We Let Trump Get Away With Everything I

Why? Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we have to wait for an election, when we have a criminal president breaking more laws every day, and two mechanisms for removing such a president (assuming he can’t be pressured to resign)? Yesterday, the Hatch Act finally fell. It’s a dead letter.

With opening night of the 2020 RNC, Trump and the GOP have openly and blatantly violated the Hatch Act. One could argue that the president and vice president are exempt from the act, but not the spaces used. The William Jefferson Clinton Federal Building and the White House are Federal property, and in a normal world, campaigning activities in either space would be followed by a scathing Inspector General report, an investigation by the House Oversight Committee, and calls for the president to resign for tainting Federal property and abusing his power. But not this president. Not ever. Trump has killed the Hatch Act, and we let him do it.

Tonight, the violations become more blatant as we will see the sitting Secretary of State make a campaign speech on foreign soil, and we might see the first-ever campaign speech from the White House.

"Putin was a pleasant call. This is ridiculous."

Indeed. We need to go back and look at every fucking phone call this man has been on since his January 20 2017 inauguration. And no, Donald, you can’t speak to anyone on the phone without staff on the line.

The Week The Republic Died

The last two weeks have been incredible. We entered the third stage of a slow-motion constitutional crisis that began with Bush v. Gore. It’s a crisis in which one political party - always the GOP - smashes a crucial part of the constitution.

In 2000, Bush v. Gore broke the Constitution so that a legal recounting of votes could be stopped. In 2016, the GOP-controlled Senate broke the Constitution so that a nominee to the Supreme Court could be blocked. We were naive to think that the block would only happen once. Because there were no negative consequences for the GOP, they will block a nominee anytime the president is a Democrat and the Senate is run by Republicans. And then in April 2019, we had a third major breakage of our Constitution. The White House simply refused to cooperate with House inquiries and oversight in any way. By simply saying no over and over, the White House stumbled upon a way to neutralize the House, which had swung Democratic at the start of this year.

When the Democrats won dozens of House races in the fall of 2018, pundits and journalists rushed to write stories about how the House would rain subpoenas upon the White House, and force Trump’s financial secrets out. Virtually no one predicted that it wouldn’t happen. The House has the power of the purse and the power of subpoena. Or it used to. Now it has zero power. Who could have imagined it?

This is a shocking discovery. Could it mean that all it takes to kill the world’s greatest constitution is for the Executive branch to refuse to play with one or more other branches? That’s all it takes? The Constitution was held together by an ‘honor system’ among powerful white men? It was an honor system all along?

Everyone, from elected officials, to pundits, to journalists to history and constitutional law professors assumed that the system couldn’t be broken because everyone was playing within the bounds set by the Constitution. Then team Trump basically smashed it. They smashed it by clinging to theories that the Executive has inherent dominant powers. Those theories have been around since Nixon, and the executive has become particularly strong since Bush 43. But it seems that the Trump White House has accidentally found the mechanism to make the executive even more powerful. And that is a simple refusal to cooperate with equal branches of government.

They are now in courts arguing that Congress doesn’t really have the power to oversee the Executive. Who knew!

Make no mistake, this started with Bush v. Gore in 2000 and became entrenched by the time the GOP refused to consider Obama’s nomination of Garland in 2016. Looking at the history, Bush v. Gore had a feel of “we’ll only break the system this once, and we’ll pretend it didn’t happen.” But by 2010 the GOP had decided to break everything. Treat the Democrats as illegitimate even when they win office. Don’t respect the Power of Inquiry that is in Article 1. It’s fairly obvious that if a Democratic House were to impeach, a Republican-led Senate would not proceed with a trial.

We see where this is going. The next phase is to ignore the courts when they rule against the Executive. So in 2020 (or earlier if the Justices decide this is an emergency) the Supreme Court could affirm that House subpoenas are legal and must be respected. However, the White House will then continue to defy and ignore the subpoenas. Congress nor the Supreme Court can enforce the Court’s decision. Imagine a sporting event where the referees are ignored. I think we’re about to see that happen. The Justices are the referees, and they can’t force the White House and Congress return to regular order. The 2018 midterms and the Democratic gains in the House have been effectively nullified by Trump.

And worst of all is that we let it happen. All of us, sitting on our asses. We deserve to have our Republic burned down by these angry old men.

Great Jobs That Nobody Wants

Here’s a theme for this week. There are two high profile positions no one wants. They are hosing the 91st Oscars, and White House Chief of Staff. One requires two months of intensive preparation and execution. The other could last just six months and completely destroy a career. Why don’t you want these good jobs, America? These are really good, high paying jobs!

Will Outside Counsel Soon Move Inside?

A silly legal question from an armchair law aficionado: At what point does the wall between the White House counsel and the president's private, outside legal team come crumbling down? When will this firewall fail or be breached? Is it when Robert Mueller produces his report? Or could it be sooner, such as when the White House becomes involved in a cover-up or tries to obstruct the Special Counel's investigation?

Surely, it has to be when the White House gets involved in the cover-up of the 2016 Trump campaign's foreign collusion conspiracy?

