When the complete history of our era finally gets written, I betcha one of the things future generations shake their heads at is how we allowed Donald Trump to be a free man for most of his life. Keep in mind, that history will be written long after every treasonous Republican who enabled, supported or co-conspired with Trump is long-gone, reduced to a snippet (similar to many) about a corrupt conservative politician who hitched their wagon to Trump KNOWING his wagon was hitched to Vladimir Putin. The “sign of life” we on the left have been demanding from the Department of Justice – evidence that evidence is being put before a Grand Jury for the express purpose of prosecuting the January 6 insurrection – finally popped into the light yesterday. For argument’s sake, there’s been a running indicator this whole time that contrary to simmering doubts, Merrick Garland’s DoJ has indeed been engaged in investigating Trump’s multi-faceted criminality for a while now. Remember how two prosecutors – Carey Dunne and Mark Pomerantz – quit after newly elected Manhattan DA Marvin Bragg decided NOT to pursue the tax prosecution against Trump? Consider for a second all the similarly motivated and dedicated prosecutors who went aboard the DoJ as Team Biden took back the reins of power from the corrupt Trumpanistas. No one, to this day, has questioned a single one of those prosecutors about whether they feel similarly frustrated at the DoJ’s apparent lack of will to prosecute Trump. And none of them has quit – or sent urgent, back channel messages to the news media about their dissatisfaction with Merrick Garland or his prosecutorial zeal or integrity.

That really should make us all go “Hmmmmmmm…”. We can infer that something could “be” because of something else that “isn’t” when it “should be”. Example: we infer the existence of exo-planets outside our solar system almost always without ever seeing the exo-planet. What we see instead is “missing” or “altered” light – light that’s missing or altered because the planet in question is blocking it or causing it to refract around it. Though the planet itself is “invisible” to us, its existence isn’t.

If there was real, deep, profound unhappiness among the crew of dedicated, progressive prosecutors, there is no way in hell we wouldn’t already know about it. If there was any sort of dissention in the DoJ ranks or disapproval, our cynical news media would have sought it out and blared it ad nauseum already. It seems there isn’t any – and that shouts volumes.

Our news media has, in fact, done a good job covering Trump. They covered his criminality with gusto. Too bad they never called it that. Consider how long it took our “news media” to decide it was news that an American president couldn’t tell the truth to save his bloated orange life. Consider how long it took NEWS ORGANIZATIONS to accurately describe lies as lies and a liar as a liar. To do that, one has to “aggregate” a story. In other words, as one adds new information to a story, one has to “change” what the story is because now we know something we didn’t. If, say, we learn that the criminal we’re following is color blind, then, should a story point occur later where the criminal’s color blindness comes into play, it would be stupid (from a storytelling point of view) either to not mention the character’s color blindness or wonder about it since their color blindness is a stone cold fact.

Donald Trump’s relentless pursuit of corruption, his bottomless racism, misogyny and ignorance – these are all well-established facts about Trump. The only people ever questioning the fact that they are facts? Our news media!

How can our press still be scratching its collective head about Trump – wondering what motivates him – when they themselves have repeatedly provided the answer? They’ve reported on Trump giving away secrets to Russian diplomats, siding with Putin every step of the way, and even trying to create “secret back channels” to Putin. They’ve reported on meetings where no Americans were there to take notes but the Russians sure were. They’ve described money going from Russian hands into Republican hands – through intermediaries like the NRA. They’ve reported on Republicans proudly standing with Putin and his war criminality over doing the right thing.

Our news media has even heard current GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy himself insist that he thinks “Putin pays Rohrbacher and Trump – swear to God!” That’s literally “heard” because McCarthy’s insistence that Putin owned Trump was recorded and then played back for Washington Post reporter Adam Entous in 2017. What, I wonder, was McCarthy hoping would happen when he told his colleagues his fear that the man they were about to nominate to be POTUS was a grave national security threat.

Whatever scared McCarthy, it didn’t matter nearly as much as ending the greatest experiment ever in human self-government. And, whatever it was, it didn’t scare the GOP into calling the FBI to report Trump – which they absolutely should have and were obligated to do because they took an oath of office to uphold and defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign, domestic and like them.

To this day, I don’t think a single journalist has taken this question to McCarthy and – in light of more recent events – demanded he account for this moment. The one time journalists did demand McCarthy explain himself, he insisted he was “joking”.

Oh, shut U P ! ! ! !

Kevin McCarthy, like Trump, has no sense of humor (pro tip – not everyone actually has a sense of humor; if you can’t laugh at yourself? You don’t have a sense of humor). Think of him as a schoolyard bully. Do schoolyard bullies do stand up while bullying? No. Because bullies are never funny. In order to have a sense of humor, the first thing you must be able to do is laugh at yourself. If you can only laugh at others? That’s a tell. You’re broken. Laughing at others isn’t “having a sense of humor”, it’s evidence of the exact opposite in fact.

The instant that story dropped in 2017 – about Putin literally owning Trump – the red flag warnings should have been up all across the country. Instead, our news media shrugged. They normalized it – just as they did with “Mexicans are rapists” stories and “Pussy grabbing”. “But her emails!” meant more to them.

In the information game, the person with the biggest megaphone more or less wins. At the very least, they’re the ones who get heard. I’m not entirely sure when our news media decided to throw in its lot with corruption. Our news media seems convinced that one can compromise with corruption – they call it “bi-partisanship” and, aside from our news media and a handful of corrupt conserva-dems? No one with a double digit IQ agrees. Making deals with corruption only makes you more corrupt. Corruption itself never changes, never compromises.

When we finally do “get to the bottom” of this terrible news story, my betting is, it will spell the literal end of the Republican Party. For branding purposes, having half your bench in irons or being prosecuted for treason – that’s not the best way to win an American election. But then, we need to remember, Republicans don’t believe in “winning” election.

They believe in stealing it (either via voter suppression, gerrymandering or outright treason). That’s their brand!