The Desperation is in the Details
If we have learned one thing from the Trump administration and its watercarriers in the rightwing media and Congress, it’s that shame, patriotism, decency, and facts do not constrain them. Longtime observers of Donald Trump, as well as experts in narcissistic personality disorder and dementia, have predicted for some time now that as the walls close in on Trump, he will become increasingly unhinged, desperate, and volatile. Indeed, we have seen this play out repeatedly in the form of histrionic and barely literate tweetstorms in the early morning hours whenever Trump feels attacked. What has been less clear is whether, or the extent to which, Republicans who have their own sworn duty to defend the Constitution — and who are not themselves in thrall to sociopathic character flaws or possible dementia — will follow Trump down his rabbit hole of exploding and imploding lies, accusations, insults, threats, abuse of power, and cynicism.
Political analysts, as well as increasingly anxious citizens, have watched as Republican Senators and House members have gone from extravagantly praising Robert Mueller’s integrity to savaging him, from calling for the Russia investigation to take its course to demanding it end, from supporting the FBI and other intelligence agencies to attacking them, from defending the independence of the Justice Department from Trump’s attacks to joining in his attempt to coopt it to protect himself. We have seen them sit silently by as the man who occupies the White House lacerates career public servants to prop himself up, in a despicable display of petty authoritarianism as well as potentially criminal witness intimidation. We have watched as Attorney General Sessions had to recuse himself from the Russia investigation due to his own lies, as the Republicans on the House and Senate Intelligence committees and the Senate Judiciary Committee and House Oversight Committee have shut down investigatory leads, refused to investigate Trump’s corruption and Emoluments clause violations, turned hearings about the Russian attacks on our election into attempts to destroy Hillary Clinton and undermine the U.S. intelligence agencies, and amplified Trump’s lies about Barack Obama, and as Republicans are now, again, looking to investigate Hillary Clinton’s emails for the umpteenth time rather than figure out how to defend our country and its elections from future Russian interference. We have watched as, each time Mueller’s investigation comes closer to Trump himself, the calls on the right for examining Hillary Clinton’s emails or the thoroughly debunked Uranium One issue ratchet up, with the Himmler-esque Sessions — unable to personally derail the Russia investigation as Trump had counted on — happily obliging.
And so those of us outside of Trump’s base have increasingly, and with ever-growing anxiety, questioned whether there are any, much less a sufficient number, of Republican Congressmen who will do their Constitutional duty of acting as a check and balance on Trump’s undemocratic, unconstitutional, authoritarian, corrupt, and illegal conduct — conduct that is placing the country and the world, indeed American democracy itself, in mortal peril.
For the evidence has long been before us that the self-obsessed, tantrum-prone, would-be tyrant who occupies the presidency neither understands nor accepts the constraints of the Constitution; that he is dangerously ignorant, incurious, and incompetent; that he rejects democratic principles; that he embraces violence and authoritarianism; and that he is an indefatigable bigot and misogynist who treats Americans who do not support him — which is the majority of Americans — as enemies. He has been painfully unfit for office, incapable of upholding his oath of office and in constant derogation of it, since his inauguration. And so the nation has been laboring under the trauma of living with a man whose words and deeds are relentlessly abusive, antithetical to American values and to a functioning democracy, and place the country at constant risk. That abuse and those risks, of course, are compounded and made possible by the people with whom he largely surrounds himself, who cover for him and lie for him and ensure that rather than protect this country and the Constitution from him, they protect him from the country and the Constitution.
The firestorm that erupted yesterday with the teasers from Michael Wolff’s new book, Fire and Fury, comes not so much from learning of the astonishing access Wolff was given and the things that were said, but from the degree to which the book appears to confirm, in jawdropping detail, that those closest to Trump view him no differently than his fiercest critics do. Just like the rest of us who are not in his cult, those on the inside recognize him for the unstable, unfit, narcissistic, moronic, incompetent, treasonous toddler and wannabe Joffrey that he is. On top of that, just as we all have read elsewhere in prior news reports, those in his inner circle are well aware that he is suffering from dementia, ignorant beyond all measure, unwilling to read or absorb information or learn, hopelessly corrupt and mendacious, unaware of his own failings, and thus, incapable of upholding his oath of office — and violating it on a daily basis.
