This is the type of thing I tend not to write about anymore because it feels like I’m beating a dead horse. By now, anyone who doesn’t know that the president doesn’t respect the norms and laws of his office simply doesn’t want to be convinced. But I commend Greg Sargent for spelling it out once again for the people in the back row who are hard of hearing.
In a new interview, President Trump once again telegraphed his desire to see the Justice Department investigate Hillary Clinton over the array of fake scandals that he and his allies have been talking about in recent weeks. But in this case, he went further than that. Asked by radio host Larry O’Connor about demands that the Justice Department probe those scandals, Trump openly stated his frustration with his inability to get the department to do his bidding in this regard…
What Trump said ought to be enough to invoke the 25th Amendment:
“The saddest thing is, because I am the President of the United States, I am not supposed to be involved with the Justice Department. I’m not supposed to be involved with the FBI. I’m not supposed to be doing the kind of things I would love to be doing. And I am very frustrated by that. I look at what’s happening with the Justice Department, why aren’t they going after Hillary Clinton with her emails and with her dossier, and the kind of money — I don’t know, is it possible that they paid $12.4 million for the dossier, which is total phony, fake, fraud and how is it used?
“It’s very discouraging to me. I’ll be honest, I’m very unhappy with it, that the Justice Department isn’t going — maybe they are but you know as President, and I think you understand this, as a President you’re not supposed to be involved in that process. But hopefully they are doing something and at some point, maybe we are gonna all have it out.”
Clearly, Trump has internalized enough from his numerous attorneys to realize that he’s under scrutiny for obstructing justice precisely because a president isn’t supposed to tell the Justice Department what to do and who to investigate and who not to investigate. He’s certainly not supposed to fire the Director of the FBI in a naked and admitted attempt to shut down an investigation that involves himself.
But he’s doing everything he can, within these limitations, to provoke the Justice Department into launching an investigation of a former political opponent for no real reason other than he’s crazier than the drunk guy at the end of the bar.
And, of course, it would serve as a distraction from his own political woes.
This episode doesn’t teach us anything we should not have already known. But we can’t get so inured to this behavior in our president that it begins to pass without comment.
He isn’t fit to serve in his office, and he makes that clear every single day.
A propos of your post the other day about Trump’s Asia trip. I think, at this point, everyone who will be meeting with him knows that he is basically deranged and, at best to be humored and flattered but certainly not to be taken seriously. Even Duterte must realize this.
The China end of the trip will be the most interesting because Trump thinks he has a special relationship with President Xi cemented over a slice of delicious chocolate cake. Xi will try to get what he can out of this meeting but they should have low expectations. I’m really not sure why Trump is even going on the trip. Anything to be negotiated would be done relatively more effectively by Tillerson, Ross or McMaster (emphasis on “relative”, of course).
When I read that quote by Trump about “the saddest thing” I can just hear a whiny, petulant spoiled brat and can see him stamping his feet. It’s absurd that this man is still holding office. He honestly thinks he has the powers of a king.
His comments to FOX news and on Twitter are damaging enough, but he’s going on a tour of Asia and short of a gag in his mouth, he’s a loaded gun. I wish this ignorant man would just shut up and go away.
What he seems not to have internalized is that he won the election. He just can’t let Hillary go…almost like a jilted lover.
I await the time went gets it…he won and it is too late.
What he seems not to have internalized is that he won the election. He just can’t let Hillary go…almost like a jilted lover.
He’s not a jilted lover. He knows that people like Peter Daou and Joy Reid will take to Twitter in a sputtering rage to defend Clinton all while Scott Pruitt and other scum dismantle, or sabotage, the government.
Investigating Trump is easy for all you have to do is collect all interviews and tweets of his. Trump opens his mouth and provides evidence for prosecution. He is an attorney’s nightmare client and an investigators dream criminal.
>invoke the 25th Amendment
No one will invoke the 25th Amendment, because it is Caligari’s Cabinet! One crazier than the next! And it is by design!
I don’t see how this resolves itself. The Republicans are just not going to do anything to remove him, or even hold him accountable. They are too scared of the noise machine.
And because of a flawed system, the Democrats have no power to bring even the smallest sanity!
Why 25th amendment? This seems like a perfectly rational viewpoint for an ambitious autocrat: removing any remaining barriers to practicing his autocracy.
In fact it’s surprisingly rational. Should be an argument against pleading insanity or diminished capacity.
