John R. Hall
Little Ricky / John R. Hall

Back around 445 BC, when the prophet Malachi wrote down a devilish vision he had had, probably with the aid of some ancient type of psilocybin experimentation or consumption of undercooked pork, he must have foreseen the rise of the traitor Donald J. Trump and his tyrannous Trumpocrats. Some 2,460 years following Malachi’s musings, the day of the proud and wicked did cometh; it came disguised as a comforting, inclusive, caring sociopolitical faction. A Hitleresque subterfuge attempting to hide the fact that that GOP offshoot is a dangerous jingoism led by a delusional narcissist.

Malachi wrote: “For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh ‘shall burn them up,’ saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch” (Malachi 4:1).

Surely Malachi’s flaming vision forewarned us of the false prophet Trump and his trumpeters, because “proud and wicked” will never again be more aptly applied or properly placed than where they currently reside—inextricably connected to Trump and his converts.

Trump is a word with dual uses, which seems apropos when considering the two-faced nature of The Donald. One utilization of the word trump is as a noun when deployed as a surname. Commonly, though, trump is used in verb form due to its meaning of “a decisive overriding factor or final resource, as in a trump card.” The surname Trump has taken on connotations that will evermore remain attached to its most famous, and eternally infamous, family. Associations that conjure up words such as racist, criminal, conned, corrupted, crooked, ad infinitum. Terms that forevermore will be linked to a treasonous person and a false prophet: Donald J. Trump.

Assigning a singular sobriquet upon our psychotic president is an endeavor in futility. As soon as one cognomen appears appropriate to me (such as the “pugnaciously truculent Trump” did in my article “Desperately Seeking Definition”), the moniker is trumped by each episode of CNN’s New Day. That’s when Alisyn Camerota and Chris Cuomo illuminate, to an awaking America, Trump’s latest and afore unimaginable horror that is haphazardly heaped upon humanity. Transgressions that even the Bible itself could not have anticipated. Each episode of New Day shines a light on Trump’s unabated string of unforeseen faux pas, to put it delicately. To put it plainly, which is how Trumpocrats like their talk, New Day’s dapper and chic duo heroically hop daily into Trump’s swamp and tenaciously tread the thick, murky, sewage-filled cesspool containing Trump’s unfathomable treachery and bald-faced lies. At times, if you watch closely, you can see the sunrise couple gag when the stench becomes too much for the seasoned twosome.

Even CNN’s gritty veteran reporter Jake Tapper has his breaking point. On March 23, 2017, Tapper choked back tears, and so did I, as we watched a stoic father fall apart before our very eyes. Kraig Moss, Trump’s personal troubadour and supporter extraordinaire, is now neither. Nowadays, he’s just the latest disillusioned trumpeter to be unblinded by the unrefracted light now cascading across Trump’s polluted swamp.

Moss awoke to a Trumpian dawn breaking over an America that no longer pandered to him—a daybreak that broke Moss’s spirit. Trump trampled upon Moss’s unwavering dedication to him by reneging on his public and personal promise. A promise that Moss’s son, Rob, would not have died in vain. Trump promised that other parents and their children would have the medical and addiction treatment resources that were out of reach for Moss’s son. A promise that the pain that fell upon Rob’s heart, and continues to fall drop by drop upon his father’s (Kraig’s) heart, would be honored and not forgotten.

Kraig Moss’s son, Rob Moss, died on January 6, 2014, at age twenty-four. His addiction to heroin took its fateful and final toll. His father, Kraig, energized by Trump’s call to end the flow of drugs into America, decided to honor his son’s life and struggle. The distraught father took to the road. Starting in January 2016, he attended Trump’s rallies, one after another, until the tally totaled more than forty-five. Through Trump’s tour, Moss earned the title “The Trump Troubadour.” It seemed everywhere that Trump went . . . his troubadour was sure to follow. In the cold, standing in rain, leaning into the wind, Moss shined while he played his guitar and sang. He spoke softly about his son, of his pain of losing him, of his hope, and of his faith he had placed in Trump.

Eventually, due to Moss’s newfound faith in American politics and his determination to see his candidate succeed, he faced a dilemma. Either he had to return home to toil away to make ends meet, or he had to stop paying the mortgage on his house. He chose the latter. Then he sold his construction company’s equipment. He did both. Simply so he could continue to follow and support the man who promised to provide him some relief, some solace, some hope, a sense that what he was doing would honor his son’s life. Trump’s rise gave hope to Moss that his son’s life and death, that his struggles, might have a deeper meaning. Kraig hoped that through his son’s death, and through his subsequent troubadour activism for Trump, that he’d be able to influence the national conversation on heroin addiction, and that Trump would give voice to his pain and thereby save other parents from the horrific end that heroin addiction visited upon him and his son.

Kraig’s personal and professional sacrifices, and his devotion to Trump, paid off in spades when candidate Trump acknowledged him at a rally in Iowa.

“Speaking through a microphone to the crowd, [Trump] addressed Moss directly: ‘The biggest thing we can do in honor of your son . . . we have to be able to stop it [referencing drug flow into America and drug addiction].

‘I know what you went through. And he’s a great father,’ Trump said of Moss to the crowd. ‘I can see it. And your son is proud of you,’” Trump said directly to Moss, as reported by the Washington Post.

