Back in 2020, our news media got all atwitter when the RNC – ever Donald Trump’s leather-clad, down-on-all-fours, red-rubber-ball-in-mouth bitch – announced it wouldn’t have a platform for the presidential election. Frankly, we should have appreciated the RNC’s unintentional honesty. The last time Team Trump imposed itself on the party’s platform, they tweaked it to take Putin’s side against the Ukraine. That, it turns out, wasn’t just odd, it was treasonous! Not hyperbolic treasonous, real, honest-to-God, red-meat-and-potatoes treasonous. Emphasis on the “red”. Is I scream and shout here regularly, we can point to an actual documented moment in time when the GOP clearly crossed a line. On one side was terrible, immoral behavior that skirted illegality. But, on the other was flat out law-breaking. Treason, in fact.
On June 25, 2016, current GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy walked into a GOP leadership meeting and said “There’s two people I think Putin pays – Rohrbacher and Trump – swear to god!”. No one questioned or doubted what Kevin said. No one demanded receipts. Instead, then Speaker Of The House Paul Ryan put the kibosh on any further discussion of that particular subject. Though they suspected that their soon-to-be nominee for POTUS was a national security threat, these Republicans willfully chose to keep this terrible secret a secret from We The People. And then they did everything they could to prevent any investigation into this secret – that Russia had compromised Trump and the Republican Party knew it.
With that piece of information in mind – “Putin pays Trump” – reconsider the GOP allowing Trump to change its platform and Trump’s whole “different approach to Putin”. It’s the “different approach” an intelligence asset has to the master spy running him. Reconsider “Russia, if you’re listening!” Reconsider Trump’s relationship with Wkileaks and every bit of obstructive behavior Team Trump has displayed – so much obstructive behavior that the Mueller Report complained it couldn’t get its main investigation done because of it! Consider the sledgehammer Trump took to NATO and every little acquiescence to Putin’s interests over ours. “Putin pays Trump” equals “Trump is a traitor”. Anyone not immediately on the phone to the FBI is officially a co-conspirator.
See something, SAY something. See something, say nothing? Why’s that?
In October 2016, Mitch McConnell stuck the dagger in when he refused to let President Obama tell America what our intelligence community believed (and which history has born out as absolutely true) that Russia was actively working to subvert the out come of our election in Trump’s favor. Mitch threatened to accuse Obama of politicizing the intelligence for political gain – the very thing Mitch was doing. Instead, Obama softened what should have been an eye-opening piece of information that We The People deserved to know.
Mitch was simply continuing the treasonous roll Kevin McCarthy started. Jump forward to 2020. The biggest threat to Trump losing power is losing the Department of Justice. Even when Republicans lost the House and began to face oversight, they used every legal device available to them to run out the clock. Republicans don’t see elections as referendums, they see them as opportunities to steal another election. The only thing saving Trump from indictment during his term was Robert Mueller’s slavish devotion to a DoJ rule (not a law) that frowned on (but didn’t prohibit) indicting a sitting president. Imagine giving treason the benefit of the doubt because “niceties”… White people cut themselves some amazing slack.
Also remember – professional, by-the-book rule of law investigations take time. Nothing of value could be started while Trump occupied the White House. And even after Biden won, the Republicans in the Senate deliberately slow walked all DoJ nominations, Merrick Garland’s in particular, their jaundiced eye, as ever, focused on the clock. I wish this was all done and dusted already – with Trump in federal custody, virtually the entire GOP gutted because they’re under indictment themselves and their violent followers dissuaded from further violence because of their own crushingly expensive legal bills. I do believe that day is coming. Once the DoJ pulls the thread on indicting sitting politicians, the pulling may never stop. The Republican Party will absolutely unravel.
Once again, as they gear up for what they expect will be the last “free and fair” election in America – this’ll be the one where the Republicans finish the kill – the GOP has ditched the idea of having a platform. Since they have no platform to talk about, they’ve also tossed the idea of participating in debates. This is the Republicans – still being bracingly honest – announcing in public that they no longer feel the need to be retail politicians. From here on out, they’re crusaders imposing their minority white will onto an unruly, non-white majority.
Ironically, the Republicans also are being honest when they embrace The Big Lie. They’re confirming what we long suspected: the GOP no longer “believes” in democracy because democracy no longer believes in Republicans. As Trump himself keeps pointing out, when more Americans vote, Republicans lose; if every American voted, the GOP might never win another election again ever. This is precisely why the Republican Party embraced Trump even though they knew he was a traitor. Machiavelli himself couldn’t have mustered that much naked cynicism.
The point of the insurrection – both the physically violent one and the bureaucratic ones behind the scenes – was to deny We The People yet again our electoral choice on the one hand while, on the other keeping Trump in power and out of federal prison convincingly accused of treason. “The Big Lie” is, itself, treason. It’s based on treason and designed to perpetuate treason and treason’s desired outcomes. Everyone agreeing with it is automatically a traitor and should be understood as such – starting with Donald John Trump.