THE STATUE T***P DESERVES...

One Penn alumnis who wrote to the Gazette was upset at the labeling of the T***p supporters who stormed the Capitol on January 6th after being incited by their president as "insurrectionists."   One wonders how he interpreted this scene of rioters bearing the battle flag of the Confederacy- unquestionably "insurrectionists"-  inside the Capitol after they assaulted and overwhelmed the Capitol police.

 As a plus for being a graduate of the University of Pennyslvania, bi-monthly I receive one of the finest alumni magazines in the country. (I haven't read all of the others, but I feel fairly confident in making this assertion.) As is probably true of all universities, in spite of its alleged high standards, we managed to accept and graduate a few rumdums.

And my most recent issue contained some remarks by a few of them in the letters to the editor section. They decried the "demonization" of the 45th president, who happens to be a Penn alumnus (Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, Class of 1968). One letter claimed that it was slanderous and poor journalism for a previous essay writer to have described the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol by T***p supporters as an "insurrection."

After his election and inauguration in 2017 (biggest crowds ever- period! Sean Spicer claimed, starting off the next four years with a big, albeit innocuous, lie) several of the alumni wrote to the magazine highly upset that the editors had not seen fit to honor Mr. T***p by putting him on the cover.

Here was my response then, updated with a few quotes and changes to reflect the intervening reality of the worst president of the worst administration since Watergate.

Dear Editor of the Pennsylvania Gazette:

Although the din has lessened considerably in the aftermath of recent events, your letters section reveals that there are still some instransigient Penn grads who deplore the failure of The Gazette to honor the 45th President of the United States and who consider any factual reporting of his tenure as "demonizing" him. In light of Penn President Amy Gutman's essay in the May/June 2021 issue that we need to preserve for history the remembrances of Penn students regarding the Coronavirus 19 pandemic, I think that the appropriate thing for the University of Pennsylvania to do with regard to its most recent alumnus who ascended to the highest office in the land would be to erect a column funded by donations from the former president's most fervent supporters among Penn's alumni.   The column should be prominently displayed on College Hall Green.  And it would appropriately recognize his contributions to the nation and to its culture.

The historical facts of his legacy can be inscribed in granite on this column, and future generations can read them and wonder at the awesome ignorance, narcissism, vulgarity, and overall incompetence of the 45th president and in those who knew all of those things, yet supported and revered him anyway, either despite or because of his failings.  

    I have a few suggestions for inclusion. On every side of the column permanent bronze plaques will contain some of his most famous quotes.  And underneath those, also in permanent bronze, will be a list of the supporters who subscribed to put up the statue, in order of the amounts of their donations, along with their school and year of degree.   Here are some sample quotes from the 45h president for the plaque:

"I moved on her and I failed. I'll admit it. I did try and fuck her. She was married. I moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn't get there. And she was married."

"I've gotta use some Tic Tacs, just in case I start kissing her. You know I'm automatically attracted to beautiful - I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything."

"You have to treat 'em [women] like shit."

"Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?! I mean, (Carly Fiorina's) a woman, and I'm not supposed to say bad things, but really, folks, come on. Are we serious?"

"You know, it really doesn't matter what they (the media) write as long as you've got a young and beautiful piece of ass."

"I don't think Ivanka [his daughter] would do that [pose for Playboy], although she does have a very nice figure. I've said if Ivanka weren't my daughter, perhaps I'd be dating her."

"Yeah, she's [daughter Ivanka] really something, and what a beauty, that one. If I weren't happily married ..."

"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."

"I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City, N.J., where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering."  [that did not happen.]

"There were people over in New Jersey that were watching it, a heavy Arab population, that were cheering as the buildings came down. Not good."  [still didn't happen.  total fiction.]

"(John McCain is) not a war hero.. He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren't captured."

"So if you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of 'em, would you? Seriously. Okay? Just knock the hell - I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise. I promise."  [at a campaign rally]

`You know what I wanted to. I wanted to hit a couple of those speakers so hard. I would have hit them. No, no. I was going to hit them, I was all set and then I got a call from a highly respected governor... I was gonna hit one guy in particular, a very little guy. I was gonna hit this guy so hard his head would spin and he wouldn't know what the hell happened... I was going to hit a number of those speakers so hard their heads would spin, they'd never recover. And that's what I did with a lot - that's why I still don't have certain people endorsing me: they still haven't recovered." [reacting to the Democratic National Convention, July 29, 2016].

"The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."  [not true]

"Don't tell me it doesn't work - torture works. Half these guys [say]: `Torture doesn't work.' Believe me, it works."

"The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don't kid yourself. When they say they don't care about their lives, you have to take out their families,"

[At a nationally televised July 4th speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial]   "In June of 1775 the Continental Congress created a unified Army out of the Revolutionary Forces encamped around Boston and New York, and named after the great George Washington, commander-in-chief. The Continental Army suffered a bitter winter of Valley Forge, found glory across the waters of the Delaware and seized victory from Cornwallis of Yorktown.   Our Army manned the air, it rammed (?) the ramparts, it took over airports, it did everything it had to do. And at Fort McHenry, under the rockets’ red glare, had nothing but victory. When dawn came, the star-spangled banner waved defiant.”   [there were no airplanes or airports in 1776.    Ft. McHenry was bombed by the British 30 years later during the War of 1812.]

[At a nationally televised press briefing on ways to combat a coronavirus which invades the lungs]    ".... supposing we hit the body with a tremendous whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light and I think you said that hasn't been checked but you are going to test it. And then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body which you can do either through the skin or in some other way and I think you said you were going to test that too. It sounds interesting.

Right. And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number ... interesting to check that so that you are going to have to use medical doctors with but it sounds interesting to me so we will see but the whole concept of the light the way it kills it in one minute that's--that's pretty powerful."  [after this speech, the makers of Lysol, a disinfectant containing bleach, had to put out a national alert warning consumers against ingesting or injection of its product, which is poisonous to a human body.]

"Sorry losers and haters, but my I.Q. is one of the highest -and you all know it! Please don't feel so stupid or insecure, it's not your fault."   [That is true in part.   T***p's IQ is not their fault.   However, a book by T***p's niece revealed that T***p managed to get into Penn  by paying a smart person to take his Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT).]

"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters, okay? It's, like, incredible,"  [This also turned out to be true after T***p managed to incite a riot of his supporters who stormed the Capitol, resulting in five deaths, while he sat in the White House watching it on television and refused to lift a finger to stop his supporters for hours.   When telephoned for help by desperate House minority leader who was besieged in his office by the angry mob which was threatening to kill the Speaker of the House and lynch the Vice President, T***p told him:  "Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”]

And finally, the quote that should make the University of Pennsylvania and all of its alumni very proud:

"I went to an Ivy League school. I'm very highly educated. I know words, I have the best words."

The column should also include the articles of impeachment from both trials as well as statements made by the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol screaming "Hang Mike Pence" and "Kill Nancy Pelosi,' the Vice President and Speaker of the House, respectively. Replicas of the Confederate battle flag carried by the insurrectionists and the gibbet and hangman's noose they erected can also be attached in bronze to the column.

Because history will whitewash the last four years unless we create a permanent memorial to the worst president in history.

Sincerely yours,

James Finkelstein

University of Pennsylvania 1973 graduate from the College of Arts and Sciences