I can only imagine the redemption Kraig Moss must have felt that day. In that moment when Trump publicly spoke directly to him, after all of his trials and tribulations, which were the troubadour’s impetus for following Trump, and all the financial sacrifices required, which allowed him to sustain his jongleur journey—his candidate’s words directed to him and referencing his son must have made it all seem worthwhile.

Worthwhile is in the eyes of the beholder, and it is subjective. Just as it is with beauty and experiences; it all depends on one’s vantage point, on one’s past, on one’s travels, on one’s vicissitudes and emotional investment. Unlike subjective circumstances, time is objective, and it exposes everything. It allows, if not crystal clear vision, then at least a less emotional reevaluation of the past. Time indicts the guilty. Time vindicates the innocent. Time heals all wounds.

It might have seemed to Kraig that with Trump’s ascension into the Oval Office, that the time, and a man of the times, had arrived who would finally help to heal the deep-seated wounds Kraig had shared with the world. Sadly, but not unexpectedly to me, Trump instead threw salt in Kraig’s wounds and extended the time it will take for him to come to terms with a father’s inescapable pain: the loss of a child. It will take Kraig a long time to heal from Trump’s betrayal. If healing from that is even possible. Losing one’s faith in a prophet, even in a political prophet, is not something easily navigated. Trump’s transgression upon Kraig is unforgivable, and so are the other terrible things Trump does (see “Trump the Terrible—the Tyrant That Keeps on Raping America”).

I am sure that Kraig waited with bated breath for Trump’s GOP version of the Affordable Care Act to arrive. When his wait was over, he discovered that not only would Trump’s promoted Affordable Care Act fail to expand addiction services but it “would [also] eliminate a requirement that Medicaid cover basic mental-health and addiction services in states that expanded it, a mandate that covered nearly 1.3 million people,” the Washington Post article exposed. Kraig must have felt like he was back in that basement bedroom where he discovered his son, where he tried in vain to breathe life back into his son’s lifeless body.

Trump had told his tireless troubadour, “I know what you went through.” Trump also said before Congress on February 28, 2017, “We will expand treatment for those who have become so badly addicted.”

I have been asked many times, by many people, “Why do you dislike Trump?” To all who asked that question of me, I am sure that enough time has passed that you can now view that question the way I always did, as a rhetorical question. A question asked in order to create a dramatic effect or to make a point rather than to get an answer, but I shall now answer it.

I dislike Trump because of what he did to Kraig Moss. I dislike Trump for what he did to President Obama. I dislike Trump for what he has done to countless others. I dislike Trump because of what he will do to uncountable more people. I dislike Trump for preying on those feeling disenfranchised. I dislike Trump for preying on those in pain. I dislike Trump for preying on the fearful. But mostly I dislike Trump for treading on America.

I dislike Donald J. Trump. And I dislike those who remain blindly dedicated to him. I dislike those who know he is a horrendous parasitic life-form and remain silent. I dislike those with the knowledge to expose him as the racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic, homophobic, misogynistic, treasonous miscreant that he is but refuse to come forward simply so that they might remain next to power. I dislike those who support Trump simply because of his campaign cry to make America great again. I dislike those who support Trump due to their pathetic and self-serving profit-motivated visions and vested interests. I dislike those who support Trump due to their unfounded fear of losing their guns. I dislike those who support Trump due to their religion. I dislike those who support Trump to prevent women from controlling their own bodies. I dislike those who support Trump due to their hatred of humanity.

I dislike Donald J. Trump, and I always will, because from the Vulgate came the Latin term for him: Trump is the filius perditionis. In contemporary terms, he is the son of perdition. By both terms, he is excluded from redemption and unworthy to be reclaimed.

In the movie The American President, when the president is trying to prevent his girlfriend from walking out on him, she turns to him and says, “Mr. President, you’ve got bigger problems than losing me. You just lost my vote.”

Just like that movie’s fictional president has bigger problems, President Trump has got bigger problems too. They’re bigger than getting Mexico to pay for his wall, or failing to demonize all Muslims, or his constitutional legal battles over his misguided immigration ban, or his failure to repeal and replace Obamacare with the GOP’s version of the Affordable Care Act, which was just a Trojan horse concealing a tax break for the wealthy, or kicking Mexicans out of America, or my disdain of him. His biggest problem is that he just lost the support and the vote of the honorable Mr. Kraig Moss, et al.

As Mr. Moss now knows, sometimes when the lights are turned on, instead of being blinded by them, they allow you to see clearly. So much so that the man behind the Wizard of Oz’s curtain is finally exposed as a fraud. Mr. Moss, all good people of this great nation suffer with you, sir. Your loss is our loss.

Postscriptum: “Beware of false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them” (Matthew 7:15). “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32).

Jake Tapper’s interview with Kraig Moss is below. Click here for the Washington Post’s article.

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Copyright © 2017 – Hunting For Thompson – All Rights Reserved

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John R. Hall

John has been described as a contrarian, a provocateur, and a polemicist. With the dexterity of a master magician, John's writing style forces readers to reexamine their positions and opinions on society, politics, and lifestyles. In his book, Red, White, and the Blues: A Long and Hard Ride over Treacherous Terrain, John interweaves a narrative of a life lived in constant motion while taking the reader along on his 2011 coast-to-coast motorcycle ride across the 48 contiguous states.