Something snapped in my head today (after reading several articles, including Charlie Pierce on the Democrats’ ongoing dysfunction and some pro-Trump comments on YouTube videos of interviews) and am now convinced that, more than anything else, we have to attack the Trump voters, directly; we have to impugn them, blame them, ridicule them, ostracize them, insult them, marginalize them, make them pay.
I’m tired of the misplaced propriety and inept tactical strategizing that has us both believing they can be seduced or swayed into voting for progressive candidates, and (even worse) worrying that they’re some kind of formidable, dangerous revolutionary force that will rise up en masse with their guns and Confederate flags and salt-of-the-earth strength and wage war against us and tear this nation to the core. They are frightened, angry, uneducated, exploited people who’ve been whipped into a muddled frenzy by a bunch of unscrupulous grifters and con-men. They’re fat and lazy and self-indulgent and they don’t read and rarely vote; they’re aging and marginalized, but they made their choice and they’re adults and they must be made to pay, to suffer, to regret, to take the blame.
Look at how they treat us — how they ridicule the sick and uninsured and attack the non-white and bully the Muslim schoolkids and send threatening emails and letters to progressive candidates and activists and walk around with their “open carry” guns using racist epithets, just like their kind historically attacks abortion clinics and murders gay people and (going further back) performs lynchings.
I mean, this is our Nazi moment, right? They’re already marching with torches with the president they elected smiling at them. I’m tired of all this hand-wringing about their “economic anxiety” (although I admit that trope has been debunked and exhausted at this point); I’m tired of politicians and commentators bending over backwards to attempt to curry their favor and not call them “deplorable” and try to speak their language etc. We have to attack them, directly (not with physical violence, of course, but politically and rhetorically). Just like post-WWII Germany, we must tell the world that we will not accept this movement; that it is un-American.
These are people who complain the “elites” think they are stupid, who react by angrily lashing out.
Liberal condescension was a big motivator for specifically the people who were the 40% who supported Trump in the primaries.
You are just proposing to pour gasoline on the fire.
I think it right to accept that many are unreachable, but no payoff in stirring them up.
I don’t care any more what they think of us, do you understand? We’re way past the time when anything like that could make any difference.
“Gasoline on the fire”? Those assholes — the Bundy standoff crowd — aren’t a “fire.” In their dreams, do they have that kind of meaning or power; they’re fat people with guns and pickup trucks hooked on booze, opiates and junk food who are frightened and angry and need the ACA and FEMA everything else the modern world and modern America can provide them, once they wise up and stop acting like stupid children.
I’m not going to worry about being called “condescending” by people who call my fellow Americans socialists, terrorists and niggers, and neither should you.
Rising up against oppression — real oppression — is the greatest of American traditions, going all the way back to our founding and through the magnificent populist movements of the 1930s and the 1960s. We can’t let these pasty-white candy-asses presume to rob that mantle from us, the progressives. It’s ridiculous that we’re even discussing the “dangers” of “upsetting” these backwards people.
(Like I said, something “snapped” in my head today.)
They have more guns than we do and the support of the police.
You have got to be kidding.
Take a step back and look at what you’re saying. Don’t buy into their eliminationist/apocalyptic rhetoric! It’s just a bunch of pathetic fat people with YouTube accounts. Look (again) at the Bundy ranch — look what actually happens when they try to enact their demented “takeover” agendae.
This is America — Woody Guthrie’s America; Martin Luther King’s America; Stonewall America. These aging, gold-hoarding, paranoid hate-radio neo-fascists aren’t going to tear it down. They’re a paper tiger…the least we can do is verbally attack them and reprimand/shame them the way they do to us.
The older ones are disorganized and ineffective. The younger ones among the neo-Nazis (I’m for calling out the alt-right for what it really is) are finding out the hard way that they really don’t want to show their faces once the proverbial shit hits the fan. We saw what went down in Charlottesville. Revolution is all fun and games until someone loses a job or finds out that no one wants to sit next to them in class or be their dorm-mate, or (worse yet) get written out of mommy and daddy’s will. I don’t doubt that a few of these assholes can and will commit occasional acts of terrorism in the form of mass shootings or driving vehicles into crowds of pedestrians, as that is the Vanilla ISIS way. That is clearly awful as it is. But full scale revolution it is not.
