It’s all over for the Donald Trump presidency. His thuggish actions in last night’s debate in Cleveland constituted the most disgraceful display of presidential behavior in the history of the Republic.
It was also a bad night for American democracy.  When Donald Trump refused to condemn White Supremacy, he was irrevocably exposed as the despicable racist hater that he is.

And that led to one of the most disgraceful moments in the history of presidential debates, Trump legitimized an organization labeled by the Anti-Defamation League as one of the most virulent and violent White Supremacist hate groups in America, the Proud Boys.  Instead of denouncing them unequivocally, Trump exhorted the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.”  This led to a night of rejoicing by the Proud Boys on the Internet.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/proud-boys-celebrate-after-trump-s-debate-call-out-n1241512

Only the hard-core Trump base could find his Captain Queeg-like performance appealing. The few undecided voters that remain will not want to go through four more years of the violence, racial division, defiance of science (Covid -19, climate change), political polarization, and rank incompetence of key decision makers (e.g. Jared Kushner) that has typified the Trump years.

Biden won the debate.  The CNN Instant poll reported that viewers judged Biden to be the winner, 60-28. And it was the Biden base that was the most energized.  Between 10-11 pm, the Biden campaign had its best online fundraising hour of all time.

Joe started slow, but as the debate proceeded, he projected competence, dignity, and strength.  He offered the voters unification, rather than division. Trump came over as a lowlife, authoritarian thug, a Benito Mussolini with orange hair.

Yet while Biden won the debate, the truth is that Trump destroyed himself.  He did nothing to broaden his appeal to undecided women and the young.

And Trump’s violation of democratic norms destroyed the very dignity of the office he holds.  His attacks on the Biden family were repulsive.

Yet the worst is yet to come for Trump.  With the debate over, the media will now focus on the stories of the past week that graphically evidenced Trump’s manifest unfitness for the presidency.

The New York Times story of the past weekend regarding Trump’s taxes exposed him as a phony self-promoter who deserves the title of America’s worst businessman and most flagrant tax cheat.

We also learned from the New York Times story that Donald Trump is an horrific security risk.  With Donald Trump’s personal debt situation, he is vulnerable to pressure from others, particularly debt held by foreign entities, and there is no way he could get a security clearance if he was not president.

America is still digesting the Bob Woodward book, Rage and the disclosure that Trump withheld from the American public in the early stages of the Coronavirus Pandemic the truth about the dangers of the virus, when a full disclosure would have saved thousands of lives.  This was the ultimate case of gross criminal negligence on the part of a President of the United States.

Yet the most frightening story about Donald Trump concerned the White House efforts to pressure the Center for Disease Control to play down the risks of sending children back to the classroom, alarming public health experts. on school openings.

This is a worse story than the Trump tax story.  The White House officials in question, Donald Trump, Marc Short, chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, and Deborah Birx are vile and corrupt public officials who have put at risk the lives of our children and grandchildren of school age, just to satisfy Trump’s political goals.  There is a special place in hell for these three despicable lowlifes.

Yet with all the horror stories of Trump’s national leadership that have been revealed at an accelerating pace over the last six months, there is also a strong note of hope.

Since Trump first descended the escalator at Trump Tower to announce his candidacy in the summer of 2015, I have written at length about his lifetime record of racism and his law-and-order pitch over this past summer, which was geared to frighten white suburbanites to dread the arrival of new African-American residents.

White and Black America rejected this deplorable, hateful racist Trump pitch.  This is conclusive evidence that America is a better place than Donald Trump wants it to be.

And Trump’s refusal to condemn White Supremacy constituted his final effort to strike a blow to further racism in America.

It’s all over now.  Joe Biden is headed to the White House, with victories over Trump to come in states like Texas and Ohio, which nobody anticipated at the beginning of this campaign.  He will win close to 400 electoral votes and attain a ten-point margin in the popular vote.

For Donald Trump, he will now have to face criminal investigations by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.  This is a state entity, and a self-pardon before he leaves office does not shield him from a state prosecution.  He may well also witness the collapse of the House of Cards that is the Trump Organization.

Yet the scars on the American social fabric resulting from Trump’s agenda of racial hatred will not quickly vanish.  We can hope, however, that the Biden powers of healing will usher in an era of hope, as contrasted with the Trump era of darkness.

Alan J. Steinberg served as regional administrator of Region 2 EPA during the administration of former President George W. Bush and as executive director of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission.