Tag Archives: Republican Party

Final Thoughts (Maybe) About the Republican “Performance” in the SOTU

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The New York Times published an interesting piece about the Republicans’ unprecedented outbursts during President Biden’s State of the Union address: Heckling of Biden Reflects a New, Coarser Normal for House G.O.P., https://nyti.ms/3Xq479c While it bore similarities to my own comments in The Barbarians Are Inside the Gate, it was a bit too abstract for my taste and replete with “both sides” implications, a now all-too-common trait of main stream media.

But what struck me most were the comments that gleefully recalled the moment when then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi ripped up Trump’s speech following one of his SOU addresses to Congress. In essence, those comments claimed that the obscene heckling of President Biden was justified by Pelosi’s previous conduct. What’s good for the goose, and all that. Hypocrisy, they say. You can’t have it both ways, they say.

I confess I didn’t read all the 666 comments the Times allowed before closing comments (a curious number, I note in passing – assess as you will), but of those I did read, not one noted the obvious difference between Pelosi’s demonstration of hostility to the then pretend president and the yelling and disruption that occurred during Biden’s speech.

I refer to the obvious fact that when Pelosi tore up Trump’s speech, Trump’s speech was over. He was finished talking. Should Pelosi have waited until Trump departed or until she was in the hall outside or called a press conference later to show her contempt? Maybe. But there is a fundamental difference between her post-speech demonstration and the multiple interruptions and crass behavior during the speech by members of the Republican Party. Her action did not disrupt Trump’s remarks, no matter how distasteful they were to her. The Republicans, on the other hand, did everything they could to disrupt and disorient the President. And they failed.

My final (maybe) observation: the writers at the New York Times, Washington Post and other newspapers that still claim to some degree of objectivity in matters political should stop calling these Republican Party louts “conservatives.” There is nothing “conservative” about most of them. They don’t just want less government; they want no government.

Just two days ago, Ted Cruz, officially the U.S. Senator from Texas, tweeted: “Abolish the IRS.” https://bit.ly/3Ih6PtCCruz is not the only Republican to advocate that. You may also recall that many other leading Republicans have advocated abolishing the Department of Education and other federal agencies, including Betsy DeVos, Trump’s Secretary of Education. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) introduced a bill in early 2021 with co-sponsors including (unsurprisingly) Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), to do that very thing.

To be clear, I for one believe the United States Tax Code is a monstrosity. One fine day, I plan to write about it in some detail. But the idea that we can in one swoop “simplify the Code” and then eliminate the IRS while still effectively collecting enough revenue to pay for the U.S. Miliary, among many other federal services that help assure this country’s safety and prosperity, is blatantly stupid.

The National Taxpayer Advocate did a Microsoft Word count of the tax statutes and implementing IRS regulations in 2012 and came up with roughly 4 million words. At roughly 450 words per page, that works out to around 9,000 pages. The National Taxpayer Advocate also noted that the tax code changed 4,680 times from 2001 to 2012, an average of once per day.  https://bit.ly/3DYxWa8

That was ten years ago. Most likely the Code is substantially larger today. Much of it is designed, by Republican and Democratic administrations alike, to foster or discourage various forms of economic and other behavior. Changing it to a simpler system whose focus is mainly, if not solely, to fund the government is highly desirable in my view but it’s not something that can be done overnight in a sudden “simplification.” Advocates for that approach are not “conservatives. They are either anarchists or … well, this is a family blog, so I won’t go further.

Suffice to say, the complexities of the Code and its pervasive influence on the conduct of American businesses is such as only a prolonged and careful reexamination has any chance of success. But the Code’s very complexity and influence has spawned entire industries of tax lawyers, tax-specialist accountants, software companies and tax preparers, all of whom have a vested interest in keeping the complexity. And then there are the giant corporations that benefit from manipulating their operations and accounting to pay less tax than the might in another system.

To return to the main point, the Republican Party has become the Party of Grievance. Their appeal to the good old days, when white people ran everything and most things were thought to be cheaper and readily available at all times, those days are gone. Permanently. The Republican Party is the Party of the Past, a past that never really was and that was unsustainable. You may be able to turn back the clock, but you cannot undo time. It moves forward whether your clock, or your mind, keeps up or not. To believe in the past that the Republican Party is selling is to believe in a mirage, a false idol that leads you to your destruction.

The Republicans can yell and scream until the dogs come home. They have nothing constructive to offer the American people or the country. Joe Biden was too gracious, too composed and, in boxing them in on Medicare and Social Security, too clever for the screamers. They won’t learn anything from it. They’re out there every day justifying what they did because Nancy Pelosi hurt their feelings. Grievance and more grievance – the Republican Party’s true platform.

The Real Election Fraud – How to Fix It

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Subtitle: Gilead is almost here. It can be stopped.

The so-called Republican Party supports Donald Trump’s Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen, despite the reality that no factual evidence to support that claim has ever been produced in dozens of court cases or “audits,” not even in “audits” run by Trump’s most committed followers. Trump’s lawyers have been sanctioned for failing to properly research the factual basis for the election challenges they filed. This led to Republican-controlled state legislatures passing laws designed to suppress Democratic votes and, failing in that, to permit those same legislatures, or their appointed election hacks, to overturn the votes of their citizens and award the presidency to Donald Trump in 2024.