To be more clear, in terms of electoral politics: Trump got elected by 1) cheating (or, having others cheat for him) and 2) appealing to this horrible, stupid group of people, even though everyone else in the country and the entire world was appalled. (Anyone who pretends not to be appalled is just playing games appeasing those voters). (Also, 3) being up against the most systematically maligned candidate in history.)
So we have to do the same thing. We have to get everyone who isn’t in that group to vote against Trump and Trump’s party and agenda, even though the Trump supporters will be appalled and will darkly threaten to “rise up” like a bunch of brownshirts. Screw them. They don’t have the numbers; they’re on the wrong side of history, and if they didn’t want to be ostracized and condemned they shouldn’t have fucking marched with torches and embraced neo-Nazism.
I know a lot of Republican voters. I spend a lot of time with them. They’re not really the most decent people. They’re racist. They’re selfish. They’ll cut off their own nose to spite their face on policy questions. They don’t pay a ton of attention to politics and when they do it’s all “stupid libs!” and “yeah, daddy repubs!”
But fundamentally right now most of them are embarrassed. They haven’t been able to ignore the Trump clownshow. They have no interest in defending it. They don’t give a shit about 2 minutes hate against Hillary anymore. They recognize the Republican congress is a joke. Some of them recognize they should have just abstained or even sotto voice voted for Clinton.
Seems to me that a widespread social atmosphere of “nice job, dipshits” could be pretty constructive right now.
That’s what I’m saying! That’s the tactic. It’s so American, too. “Hey! Assholes! That’s right, we’re talking to you. How about we try it the smart way, now? What do you say?”
The ones I know just smile about it. Laugh even.
I don’t know a single republican that is embarrassed about Trump, he hates who they hate, and that’s good enough for them.
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The ones I know, many of whom are family members, have been giggling since Trump was inaugurated. Anything that allows them to continue to wallow in their hatred of Democrats and liberals. And, oh, we are just making too much of the Russia story!
I, too, believe we have to engage those who voted for or likely voted for Trump just because he had an “R” after his name. They will continue to carry water for him and the party unless we start directly challenging them. I long since progressed from not being mad at Trump to being truly angry with those who voted for him. The 62 million of them. They well knew what kind of person he was.
I disagree, based on anecdotal evidence from where I live (a very Red part of rural California) – the Trump flags and yard signs are disappearing.
I think people are who voted for him are tiring of his act.
Huh… one might even call them ‘deplorable’ or something.
Nah. As Marie and AG remind us all the time, that would just expose that we are already worse than Trump voters!
That’s a compliment, btw. A rant that’s honest, truthful, measured, and proportionate to the outrages ranted against is a valuable public service.
You didn’t suggest otherwise, but I’ll just add that it’s important, as always, that we not become them to defeat them, as that’s always pyrrhic “victory”. Specifically that we eschew their pervasive tactics of Reality-Denial, lying, the scorched-earth tactics of all-out political war via false character assassination (cf. your accurate reference to the decades of ginned-up hate and non-scandal “scandals” against the Clintons), as we rightly, robustly attack (and counter-attack) righteously and truthfully.
The difficulty now, of course, is that as a result of the intentional cretinization and barbarization of the white electorate, it is cheering these sort of statements by Der Trumper. He is simply saying precisely what they want to hear. Legal principles apply only when they are out of power.
The decades of 1960-80 now strike me as rather the modern Golden Age of American democracy. An abusive dead end colonial war was stopped by the popular will of the people. The long sought passage of the various Civil Rights Acts was finally engineered. The appalling corporate depredations against the environment generated a (now unbelievable) popular movement to protect the planet, resulting in environmental statutes that this nation will never be able to enact ever again once today’s “conservative” Repubs have destroyed them. And of course a criminal executive was removed from office under the constitution via bipartisan means. At that time, citizens were at least marginally informed adults who were concerned about prezes having FBI blacklists for political opponents.
The modern “Conservative” movement (funded by the nation’s plutocrats) successfully arose to destroy that era, and usher in the current political world of corruption, decay, plutocracy and paralysis. The citizenry had to be effectively retarded from adulthood to adolescence, that time of life consisting of massive ignorance coupled with unshakeable, freely-offered opinions. This is the transformation of the white electorate that “conservatism” hath wrought.
So yes Trumperian atrocities like this should be documented and catalogued. But don’t kid yourself into thinking that anything out of the the man’s mouth concerns the now incompetent white electorate. The Golden Age is long gone, and “The 46%” cannot be returned to responsible citizenship.