Rachel Maddow: Trump Demands Prosecutions for Cheney, Jan. 6 Committee Members
Rachel Maddow: Missing Cues, Trump Claims Right to Prosecute Political Enemies
The Chickens Have Come Home to Roost
Few people remember the first time Donald Trump's name came up as a candidate for President. That's because it wasn't a memorable candidacy. It happened in 2000, at the end of the Clinton Presidency, as Republicans were sorting out who they could nominate to defeat Al Gore, still the party of Reagan, looking for a "Reaganesque" candidate who could win what would be more a battle of rhetoric than a battle of change, since the country had been lifted out of the economic doldrums, including high unemployment and stagnant economic growth under George H. W. Bush.
Few people took Trump seriously, whom they considered some kind of comic figure that had built a reputation and personal fame on immoral worldliness, getting himself in the gossip columns of the major dailies and on the daytime television gossip shows because of his bragging about his sexual exploits and affairs on his "trophy wives," including highly publicized divorces, rumors of big settlements he had to pay to get out of marriages, and his penchant for getting away with corrupt business dealings. His line about being able to get away with shooting someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and getting away with it didn't just materialize in 2016. He had a long history of using money, or the image of having money, to cheat at business, and bragging about it was his brand.
He didn't always get away with it. He paid out millions of dollars in settlements to make crimes go away. When one is rich, that's a luxury open to them that ordinary Americans don't have. But in that Republican party, at that time, it didn't catch on. Republicans were still hiding themselves behind the banner of being the "party of family values" and Trump's shenanigans, which included a plethora of anti-Constitution and anti-Democratic rhetoric, led to his relatively early exit from the campaign, due to it being squashed by party leadership.
Nothing has changed since then, except that Trump had sixteen years between his first and second attempts at the Presidency, which included muttering about possible runs in 2004, and 2008, and the early 21st century electorate has proven to be much less conservative and Republican, and much more progressive and Democrat. Characters like Rush Limbaugh built a career on anti-democracy rhetoric, advocating that the minority party use loopholes to abandon the two-party give and take compromise that makes democracy work. The best politics for Republicans, according to Limbaugh, was to throw up roadblocks and halt any forward movement for which the other party could take credit.
Trump, who used the loopholes for his own benefit for virtually his entire career, fit well into that way of doing politics. And so, a party that was getting desperate to figure out how to claw and scratch its way to power with a minority of voters in the electorate, settled on Trump's rhetoric of racism and white supremacy, including hatred of blacks, Latinos and Asians, his anti-establishment image, and his television celebrity status. Republicans abandoned their Reagan "family values" principles, and chose a serial adulterer, "never-ask-for-forgiveness", lying, cheating, racist, misogynist sexual deviant, rapist as their party nominee for President.
Then, when the chickens started coming home to roost, as the Mueller investigation uncovered the cheating and illegal activity turned into campaign strategy involving foreign contributions and influence, and extensive violations of the law by his collaborators and associates, the Republicans want to claim that it is the Democrats who are weaponizing the justice department against their criminal nominee.
He brought all of this on himself.
What Did We Expect?
Did the Republicans who decided to back Trump because they desperately needed a win and had to depend on celebrity rather than on the standard characteristics that Americans recognize for leadership, actually think that when he got into the White House, he would play by the rules, follow the law and suddenly become a patriotic American with a knowledge of history, government, economics and the international situation necessary to be the President? Or did they think he would be some kind of figurehead, rubber stamping what they wanted to do as long as they let him play with the toys, get his fat face in front of the microphone and pretend to be important and famous?
And what did those among the electorate who decided to vote for him actually think? There's an old saying in politics, "When the pot boils, the scum comes to the surface." That has certainly materialized, as what now constitutes the MAGA base that supports Trump includes a long list of society's undesirable elements, criminals, racists, subversives and counter-cultural antagonists. Virtually everyone whose intelligence and critical thinking skills have failed to prevent them from being sucked in by conspiracy theories which don't even remotely try to support their claims with evidence have been sucked in by Trump's politics.
There's probably not anyone who epitomizes his brand of bureaucrat more than Steve Bannon, now headed to prison in spite of having received a Presidential pardon for his worst crimes, which would have landed him there for decades. Hillary Clinton called them "deplorables," a name they used with pride, not contradicting the nature of their breed. Bannon, especially in the days since he has realized he is going to spend time in prison, has opened his mouth to spew his hatred for America and for all that it stands for. Look at the rest, all convicted felons, not resulting from some Democratic party "witch hunt," but all by their own actions long before Trump brought them into the light of day. Once in Washington, they didn't know any other way to behave, except to break laws to get what they wanted, use bribes, threats and loopholes in the law to win at all costs.
It was the GOP that weaponized the Justice System when Trump forced Jeff Sessions out of the Attorney General's office for being too committed to the Constitution and the law, and brought in Bill Barr, a former attorney general under Bush who knew how to turn the office into a personal Presidential attorney. Barr was exactly what the GOP needed to make the mountain of criminal evidence against Trump and his entire campaign, uncovered and published in the Mueller Investigation, simply go away. And he was willing, right up until the very end, to be a loyal hack and keep the mountain of illegal activity going on in the White House from ever seeing the light of day as long as he was in office.
