What’s a stone cold criminal to do? In time, our news media will catch up. They’ll realize that they’ve spent four plus years slowly normalizing an authoritarian coup d’etat. Had We The People not turned out en masse to say “NO!” to the Republican Party’s shot at setting in concrete a state of permanent minority rule, that concrete would now be setting all around us. The Republicans knew even before they made Trump their presidential nominee in 2016 that he was dirty — monetarily compromised by Vladimir Putin. They’ve done everything they could since then to cover up both Trump’s complicity and their own. In every way, shape and form, the entirety of the GOP is now a full-fledged criminal enterprise.
Trump himself will go from being “unindicted individual one” in the Michael Cohen case to “Indicted individual”. Trump knows what he’s done. He’s not confused on this point. That’s why he’s worked so hard to obstruct justice — because he KNOWS what the price will be. His guilty conscience enters every room an hour before he does. Trump will do everything he possibly can to remain POTUS because the alternative is going to prison for the rest of his stinking life — seeing his children go to prison — seeing his company implode — losing literally everything. The Republican Party has put itself in the very same boat — right alongside Donald.
Conspiracy works this way: “See something, say something; see something, say nothing?” We need to know WHY. Who are you protecting by NOT saying what you’re obligated to report? That is the petard on which every single Republican will be hoist.
Pick a Republican — any Republican — even a Mitt Romney. Mitt may be isolated to a degree from most of the other Republicans for having dared to vote to convict Trump during his impeachment trial. But, Mitt knows way more than he’s letting on. At the very least, he suspects way more. Even if all Mitt has are vague suspicions that his fellow Republicans are criminals, he is OBLIGATED to say something.
We tend to forgive rich white guys when they DON’T rat each other out. Other people who keep each others’ secrets — who they associate with and why — are called “fellow travelers”.
People like Mitch McConnell, Steve Mnuchin, Steve Bannon, Matt Gaetz and Jim Johnson — all privileged white guys — have it in their heads that they will NEVER go to jail for anything. Well, Matt Gaetz knows better. That’s because Matt scored a DUI in 2008. How many times you suppose Matt Gaetz has gotten AWAY with DUI over the course of his drunken, privileged life? Do you suppose any of the 17 AGs who threw in with the state of Texas’ ludicrous lawsuit cum coup d’etat thought for a second that THEY might have to answer for their staggeringly anti-democratic actions?
Hell, no. Republicans have gotten it into their heads that they can and will get away with everything.
And yet…
They have to know they’re in a spot here. On the one hand, they lost the presidential election by a ton. Let’s stick a pin in the “Yeah, but…!” results that, so far, have kept the senate in their hands. As I wrote here — we need to forensic a whole lot of internet-connected voting machines and put a whole lot of Republican-run voting machine company executives under oath. The Republican leadership may be craven and corrupt but they’re not stupid. They know Trump lost this election. They KNOW they don’t have the support their vote turnout says they do — a significant portion of it in certain places is entirely fictitious. They KNOW this. They know that their minority is even more of a minority than the rest of us think.
The know their ludicrous Texas Hail Mary is an insult to every American and to the Supreme Court itself.
Why else would formerly semi-respectable people do such utterly self-immolating things?
If our news media scratched its head any harder while trying to figure out WHY Republicans are still so dedicated to Trump, they’d leave permanent divots in their heads. They even use the term “coup d’etat” though they don’t seem to associate it with its more “illegal” aspects. The way the news media tosses it off, a “coup” is this season’s style motif. When they list all the possible reasons Republicans might be acting the way they are, “because they’re criminals” never seems to stick.
But that is what the Republican Party is — a criminal enterprise bent on ending the greatest experiment ever in human self-government and turning it into the authoritarian, theocratic shithole of their dreams.
Hey, Republicans — I sure hope ya like succotash! It’s going to be what’s for dinner — for the rest of your stinking, corrupt, treasonous lives.