Read This First! "In nearly every individual thing Trump says to you he is lying, distorting, rationalizing, contorting, blaming, and self-martyring."

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If You’re Thinking of Voting for Donald Trump, Read This First
Keith Olbermann understands your frustrations, but wants you to know something before you pull that lever.
By Keith Olbermann, October 25, 10`6

On November 8th we will stage the most important presidential election since the Civil War.

Two weeks from that election and one candidate has spent the last several days insisting there is already voter fraud happening at polling places that don't exist yet. Two weeks from an election that one candidate says is rigged—unless he wins—because of voter fraud, even though voter fraud has happened only 31 times in the last one billion votes cast in this country.

Two weeks until that election and the leaders of one party are still chained, of their own volition, to the captain of the Titanic. Two weeks until that election and their candidate has shown himself, more and more, hour by hour, day by day, to be manifestly unstable, sexually criminal, deranged, bigoted, and despotic.

Yet—to paraphrase Winston Churchill—these so-called leaders have been given the choice between shame, and loss-of-office. They have chosen shame. They will get loss-of-office… later.

But it is not to them I want to speak now, two weeks before the election. It is to those who will vote for Trump. More importantly it is to those who may vote for Trump. To those who, bluntly, can still hear me.

If you're thinking of voting for Donald Trump, I'm sorry this country and your life in it are not what you thought they would be, nor what you thought was promised to you. I'm sorry that you think you have been denied something by Americans who don't look like you or pray like you. I would remind you that when your grandfather or great-grandfather or whoever came here—and whenever they came here—they were blamed, identically, because they were Catholic or Italian or Irish or just foreign.

I don't doubt you have grievances, nor that our system of government has been so overcome by the political industry that you see no chance that you will get what you really want. I have felt that way, too, nearly every day of my adult life.

But I'm not here to agree or disagree with your grievances. I'm here to urge you to recognize that what you see as your solution will in fact end with your slavery.

Because… You know this man. You have always known this man.

Voting for Donald Trump is like not getting the car you want, so you instead take the car you have—and you drive it into a wall. While you are in it. While your family is in it. While your country is in it.

This election is not a question of policy or political correctness or rebellion against the machine. This is sanity versus insanity, and freedom versus a police state. This man is crazy.

We have indications that he [has been] violent against women, he has been violent since he was a child, he hates and disparages people based on how they look or where their parents are from. And anyone and anything who goes against him, is not treated the way you would treat them, or it. He does not move on. He does not work harder. He does not find another way. He says it's fixed, it's a plot, it's a lie, it's the fault of Mexicans, it means war. He has uncontrollable anger.

And you want to give him nuclear weapons?

You know this man. You have always known this man.

He is the lying used car salesman across town. He is the contractor who puts a hole in your wall then vanishes. He is the fast-talking huckster on the late-night television commercial. He is the husband or the wife or the girlfriend or the boyfriend who promised you forever and ran off with your heart and your money—and your life.

You may not like Hillary Clinton or her policies or anything about her, but if she's elected, you will have four years to find a presidential candidate of your own whose true goal is not to rob you blind, and four years from now you will still have a presidential election and a vote—and a country.

Trump will give nothing to you but shame and regret and shackles. He will take, and he will keep, whatever he can get his hands on. It is the story of his life—He boasts about it. He says giving employees a paycheck is the equivalent of your neighbor sacrificing their son in the war. You really think he will give you anything? You really think he will give you a better job? More money?

From women to business he is grab first and ask questions later and you know that. And in the rubble—the rubble of your life in a political-science-fiction-nightmare version of a fascist America made real—this will be on your conscience. It will be your fault, not his. He is merely the con man who is fattening you up for the kill. He ends his appearances with the Rolling Stones song "You Can't Always Get What You Want." He is telling you in advance. How much more warning does he have to give you?

You know this man. You have always known this man.

There has been a lot of time wasted on trying to understand the nature of the strategy Donald Trump has used since his profile as a potential serial sexual criminal began to emerge in early October. Well, there is no strategy. This is the point. This is not strategy—this is him.

He has been acting in this campaign—especially in the last two weeks—as if he has already been elected, already is president, and that the rest of us are just annoying him by asking him about these harrowing tapes and accusations. He behaves as if we are being rude to him by not simply agreeing with him and praising his countless amazing skills and wonderful accomplishments and vast piles of money—as if on your deathbed or after it, the question you will ask—or that you will be asked—is: "how much money did you make?"

