Oh, the irony… Joe Biden absolutely did not steal an election from Donald Trump but Donald Trump absolutely did steal an election from Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump not only lost election 2020, without Russia’s direct involvement, he would never have “won” election in 2016 to begin with.
Trump may have wet-dreamed about being POTUS before he ever met Vladimir Putin, but had laundered Russian mob money not propped up his bankrupt Atlantic City casinos and bought countless condos as money laundering vehicles, Trump would have completely crashed daddy’s real estate business eons ago and no one (not even his most ardent followers) would even know his name today. For one thing, Mark Barnett would never have thought to invent a reality show based on him. Tony Schwartz would never have ghosted “The Art Of The Deal” because no one would have equated Trump with success. Take Russia completely out of the Donald Trump equation and Trump is nothing and (maybe even literally) a nobody.
These two things are mutually exclusive propositions: winning a presidential election & having the direct assistance of ANY foreign government least of all a hostile one actively engaged in a cyber war against us in winning that election. Take your pick. There’s no middle ground. Benjamin Franklin famously said of our government’s prospects that we could keep our Republic going but only so long as we were willing to keep it going ourselves. Keeping that republic — keeping it safe from enemies foreign and domestic — demands real and constant vigilance. There are no gradations to corruption or treason. No “acceptable” amount of bad faith or bad intent. One can’t just be “a little bit corrupt” or “a little bit treasonous”. One is or one isn’t. And, once one is — corrupt or treasonous (or corrupt AND treasonous as with Trump and the entire Republican Party) — that’s it. There’s no coming back.
Stone cold fact: the GOP hierarchy knew before they even nominated Trump to be their presidential candidate in 2016 that Russia owned him. They said as much out loud (it was recorded and the recorded conversation was played for Washington Post reporter Adam Entous a year later) but agreed to keep this terrible, national security threat a secret. If the rule of law is (and, it too either must “be” or “not be”, it can’t really exist in some quasi-enforced state) then it demands that everyone in the GOP hierarchy who knew or even suspected that Trump was behaving treasonously was obligated (at the very least by their oaths of office!) to do something or say something.
Regular readers of this blog know that I harp on this moment relentlessly. That’s because it’s a very clear line in the sand between any possible reasonable doubt about the GOP’s complicity in treason and the GOP having really and truly committed treason. This is one of the clearest examples I can think of of our news media reporting important stories with important details that they then fail to aggregate into the larger story — to our detriment. How many Trumpian lies did it take for our news media to finally decide Donald Trump might be “a liar”? How many euphemisms did NEWS media use to avoid using the only correct word: LIAR? Why would a news operation hesitate to tell its news audience the truth they’re tuning in to see? Because what’s making news might hurt some of their feelings? What kind of bullshit arrogance is that — by people with commercial interests?
This is exactly how corruption gets normalized.
When politicians or news media or average citizens accept corruption as “just how it is”, they speed corruption’s spread. Corruption doesn’t need any more advantages over integrity and the rule of law. The corrupt can cut every corner there is. Integrity can’t. The rule of law takes time because it has to play by the rules whereas corruption can take a huge, steaming dump on the rule of law. When that happens, the rule of law can’t defend itself. That part’s up to us. And, if we stood up for the rule of law as it applies to Donald Trump and how he became POTUS, the rule of law would DEMAND that we prosecute Trump to the fullest extent the law allows because of how Trump broke it and why.
For starters, if we don’t punish people when they cheat in order to win elections, we’re telling them “cheat more”. We’re telling them that cheating is just another (accepted) election strategy. Similarly, if you don’t punish the crap out of people for trying to overthrow the government, you’re telling them, get your insurrection right next time! Bet the ranch: they will.
And, if Donald Trump and the Republicans thought Trump’s cavorting with Russia was in any way defensible (meaning not completely illegal), they’d have run that argument down our throats long ago. It was the only shot at legitimacy they had (bullshit as it was). Instead, from the get-go, Trump and his Republican co-conspirators have done everything possible to obfuscate, lie and obstruct justice on Trump’s behalf. Like the co-conspirators to commit election fraud, obstruction of justice and treason that they all absolutely are.
Here in our little experiment in human self-government, The authority to govern flows FROM the people. Win election fairly and squarely and you have our permission — the authority — to govern us. Cheat to win and the authority doesn’t flow to you the same way. It shouldn’t flow to you at all because you cheated. Without the authority to govern America you don’t have the power or permission to nominate SCOTUS judges; you’re just pretending that you do. And, if you cheated (as the Republicans did) in order to secure the power (versus the authority) to nominate judges (so as to shape the judiciary more to your liking than the Peoples’ preferences), then when you nominate those judges, you’re committing a crime.
To deny the majority their will — what they voted for — IS A CRIME. It’s not a political opinion, it’s a crime. And just like with a guy who stole your car, if we catch him, you get your car back. We caught Trump and the GOP stealing from us. Are we really going to let them keep what they stole?
They stole lifetime judiciary appointments that Obama had the authority to fill — which means they stole from US. They denied Merrick Garland so much as a hearing so they could hand that SCOTUS seat to Neal Gorsuch. They stole what should have been Joe Biden’s first SCOTUS selection by handing that seat to handmaid Amy Barrett. Even Trump’s one “legitimate” choice — Kennedy’s replacement Brett Kavanaugh — stinks of corruption. Judge Kennedy’s son worked Trump’s account at Deutsche Bank (where he works). Brett Kavanaugh’s entire nomination process was a study in even more corruption from the bogus FBI investigations into Kavanaugh’s rapey past to Brett’s own perjured hearing testimony. The reason Republicans always seem to be acting like criminals is because they are.
We’re soooooo close to having the first real threads pulled on the Trumpublican Corruption Ugly Christmas Sweater. The first ones publicly pulled will be “January 6 Insurrection” threads. Once we pierce the veil of Congressional Republican involvement in planning the insurrection, this story will undergo a massive shift in its focus. Suddenly, sitting members of Congress will be in very real legal peril that will cost them very real money.
That’s going to be what destroys Republican corruption: what it costs them personally. None of them seem to grasp what defending themselves against federal charges like these is going to cost them in real cash money. Billable hours for this kind of lawyering is staggeringly expensive. That’s one reason so many of the foot soldiers are throwing in the towel and copping pleas. They don’t want to bankrupt their families for a generation. They don’t want to lose their family homes while also becoming unemployed and unemployable. Also in the mix: we will find Russian involvement. Count on it. If you consider how much money and effort Russia expended to make Trump POTUS and then to keep his corrupt, treasonous admin alive and unprosecuted, it’s impossible that they’d have nothing to do with a coup attempt to keep Trump in power.
Russia paid for part of it. They helped arrange it. If that’s the case then this physically violent act against the US is itself an act of flat out treason.
And voila — Trump will be tied directly to Russia. That will pop the lid on Trump and the GOP’s treasonous behavior.
America’s original sin was and remains slavery. We’re still dealing with it today. If we allow Trump to get away with betraying us, if we allow the GOP to go unpunished for its treachery, then we will have brought the end of our democratic republic ourselves. A country that won’t stand up for its sovereignty (and letting Russia make Trump POTUS was us letting Russia choose our president) won’t be a sovereign country for much longer. It’s told all its enemies that it’s no longer serious about its own government, it’s own people, its own future.