We have heard the White House communications office use the phrase "outside counsel" quite a lot. Reporters are referred to Trump's private legal team for any questions relating to the Special Counsel investigation. But what happens when the White House Press Secretary lies in an effort to cover-up a detail in the alleged conspiracy between the Trump campaign and multiple foreign governments? Far more serious was the sighting of a White House lawyer at a classified DOJ briefing on the progress of the Special Counsel's investigation.

The White House counsel hasn't gotten much attention throughout Trump's first term, since most of the action has been conducted by his private legal team. But no matter how invisible or ineffective the White House team is, I think trouble is coming to them. Surely at leaast one of the fires Trump has set has gotten into our house. 

Sanders' lying at the podium, and Republican efforts to obstruct justice should bring the Mueller investigation into the White House. "Outside counsel" is going to have to become White House counsel. There can't be a wall between Mueller and the White House any longer.

A Big Step Towards Authoritarianism

My head is still spinning from the news this past weekend. I consider myself someone who can keep up with all the big stories surrounding the corruption of the Trump administration and the criminal conspiracies of the Trump 2016 campaign. But I can no longer keep up. A conspiracy wall the size of a soccer field couldn't hold it all. My brain hurts. 

So what happened this weekend? Trump and his legal team got angrier, sillier and more bold in their use of limited hangouts. At this stage, it appears that Trump is on the verge of torpedoing the Mueller investigation and claiming that anything less than shooting someone is a not a crime. 

But this latest development is unfolding in a most terrifying way. First, let's accept the fact that most Americans don't care. That's terrifying in itself. Bush v. Gore shattered the republic. The endless war on "terror," the permanent state of fear, and the Patriot Act shattered it some more. The Republican-led Senate preventing a sitting president from filling a Supreme Court vacancy set fire to the house. Now, while the fire spreads to all the rooms under president Trump, most Americans are either too broken or simply not engaged to care. The disengaged post-Watergate future scholars warned us about is here. That sets the stage for even more, permanent oppression. 

This weekend, we reached the stage where the president declared himself to be above the law. It took nearly two years for Richard Nixon to reach that stage. It took Donald Trump less than 15 months (since the Mueller investigation began). And just in case it wasn't clear, the president himself tweeted it on Monday morning as a kind of limited hangout that maybe he did commit a crime, but take it from him, he didn't! And as if that wasn't enough, he tweeted 90 minutes later that the Mueller probe is unconstitutional. 

In 2017, tweets like this were met with some eye rolling and some gasps from Mika Brzezinski. It seems to me that this past weekend a large portion of the news media finally woke up and realized that these tweets are official presidential statements, and need to be taken seriously. Despite typos, misspellings and occasional humor, Trump has followed through on most topics he has tweeted about. From his "travel ban," to exiting the Iran deal, to starting trade wars, Trump eventually remembers what he's angry about and acts on it. And so, we have to assume that he is going to try to end the Special Counsel's investigation again soon. His staff might talk him away from the ledge, or he might take the dive, but as Trump always says before he does something big, "we'll see what happens."

We've reached the totalitarian stage of the Trump presidency. It was always there, beginning with the lie about the inauguration crowd size, but now it is fully out, 500 days into his first term. 

In 2017, Trump reserved his angriest tweets for Saturday mornings. Now his manic, angry, desperate tweets are sent almost every morning - usually before 07:00 DC time.

Trump's tweets are bad enough. But Trump has found the recipe for motivating his base of 60 Million white supremacist supporters. His blistering, endless condemnation of NFL players who do not stand for the Star Spangled Banner before games is white nationalism wrapped in public patriotism, and it stirs his base into a frenzy. It is Trump's most successful tactic as president. No president has ever succeeded in doing this. Reagan came close, launching his 1980 campaign at the Neshoba County Fair in Mississippi, the same county where three civil rights activists were murdered in 1964. Ronald Reagan gave his base white nationalism packaged as an argument for "states rights." He demonized the poor and anyone who collected public benefits of any kind, claiming that they were a burden on working people, and that government, by aiding the poor, was too big and too intrusive. That was terrible at the time, coming on the heels of a dark but progressive era that brought bipartisan support for legal abortion, some equal rights, and even some environmental protection polices and causes (think Superfund sites and No Nukes). Reagan represented a right wing backlash to all that.

Trump represents an even stronger backlash to that, as well as all the social and economic changes that have come since the early 1990s. The USA is more Hispanic. The USA has many more people living in poverty. Our local law enforcement agencies are more militarized and use even more force against young black men and women. And the US has a furious white population, fueled by 22 years of Fox News, ready to go out as loudly and with as much violence and destruction as they can muster. If there ever is a serious attempt to remove Trump from office, there will be civil unrest. 

Last September, Trump found this winning formula, and today, he deployed more furious tweets about black athletes, rallying his base. Trump's big ego has always been ridiculed. But now, with his more identifiable totalitarian posture, his inflated ego is finally being recognized as part of his 'strong man' style of leadership. It needs to be taken seriously.

It's a shame and embarrassing that one of the only public officials to condemn Trump's tweets today is the mayor of Philadelphia, Jim Kenny. Kenny was correct to speak out, of course. And his words were very apt:

“I don’t how you can make your case to a child who acts childish, who changes his opinion and his statements every single day and who, frankly, frightens me more than I was frightened in 1968 during the height of the Vietnam War.”

2018 is beginning to look a lot like 1968. You don't need this little blog to tell you that. Look outside.