In the past forty-eight hours, Trump has demonstrated that not only is he a narcissistic, incurious bully, but that he is dangerously out of control. On Sunday, Trump callously derided Sadiq Khan, the Muslim Mayor of London, in the immediate aftermath of a horrific terrorist attack. In a move right out of the Fox News playbook, Trump quoted a sentence fragment out of context to make it appear that Khan was minimizing the seriousness of the attack. In a moment when any sane world leader, let alone the leader of Britain’s closest ally, would have responded with solidarity and compassion, Trump chose instead to stoke Islamophobia and score cheap points for his fearmongering policies. Trump repeatedly demonstrates that he has a boundless capacity for boorishness.
If that wasn’t enough, yesterday Trump unleashed a Tweetstorm about his travel ban, repeatedly decimating any fig leaf of an argument that his Executive Order was anything other than unconstitutional discrimination on the basis of religion. Along the way, Trump criticized the judiciary as “political,” once again displaying his abject ignorance of the concept of the separation of powers. So much for his oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.”
Yet while we were focused on Trump’s Twitter tantrum, we may have missed much more consequential news. The Intercept obtained a classified NSA report which detailed efforts by Russian military intelligence to hack the system of a U.S. election software vendor and to mount a spear-phishing attack against 100 state election officials. The Justice Department has already identified and arrested the alleged leaker, Reality Leigh Winer, a 25 year old government contractor with top level security clearance. Through Winner’s brave or foolhardy act, we now know that Russia seeks nothing less than to deprive us of our national sovereignty and self-determination. Republican diffidence in the face of these revelations is evidence of their complicity in efforts to destroy American democracy.
If we are honest, though, we would have to acknowledge that Republicans have been engaged in undermining American democracy for some time. What else can we call the Republican racial gerrymandering in North Carolina that was struck down yesterday by the Supreme Court? What other reason can there be for twenty states to have enacted new laws since 2012 making it harder for citizens to register and vote? Why else have 99 bills been introduced in 31 states since November 2016 to “restrict access to registration and voting?”(Source: “Voting Laws Roundup 2017,” The Brennan Center for Justice, New York University School of Law). These measures are nothing more than 21st Century poll taxes, designed to prevent African Americans and Latinos from exercising their right to vote.
Our first line of defense against this assault on our democracy from within is to VOTE as if our freedom depended on it. From all appearances, it just might.
#RussianElectionHacking; #RealityWinner; #VoterSuppression
NEW JERSEY RESIDENTS: TODAY IS THE DEMOCRATIC GUBERNATORIAL PRIMARY – Don’t FORGET TO VOTE!!!! (polls close at 8:00 p.m.)