Such a step would, obviously, signal the end of American democracy and the establishment of a dictatorship by what purports to be “lawful means.” It might also/should lead to a second civil war. [Aside: if Republicans’ lust for power should lead to a civil war, what do you suppose our adversaries, like Russia, will do while our national government is distracted in such a struggle?]

While the American Civil Liberties Union and others are filing lawsuits to challenge many of these actions, it is far from clear that the courts will intervene. The bedrock principle of separation of powers provided for in the Constitution will then also cease to exist. America as we know it will cease to exist. The Republic of Gilead will have arrived in America. If you don’t recognize that phrase, please read, at once, The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) by Margaret Atwood. If you want to see what that looks like, read some of the stories from Tennessee where religion is now being used, under state law, to permit discrimination in delivery of adoption services. https://bit.ly/3qQNSVJ

There is a partial solution, and it should be adopted immediately. The Constitution, in Article I, Section 4, Clause 1, states that the,

Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations …. [bold face added by me throughout post]

It is time for the federal government to stop playing whack-a-mole with the states. The federal government should take full control of the process by which the national legislature is elected. Such a step would not, by itself, prevent the states from trying to tilt the playing field for other offices but it would make it much more difficult. If done right, it would establish a very high barrier against interference in the presidential election.

There is no ambiguity in that conferral of federal power. The National Constitution Center agrees:

Although the Elections Clause makes states primarily responsible for regulating congressional elections, it vests ultimate power in Congress. Congress may pass federal laws regulating congressional elections that automatically displace (“preempt”) any contrary state statutes, or enact its own regulations concerning those aspects of elections that states may not have addressed. The Framers of the Constitution were concerned that states might establish unfair election procedures or attempt to undermine the national government by refusing to hold elections for Congress. They empowered Congress to step in and regulate such elections as a self-defense mechanism. [https://bit.ly/3GnXRay]

To the same effect, a group of constitutional scholars filed a friend-of-the-court brief in Shelby County v Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013), the case in which the Court eventually gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965:

… the Framers wanted to make sure that state and local officials couldn’t undermine federal elections. [https://bit.ly/3rbVyRp]

Further, the Supreme Court itself has held that,

the Framers understood the Elections Clause as a grant of authority to issue procedural regulations, and not as a source of power to dictate electoral outcomes, to favor or disfavor a class of candidates, or to evade important constitutional restraints [quoted favorably from U. S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U. S. 779 (1995) in Cook v Gralike, 531 U. S. 510, 523 (2001)]

The Court made clear that,

“manner” of elections as we understand it, … in our commonsense view that term encompasses matters like “notices, registration, supervision of voting, protection of voters, prevention of fraud and corrupt practices, counting of votes, duties of inspectors and canvassers, and making and publication of election returns. [case cites omitted]

Justice Kennedy concurred in the Court’s opinion, but added this:

A State is not permitted to interpose itself between the people and their National Government as it seeks to do here. Whether a State’s concern is with the proposed enactment of a constitutional amendment or an ordinary federal statute it simply lacks the power to impose any conditions on the election of Senators and Representatives, save neutral provisions as to the time, place, and manner of elections pursuant to Article I, §4 ….

The dispositive principle in this case is fundamental to the Constitution, to the idea of federalism, and to the theory of representative government. The principle is that Senators and Representatives in the National Government are responsible to the people who elect them, not to the States in which they reside. [emphasis added]

These principles governing the scope of federal power over elections for Congress are very longstanding:

It cannot be doubted that these comprehensive words embrace authority to provide a complete code for congressional elections, not only as to times and places, but in relation to notices, registration, supervision of voting, protection of voters, prevention of fraud and corrupt practices, counting of votes, duties of inspectors and canvassers, and making and publication of election returns — in short, to enact the numerous requirements as to procedure and safeguards which experience shows are necessary in order to enforce the fundamental right involved. And these requirements would be nugatory if they did not have appropriate sanctions in the definition of offenses and punishments. [Smiley v Holm, 285 U.S. 355, ___ (1932)]

That should be enough to settle the question whether the states can establish rules that prevent Congress from regulating federal elections if it chooses to do so. They can’t.

The argument for federal intervention seems conclusive until one encounters the Shelby County case that held unconstitutional the pre-clearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (the Congressional renewal of 2006) in one of the worst instances of judicial overreach and legislating by the Court in its history. The 5-4 majority opinion was written by Justice Roberts, the current Chief Justice.

In Shelby County, the Supreme Court held that the pre-clearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act (states with a history of racial discrimination could adopt no law on voting until advance-approved by the federal government) were unconstitutional. This was so, the Court said, because the problem at which they were directed had disappeared and that a “current problem” was essential to a law that was such a drastic departure from the principles of federalism whereby the states ran the election process.

The Court’s central reasons for this grotesque outcome were, in my opinion, a “conservative” hostility to the very constitutional principles the majority purported to uphold. The opinion’s opening lines reveal this in Roberts’ characterization of section 5 as “a drastic departure from basic principles of federalism” and of section 4 as “an equally dramatic departure from the principle that all States enjoy equal sovereignty.” The cart that follows that horse had nowhere to go but oblivion.

The Court ignored entirely the Constitution’s empowerment of Congress to regulate by direct action the election of members of Congress, claiming that

“the Framers of the Constitution intended the States to keep for themselves, as provided in the Tenth Amendment, the power to regulate elections.”