And while the book’s snippets and incipient release are reviving discussions of impeachment and a possible 25th Amendment solution, if there is one thing this book reveals, it is a portrait not merely of White House dysfunction, but of a set of people who have no interest in protecting the Constitution or the country from the very man whose unfitness, ignorance, and cognitive decline they themselves recognize. They have first-row orchestra seats from which they view his unfitness every day, but they go on television and lie for him and protect him and pretend that all is well. Their loyalties do not lie with the country or the Constitution, or even with Trump. Their loyalties are to themselves and their own agendas, each one more eager than the next to exploit Trump’s stupidity, his endless thirst for flattery, and apparently even his dementia, for their own gain. Wolff’s quotes are mesmerizing, but what these excerpts reveal is that the beating heart of the Trump administration is a rotating, treacherous claque of bottom-feeders, exploiters, cynics, and liars, and the degree to which Trump is running the country, if at all, is not at all clear. But we knew that already, didn’t we?
They won’t call for his ouster, and neither will Mike Pence, or Trump’s cabinet, or the Republican Congressional leadership that only days ago simpered and smirked over their abominable tax legislation. They have personal agendas to pursue, agendas that are more important than democracy or the safety of the United States. White House staffers will slink out and look for book deals and CNN and Fox gigs and lobbying and consulting jobs, transforming their prior access into sinecures. And for the elected Republicans, there is apparently no principle, not even the Constitution itself or the defense of free elections untainted by our adversaries’ tampering, that is more important to them than ensuring that the rich get richer.
And yet there is the Russia investigation and Robert Mueller.
Within only a couple of months, Mueller’s team produced multiple indictments going to the heart of Trump’s campaign, with likely further indictments to come. That investigation, along with reporting in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and elsewhere, has already demonstrated that, rather than Trump and his team having had “no contact” with Russia and “nothing to do” with Russia, Trump, the campaign, and the transition were infested with Russia contacts and collusive communications between those who ran the campaign and Russian cut-outs and agents. The collusion is there, and the only question is the role that Trump himself played — how heavily was he involved, was he a Russian agent based on kompromat, or out of a monumental personal grifting effort, or a genuine desire for rapprochement with Russia? And how closely did his team work with Russia, beyond what we already know? These questions are not fully answered yet but of course we know that Don Jr. and Kushner and Manafort and Papadopolous and Clovis and Flynn were all in on the collusion.
As these details have come into focus, rather than express concern for the increasingly obvious possibility that Donald Trump is in fact a Russian asset, a man potentially guilty of money laundering and other crimes — on top of the depredations he commits in plain sight every single day, the frauds and sexual assaults he has been accused of, and on top of his overt, soul-crushing imbecility and unfitness and dangerousness in their own rights—, we see, instead, ramped up efforts on the part of the GOP and the rightwing media to protect Trump, to lie for him, to derail the investigations, to prevent the truth from coming out, and even to abuse the levers of government itself to obstruct justice for him, through their grotesquely partisan, disingenuous, and brazen attempts at deflection. To wit:
- Although Devin Nunes had to recuse himself from chairing the House intelligence committee, he is nonetheless spearheading a parallel, secret, Republican-only inquiry into how the FBI handled the Steele dossier, using his subpoena power to demand documents and accusing the FBI and DOJ of corruption.
- Republicans are increasingly calling for the appointment of another special counsel to examine the FBI’s decision not to prosecute Hillary Clinton, while at the same time criticizing Mueller and his team.
