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Georgia Garvey

Now that the 2024 presidential election has come to its inevitable if protracted conclusion, can we turn the page? Donald Trump won so we won’t have to sit through years of conspiracy theories about how Democrats have been training tiny monkeys to live in the ballot scanners and reject all Trump votes, but there are plenty of other matters I’d like to put to rest as well, among them:

1. The 2020 presidential election, especially any suggestion that it was “stolen” or “rigged” or thrown to Joe Biden. These were spurious enough arguments four years ago, when anyone who sat down and thought about it might have asked themselves why the liberals didn’t rig the House and Senate races while they were at it. But now that Trump has won a second term, let’s officially close the books on this. The claims had their airings in numerous courts before all kinds of judges (including Trump appointees) four years ago, but in case the legal vetting wasn’t enough, let’s use November 2024 as some solid proof. Democrats have spent the last several months arguing that the future of democracy itself was on the line in this election. If they rigged the 2020 election, they would have rigged it in 2024, too.

2. Any assertion that the Democrats or Biden or the great big liberal “they” in the sky can create catastrophic weather events or target specific areas for disaster. I suppose someone might believe that Trump didn’t deploy weaponized tornadoes during his last term because the technology was only developed in the last four years. But Trump’s certainly getting the keys to the Hurricane Machine now, so we’ll all know in about two months the full truth of the situation. If California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s house gets flattened by a typhoon, I’ll agree that “they” can control the weather. If blue states stay safe and sound, can Marjorie Taylor Greene agree that this was all just cooked-up nonsense to get hurricane victims angry at the government?

3. Discussion of the involvement of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the Trump administration in relation to vaccines or health care. Just about the time he decided to run for president, Kennedy repositioned himself from an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist (peddling debunked and misleading claims about vaccine efficacy and harms) to a “vaccine safety” enthusiast. He’d previously spent all his time saying that vaccines were dangerous and caused autism, despite considerable evidence to the contrary — and the eventual exclusion from vaccines of thimerosal, the very ingredient he and others had been blaming. The candidate Kennedy started saying he didn’t want to ban vaccines, per se, but just wanted vaccine “choice” and double-blind controlled studies, which would involve giving some kids a placebo instead of an actual vaccine. That’s not much of an improvement. And let’s be honest: The only reason RFK Jr. got any traction in the Trump campaign was so that he would bring his supporters along with him. Trump can, and hopefully will, make RFK Jr. just the latest in a long line of people to be disappointed after sidling up to him in hopes of gain.

4. The idea that Trump is going to deport millions of immigrants. Research shows there could be as many as 11.7 million undocumented immigrants in the country (a number that’s slightly less than where it was in 2008). Setting aside the substantial ethical questions, we’re still left with practical considerations. Even if Trump really could engineer the removal of millions of people from the country, there would be an avalanche of unintended economic consequences. A 2014 Pew Research study found that 17% of agricultural workers are undocumented immigrants, as are 13% of those in construction and 6% of those in manufacturing. Are legal citizens clamoring to work dangerous factory jobs for low pay? Can farmers afford to pay minimum wage and contribute to employees’ Social Security for apple-picking, for example, while also keeping prices down? Seems like Trump’s corporate backers and employers of undocumented migrants might have something to say about these mass deportations.

I could go on, but this would be an excellent start.

And as for some of the topics, I know it’s unlikely that we won’t hear about them anymore. Expressing hopes that Republicans will stop saying that Trump won the 2020 election is on par with buying a lottery ticket and expecting to win the jackpot. And it’s a fever dream to think Trump will stop threatening to kick every undocumented migrant out of the country, even if not a single person gets displaced.

A girl can dream, though. And for four years, dreams might be all we get.

— Georgia Garvey is a syndicated columnist with Creators.