That is simply wrong. The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution says,

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The “powers … delegated to the United States” plainly include Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 explicitly empowering Congress to regulate Congressional elections.

The Court thus completed its elevation to quasi-legislature, eviscerating the separation of powers. Despite a long continuous history of (mostly southern) states inventing new ways to evade injunctions and settlements aimed at racially motivated voting restrictions, the Court made a finding of fact that the problems at which the Voting Rights Act had been directed and repeatedly re-enacted had, by 2013, disappeared and were unlikely to return. There was thus no current need for the legislation and in the Court’s view, that fact rendered it unconstitutional.

I would have thought that the question of the current need for legislation was as distinctly a legislative function as was the original question whether the legislation was needed at the time of its enactment. In principle, after Shelby County, there seems to be nothing standing between any piece of legislation and this Supreme Court’s disposition to decide that Congress was simply wrong about the need for it and thus the legislation is dead on arrival.

One can only wonder which other federal statutes have outlived their usefulness in the minds of the conservative Justices and how long it will be before the principle of Shelby County will be used to justify their rejection based solely on the Court’s view that the legislation is no longer necessary.

True enough, the Court in Shelby County made much of what it called, with relish, the “extraordinary and unprecedented features” of the law’s pre-clearance procedures. But Congress was dealing with an intractable history of racially discriminatory legislation, regulation, and practices, one with long-standing roots in history and culture. The Court swept that aside by looking at the current data on voting in the subject states, finding that all was well, and thus holding that the legislation had long ago accomplished its original purposes. In the conservative majority’s view, by 2013 the law was just a meaningless burden on the oppressed states that had for many decades been guilty of racially discriminatory voting policies but had cleaned up their act. The Court presumed to judge whether those problems and tendencies, buried in southern culture, would rise again. It didn’t think so.

It was oh so wrong.

The extent of that wrongness is well shown in these quotes from the Shelby County opinion:

In 1965, the States could be divided into two groups: those with a recent history of voting tests and low voter registration and turnout, and those without those charac­teristics. Congress based its coverage formula on that distinction. Today the Nation is no longer divided along those lines, yet the Voting Rights Act continues to treat it as if it were….

If Congress had started from scratch in 2006, it plainly could not have enacted the present cover­age formula. It would have been irrational for Congress to distinguish between States in such a fundamental way based on 40-year-old data, when today’s statistics tell an entirely different story.

It could not be any clearer that the Court is acting as a legislature in making these judgments. If there is any saving grace in this debacle, it is the concluding language that purports to limit the effect of what the Court did:

Our decision in no way affects the permanent nationwide ban on racial discrimination in voting found in §2. We issue no holding on §5 itself, only on the coverage formula. Congress may draft another formula based on current conditions….

Our country has changed, and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.

If this weren’t so egregious an error by the highest court, I would laugh out loud. In reading that last paragraph, I immediately thought of the pathetic cliché, “I’m not racist; why some of my best friends are Black.”

Two important footnotes: (1) Justice Thomas, one of the two dissenting voices in the recent decision to allow the National Archives to release the Trump papers to the January 6 Select Committee, said he would have held all of Section 5 unconstitutional along with the coverage formula. No surprise there. (2) the remarkable dissent penned by Justice Ginsburg (RIP incisively destroyed the central premises of the majority opinion with an overwhelming recitation of facts the Court chose to ignore:

Jurisdictions covered by the preclearance requirement continued to submit, in large numbers, proposed changes to voting laws that the Attorney General declined to approve, auguring that barriers to minority voting would quickly resurface were the preclearance remedy eliminated.

Justice Ginsburg identified some of the “second generation” techniques being employed to defeat the will and ability of minority voters, such as racial gerrymandering and at-large districts that produced fatal dilution of minority voting blocs. She noted that,

… the record before Congress was huge. In fact, Congress found there were more DOJ objections between 1982 and 2004 (626) than there were between 1965 and the 1982 reauthorization.

… between 1982 and 2006, DOJ objections blocked over 700 voting changes based on a determination that the changes were discriminatory.

Those findings alone dispose of the majority’s manufactured claim that “our country has changed.”

Justice Ginsburg also made the point that the 2006 extension of the pre-clearance provision was no casual act, noting that the vote to extend the Act was 390 to 33 in the House and 98 to zero in the Senate. Congress’ intent to extend the protections of the Act in the face of continued recalcitrance and artifice by many states could not have been clearer.

In addition to completely undermining the factual basis claimed by the majority, Justice Ginsburg highlighted the majority’s massive legal mistake by pointing out that the principle of equal sovereignty among the states relates to the admission of new states and that the Court’s use of the doctrine was thus unprecedented. She concluded her devastating dissent with this:

After exhaustive evidence-gathering and deliberative process, Congress reauthorized the VRA, including the coverage provision, with overwhelming bipartisan support. It was the judgment of Congress that “40 years has not been a sufficient amount of time to eliminate the vestiges of discrimination following nearly 100 years of disregard for the dictates of the 15th amendment and to ensure that the right of all citizens to vote is protected as guaranteed by the Constitution.” …. That determination of the body empowered to enforce the Civil War Amendments “by appropriate legislation” merits this Court’s utmost respect. In my judgment, the Court errs egregiously by overriding Congress’ decision.

