August 24, 2018
All of the commentators are saying that the Cohen plea and Manafort conviction on Tuesday mark a watershed moment; that the seismic impact of those twin developments has altered the trajectory of Trump’s presidency. Trump seems to realize it, with his deranged rambling that impeaching him will tank the stock market and his whining that flipping should be “illegal.” Although we’ve long known that Trump was a corrupt racist authoritarian, it was still a shock to hear the current occupant of The White House openly speak like a two-bit mobster.
Republicans in Congress responded like loyal capos, rather than members of a co-equal branch of government with a Constitutional duty to act as a check on the President. Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham averred that Jeff Sessions could be replaced after the first of the year— opening the door to Mueller’s firing. Orrin Hatch took fawning obsequiousness to a new low, opining that while Trump was not a “pillar of virtue,” eight to ten years ago, “he has changed a lot of his life once he became president.” Hatch went on to attribute Trump’s libertine past on the fact that he came from “New York City, …a slam bang difficult world,” (Source: “As Bad News Piles Up, Senate Republicans Hardly Flinch,” by Carl Hulse, The New York Times, 8/22/18). Hatch conveniently ignores the fact that most of the other 8 million of us managed not to become sociopathic criminals despite being from this 21st Century Sodom.
This morning we learned that Trump Organization CFO, Allen Weisselberg, had been granted immunity by federal prosecutors. Weisselberg, whose tenure goes back to Trump’s father, Fred, has been intimately involved with The Trump Organization’s finances for decades. Although his immunity was purportedly related to Cohen’s payments to silence Daniels and McDougal, some speculate that prosecutors’ interest in Weisselberg goes beyond Cohen, putting Trump’s shady dealings directly in their crosshairs, (Source: “Why the Allen Weisselberg immunity deal may be the biggest news of this bananas week,” by Chris Cillizza, CNN.com, 8/24/18).
Add to this the announcement that Manhattan District Attorney, Cy Vance, is evaluating bringing criminal charges (beyond the reach of presidential pardon power) against the Trump Organization and two of its senior executives and it is clear that the legal pressure on Trump, and those in his orbit, is intense and it is mounting (Source: “Manhattan D.A. Eyes Criminal Charges Against Trump Organization,” by William Rashbaum, The New York Times, 8/23/18).
Trump is reacting like the cornered rat he is, tweeting wildly racist false conspiracies about white farmers being murdered in South Africa, in a desperate move to rile up his racist base. The White House reportedly killed a bipartisan bill to shore up election security, making it plain that they are counting on the Russians to subvert our elections once again (Source: “White House Reportedly Shut Down Bipartisan Bill to Fight Election Hacking,” by Adam K. Raymond, Daily Intelligencer, NYMag.com, 8/23/18).
With everything that has happened this week, the specter of the Stepford sycophants in Congress praising and providing cover for this disgustingly racist and nakedly avaricious shell of a man isn’t just alarming, it’s bizarre. Clearly, they are all in for Trump and Trumpism—the hate mongering, the corruption, the thorough contempt for the Rule of Law, or any rules at all. The pundits are right when they say that historians will look back at this week and see it as a turning point. The question is, a turning point for whom, Trump…or the country?
#VOTE
#Paperballots