Friday, November 9, 2018

Trump or Nixon: Cons, Crooks, Liars — Same Cloth, Same Cut, Same Outcome

History may indeed be repeating itself

Opinion piece on Jeff Sessions follows below highlighted in part from the Atlantic (via MSN):

Introduction: As AG, Sessions rolled back civil-rights enforcement, failing to file even a single voting-rights case in a country where the Republican Party has settled on disenfranchisement of rival constituencies as a tactic for winning elections.

He failed in his duty to prevent the president from attempting to influence the FBI investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, and then aided the president in presenting a patently false justification for firing former FBI Director James Comey over that investigation.

In virtually every consequential way, Sessions should go down in history as one of the worst attorney generals ever to hold the office.

Related and germane to this issue: Trump forced out Sessions just one day after the midterm elections and after nearly a year of berating him for recusing himself from the DOJ/Mueller Russian “collusion” investigation. 

Now Sessions’ temporary replacement is Matthew Whitaker, his chief of staff — and thus also effectively Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s new boss. Whitaker has expressed repeated skepticism over the scope of Mueller’s inquiry in the past, raising immediate questions about whether he will try to limit it.

(My note: Experts all across the legal spectrum say Whitaker is unfit to be AG, let alone in a position to shut down such an important and critical investigation by some accounts is nearing completion).


Original post continues on the Sessions firing and Trump’s next move(s):

Trump was enraged (Note: He still is BTW) about Sessions recusal meant since it meant he could not control the investigation himself. He will not make that mistake with his next choice of attorney general.
Trump’s losses in the midterms will not make him more cautious; they will only make him more dangerous. 

Trump’s only true ideological commitment is to his racially exclusive vision of American citizenship.

His authoritarianism is more instinctive than ideological, closely tied to his desire to enrich himself and his allies without facing legal consequences. If the only way the president can save his own skin or that of others implicated in his corruption is to violate the rule of law, then he has no compunctions about doing so.

With Democrats in charge of the House, the president is no doubt confident that he can blatantly break the law and still convince his supporters, sealed in an impenetrable bubble of pro-Trump propaganda, that he did no such thing. 

Protecting the rule of law will fall to a Republican majority in the Senate whose willingness to do so is deeply in question.

Indeed, the president said as much during his rambling press conference post-election morning, warning that if House Democrats looked into this campaign or his finances, he would retaliate, saying: “They can look at us, we can look at them, and it will go back and forth, and it will probably be very good for me politically. I can see it being extremely good politically, because I think I am better at that game than they are, actually.”

(My note: So, once again as always, it’s Trump first, and county, what, last?)

The racial element of Trumpism is an essential one, but so is this: Trump believes that he and his friends and allies are above the law. There is no act they could commit that would warrant prosecution or sanction.

At the same time, there is no act committed by his critics or rivals that could not be subject to prosecution, should he so choose. It is not simply that the president does not believe in the rule of law. It is that he believes the law is a shield that protects him, and a sword that can be used to impale his enemies.

Nothing has made this clearer than his constant demands for prosecution of his critics, and his decision to issue federal pardons to men like Dinesh D’Souza and Joe Arpaio, whose violations of the law he regards as trivial because they are pro-Trump sycophants.

This is not how things are supposed to work in a democracy, and certainly not in the United States. But with Sessions gone, Trump will be looking for a replacement who sees the law the way he does: as a set of rules that applies to his enemies but not to himself or the charmed circle that surrounds him. The danger to American democracy did not subside with House Republicans’ defeat in the midterms. It has only grown.

End of the Atlantic article

My 2 cents: Not much more I can add to this except to say, I believe, that S/C Mueller has the “goods” on Trump Empire, Inc. and in understatement line: “Trump’s going down hard.”


Memo to Mr. Trump: In most people’s view that is blatant obstruction of justice and Mr. Trump: “No one is above the law” no one, Capiche?

Absolutely stay tuned as I’m sure you will, and thanks for stopping by.



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