And, indeed, here we are. Multiple Republican states are passing a multitude of laws to make voting more difficult with almost certain disparate impacts on voters most likely to vote Democratic. For a dramatic statement of the problem, see Senator Klobuchar schooling everyone on this: https://bit.ly/3tQXSQS

The Republicans haven’t stopped there. They are replacing election officials with their partisans in anticipation that Democratic voting will overcome the implanted obstacles. In that case, the Republicans are preparing the groundwork for simply rejecting the vote counts and declaring the Republican candidates the winners. The main goal of this action is, of course, to install Donald Trump back into the presidency in 2024 even if the voters reject him.

If you think I am exaggerating, read these samples: https://wapo.st/3GzjIvJ [Election officials in Texas reject hundreds of ballot applications under state’s new voting restrictions]:

The clerk’s office in Travis [County, Austin] said it does not have enough information from the secretary of state to provide voters with what they must do to fix their applications.  Many other counties are experiencing the same high rejection rate,” the office said in a statement. “We have not received instructions from the state outlining what our office can do to assist voters in submitting a completed application.”

And it has now been disclosed that at the end of 2020 there was a multi-state effort by Republicans to submit fake collections of electors voting for Donald Trump. See, among others: https://bit.ly/3AnBf7G This seems like the plot of a cheap B-grade movie but it’s real. No more evidence is needed of the dishonesty and determination of Republicans throughout the country to undermine democracy and install Trump as dictator.

I am, of course, aware that two putative Democratic senators, Manchin and Sinema, have aligned themselves with Republicans to prevent the adoption of federal voting protection laws. https://nyti.ms/33HxBtw They almost certainly will stand with Republicans in opposing any other federal regulation of voting even if limited to congressional seats as the Constitution provides. Hypocrisy is the missing name for Republican politicians and the Democrats who align with them.

Realistically, we must acknowledge that the constitutionally appropriate solution I am advocating (the complete federal regulation of elections for House and Senate members) is not going to happen until the party balance in the Senate is changed or the filibuster is eliminated. The most likely path is to remove the turncoats Manchin and Sinema, and elect Democrats in other states where Republicans now have Senate seats. This is a tall order to put it mildly, but it is likely the only way to prevent Republicans from simply “taking” the presidency in 2024.

History is not favorable for this outcome. Usually the party “in power” loses seats in Congress in the mid-term elections. If Democrats don’t overcome that history and lose majorities in both houses of Congress, the Republicans will simply stop any legislation favored by Democrats and it will be ‘game over.’

It appears from my sporadic observations that the Democratic Party lacks a strategic vision that spells ‘high likelihood’ of success. The news is generally dominated by Republican talking points. Democratic politicians in online gatherings I have attended spend most of the time with canned talking points. There is little or no follow-up with compelling data points. Trump appointed judges are doing just what the conservatives wanted them to do. Main case in point is the decision just handed down: a nationwide injunction against the President’s vaccine mandate for federal employees.

The President has already achieved many major goals. As he points out, the Republican Party stands for nothing but obstruction, the official Party of No. Who is going to tell that story in terms the voting public can understand? When are they going to start? The run-up to mid-terms is underway now.

It’s great that the Democratic Party stands up for diversity and economic equality, goals I endorse without qualification, but the voters are likely more interested in tangible gains than in broad statements of high principle. Democrats need to stop sounding like politicians and talk about delivered deliverables and what comes next. Every day that goes by without a coherent plan to reach the voters with comprehensible truths is a lost opportunity that cannot be recaptured. The Republicans are wasting no time in undermining the ability of Democrats to vote. We need to move now.

Maybe multitudes are a strength, but I continue to be put off by the number of organizations claiming Democratic credentials seeking donations but stating no clear use of the money. New groups seem to crop up every week. We’re not going to win this way. The national Democratic Party needs to address this and bring the legitimate disparate groups together in a coherent strategy. It’s harder than for Republicans who know exactly what their goals are. It’s time to get the act together.

The Fourth Reich — It’s Them or Us

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Disclosure: Much of this post depends on information from the Bob Woodward- Robert Costa book, Peril. Woodward and I were friends in college and have had sporadic contact since then. I still consider him a friend, though we do not communicate regularly. Back in the day, a national magazine (not to be named) briefly suspected I might be Deep Throat. As everyone now knows, I was not Deep Throat. I never was.

This post is also inspired both by the column in the Washington Post by Margaret Sullivan [https://wapo.st/3v4LeMv] that asks the question why the “news” has largely ignored or downplayed the revelation that John Eastman, a Trump lawyer (and thus, legally, Trump himself), produced an outline for the steps to overturn the 2020 election and replace the real winner, Joe Biden, with Donald Trump.

The third inspiration is a line in Steven Pinker’s new book, Rationality:

Many facts, of course, are hurtful: the racial history of the United States, global warming, a cancer diagnosis, Donald Trump. Yet they are facts for all that, and we must know them, the better to deal with them.

So we must.

Since I began thinking deeply about this, we have also learned that Trump’s Department of Justice deliberately sat on its hands and did not brief Congress or others in the administration about what it apparently understood could be a day of violence against the government. https://bit.ly/3npJLON

We have also become aware that,

Republican leaders loyal to Trump are vying to control election administrations in key states in ways that could drastically distort the outcome of the presidential race in 2024. With the former president hinting strongly that he may stand again, his followers are busily manoeuvring themselves into critical positions of control across the US – from which they could launch a far more sophisticated attempt at an electoral coup than Trump’s effort to hang on to power in 2020.

