I got my start as a professional actor very early in life, playing Tiny Tim in a televised mounting of A Christmas Carol. From that point on I was extremely active as a child actor.

One of the theatrical productions I was in as a child actor was The Emperor’s New Clothes. Our director reimagined the play in kabuki style, so we had wonderfully elaborate costumes and makeup. However, the story was the same:

Two crafty thieves convince the Emperor and his advisors that they make clothes out of a magical cloth that only smart people can see. Dumb people, the thieves explain, can’t see the beautiful fabric. Of course, there is no magical fabric. The thieves simply count on the Emperor and his court to be too embarrassed of not seeing the cloth (thereby making them dumb), so they pretend that they see it. This results in the Emperor parading through his kingdom completely naked because he thinks he is wearing robes made out of the magic cloth. And nobody has the guts to speak up and tell him he’s naked.

In some ways, the classic story is relevant today.

Donald Trump is a world laughingstock claiming he didn’t lose an election he lost by over 7 million votes. His conspiracy theories have all been debunked. His handpicked Attorney General William Barr made a clear declaration that there was no voter fraud. Trump’s own Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) issued a statement that it was the most secure election in the history of the United States. There is no question that Donald Trump lost the election by record numbers. Anyone who says otherwise is either purposefully lying or is gullible enough to be convinced of a lie.

Donald Trump is parading through the streets naked. The majority of Republicans in Congress are standing by Trump’s ridiculous claims of voter fraud. They don’t have the guts to tell him he’s naked. They don’t have the guts to stand up for democracy and the Constitution.

In the play The Emperor’s New Clothes a small child is the one to point out to the kingdom that their inept leader is standing in front of them naked, and the thieves are long gone with all of his treasure.

Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney, a devout Republican and daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, has pushed back against Trump’s Big Lie. She refuses to pretend that Trump didn’t lose the election. She also refuses to pretend that Trump didn’t try to overthrow the government on January 6, 2021 by inciting his followers to violently storm the Capitol.

Make no mistake, Cheney is no liberal. She has voted along party lines for most of Trump’s policies. That tells you how big the lie is that Cheney won’t sit back and let history be rewritten.

Cheney is losing her position as the third most powerful Republican in the House because she refuses to pretend that Trump didn’t lose the election. The rest of the Republicans in the House and Senate know full well that Trump lost, but they are sticking with the Big Lie. They see nothing wrong with punishing someone for speaking the truth. It is a sad indication of what the once proud Republican party has become.

Apparently in the Trump version of The Emperor’s New Clothes, when a child speaks the truth and makes the Emperor a laughingstock, the child is taken out back and shot.

It’s not surprising that Trump is throwing a tantrum that he lost the election. He’s a crybaby. He always has been. As someone who told over 30,000 lies during his presidency (as carefully tracked by the Washington Post), it’s also not surprising he’s lying now. At one point he told over 500 lies in one day.

What is surprising is that the majority of the Republican party leadership is going along with Trump’s Big Lie. Shouldn’t honesty be mandatory in public service?

Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency because the Republicans in Congress were set to convict him of obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress. Those Republicans saw truth as something they owed the voters. Those Republicans were set to do what was right for the country and not participate in a coverup.

When Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection, a few Republicans like Cheney voted with their conscience. Sadly, too many voted Republicans just voted along party lines.

The Republican party is going down a very dark path. I never thought U.S. politics could come to this level of corruption at such a high level.

The (former) Emperor is officially wearing no clothes. Trump is standing naked with his roles of fat hanging down and his tiny mushroom sitting there wrinkled for all the world to see.

It is my sincere hope that Republicans, Independents, and Democrats all recognize what level of corruption current elected Republican officials are engaged in and vote for change in the 2022 congressional elections.

We need integrity in office. We need more people like Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Tammy Duckworth, Pete Buttigieg, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

What we don’t need? Blind enabling of a would-be dictator.

Let Trump take his magic clothes and go home where he can be naked by himself. We need his enablers to stop perpetuating the Big Lie. If they can’t tell the truth, vote them out.

Peace. Love. Trust.

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