His legacy, in spite of his brief attempt to look honest and distance himself from Trump when the criminal activity surrounding January 6th, and the theft of classified documents scorched his reputation, is that he turned the Attorney General of the United States into a personal attorney service for the President.
And the GOP wants to talk about Democrats weaponizing the justice department. Wake up, America. You are being deceived by a devil who is trying to look like a savior.
Evidence is Usually the Key to a Successful Prosecution
It's still pretty much a requirement, under the law, that to prosecute someone for a crime, there has to be evidence that a crime was committed. As Republicans in Congress have tried, for four years now, and especially in the past two years when they've had a slim congressional majority, to find a reason to impeach President Biden, it's been somewhat comical, if not also infuriating, to see that they have not yet been able to find something he's done that qualifies under the "high crimes and misdemeanors" definition of evidence of misconduct in office. But they keep trying, and that, in and of itself, is a prime example of "weaponization" of government.
On the other hand, in the case of both impeachments of Trump, the weight of the evidence was so overwhelming that it would have been dereliction of duty for an impeachment not to have been launched, though the standard employed by Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in the house was quite high, seeing as Trump had done so many things that met the definition of "high crimes and misdemeanors" and the evidence was overwhelming.
When he sued across the country, accusing various states of "massive election fraud," he lost every single case because there was one thing he lacked. Evidence. He, and a couple of his attorneys found out rather quickly that accusations must be backed up by proof, or there's a high cost to pay for frivolous lawsuits. He has two former attorneys who have lost their law licenses as a result. Staged hearings and ballot drops with actors paid to make claims that there's evidence of voting fraud does not constitute voting fraud. Nor can a President accuse someone of a crime, and order the Justice Department to prosecute if there's no evidence.
All of the wailing and whining about the indictments brought against Trump by the GOP is nothing more than extremist politics. There was evidence, plenty of it, mountains of it, in fact, including admissions to having done some of what he was accused of doing from Trump himself. What he couldn't remember, members of his staff filled in for him. And the irony of virtually every investigation that has led to the criminal charges, indictments, and now to 34 felony convictions in one trial, is that the evidence has virtually all come from Republicans, most of them individuals who were part of the Trump administration, or the staff at Mar-a-Lago, or worked for Trump's companies. All of the testimony that has led to indictments in the January 6th and Documents cases has come from Republicans, many of them Trump associates.
If the GOP is going to get behind their criminal nominee, and support his campaign of vengeance, they're going to have to come up with evidence to bring charges. But in all of the attacks being made from the right, especially from Trump, what's missing is the evidence. If you know what your political opponents have done that's illegal, and can be subject to a future prosecution, you call it out, right? Unless, of course, there's nothing to call out and this is just another Republican rant about their intent to weaponize the justice department.
The People Must Speak at the Ballot Box in November
I consider myself somewhat of a historian when it comes to American history and politics. This is a critical moment in our history. I do not believe that the nation can survive without a functioning, non-political, constitutionally-committed justice department and judicial system. Rhetoric from media pundits like Rush Limbaugh has advocated turning the judicial system and the justice department into an agency pushing right wing, conservative politics, since there is not enough of a Republican majority to sustain the kinds of oppression they want to instigate through legislative means. So they appoint conservative justices who will then issue findings and rulings that support their own conservative agenda, and undermine the legislative ability of Congress.
The Trump Presidency already made inroads into dismantling the judiciary, by appointing radical, right-wing extremists, most of them completely unqualified by experience, to the federal bench. Some of them are so incompetent, they can't run a courtroom during a trial. We're seeing this already taking place in Trump's documents trial, with a judge who is ignoring the constitution, and the oath she took to uphold and defend it, in order to support his wishes to make the case just go away. That's a huge danger to the existence of this nation.
If our courts and our judiciary loses its constitutional commitment, and its objectivity, and turns partisan like the legislative and executive branches have done, then there will not be an America as we know it for much longer. We will descend into a violent chaos, perhaps a civil war, and will either become a military dictatorship when they step in to restore order, or the Russians or Chinese will move in to dominate, using the political puppets they've already put in place in the media, and the government, to gain control and suck our resources dry.
And I tend to think it's a foreign presence in Republican politics that has brought all of this about. There's a ton of evidence to support this. Reading through the Mueller Report, which, unfortunately, few Americans have bothered to do, even though it's still available, Rachel Maddow gives historical insights into much of what she observes and reports, which support this same line of thinking.
We are a constitutional democracy which derives its power from the people. There are politicians attempting to subvert the power of the people, expressed through the ballot box, and through court cases that prosecute felons no matter what office they once held in government. No one is above the law, and the best way we have of assuring this is to vote against everyone who is enabling it. There can't be any dickering over the President's age, or over inflation or gas prices that he can't control, or over this or that with regard to the Hamas war, or any other part of the administration that, if Trump had been in office, would be far worse than it is now in every way.
Every American who believes in freedom, in this constitutional democracy, in a government which derives its power from the people, must step up, and re-elect the President in November. And the results of that election will tell us how much Americans really care about their constitution and their democratic government, and most of all, their guaranteed individual freedom.
No comments:
Post a Comment