… in recent months Trump has emerged as an unashamed champion of the insurrectionists, calling them “great people” and a “loving crowd”, and lamenting that they are now being “persecuted so unfairly”.

A poll released this week by the Public Religion Research Institute found that two-thirds of Republicans still believe the myth that Trump won. More chilling still, almost a third of Republicans agree with the contention that American patriots may have to resort to violence “in order to save our country”. [https://bit.ly/3ckbwlq]

As Donald Trump Jr has asserted, the Republican Party is now the Party of Trump. He owns it. His army of sycophants are as loyal to him as ever. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, his people believe the 2020 election was stolen, just as Trump continues to claim.

This is so despite Trump’s admitted bungling of the response to COVID that added significantly to the death toll, his incessant grifting and lying and treasonous acts of disloyalty to the United States, and, of course, his many “ordinary” crimes, such as giving secrets to Russia, extorting the president of Ukraine and a multitude of documented obstructions of justice, among many others. Evidence of cultish blindness to Trumpism is everywhere – mainstream media, Fox Propaganda, Twitter, Facebook, even LinkedIn and more.

Even with all that, the Eastman memo, unearthed in Woodward and Costa’s book, is shocking. As explained by Sullivan,

Written by Trump legal adviser John Eastman — a serious Establishment Type with Federalist Society cred and a law school deanship under his belt — it offered Mike Pence, then in his final days as vice president, a detailed plan to declare the 2020 election invalid and give the presidency to Trump.

In other words, how to run a coup to overturn the election in six easy steps.

Yet, Sullivan reports, the mainstream media largely ignored it at first. She rightly asks why this was not the multi-alarm firestorm – a presidential advisor casually informing him of the steps needed to undermine the outcome of a national election and claim the presidency that he had clearly lost.

The answer, it turns out, is as disturbing as the memo itself.

As reported by Sullivan, network executives thought the story unworthy because it was “crazy” and unsurprising. In effect, Trump has so normalized the idea of overthrowing the election that evidence of actual work to do so is not important enough to report. Another didn’t address it because “There’s no indication that Pence considered it seriously.” Others responded that there was much other news that seemed more important. What would be more important than an attempt to overthrow the government?

The normalization of the Trump-Republican attempt to subvert the Constitution and reinstall Trump as president, and de facto dictator, is being enabled by publications as venerable as the Wall Street Journal. The Journal published a letter from Trump on October 27. It did so without comment or any attempt to address the truth or falsity of his claims. The grotesque problems with the letter and the Journal’s decision to publish it are addressed in detail by Philip Bump in the Washington Post. https://wapo.st/3GTiYCg

The obvious and logical, and profoundly disturbing, conclusion is that WSJ supports Trump’s claims of election fraud and his belief that he was denied re-election by widespread vote fraud. Thus, the Wall Street Journal joins the campaign to undermine American democracy and replace it with a Republican autocracy led by Trump and his family.

At the same time, Trump is desperately fighting to prevent the release to the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection/coup attempt of a large trove of documents that would reveal his role, and that of his key enablers, in the attack on the Capitol. https://nyti.ms/3wgXYAc His claims of executive privilege have been rejected by President Biden, but Trump maintains he can assert the privilege even though no longer in office. Trump’s claim of privilege fails on multiple grounds, not least of which is that most of the documents sought have nothing to do with this execution of the job of president – they are related to his personal political objective to remain in office despite the electoral outcome.

Thus, Trump continues to maintain his thoroughly debunked claims of election fraud while resisting efforts to uncover facts that might expose his role in trying to overthrow the federal government.

What else does the Woodward/Costa book contribute to our understanding of all this? A lot.

