One has to admit, things are going great for Trump right now. Granted, he seems unable to do anything right, and yet in his presidency he literally can do no wrong.
The supine GOP, having subsumed their ostensible devotion to the constitution entirely over to supporting Trump instead, actually had the nerve to claim that Trump would have learned something from the impeachment.
The short response to that is that Trump has demonstrably proven that he is incapable of learning anything at all. He is incapable of admitting when he did anything wrong because, as far as he concerned, he never does. Consequently he also can’t admit fault because he didn’t do anything wrong, so what is there to admit fault about? Everyone who stands in opposition to him is sick, twisted, a liar, a never-Trumper, and an enemy to be disposed of and summarily crushed as soon as possible.
The longer answer is that he did indeed learn something from it. He learned that he can do whatever he wants and the GOP will have him covered. He has proven conclusively what he said years ago: that if he gunned down someone on Fifth Avenue, he would not suffer any consequences for it. Because we live in a world where cheaters, contrary to the old saying, are prospering with no harm resulting from it. That’s why the Houston Astros effectively got a slap on the wrist for cheating their way to a World Series championship and George Zimmerman is suing Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg because they dared to mention that Trayvon Martin would have been twenty-five if he hadn’t been gunned down. I would say that if there was any justice, Zimmerman’s suit will be quickly tossed, but honestly I’m wondering if there is any justice anymore.
That was why Trump ejected Alexander Vindman, because Cadet Bonespurs took issue with the decorated service man’s career, and threw out Vindman’s twin brother for no reason other than that he had the same last name. He’s even getting people who didn’t work for him fired: E. Jean Carroll, who accused Trump of raping her years ago, was fired from ELLE Magazine where she had worked for decades. She says she doesn’t blame ELLE for that; she blames Trump. Me, I blame ELLE. But that’s me.
Meanwhile, as does any good dictator in a banana republic, Trump is now busy twisting the right of presidential pardons in manners for which it was never intended. Rather than reserving it for the poor and helpless who were abused by an unfair judicial process, he is pardoning the rich and powerful who were jailed for everything from tax evasion to lying to the FBI to trying to sell Obama’s vacated Senate seat. Basically he is pardoning wealthy individuals who very likely will be more than happy to reciprocate with sizable donations to his reelection campaign.
Because really, what else would you expect from a rich, lying tax evader? Trump knows what he is, sympathizes with people who have committed the same crimes that he has, and so pardons them because he is effectively pardoning himself. He reasons that if he can do this stuff and get away with it, then his friends should be able to do the same thing. Keep in mind that he has repeatedly said that he has the right to pardon himself, and if the question goes to the conservative Supreme Court, who’s to say that they won’t agree with him?
Meanwhile Bill Barr is claiming that it’s hard to do his job with Trump tweeting about the justice department. I’m sorry, but I’m not buying that for a microsecond. Barr has proven that he is perfectly happy to be Trump’s lapdog; hëll, he auditioned for the role with an essay that basically talked about how the president should have unlimited power that can’t be challenged in court. So I do not remotely accept that he really believes his complaints about how so darned hard his job is thanks to Trump’s tweets. Until such times as he actually resigns in protest, I am going to firmly believe that this is all something he arranged in advance with Trump in order to try and have a response to the vitriol rightly being heaped on him over the Roger Stone sentencing. A sentence that we all know Trump is going to toss out at some point in the near future. The Justice Department, which is supposed to operate separately from Trump, is now being thoroughly controlled by him. They’re even being shunted aside for the entire pardoning procedure as Trump ignores all the routes that other presidents have taken and consults Fox News rather than the Justice Department over whom he should pardon.
And I’m sure that Putin approves of all of this. The intelligence agencies recently reported that the Russians are endeavoring to rig the 2020 election, just as they did the 2016 one, on behalf of Trump. How did Trump react to that? Outrage. Not at the Russians; at the people reporting what the Russians were up to. He’s not angry at Putin; he’s angry at Adam Schiff who was in the briefing and whom he was convinced was going to “weaponize” the report. In what way? I dunno; maybe be concerned about it? He certainly can’t get the Senate to do anything because Moscow Mitch is naturally preventing any attempts to protect the election from foreign interference.
I have to observe that the founding fathers could never have conceived of THIS MANY worst case scenarios to be happening at the exact same time that would turn the government into an utter perversion of what they originally envisioned.
PAD
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Another thoughtful summary and analysis on the week’s events. Hope you are doing well. Good work.