There are few journalists I have less respect for than Chris Cuomo, who I would have long ago labeled an Ethics Villain except that he isn’t deft enough to reach that rung on the unethical miscreant ladder. Chris is just an extreme Ethics Dunce, and has proven it repeatedly; hence his nickname “Fredo.” Yet somehow, Cuomo has correctly grasped what so many of the Trump-Deranged cannot, a factor that is core to understanding the election. On his podcast, “The Chris Cuomo Project,” Cuomo said,

“You have some low-level culture war fruit, but I don’t really think that matters. You have pain in the pocketbook. And yes, there is a story to be told that we’re doing better in terms of most other places, major economies recovering or not recovering from the pandemic. But do you really care if, at the end of the day, things cost more? Probably not….which is why they’re pushing the “Trump is a despot” thing because they’re trying to make something more important than your pocketbook. And I don’t know that that works, and I don’t know that they should even be playing at it, frankly, because I don’t think they beat Trump in a battle to the bottom of grievance. I do not think they win that. The ‘he’s a despot’ versus ‘you’re a commie,’ I think she loses. And not because I think she’s a commie—I think that’s absurd, I also think the idea that he’s a despot is absurd. You gotta stop thinking that the people who support Trump are like Trump, that they speak like Trump, that they act like Trump. They don’t. They want to hire Trump to do a dirty job. They want him to be a virus to the political corpus. They want him to disrupt, to destroy, to demean those that they disrespect and dislike, the system that they distrust and despise. They want someone to do what they believe has been done to them and that they cannot do themselves. That’s why they don’t care that he exhibits terrible behavior because they’re putting him into a terrible place. If you’re sending somebody into the jungle, do you really care if they’re a savage? You see what I’m saying?

You may not agree. You may not accept. You may not like, but that’s what it is.

At least in great part, that is exactly what is going on. The Trump-Deranged don’t get it, and the knee-jerk progressives who think open borders, censoring “hate speech,” one-party journalism, puppet Presidencies and climate change posturing are all wonderful definitely don’t get it. I get it, but I don’t like it: my position has been and always will be that a nation is better off with an ethical leader than an unethical one no matter how effective he may be or how wise his policies are. But I also know that there are exceptions to that rule. FDR was an exception. This election also poses an exception for consideration, because it pits an experienced leader with no ethical bearings at all against an incompetent, unqualified, dishonest prop candidate who is also devoid of ethical principles.

With every discussion I have with a Trump Deranged Harris voter, the discussion devolves into typical narratives, some based on facts and some Big Lies, about what an awful human being Trump is. This is usually a position most passionately held by people who have no knowledge of what awful human beings some of our greatest Presidents were. I read a perfect example of this posture today on “Simple Justice.” The blogger, criminal defense lawyer Scott Greenfield, is, oh, maybe five times smarter than Fredo, but he wrote this…

“…as underwhelming as Harris may be, Trump is worse in every respect. He is a despicable, repugnant person. He is vulgar, deceitful, narcissistic and ignorant. He has two, and only two, motivations: self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment. If you’ve been a reader here for a while, you know all this as I’ve said it all before. It’s only gotten worse since. No, claims that things were better under Trump do not make Trump any less despicable.

Unlike progressives and MAGAs, the ends do not justify the means for me. The means matter, and must be guided by principle even if the outcome is not what I desire. The president of the United States should be a person of integrity and honor, of intelligence and humility, of grace and respect. I do not know that Harris embodies these qualities. I am certain Trump does not.

Some of you will remember when I argued that the shrieks against Trump at the outset of his first term claimed that he was immoral. My contention was that Trump was not immoral, but amoral. Morality never entered into his actions, which were grounded solely in what was good for him. He or his proxies might spin it one way or the other, or both since no one seemed particularly bothered by rank hypocrisy, but it was all subterfuge. It was only about whatever worked for Trump at any given moment.

He was impetuous. He was lazy and couldn’t be bothered to learn or think about things when he could instead just spew whatever nonsense popped into his head. And he was not smart enough to pull it off, although a smarter person would have realized his limitation, something Trump was incapable of doing.

Harris might be a terrible president. She might do some truly awful things for our nation. Or not. Who knows what she will do? But Trump is a terrible person, and he might do some truly awful things for our nation as well.

Scott is too smart to believe a lot of that (“underwhelming” is equivocation regarding Harris, and he knows it), but in many respects he mirrors my assessment of Trump from the beginning of his rise. Bias makes you stupid, however, and peer groups make you biased: there are few more committed left-wingers than trial lawyers. Greenfield’s analysis is tainted by too many Axis talking points and anti-Trump narratives.

“Trump is lazy”…I hear this routinely. I see no evidence that he’s lazy; in fact, I find his industry, persistence and energy remarkable. I have been around long enough to realize that intelligence comes in many forms, and Trump’s intelligence is definitely one of the more unique varieties. The “self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment” claim is a virtual mantra: “Trump cares only about himself.” I am certain that is a canard. Nobody takes on the Presidency who only cares about himself. He cares about the country; he has sacrificed a lot to be President and to seek a second term. Frankly, I think that accusation is pure hate: it is clearly unfair on its face, as is the related false claim that Trump only does “what is good for him.”

Trump “spews whatever nonsense that pops into his head”? Anyone who uses that to justify voting for Harris wins the hypocrisy Kewpie doll. Nor does it make sense to say the dangers of both candidates “doing awful things” to the nation are equivalent. Trump was President for four years, and did not do anything “truly awful,” unless one regards eliminating crippling regulations, stopping the Education Department’s discrimination against men, placing qualified conservative justices on the Supreme Court and other achievements “truly awful,” as progressives do. His irresponsible handling of the skeevy election loss was awful, but that wasn’t policy or leadership: it was a tantrum. Yes, I would regard it as disqualifying if the Democratic Party hadn’t tilted so far into “1984” territory.

Harris is defending the Biden Administration that was truly awful in many respects, notably by foisting a mentally disabled POTUS on the nation and covering it up, and using the legal system to harass and prosecute its political adversaries. There is no justification for concluding that Harris will be anything but a terrible President, or that she is “a person of integrity and honor, of intelligence and humility.” She has proven during the campaign the she is none of those things, and unlike Trump, she has no track record of successful leadership.

Harris is partially responsible for the dirty job that nice, dignified, honorable Republican leaders have not been able to do, because they were crushed by the ruthlessness of Kamala Harris’s party, Barack Obama’s Chicago politics and the Clintons’ Machiavellianism.

Chris Cuomo’s analysis is correct.