  • The chair of the Joint Chiefs, Mark Milley, after plenty of chances to observe Trump’s thinking and behavior as president, agreed with Speaker Pelosi’s observation that Trump was “crazy” and had been “crazy for a long time.” Peril at xxii. Colin Powell, former Chair of the Joint Chiefs described Trump as a “f*cking maniac.” Peril at 106.
  • Pelosi characterized the Oval Office under Trump as an “insane snake pit.”Peril at xxiii.
  • Referring to the white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville, and under pressure from then-Speaker Paul Ryan, Trump refused to criticize the marchers because “These people love me. These are my people. I can’t backstab the people who support me.” Peril at 8.
  • Trump was often unaware of his own actions. He did not know that the money for the border wall in the early 2018 spending bill was an amount he had approved. He finally agreed to sign the bill to prevent a government shutdown. Marc Short, Trump’s legislative advisor told Ryan this chaos was typical of “every day around here.” Peril at 9. Bill Barr, who was committed to run the Justice Department in Trump’s best interest to promote his re-election thought Trump’s big problem was his “pigheadedness and his blindness.” Peril at 71.
  • Trump failed to grasp the nature of the threat posed by COVID-19 and refused to accept information that conflicted with his view. Peril at 82.
  • Trump rejected advice of Gen. Milley and other senior advisors to rename military bases from Confederate traitors to Medal of Honor winners. Peril at 108-109.
  • Even as the U.S. pandemic continued to escalate (approaching 4.9 million cases and more than 160,000 deaths), Trump insisted that it was “disappearing. It’s going to disappear.” Peril at 113.
  • Trump tweeted that the “deep state” was interfering with the development of vaccines. When his own appointed head of the FDA tried to explain the process, Trump changed the subject. “the president had no idea how the FDA operated and had made no effort to find out.” Peril at 113-115.
  • Aware of his failing election campaign, Trump primed his followers for the possibility of defeat by repeatedly claiming that the only way he could lose was a rigged election. Peril at 131.
  • As soon as Trump’s defeat was reported, he announced from the White House that the election was a “fraud on the American public.” Peril at 133.
  • Even Michael Pompeo, one of Trump’s most loyal sycophants, told Gen. Milley that “The crazies are taking over,” referring to Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Michael Flynn and Mike Lindell, the key players on Trump’s legal defense team. Peril at 150.
  • On November 10, following Trump’s firing of the Secretary of Defense, Gina Haspel, the CIA Director, presciently predicted, “We are on the way to a right-wing coup.” Peril at 152.
  • Mark Meadows made repeated efforts to install a Trump super-loyalist into a leadership position at the FBI and, stymied by Barr, later at the CIA, stymied by Haspel. Peril at 154-156.
  • Trump acknowledged that Giuliani was “crazy” but claimed that “sane lawyers” would not represent him in attacking the election. Peril at 164. Trump’s AG Barr referred to Trump’s legal team as a “bunch of clowns.” Peril at 170. See also Peril at 180.
  • Trump’s team of incompetents had no plan to efficiently distribute COVID vaccines. Peril at 187.
  • Steve Bannon advised Trump to focus on January 6, the day the Electoral College votes would be certified by Congress, the last step to elect Joe Biden as President:

We’re going to bury Biden on January 6 …. If Republicans could cast enough of a shadow on Biden’s victory on January 6 … it would be hard for Biden to govern. Millions of Americans would consider him illegitimate. They would ignore him. They would dismiss him and wait for Trump to run again. “We are going to kill it in the crib. Kill the Biden presidency in the crib… [Peril at 207-208]

  • Trump directly threatened VP Pence if he refused to reject the Biden Electoral votes and hand the election to Trump. Peril at 229-230.

The above references are just a small taste of the astonishing revelations in Peril. Most of the rational people in the White House at the time of the election and its aftermath appeared to believe that Trump was mentally unstable, incapable of and uninterested in the complexities of governing and focused only on retaining power. There was palpable fear, even among some Republican leaders, that Trump was so unhinged and desperate that he might start a war or try to use the military to retain power. His distraction likely played a role in the continued spread of COVID and  his administration’s failure to respond appropriately.

These concerns, which continue in the wake of the January 6 insurrection that Trump inspired and encouraged, raise the gravest questions about the capacity of the American democratic republic, and the Constitution on which it is based, to survive the presidency of an incompetent psychopath like Trump.

Thus far, the only action against the insurrectionists has been to arrest just over 700 of the perpetrators out of what appeared to be several thousand involved in the assault. No charges have been leveled against anyone in Congress or the Trump administration in relation to the attempted coup. Trump continues to claim in every available forum, without any factual basis and in the face of more than 60 defeats in legal proceedings, that the election was stolen. His supporters in Congress continue to obstruct President Biden’s efforts to end the pandemic and restore the economic health of the country.

Republicans around the country continue to alter election rules, gerrymander districts and prepare to overturn the results of any election defeats they may experience in 2022 and 2024. The Doomsday Clock on American democracy is ticking down and, as far as can be told, more than a year after Joe Biden’s election, no meaningful actions to hold the real leaders of the January 6 coup attempt accountable has been made.

Watch this video, produced by Don Winslow Films, listing 19 critical questions central to the January 6 insurrection, that remain unaddressed as far as anyone can tell.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2cG1PIhLIA

We are told we must be patient, that building a solid criminal case against a former president requires time. To a lesser extent the same “principle” is offered regarding the members of Congress who actively promoted the insurrection and have worked very hard to sustain a ludicrous phantasmagorical version of what occurred on January 6.

I understand the need for careful preparation, but in a little over a month we will have reached the one-year anniversary of the attack on Congress. I ask what evidence of conspiracy, perjury, sedition and obstruction of justice, to mention just a few of Trump and team’s major crimes, is missing? Has a grand jury been impaneled?

As Don Winslow’s video compellingly asks, why have so many key witnesses not been subpoenaed by the House Select Committee and placed under oath? What kind of investigation is this? Are we going to get another version of the Mueller Report that says we can’t find enough evidence to indict but neither do we exonerate? How could such a conclusion be reached without a full investigation? Mueller failed to fully investigate, as revealed in Andrew Weissmann’s book, discussed at length in an earlier post in this blog, “Lawless White House” – the Mueller Report – “Oh! What A Tangled Web We Weave …” https://bit.ly/32GUDA1

Trump is infamous for using legal processes to stall and delay investigations and actions against his multi-various criminal activities and civil offenses. If the government takes much longer, there will be no chance for meaningful action while Republicans scheme to undermine the democratic process whose survival is central to a full accounting from Trump and his enablers. I am encouraged, not much but more than zero, by the fact that the Biden administration has not announced that it is closing any investigations but that is not sufficient.

Winter for American democracy is theatening and once it is here, there may be no chance for a renewal.

