Dick Hubert’s Worldview: E. Jean Carroll, Donald Trump and a national reckoning

Somewhere in Westchester County, maybe in our circulation area, there’s a juror in the latest E. Jean Carroll/Donald Trump courtroom drama whose decision (with fellow jurors) I celebrate and whose anonymity it’s crucial to protect.

For that juror (and his/her fellow jurors) unanimously awarding $83.3 million in damages to Carroll for Trump’s ugly defamations of her character after another jury found him guilty of sexually assaulting her is the beginning of what I hope will be Trump’s legal, financial, and moral reckoning with the forces of decency and democracy in this country.

As I write this, analysts are offering views as to whether and how and when Trump might pay up.

Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, was quoted as saying of Trump: “No matter what Donald Trump thinks, and no matter what Donald Trump says, the rules apply to him.”

Trump, of course, has acted as if none of the laws apply to him and that elected officials and judges should do what he tells them to do.

Republican elected officials and candidates for the Republican nomination for President in 2024 (except Nikki Haley) have bent to his will and paid homage to him.

Far too many Americans and friends (and enemies) of our country are convinced Trump will be our next President.

Trump’s public posture is that Biden is a weak opponent and the only obstacle in his path is Congressional passage with Biden’s signature of a tough immigration bill. He has told Congressional Republicans in both the Senate and House to kill the bill or risk his ongoing wrath.

And so, right now, only the courts (state and federal) would seem to stand in his way to the Republican nomination for President and a November election.

Discount the courts, as many are wont to do, and the only hope to stop him, and it is a frantic one, is that enough American voters in swing states will stand in his way and vote for Biden.

We already know what Trump will say if the vote does not go his way: that you can’t trust elections, that the vote count is dishonest, that voting machines were tampered with and ballot boxes stuffed, and that only his followers, at gun point perhaps, can save the day.

A lot of elected men and women, especially Republican legislators, fearful of attacks on their family, have hesitated to confront Trump. That is not my insight: it is the in-depth reporting of just about every journalist covering Congress and even local and state officials.

The (thank goodness) failed plot to kidnap and terrorize Michigan’s Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer is a stark reminder to everyone in public service of the threats from Trump’s devoted followers that must be taken seriously.

And it’s not just those in elected office.

Those who watch the polls and count the votes, our paid election workers, have, as we all know, been on the receiving end of Trumpist harassment.

Thus it was a pleasant surprise to hear on NPR’s Weekend Edition this past Saturday, Jan. 27, a five-minute report detailing how residents of Fulton County, Georgia were coming out in droves to volunteer to staff the Board of Elections for the November general election. They had seen how Trump and followers like Rudy Giuliani had made life miserable for election staffers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss who had to go into hiding for their own protection after being falsely accused by Trump and his team of changing votes from Trump to Biden.

These are idealistic Americans. Bless them. We’ll need every one of them, throughout the country, to say no to Trump this November.

George Conway, the famed Conservative lawyer who is now known for his cable news appearances and his writings in The Atlantic, this past Friday, while commenting on the Carroll case, provided his reasons why America should say “NO” to Trump:

“Even the judge in this case pointed out that Trump can’t control himself. He’s a deeply morally bereft, sadistic human being, who has no conscience, morality, empathy, or remorse.

Those who continue to support him need to stop pretending that he isn’t a sick and disturbed man….

His aberrance is pathological. It is incurable. It is unalterable. His pathology is guaranteed to always get worse. Many elected officials in the GOP know this. Maybe not the degree, but they know enough. They risk our lives for fame, grift, cravenness…”

Annoyances—from
the Post Office to Windows 11

Last week my neighbors and I failed to get USPS mail delivery on Wednesday and Thursday.

Fortunately, I had prepared for moments like this by befriending our carrier and getting his cell phone number. Obtaining that number became important when I realized that I could never reach the Port Chester Post Office by their main number—it was never answered.

So I called him to find out if he was all right. He answered the phone, and I could hear pain in his voice. He told me his back had given out, he was in real agony, and hoped a visit to a doctor or chiropractor would help.

I told him I hated to bring up business, but his not being on the route meant we had no mail deliveries for two days, and there was no way I could reach at the Post Office to complain.

I was not alone, he said, as not even the mail carriers could call in to the Post Office. The only way they could communicate with each other in any kind of emergency (or even on routine matters) was to call someone else’s cell phone.

And so he promised to call his supervisor for help while noting to me that the Post Office was so thinly staffed that there was no one available as a substitute to take over his route.

We did get a delivery late Friday afternoon. I don’t know who did it. But nothing on Saturday.

This rant is my way of saying that this failure to even answer the main telephone number is outrageous, and whoever is responsible for this action and the state of the morale at the Post Office should be reprimanded.

As for Windows 11

I bought a brand-new desktop Windows 11 computer from Hewlett-Packard last May and with it every kind of service contract I could think of that they offered.

Sadly, I am known in my family as having a “Black Cloud” hanging over my head when it comes to technology. If something goes wrong, it happens to me.

In late January, my computer started running far too slowly. I couldn’t access websites. I was lucky to even use e-mail. My only backups for communicating suddenly turned out to be my Apple iPad and iPhone.

I spent hours on the phone with HP technicians in Mumbai, India. Four phone calls and innumerable “remote” sessions and they determined my Windows 11 operating system was corrupted, they didn’t know how, there were no viruses and no malfunctioning hard drive or RAM, and I would need a new operating system. YIKES!After the last session, I found myself locked out of my computer and helpless to restart it.

To the rescue came a friend and computer expert whose identity I will not publish. Suffice it to say that he was able to access a Microsoft code (through an account I didn’t know I had), open the computer, restore it to its last miserable state, download a new copy of Windows 11 onto a memory stick, and promise to come back and put me back in business after I returned from a long-planned vacation.

I’m writing this (on my iPad) in detail because I want to know if any of our readers have had a similar problem. I am being told by the HP techs in Mumbai that corruption of Windows 11 is not an unheard-of problem and that it is dangerously close to a common occurrence. Is it? 

And am I the only one whose USPS Port Chester Post Office experiences are…frustrating?

As the old newspaper promo commercial used to say, “Inquiring minds want to know.”

Dick Hubert, a retired television news producer-writer-reporter living in Rye Brook, has been honored with the Peabody Award, the DuPont Columbia Award and the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Journalism Award.

Editor’s Note: This column, written by Dick Hubert, represents his opinion and not that of this newspaper.