Donald Trump and the extremist GOP officials backing him pose an existential threat to our democracy: Brent Larkin

CLEVELAND — Evolution got it horribly wrong on June 14, 1946. Donald John Trump arrived in the world with far too many missing parts.

Absent were honesty, character, humility, compassion and propriety. As the years passed, this lack of essential qualities created an incompetent mess of a man, one prone to abject cruelty and ignorance.

Now, having steered the Republican Party off a cliff in the last three election cycles, Trump wants to resume ruining lives and threatening our national security by botching virtually every problem that arrives in the Oval Office.

Through his words and deeds, Trump now makes clear his end goal in a second presidential term would be the demise of our constitutional democracy. A compliant Republican electorate, blissfully unaware how little Trump actually cares about them, is likely to make Trump its presidential nominee for a third straight time.

Ahead lies the most important American moment since World War II. If Trump is allowed to regain the presidency, what follows would likely be a president who largely ignores the courts and Congress, doing what he wants when he wants to.

In the next 48 weeks, expect chaos, even bigger lies, vile rhetoric, threats, and perhaps far worse. For more than seven years, Trump has emboldened extremists to engage in violence, including a violent invasion of the U.S. Capitol designed to overthrow a lawfully held election. It’s a good bet, given the zealotry of his recent statements, that there will be more Trump-inspired violence in the months ahead.

President Joe Biden is a vulnerable incumbent. I believe there is now a small chance he will lose. Cratering turnout among Black voters and the many young voters angered over what they view as Biden’s unconditional support for Israel are rupturing the traditional Democratic coalition.

At 81, Biden looks and moves like an old man. But he is also a sane man. And compared to his likely GOP opponent, Biden is Albert Einstein.

The hard truth is that a whip-smart second-grader in the Oval Office would be less of a threat to America and the world than a second Trump presidency. That’s not crazy talk. It’s a fact.

No one knows and understands this better than the many men and women who worked or spent time with Trump in the White House. Details of his unhinged behavior now emerge on a regular basis.

One of the most recent Trump truth-tellers, outed in the archives of social media, is new House Speaker Mike Johnson, the gentlemanly extremist whose bigoted views regarding sexual preference make him a five-star homophobe.

“The thing about Donald Trump is that he lacks the character and the moral center we desperately need again in the White House” Johnson wrote on Facebook in 2015. Eight years later, on Nov. 14, Johnson endorsed Trump.

That endorsement came a day after the death of Trump’s sister, retired U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Maryanne Trump Berry. When her brother was president, his sister said of him in secretly taped conversations: “He has no principles. None;” “It’s the phoniness and this cruelty. Donald is cruel;” “You can’t trust him.”

Awaiting four criminal trials on 91 felony counts in four jurisdictions, Trump seems more deranged than ever, using language similar to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and offering frightening previews of the fascist tactics he would employ in a second term.

These delusional rally rants and social media posts have gone well beyond the standard fare of bald-faced lies. Trump now offers some occasional specifics: imprisoning some enemies, executing others, dismantling key parts of the federal government and punishing unfriendly news media outlets.

More recently, Trump has questioned the loyalty of Jews who oppose him, and promised (again) to repeal the Affordable Care Act that provides health care for 28 million Americans. Trump celebrated Veterans Day by suggesting his opponents are “vermin,” a term used by Hitler to justify extermination of Jews.

Trump demands pandering in return for his endorsement. In Ohio, he has two sycophants willing to shred what little is left of their reputations in pursuit of Trump’s support in the GOP primary for the U.S. Senate seat held by Democrat Sherrod Brown.

One of those sycophants, Frank LaRose, is probably the most unfit secretary of state in Ohio history, willing to abuse the public trust in pursuit of career advancement. LaRose wants Trump to forget he once accused the then-president of making a “racist” remark on Twitter and later rightly suggested Biden’s 2020 election win was legitimate.

Emails obtained by NBC News show that, in about 2016, the other one, Bernie Moreno, referred to Trump as a “lunatic” and “maniac.” Now, Moreno acts as if he worships Trump. Moreno has neither class nor shame. Just ask some of those he served with on the boards of MetroHealth and the Cleveland Foundation.

Unlike his opponents, state Sen. Matt Dolan, the third viable Republican candidate, has consistently refused to sell his soul to Trump. To prevail in the primary, Dolan will probably need close to 40% of the Republican vote in a state Trump won twice by eight-point margins.

On Dec. 1, the Ohio Republican Party endorsed Trump, awarding its seal of approval to a man who has spent much of his adult life dehumanizing others, whose language at times resembles that of history’s most despicable tyrant.

The party that not long ago warmly embraced people like George Voinovich, Bob Taft, Jo Ann Davidson, Betty Montgomery and Jim Petro is now an extremist sect obsessed with banning books, bashing gays and disrespecting women. It’s a confederation of cowards who live in such mortal fear of the gun lobby they’re willing to tolerate the slaughter of children in their classrooms.

This same “party” now wants Donald Trump to finish what he started. It’s one promise Trump might just keep.

Be afraid, dear voters. Be very afraid.

Brent Larkin was The Plain Dealer’s editorial director from 1991 until his retirement in 2009.

To reach Brent Larkin: blarkin@cleveland.com

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