Donald Trump is defending himself by claiming that his victims were too unattractive to attack—not as some kind of political strategy; not as some kind of clever answer. He is doing this because that is who he is and that is what he expects to be able to do as president.

The presidency would be the same as his current life—70 years of hedonism and selfishness and abuse—except backed up by the power of the presidency and the military. He has been the dictator in his life—and now he intends to become the dictator in your life.

You know this man. You have always known this man.

You have seen him, and you have seen him recently. He is Bill Cosby. He is O.J. Simpson. He is Bernie Madoff. In nearly every individual thing Trump says to you he is lying, distorting, rationalizing, contorting, blaming, and self-martyring. But in one sense he is the most truthful candidate we have ever had. The awful, dishonest, egomaniacal, dangerous, hateful candidate he shows the world—that is really him.

He is not putting on an act. He is not hiding anything more than details. He is—every day—showing you his soul. The monster you see is the monster you will get—only this monster will now have the power to issue executive orders and pull that funny guy Jose you know who works at the restaurant or on that farm, out of his house and throw him into a detention camp, and if you protest, he'll have the power to throw you in the detention camp alongside Jose.

Elect him and you will spend the rest of your lives trying to un-do your vote. You already know this man promised to honor the outcome of this election if he loses—and then said he was backing out of that promise. You have already heard him spend hours explaining that if he loses it will not be because he and you have been rejected—it will be because he and you have been defrauded.

What makes you think he believes in the things about this country that you love? That you have believed in and depended on and taken for granted since you were a kid? What makes you think he would not say, in his inaugural address, "the people have spoken—so there is no need for any more elections"? Why on earth would you think that having gotten you to give him your vote, your money, and your freedom—that he would ever again bother to ask you what you want? Why would he listen to you? Why would he do anything for you? Who would make him?

If you want to vote for him because nobody pushes him around—what are you going to do when he does something you don't like? What makes you think that if you dare to raise a complaint, that he would not treat you as he has treated those who during the campaign have opposed him or criticized him or merely pointed out what he has said?

You cheer now when the reporters at his rallies are booed and threatened; you high-five when somebody sucker-punches a protestor. How do you think President Trump will treat you if you feel like he's broken his promise to you? How do you think President Trump will treat you if you do not jump when he says jump? How do you think President Trump will treat you if you do not applaud when he says applaud? He has already shown you how.

You know this man. You have always known this man.

You know that this is the kind of man which oppressed people around the world have spent their lives trying to escape from, and have lost their lives staging revolutions against. Elect him and you are signing the death warrant to your own freedoms. But even if you think he's going to lose but you must vote for him anyway—in protest—you will have still opened Pandora's Box. Because this might be the most skilled and dangerous con man ever to rise up to try to cheat us out of the democracy you and I cherish.

But he might not be. The next one may be far worse, and far more skilled. And whichever is the case, he certainly will not be the last of the con men. And when the first one finally soft-sells enough of your friends to gain that sacred office of the presidency, you—as much as I—will be at his mercy. If Trump merely "does well" while losing this election it will be open season for demagogues and fascists and white supremacists to try to take over this country. Your country. You have already seen it diagrammed for you. Donald Trump has shown his math. He has gotten this far—gotten to within two weeks of the presidency—based on summoning hate and fear and directing it towards a group—Mexicans, Muslims, Jews, Liberals, Reporters. It doesn't matter which group and nothing guarantees that the next time, it won't be your group.

You know this man. You have always known this man.

And among all the things you know about this man—out of all that has gone on since Trump started it in June of last year—one statement he made should jump out and grab you by the throat. And it should ask you, very softly but very firmly, why would you ever, ever, consider turning over this country to this man—why would you ever, ever, consider encouraging his type just by giving him your vote.

When the woman on the plane 35 years ago, Jessica Leeds, accused him of groping her, he tried to defend himself, not by getting a believable witness, not by proving he wasn't on the flight, not by the way you would defend yourself against such a charge if it were not true and your whole life was at risk because somebody had slandered you. No. Trump said you should know he didn't do it because, "believe me, she would not be my first choice, that I can tell you."

"She would not be my first choice."

So, ask yourself one question before you vote for this man. Who would be his first choice? Your daughter?
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