Le GOP: C’est Trump
Trump’s tweets the morning of May 8th trying to discredit Sally Yates are unspeakably disgraceful; in their own way, they and his smear campaign are worse than his unfounded lies about President Obama, because she is not a former President with all the power and good will and money that that title carries with it. She is a career prosecutor who has served her country and her government with integrity for nearly three decades.
Trump is a desecration of every principle of decency and democracy that exists. This hulking abomination is weaponizing the presidency and the government against our own citizenry, while simultaneously corrupting both to arrogate money and power for himself, his family, and the wealthiest among us. The entire administration and the entire Republican party are guilty, not merely complicit, in this twisted project of the destruction of decency and the democratic norms that are the bedrock of our society.
Because the Trump cabinet, the Trump appointees, the Trump hires, the adult Trump children, the Republicans in Congress, the Republicans at the state level, and the hating mouthpieces in the rightwing media not only do nothing to stop him when they could stop him in a heartbeat — they actively assist in his lies and his violation of Constitutional and democratic norms — not to mention the norms of basic human decency.
They lie for him. They distort for him. They spin for him.
They attack for him. They spread the talking points without regard to truth or consequences or fairness or legitimacy. They politicize everything, even potential treason, even national security, even nuclear war.
Most fail even to condemn; but even those who occasionally do, like John McCain or Justin Amash or Don Young, vote in lockstep to support him and do nothing to stop the madness.
They allow, they enable, they contribute to the Constitutional and other violations. They quash efforts to obtain his tax returns so that we can have transparency into his business conflicts, they do not support him divesting his businesses. They let the tweets go or they defend them.
They obstruct investigations into an attack by a hostile power into our very elections — the essence of the democratic process — because they do not want anyone to know what that investigation might uncover.
Instead, they deflect and try to politicize it, saying nothing as Trump desperately levers the government to find support for his fabrications, sneaking off in the middle of the night to view classified documents and then lie about what they have seen; perjuring themselves in confirmation hearings; lying on TV to give him cover; refusing to hold to him to a single bare minimum standard of ethics or decency, ignoring the sickening pile-up of his and his family members’ abuse of their governmental roles to make money for themselves, even if that means lauding and getting in bed with dictators around the world — but if there’s Trump property there, or that they want to develop there, that’s all that matters (Turkey; Philippines; Azerbaijan; Cyprus; China; Russia, Saudi Arabia) — national security, human rights, democracy can all be damned.
Instead of being a leader combating human rights violations, the President of the United States speculates openly about doing deals with murderous oppressors and actively roots for far-right fascists and racists to destabilize Western democracies and our allies. And what does the GOP do?
Basically nothing. Rex Tillerson whispering clean-up words as he himself weakens State Dept norms, and Matthis quietly seeking to reassure Merkel and others, and John McCain giving a speech in Europe that barely cracks the news here and has no impact on Trump are just squawks. Do you hear any GOP voices objecting to the conflicted nepotist neophytes Jared and Ivanka helping set policy as their siblings put visas up for sale and exploit their ties to the presidency — mainly at taxpayer expense?
Where is the GOP as the government is purged of scientists as if we are fucking Cambodia in 1979? Where is the GOP as the Trump administration declares war on the poor, on the elderly, on special needs children, on public education, on the environment, on women and their rights? Right there with Trump, is where.
Most are drunk on the prospect of forcing 24 million people to lose their health care and millions more facing potential bankruptcy; giddy with the prospect of denying women, the poor, people of color, and LGTBQIA people basic human rights.
The heady joy of wounding other people and showing them that white, Christian, straight men are boss, of denying facts, denying science, of elevating and celebrating ignorance, cruelty, stupidity, greed, and venality and doing so in the most Orwellian and dishonest and hypocritical means possible — well, it appears that for the Republican Party, that is a drug more powerful than any notion of patriotism or love of country or humanity or commitment to democracy ever could be. The short-term goals of power and maintaining staggering levels of income inequality, racism, and sexism, win out over equality and justice and fairness for all;they win out, for the Republican party, over country and democracy.
Because we are seeing, as we have been warned by everyone who has lived to tell the tales of incipient and actual authoritarian states, that there is no policy too small, no amount of progress too minor, for these people not to attack and unwind. Standards so that children who have school lunches won’t get Type II Diabetes by the age of 12? Abrogated. Warning labels on food so that Americans aren’t poisoned? On the chopping block. Programs to help domestic violence victims? May be gutted. Efforts to address police brutality? Good-bye. Websites discussing science they don’t like? Scrubbed. And on and on and on ad infinitum. The big, splashy things are easier to mobilize and fight against — blatantly disgusting and discriminatory executive orders; health care bills staggering in their blunderbuss cruelty and their boondoggle for the wealthiest. But these smaller items, accumulating daily in the interstices, are the means by which the Republican party is actively undermining progress for millions of Americans because that it what they do. And if allowing an illegitimate, unstable, unfit, narcissistic, corrupt, fraudulent, lying, disgraceful, racist, crass, sexual assaulting putrid disgrace of a bloviating monster who puts the country and world at risk to stay in office is what it takes to get their hateful agenda through, the GOP has demonstrated that it is ready, willing, and able to continue to support him.
And that is why we will hear no one on the GOP side criticizing Trump for his pathetic, embarrassing, dangerous, despicable tweets this morning. Instead, we will continue to hear two things from Republicans in Congress, with a handful of exceptions: active support for Trump, and silence.Both are lethal to democracy, to decency, and to national security. Trump is the worst, but he can’t do this alone. And he doesn’t.
