US President Donald Trump has sparked outrage by suggesting the US presidential election should be postponed. Though he later seemingly back-pedaled the idea, the comments nonetheless faced fierce criticism from Democratic and Republican political figures alike.
Trump’s comments are certainly outrageous, though at the same time utterly unsurprising. His pathological tendency to lie and his overt authoritarian tendencies have long been apparent to anyone who pays the slightest attention to US current affairs.
But beneath the outrage of political opponents from within the two major US political parties lies a deep web of hypocrisy and false assumptions. Because the US has never really been a democracy. And nor have any of Trump’s predecessors been whiter-than-white when it comes to authoritarianism and dishonesty.