Democracy At The Brink
Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post joins Charles Pierce of Esquire in calling out the fact that we are deep into a Constitutional crisis:
Robinson points out that in response to Trump’s absurd, but chilling, “I hereby demand” tweet that the Justice Department manufacture an investigation to to discredit the investigation underway against him and attack his political rivals,
Rather than push back and defend the rule of law, Justice tried to mollify the president by at least appearing to give him what he wants. The Republican leadership in Congress has been silent as a mouse. This is how uncrossable lines are crossed.
After walking through Trump’s lies and the rightwing’s eager peddling of them, Robinson concludes,
None of this is normal or acceptable. One of the bedrock principles of our system of government is that no one is above the law, not even the president. But a gutless Congress has refused, so far, to protect this sacred inheritance.
Trump is determined to use the Justice Department and the FBI to punish those he sees as political enemies. This is a crisis, and it will get worse.
And Pierce observes that The New York Times’s nearly mind-boggling reporting on the Trump/Nader/Broidy/Prince/Qatar/Kushner/UAE/Saudi scheme gives ample reason to believe that the Trump administration
may have conspired with foreign governments at the very least to finagle the last presidential election, and that those government did so in the expectation of favors from the administration* they worked to install. That it may have delivered the quo for several of those quids through the foreign policy of the United States. And, if the administration delivered the quo, that it would be guilty of a crime. In fact, it would be guilty of one of the crimes specifically mentioned in the constitutional provisions regarding the impeachment and removal of a president — to wit: bribery. And this is not even to mention the many still unresolved questions relating to Russian ratfcking for the hell of it.
Yet, in the face of what ought to be an on-all-hands-on-deck scramble among the Congress and others sworn to defend the Constitution to put a stop Trump’s apparent trading of our national security to enrich himself and his family, with a grotesque cast of illicit international and shady domestic characters at the ready to facilitate not only a giant grift on the American public but in essence the destruction of our system of government itself, we have a Republican Party that is eagerly assisting in the demise of self-rule in exchange for tax cuts and self-enrichment (a more charitable view might be that they are so knee-capped with fear over losing the mid-terms that they are willing to sacrifice the country itself):
Clearly, the Republican majorities in the Congress will do nothing about this gathering threat to the constitutional legitimacy of the government as a whole. Therefore, those majorities have to be pushed and threatened to get them to move and, if they still refuse, they have to be replaced by majorities that will protect jealousy both the legislature’s legitimate powers and the general constitutional order. If neither of those courses is followed, then we have said as a self-governing people that we are willing to participate in a farce, a burlesque of constitutional democracy concocted by a passel of avaricious clowns, rather than fight for our right to a political commonwealth based on self-government.
There is a fight to be had here, and it is better that it be held out in the open, with every honest weapon available — including the current midterm campaign. It is not a time for irresolute appeals for civility and political politesse. Nothing honest is off the table. The American republic is fighting for its life and, as the old song goes, which side are you on?
And lat night, a friend noted to me in a private email hat the rightwing’s systematic sabotage and undermining of Mueller (a lifelong Republican), the FBI (deeply conservative, chock full of Republicans, and helmed by Trump’s Republican appointee), the DOJ (led by Trump appointees, rightwinger Jeff Sessions, and Republican Rod Rosenstein as his deputy), and any employees thereof who have not ignored their oaths of office, has already had such a negative impact on public perception of the Russia investigation that it’s almost a worse threat to Constitutional democracy than a Saturday Night Massacre to remove Mueller would be.
I agree with all of this.
As the news becomes overwhelming that the Trump White House is a de facto criminal grfiting enterprise for him and his family, open to bribery by foreign bidders through an international network riddled with brazen corruption, Republican loyalists, both those who are glued to Fox and worse, and their elected representatives in Congress, are simply rejecting the news entirely. They refuse to believe what is in front of their eyes, choosing instead to push Trump’s democracy-busting lies and demands, latching on to Hannity’s conspiriacies, smears, and falsehoods, and in the process, rejecting democracy itself.
That’s what has been slowly happening since the campaign. We’ve all known it. We’ve watched it in both super-slowed-down and hyper-fast real time; we knew it when that Trump voter was willing to say on the record in The New York Times (or maybe it was TV or WaPo; I can’t remember) that if it took Vladmir Putin to beat HIllary Clinton, he was just fine with it. Destroying Hillary Clinton and installing Donald Trump was more important than 250 years of democratic government and the Constitution. That guy wasn’t an outlier; he was the norm.