 

 

 

Marjorie Taylor Greene Does Not Believe in Evolution

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You may think the title of this short post is click-bait, but I assure you I saw the video with my own eyes and ears just a few minutes ago. You can see for yourself at https://www.rawstory.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-evolution/

A Member of Congress, an up and coming standard bearer of the Trumpublican Party, formerly the Republican Party, does not believe in what she calls the “so-called science” of evolution.

There is nothing left to say.

 

Some Things You Just Don’t Do

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We should not be surprised that Donald Trump actively incited an angry and delusional mob of his supporters to attack the national Capitol Building on January 6. Among the hundreds or perhaps thousands of laws and norms of conduct that Trump has rejected, undermined or simply disregarded, we should never forget his declaration that “under Article II, I can do whatever I want.” Trump actually believes that and has acted accordingly since he won the Republican nomination. Wednesday’s assault on the Capitol is just the latest, and likely not the last, Trump anti-democratic, anti-American action.

The population appears to accept a certain amount of chicanery as “just politics” and “that’s how things are done,” and other such cliches. Such things have been going on in plain view since well before the beginning of the republic. It seems odd in some ways that evolution led homo sapiens to this state of affairs. I suspect it’s mainly a product of two forces: humanity’s advance (based on larger brains in key parts, opposed thumbs, etc.) reduced the influence of natural selection on humans in ways different than other animals and the recognition that unrelenting “tooth and claw” competition was less appealing and successful than cooperation. Such cooperation led to what we call “politics.” Politics involved a variation of the pushing and shoving competition but without the violence (although assassinations have played an important role to this day). You didn’t kill and eat your opponent, you outsmarted him, often with the help of allies whom you enlisted. Thus, coalitions and on and on. Argument, debates, voting.

Over the decades the temptations of power and money led to periodic excesses of chicanery. We evolved legal systems to address some of that, but the chicanery is so ubiquitous that the legal resistance has proved weak. Americans thought that their system was special, exceptional if you will, and the structures and processes established by the Constitution and laws were, in big-picture terms, sufficient to stem the tide of gross corruption at the highest levels of government. Until Trump.

From the dark recesses of America’s fraught past re-emerged a breed of people who seemed not only ignorant of how things were supposed to work, but who didn’t care. Although Trump was an over-entitled rich man, these people felt a kinship with his braggadocio, his seeming indifference and fearlessness when it came to breaking down historical norms. When asked to explain themselves, many Trump supporters say, “he tells it like it is – he doesn’t take anyone’s guff because he doesn’t have to.” They saw Trump’s apparent hostility to the “establishment in Washington and state houses across the country” as the way to rid America of the “swamp,” the “deep state,” the do-gooders who cared more about immigrants than “true patriotic Americans.”

Trump relished the attention paid to his histrionics to a pathological level. As noted at the top of this article, he came quickly to believe that his election vested him with powers beyond anything the world had seen. His followers came to declare that he had been sent by God to straighten things out, to resolve their grievances, to Make America Great Again. Trump’s buffoonery and incompetence were exposed time and again by the media that he also loved to attack, calling them the “enemy of the people.” The media couldn’t get enough of him and obsessed over every outrage while giving unprecedented exposure to Trump’s messages. He savored insane conspiracy theories, fictional characters and routinely called his adversaries by schoolyard names.

When Trump won the Republican nomination, his Republican allies bent the knee before him, recognizing the pathological attachment of his political base they dared not offend. The intra-party resistance melted away. Senior politicians who had publicly labeled him a “kook,” a “pathological liar,” an “unhinged nutcase,” all begged for positions in his administration and became leaders of the popular Trump Movement, a force within, but above and independent of, the Republican Party. In this world, you showed abject loyalty to Trump or you were “out.”

Members of the Democratic Party and other resistance groups warned of the dangers inherent in this situation, warned of what might happen if an unexpected disaster occurred that would make manifest Trump’s incompetence as a leader of substance. The Republicans were unmoved. The prospect of stacking the Supreme Court and federal judiciary with “conservative judges” and of reversing policies that supported women’s’ right to abortion, gay and transgender rights and all the rest were such strong enticements that the leadership of the GOP decided to look the other way and hope for the best.

The dreaded event occurred, not in the form of a war or nuclear accident but a plague. Trump instinctively recognized the threat that it presented to his re-election and decided to downplay the risk. His enabler went along. The result of the virus that was supposed to “just disappear one day” is US deaths over 370,000 and growing at about 4,000 a day. The economy tanked and allegiance to Trump weakened somewhat while many Americans still capable of independent reasoning came to see the threat that Trump represented. They believed that the remedy lay in the 2020 election. Impeachment had been tried and failed because Trump’s enablers in the Senate refused to consider the evidence of his corruption and acquitted him.

Trump lost the 2020 election by a margin of 7,060,140 votes, and the Electoral College count by 74 (306 to 232). Biden “flipped” five key states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, the “battlegrounds” that became the focus of the post-election charade that led to the January 6 attack.

Trump, facing rejection for perhaps the first time in a major way, decided he would not accept the results. He had foretold this during the prior election when he said he would accept the results “if I win.” Well before Election Day 2020, he was vocal that the election was being “rigged” against him. He espoused that position despite openly using his control of the US Postal Service and the cooperation of Republican governors to stack the deck in his favor. When he lost, he claimed he actually won and that his concerns about voter fraud had proved correct. Sixty lawsuits later, he was 1 insignificant win for 59 losses, including rejection by the Supreme Court. All 50 states certified their results, in some cases after multiple recounts and audits. The just-former Attorney General who had generally served more as Trump’s private attorney than as chief legal officer of the national government announced that there was no meaningful case of fraud to be made. One by one, Trump’s allies abandoned his claims. Trump became more and more isolated.

