Beginning of The End of Trump?

Tonight is a pivotal night.

Either the blatantly demagogic President scores another huge victory in the name of authoritarian oppression and control -- or he falls flat on his face.

Much appears to hang in the balance with Donald Trump's 9 p.m. national primetime pitch to fear monger for a wall we don't need and would be so costly in myriad ways.

Network news' decision to invite this desperate President, facing indictment on a multitude of misdeeds and demonstrable crimes, into our living rooms, granting this distracting sheer political ploy such high profile attention, is disconcerting on many levels.

The move automatically lends a sense of legitimacy to an illegitimate President's illusion of grandeur and risks abetting the demise of our democracy.

Now, so much hinges on the professionalism of the Fourth Estate, broadcast and print.

With the President threatening to declare a national emergency unless he gets his destructive wall, tonight is a chance for the broadcast industry, in particular, to redeem itself after, wittingly or not, feeding and promoting the Reality TV disaster that now occupies the Oval Office. 

The facts are clear. The lies too.

According to the federal government's Department of Customs and Border Protection, a total of six migrants (non-U.S. residents) on a terrorist watch list were stopped at the Mexican border in 2018 -- not some 4,000 possible terrorists as claimed by the Trump administration.

In the meantime, during this Trump-forced government shutdown hundreds of thousands of government workers and contractors have gone without work for more than two weeks.

All legitimate print and broadcast media must exhaustively scrutinize every Trump utterance, dissect every single Trump claim, weed out the abundant lies, eviscerating the narcissist con man's claims.

Much also depends on a thoughtful, but forceful Democratic response plainly stating the facts.

And of course, much depends on a sober-minded American public seeing through the President's facade and recognizing the unstable destructive force that he represents.

To even hint in the slightest degree that Trump carries an iota of credibility at this precipice in our country, after all we know about the President's shady past and present, perhaps most disturbingly his multi-tiered Russian business connections, is to live in fantasy.

Trump has been building his wall, that runs right through the heart of the country, long enough. 
So, enough of this garbage entertainment TV already.

Tonight needs to be the beginning of the end of Trump.

It's time all of America, Trump's loyalist Republican enablers and rabid rally-goers included, realize that America's most dangerous terrorist is hiding in plain site -- inside the White House.

(Kevin McKinney is a freelance writer and former daily newspaper journalist living at the Jersey Shore. His opinions have appeared in McClatchy newspapers, The Hill and CounterPunch. Follow on Twitter @WriteFight99)