And we’ve seen it as the Fox/Breitbart/Sinclair propagandists work in concert not only with Trump but with dangerous, traitorous clowns masquerading as patriots — such as Devin Nunes and Mark Meadows — to discredit and sabatoge the Russia investigation, the U.S.’s intelligence agencies, and other Americans attempting to save our democracy. The parade of lies and propaganda is working; while majorities of Republican voters used to support the Russia investigation, they no longer do, and increasingly they view the FBI as out to frame Trump rather than explore and get to the bottomn of the increasingly obviously reality that he is a hopelessly compromised actor who has violated his oath of office and is incapable of upholding it. Rather than face these facts, they accept “alternative” ones; a universe in which the patriotic and necessary pursuit of truth is perverted into a meritless “witch hunt”; one in which Putin’s interference in our election is shrugged off and instead a server is revisited and calls for “lock her up” are resuscitated; one in which the possibility that Trump is trading U.S. foreign policy for personal favors and enrichment is looking more and more like a reality is somehow business as usual, irrelevant; one in which the probability that a criminal conspiracy to hijack our election and install a corrupt actor open to purchase appears to both to be high and to have extended well beyond Russia is dismissed or met with a shrug.
And this is happening not out of nowhere; it is the result of successful Republican strategy and messaging. They are out there every day pounding Trump’s message and lies, and even the mainstream media doing such great reporting exposing him and his family and cronies unwittingly assist him. They assist him by referring to Trump’s orchestrated attacks on our system of government and on the FBI and the DOJ and government employees and the judiciary and even his own appointees as his “beliefs” or his “skepticism” about the investigation. In other words, their language gives him the benefit of the doubt, and assumes he in fact has skepticism and in fact “believes” the investigation is without premise, merely because he says so. There is no basis whatsoever to report that Trump “believes” the Mueller invstigation is a “witch hunt.” He has run a non-stop campaign to discredit the investigation precisely because he and his loyalitsts know is not a witch hunt. The man who has lied dozens of times that he and his campaign had nothing to do with Russia, the man whose campaign manager is now indicted along with a host of others, chafes precisely because the investigation and the reporting are exposing his web of corruption and criminality.
While these journalistic failures — the unwitting adoption of the Trump narrative they are trying to debunk — subtly take their toll and help erode confidence in our institutions, there is no question that the blame lies squarely with Trump and his family, Mike Pence, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, every Trump cabinet member, Don McGahn, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Kellyann Conway, John Kelly, and every despicable Republican in Congress who is letting this happen. Every day that they support and amplify, or do not push back on, Trump’s attacks on our system of government, every minute they help discredit these investigations, they push us further toward our system’s destruction. Trump is ensuring that no matter what Mueller does or finds, there will not be support among Republicans to reinstate the rule of law, hold him to account, or protect our country from foreign influence. Every day Ryan supports Nunes’ unprecedented interference with and undermining of the investigation and the DOJ, he contributes to its delegitimization and its demise.
Republican voters won’t support Mueller’s results because every day they are told the investigation is a frame-up and that Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama are the problem. And without Republican leaders willing to push back on this false narrative, it goes unchallenged in their epistemicly closed loop of self-reinforcing conspiracy feedback, and the truth is labeled as the fiction of Democrats, a hoax. Trump and the GOP thus together are ensuring that no matter how strong the proof of Trump’s abuse of power, misuse of office, Constitutional violations, and likely criminality, his base will either not believe it, or even if they do, they won’t care. The Republican electeds plainly do not care, either. If they did they would be in Trump’s office pushing for his resignation and actively educating the Republican base in how our system of government is supposed to work. That they are not doing that, that instead they are colluding to permit Trump’s unspeakable corruption and betrayal of our country to continue, tells you that we are deep into the Constitutional crisis already.
The lines are drawn. Are you on the side of our country, or Donald Trump? Because you really can’t be both at this point. Trump and his party stand squarely in opposition to fundamental principles of Constitutional government and adherence to the law. It’s really that stark and that simple. It’s time to choose. And what’s terrifying is that many will choose Trump over democracy. They already have.