- This morning two Republican Congressmen called for Sessions to go, claiming he is unable to oversee the FBI properly. They lie repeatedly, first suggesting there is “zero” evidence of collusion (a claim patently contradicted by the Don Jr. emails, the Papadopoulous plea, the secret Trump Tower meeting with Kislyak and Kushner, the Flynn/Kislyak meetings/calls, and other contacts), and second by suggesting the invetigation has been going on far too long when in fact Mueller has only been investigating for a few months and has already indicted Trump’s former campaign manager, his former National Security Adviser, and other members of Trump’s campaign. The notion that there is nothing to see and no evidence of collusion is preposterous. And the notion that Sessions needs to step down because the investigation is overseen by Rosenstein rather than Sessions is equally ludicrous. The reality is that they don’t like the fact that Rosenstein, while a Republican, is career Justice, and thus not a clear stooge for Trump, and so they want him, and therefore Sessions, out.
- In early December, Trump tweeted that the Justice Department should again look into Hillary Clinton’s emails — despite the fact that it already has, that those emails dominated all election coverage for 18 months, and that the media’s and James Comey’s treatment of that investigation appears to be responsible for Trump’s electoral victory. The Justice Department is now reportedly doing just as Trump has demanded.
- Also in December, Republicans, from the Wall Street Journal editorial board to Newt Gingrich to Fox and Hannity and others, attacked the FBI and the Mueller investigation repeatedly, with Jeanne Pirro calling for the agency to be “cleansed”, the WSJ calling for Mueller to resign, and House members using hearings to attack the FBI’s investigation and integrity, forcing its new (Republican) director, Christopher Wray, to defend it against attacks of partisanship . Details of these escalating attacks are chronicled here and here, though there are dozens more examples. (Funny: no Republicans are calling for a special counsel to look into Rudy Guiliani’s advance knowledge of the status of the Clinton email investigation during the election and his communications with FBI agents who were plainly favoring Donald Trump. Go figure!)
- Republicans seized on Mueller’s decision to fire Peter Strzok from the investigation after he learned that Strzok sent a personal text calling Trump an idiot, as an excuse to attack the investigation — even though the way those texts were handled was flagrantly politicized and contrary to normal Justice Department policy. Strzok also sent negative texts about many other politicians, including Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder, and other Democrats; and the offending text merely called Trump an idiot, rather than suggested pre-judging collusion. (And if thinking Trump is an idiot is disqualifying, the entire investigation would in fact be in jeopardy, and Trump’s cabinet and entire administration, as well as most of Congress, would need to resign, as well.)
- In the latter half of December, the politically-motivated attacks on Mueller by Trump, some GOP Congressmen, and apparatchiks on Fox and elsewhere had intensified to the point that 173 Democratic Congressmen felt the need to write a letter to Sessions expressing their support for the Mueller investigation, urging that the rule of law be followed, and detailing the prior bipartisan consensus that Muller, a former Republican appointee, is a man of great integrity.
- Though the testimony of the owners of Fusion GPS appears to indicate that there are ample reasons to believe many of the claims in the Steele dossier, and that a minefield of evidence exists that Russia was actively seeking to elect Trump just as U.S. intelligence agencies have previously concluded, Republicans who control the investigations have focused on discrediting the dossier and attacking Fusion GPS, rather than pursuing the evidence tying Trump to the Kremlin.
- Trump has attacked Andrew McCabe, deputy FBI director and a former member of James Comey’s inner circle, as well as FBI attorney James Baker. The motivation for this is that McCabe reportedly is corroborating James Comey’s testimony that Trump asked him for a loyalty oath, among other statements, which of course have consequences for the obstruction case against Trump. These attacks have been echoed and even incubated in the rightwing media, which has pursued a campaign of discrediting James Comey and those associated with him (McCabe, Baker, Rybicki — each of the six that Comey said in his June testimony would corroborate his contemporaneous consultations with them about Trump’s demands for loyalty). The purpose? To discredit Comey, the FBI, and Mueller’s case for obstruction against Trump.
