one of the most critical moments in history, by treating the White House as a reality show set and by caring about no one but himself.

For all the swagger and confidence, I wonder if all along we were watching the most insecure man in history unravel before our eyes.

Bye-bye, Donald.

Way to go, Sleepy Joe.

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