December 5, 2017
After last few days we have the clearest picture imaginable of the future that Republicans are working assiduously to create. From the travel ban, to their tax bill, to the elimination of public land, to the candidates they support, it is evident that, from Trump down to the lowliest Congressional backbencher, they all endorse a predatory plutocracy, where the wealthy are free to increase their wealth by exploiting the poor and middle class, unfettered by any regulation ensuring basic fairness and honesty. They seek to deport or imprison their way to a homogeneous society that has never previously existed in the history of this country. They have abandoned any pretext of morality, other than to use their twisted interpretation of Christianity as a cudgel to deprive LGBT people of their rights. Most consequentially, they signal on a daily basis that they do not believe in the Rule of Law, an article of faith that underpins our democracy.
The hits come so frequently that it is hard to keep track. Last week, in a consummate case of putting the fox in charge of the henhouse, Trump installed Mick Mulvaney as the interim head of the CFPB, despite Mulvaney’s avowed hostility to the agency’s mission. Friday, Senate Republicans passed the most regressive tax bill in decades which simultaneously decimates public school funding, through repeal of state and local taxes, while including a tax benefit for private schools, by expanding the permitted use of 529 funds to K-12 schools. Yesterday, in an inscrutable order joined by seven of the nine justices, the Supreme Court permitted reinstatement of Trump’s travel ban pending the outcome of the individual challenges from federal courts in Maryland and Hawaii. In the absence of an opinion, we don’t know the reasoning, but the order does not bode well for the prospect of striking down an executive order clearly grounded in anti-Muslim animus.
The most alarming development of all was the statement of Trump’s lawyer, John Dowd, yesterday that Trump could not be guilty of obstruction of justice “because he is the chief law enforcement officer under [the Constitution’s Article II] and has every right to express his view of the case,” (Source: “Trump’s bold new legal defense,” by Sari Horwitz and Phillip Rucker, The Washington Post, 12/4/17). Given that the charges against Bill Clinton and those drawn up against Richard Nixon both included obstruction of justice, this tortured formulation has no basis in law or fact.
While it is tempting to laugh off Dowd’s statement as a ham-handed effort to clean up Trump’s incriminating Saturday tweet and relish the fact that Trump’s admission handed evidence of obstruction to Robert Mueller on a silver platter, there is a much more sinister interpretation. Dowd’s statement, along with Trump’s tweets attacking the FBI, is a harbinger of the coming showdown between the wannabe dictator in The White House and a Special Counsel with a lifelong dedication to the principle that no person is above the law. Trump is confident that neither a Saturday Night massacre, nor Mueller’s discovery of convincing evidence that Trump is guilty of high crimes or misdemeanors, will be met with anything more than a shrug by the supine, morally bankrupt Republicans in Congress. If that should come to pass, we would do well to remember the words of Thomas Jefferson, “When once a republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil.” Or, in the words of that other sage, Curtis Mayfield, “People, get ready.”