- Over the summer, Republican house members like Bob Goodlatte began calling for second special prosecutor to look into the supposed ties between the Clinton Foundation and Uranium One deal after rightwing media and Trump flogged the concept for weeks following Mueller’s appointment— a faux “scandal” so transparently fabricated for purposes of partisan deflection that Shep Smith of Fox News debunked it in a spasm of disgust (to the fury of regular Fox viewers). Jeff Sessions has dutifully obliged by asking prosecutors to recommend whether a special counsel should be appointed, and by launching a new investigation into the Clinton Foundation from Clinton’s time as secretary of state, 2009–2013.
- Lindsay Graham, who at one point publicly lamented Trump’s “blind spot” for Russia, is now making endorsements of Trump’s golf courses and advocating for more special counsels into Uranium One and other issues.
- Charles Grassley and other Republican senators have also called for additional special counsels, including to examine supposed pro-Clinton bias at the FBI — a deeply conservative law enforcement agency. (Given that the FBI investigated Clinton’s emails and disclosed details of that investigation during the presidential campaign, while withholding from the American public the fact that it was simultaneously investigating the Trump campaign for possible collusion with Russia to throw the election, this accusation is deeply disingenuous, if not outright sinister in its manufacture.)
- Two days ago, Trump called on the Justice Department to prosecute Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin, suggesting the fact that the Department had not done so was the result of a “deep state conspiracy” against him. As James Comey pointed out in a subsequent editorial, no Republicans criticized Trump for attacking the FBI and Department of Justice, or for demanding that the agencies jettison their independence and instead become partisan instruments for Trump to wield in pursuit of personal vendettas and deflection attempts.
- The DOJ itself appears to be engaging in unprecedented actions to please Trump and support the partisan and obstructive criticism of Mueller.
- Republicans in Congress are also conducting their own investigation into Clinton’s emails, this time by investigating the FBI’s investigation of the emails as they try to manufacture a case of bias against Trump within the agency. They called Andrew McCabe to testify on 48 hours’ notice, and their methods and grilling caused representative Elijah Cummings to leave the hearings grim-faced and stating that this is a fight for the soul of our democracy.
- Democrats on the House intelligence committee may issue a minority report to detail what they see as Republican efforts to stymie their Russia investigation by refusing to subpoena relevant witnesses and documents.
- Charles Grassley, Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has refused to subpoena witnesses and documents that Democrats deem relevant to the Russia inquiry , leaving the committee in a partisan shambles as the ranking member, Senator Dianne Feinstein, attempts to obtain relevant documents through voluntary production.
- This evening, the New York Times broke a story revealing that two days after James Comey testified this summer, an aid to Sessions
“approached a Capitol Hill staff member asking whether the staffer had any derogatory information about the F.B.I. director. The attorney general wanted one negative article a day in the news media about Mr. Comey, according to a person with knowledge of the meeting.”
So: the Attorney General of the United States, ostensibly recused from the Mueller investigation, was at the same time trying to dig up dirt about the former Director of the FBI to discredit Comey’s testimony about Trump’s obstruction.
- In the face of escalating fears that Trump will end the Mueller investigation or subvert it, whether by asking Rosenstein to fire Mueller or pardoning those who are indicted, or in some other way, the Republicans in Congress have refused to pass legislation that would protect Mueller and the investigation from Trump’s interference. (Trump has recently claimed he will not take action to fire Mueller.) Mark Warner, ranking member on the Senate Intelligence Committee, is so concerned he has taken to the Senate floor to warn Trump not to take any action affecting Mueller.
These Republican efforts are sustained, reprehensible, and terrifying, and if they succeed, both Congressional committees and special counsels will have become completely weaponized for partisan purposes; Trump and his co-conspirators will be placed above the law; and the fundamental principle of Constitutional government will have been subverted, with potential treason and corruption rewarded, empowered, and emboldened.