Finally, on January 6, the damn burst. Trump gave an incendiary speech to a throng of supporters who came to Washington to protest his loss. They completely bought his claim of having been cheated. He urged them to go to the Capitol where the Congress was completing the final constitutionally mandated step of accepting the Electoral College vote count. Many members of the Republican Party in Congress had said they would vote against accepting the count because … Trump said he’d been cheated. No other basis existed to reject the count. They would put loyalty to him over loyalty to the Constitution or compliance with the oaths of office they took upon entering Congress.

Trump said he would go to the Capitol with the mass of supporters but, of course, that was just another lie. He stayed in the White House and watched on television what appeared to be thousands of his supporters assault the thin blue line of unprepared, undermanned and overmatched Capitol Police officers. [I will have more to say/ask about this extraordinary circumstance in a future post] They broke through the outer barricades, smashed their way into the Capitol and wandered around stealing objects, smashing windows and doors while preening for the cameras. There are extensive videos of the events outside and inside and they raise many serious questions.

I want to suggest that this was, at long last, a bridge too far. Trump overestimated how much power he could get away with throwing in the face of the country. His “anything I want” approach to government apparently led him to believe it was perfectly fine to send a throng of angry and delusional supporters to try to prevent the Congress, by force, from completing the final step in cementing Trump’s defeat.

It was always going to be by force because there was simply no other way the group could expect to gain entry to the building. If they thought about it at all, they apparently believed Trump’s “immunity” covered them as well, a judgment that is proving to be a catastrophic error of judgment. The arrests have begun and the process of identification of the perpetrators is being aided by large number of people with technical and other relevant skills using social media. The extent of the delusion driving the throng was so great that many wore no face covering and some displayed on their clothing nameplates and badges that identified their employers or conveyed other identity-related information.

The federal government has vowed to bring the perpetrators to justice and a number of them have already been arrested back in their home towns. A variety of federal criminal charges will lie against them. I imagine their excitement and enthusiasm for their “achievement” in Washington is rapidly dimming as the reality of criminal charges and possible long-term imprisonment dawns. Jobs are being lost and families upended. For a delusional dream of some vague power to protect Donald Trump from the electorate, from himself.

One of the attackers was a young woman, a veteran possessed of overwhelming anger and irrationality displayed in social media postings, a devotee of QAnon conspiracy theory and a pure Trump loyalist. For that, she was shot and killed heading an assault on the doors leading to the Speaker’s Lobby in the Capitol. The Speaker’s Lobby is directly outside the House Chamber where the House of Representatives was in joint session with the Senate to complete the Electoral College count. The shooting was captured on video. Other videos show a Capitol Police officer screaming in pain as he is crushed in a doorway by the mob. Another officer died being assaulted and, apparently, maced by the mob. Three other perpetrators died from medical emergencies.

Five dead. The crowd high-fiving as they left, satisfied that they had achieved something. Trump – well, he has had nothing to say about the deaths for which he bears direct responsibility. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, among other social media, have suspended Trump’s accounts. At long last, a bridge too far even for them.

Meanwhile, the Republican leadership gathered at Amelia Island, Florida for a retreat to discuss the Party’s future. https://wapo.st/3nupioS The Trump-loyalist leadership was re-elected, praising Trump the Almighty as if nothing had happened on January 6, no assault on one of the great temples of American democracy. Repeating insane claims still circulating on social media,

“Some members argued falsely that it was really “antifa” or other leftist groups responsible for the violence in the U.S. Capitol, people present said, and did not believe he had done anything wrong….

Attendees passed resolutions criticizing the news media and calling for attention to voter fraud, two of the president’s favored topics. One North Carolina official called for the reelection of the GOP’s officials partly so the news media could not say the party was in discord. A statement from a committeeman for the officer killed in the Capitol did not mention the president’s role in inciting the violence but said the Republican Party was the party of law and order.

New day, same old story. Read it at the cite above if you have the stomach for it.

So, maybe I am wrong in believing that this was a bridge too far. Maybe the Republican Party’s delusional obeisance to  a criminally-corrupt and possibly mentally unstable president will override all the evidence as it has for the throng that invaded the Capitol Building. The president and the Republican Party that, with very few exceptions, continues to support him appear utterly indifferent to the world-record number of COVID-19 deaths, to the failed vaccine distribution program that was to begin restoring order and health to the economy and to the assault on the citadel of democracy. They appear only to be concerned with maintaining their political power.

In light of that, I contend, yet again, that Trump should be removed from power by whatever means are available. If that fails, with less than two weeks left in his term, he should be arrested as soon as President Biden is sworn-in and charged with multiple crimes against the United States and against humanity itself. His acolytes are beyond reason, it seems, so the only way to deal with them and him is the full force of the legal system. No future leader, of whatever party, must ever get the idea that repeating Trump’s conduct will be accepted as just more political chicanery. If we fail in preventing that, we will have doomed the great American experiment in democracy, ultimate rule by the people, to its death.