And if embrace of Putin’s meddling in our elections, and conspiring in plain sight to prevent to the truth about Trump’s own role in that from coming out is an acceptable “price” for Republicans to pay to attain and maintain power, what other Constitutional values will they jettison to remain there? Their attacks on Mueller and efforts to shut down any reckoning with the truth are de facto attacks on Constitutional government itself and the rule of law. We recoil from their disgusting ploys for the brazen assaults on truth and on the rule of law that they are.
Terrifying as this all of is, I take odd near-comfort in the fact that what we are witnessing reflects both desperation and extreme consciousness of guilt. Indeed, the more brazen and deviating from rationality, fact, and democratic and constitutional norms the Republicans’ actions become, the more desperate they reveal themselves to be. Indeed, their actions smack of desperation in the same way that Trump’s histrionic and embarrassing attempts to silence Wolff with an absurd cease and desist letter, and Manafort’s patently frivolous civil lawsuit against Mueller and Rosenstein, do.
But there is one critical difference. The desperation and stupidity of Trump and Manafort’s stunts will be adjudicated — Manafort’s suit will be dismissed and, if Trump attempts to enjoin the publication of the Wolff book, he will fail.
By contrast, the actions of the Republican Congressmen demanding that Sessions resign so that a patsy can be installed to obstruct Mueller; the deployment, yet again, of Congressional and Justice department subpoena power to attack a former presidential candidate in order to satisfy the flailing whims of the would-be dictator who is himself under investigation, in order to deflect from his own misdeeds and to whip his base back into the frenzy of “lock her up!” from which he seems to draw personal sustenance in times of trial; the refusal of the Republican leadership to stand up for the rule of law and push back on the Fox/Breitbart attacks on Mueller, Comey, McCabe, and others in order to protect Trump; the Nunes-led junta investigating the FBI in order to to subvert the Mueller investigation and attack Clinton…these are also very desperate measures, equally frivolous, but because these machinations are purely political and not susceptible to adjudication, they are virulent and dangerous.
The Republicans’ eagerness to exploit the investigatory and oversight powers of the Congress and the Justice Department for raw partisan purposes, and to attempt to find equivalence between a good-faith investigation that was begun because U.S. allies all over the world were raising alarm bells that the U.S. election was at risk, and this flagrantly cynical abuse of power, also reveals more than desperation, I am afraid. It reveals that a not-insignificant number of elected Republicans, as well as their supporters, accept and endorse that abuse of power. Like Trump himself, they do not care if Trump abuses his power, and they are willing to abuse their own offices to remain in power. Nor do they appear to care whether Trump is compromised or has committed crimes or is unfit. They clearly know he is unfit. And they clearly suspect that he is compromised and/or has committed crimes— everything Mueller has found so far and all reporting to date suggests that he has. But rather than hold him accountable they prefer to suppress the truth, violating their oaths of office in the process, as surely as Trump’s administration is doing.
That sound of silence you hear from the majority of Republicans as their extremist fellows carry Trump’s water for him and try to dismantle our democracy? That is the sound of the craven, of the weak, of the corrupt; it is the sound of the conscience of a conservative. It is the sound of the dead.
And the rest of us, who feel we are stuck in the sunken place, screaming at a Republican Congress who will not hear us, or even when it does, ignores us and our needs and the Constitution? Despite all appearances, we have power and we must use it. We must all register people to vote and get out the vote like never before. The wave is coming. It must and it shall overwhelm, a tsunami of citizens rising up to reclaim our country. In the face of a Mueller shut-down, of a pre-emptive and cynical war with North Korea, of gerrymandering and voter suppression and corruption and kleptocracy and propaganda and hatred, of anything or everything these despicable people throw at us, we shall and we will overcome. And we will take our country back from the marauders who would destroy it and us.
Note: I am aware that Wolff has been criticized for his reporting in the past. However, he claims he has tapes; I am hearing very few denials from Bannon, Walsh, or the White House; and every person making a denial has a personal interest in doing so. Unless and until there is reason to credit the denials, I believe the author. And, ultimately, as the inestimable Josh Marshall points out, this is what matters:
