I’ve noticed that members of the January 6 committee are being careful not to say that Donald Trump should be prosecuted. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, in particular, has stated that there should be a norm against the legislative or executive branch of government telling the Department of Justice who they should investigate. Trump destroyed this norm, including by interjecting to tell the DOJ who not to investigate (because they are “a good guy”), and Raskin doesn’t want to perpetuate that practice. I think this is an admirable position to take and I won’t criticize it.
What concerns me is the idea that the Establishment (and I use that term in the positive sense) thinking that they can turn back the tide of Trumpian fascism simply by exposing the truth. Like it or not, the Murdoch media empire is part of the Establishment and CNN’s Reliable Sources reports that they’re beginning to act like it, at least on the print side.
This happens from time to time, but it’s still notable: Rupert Murdoch-controlled publications are taking a tougher line against Trump than Murdoch-owned TV. The Wall Street Journal’s most-read Opinion piece this weekend was the Friday editorial that concluded, “Trump betrayed his supporters by conning them on Jan. 6, and he is still doing it.” The New York Post’s editorial board struck a somewhat different tone, but urged readers to “unsubscribe from Trump’s daily emails begging for money” and “pick your favorite from a new crop of conservatives.” Move on from Trump, the editors wrote, and “Let’s make America sane again.”
In 2016, no major newspaper in the country endorsed Trump’s candidacy, including some who could fairly be called a part of the “right-wing media apparatus” dedicated to electing Republicans to office. It didn’t matter. And it might not matter now that some of the elite directors of the apparatus are eager to move on from Trump. Fascism has crept in so deeply to the GOP’s zeitgeist that truthful and accurate editorials aren’t going to move the needle.
As former Obama aide Dan Pfeiffer, author of the new book “Battling the Big Lie,” said on Sunday’s “Reliable Sources,” “this entire right-wing media apparatus was designed for one purpose, to elect Republicans to office.” So “this is not a moral statement from Rupert Murdoch’s papers,” he said, it’s a practical statement to get a new crop of GOP leaders elected.
Pfeiffer talked about 1/6 in the sweep of history and argued that “January 6 is a shorthand for what is happening right now. You have a Republican gubernatorial candidate in Michigan arrested in his house for participating in the insurrection,” he said. “You have a Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate who’s [running] on the platform of giving Pennsylvania’s electoral votes to Donald Trump, no matter what the voters say. This is a clear and present danger,” so the hearings are “focusing the mind on what is coming, not just what happened.”
The January 6 hearings are not designed to make a prosecutorial case against anyone, so they are inadequate to change the trajectory we’re on. They may very well change more minds than cynics anticipate, but what is needed is swift accountability, and that can only be provided by the Justice Department.
So far, the first two hearings have resembled a prosecutorial case, and a pretty compelling one. I am sure this is adding pressure and probably also creating some cover for the DOJ to act against Donald Trump. One reason this is important is because there’s no guarantee that the Establishment will prove more popular at the ballot box than fascism. This might sound like I am arguing that we should try to win an election by preemptively prosecuting our opponents, which is a very Putinesque thing to do. But what I’m actually arguing is that to fail to prosecute actual and very serious crimes out of some deference to norms or concerns about precedent, is risking losing the entire system to dictatorship. Remember that Adolf Hitler was asked to form a government after his party won a 33 percent plurality in the 1932 elections. It was the last free election a united Germany enjoyed until 1990.
Fascism defeated democracy at the ballot box, and this is always possible because under certain conditions fascism can temporarily be more popular than the status quo, particularly if the Established is gridlocked an ineffectual. Our situation is dire in large part because the Republican half of the Establishment lost control of their party and can no longer prevent people like Trump from winning primaries. The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post can’t fix that problem.
In a democracy, the people get what they ask for, and if they want candidates who will take away their freedom to choose their leaders, then it’s up to courts to try to save democracy. We can’t take away freedom of speech in order to save it, or ban whole categories of candidates. But we absolutely can prosecute people who have provably committed crimes, including crimes against the U.S. government and the U.S. Constitution. And this must be done. It is the only available remedy, and even if it is pursued as it should be, it may not be adequate.
The truth is, this could go either way. And even if the DOJ steps up and prosecutes Trump, that doesn’t wipe the slate clean from the fact that a significant minority of U.S. voters are just fine with an authoritarian dictatorship, as long as it’s one they feel will act only against those they believe deserve it. But the reality is, an authoritarian dictatorship, once in power, is no longer constrained by the necessity to curry favor with anyone, so everyone becomes a potential targer of their wrath. I don’t think Trumpers have thought that far down the road, but once a regime has achieved its larger goal, all of them become expendable to whatever expediency of the moment their rulers feel is necessary.
“The January 6 hearings…may very well change more minds than cynics anticipate, but what is needed is swift accountability, and that can only be provided by the Justice Department.
So far, the first two hearings have resembled a prosecutorial case, and a pretty compelling one. I am sure this is adding pressure and probably also creating some cover for the DOJ to act against Donald Trump.”
Exactly. Unlike the Watergate hearings, there’s no way for Congress to hold Trump accountable. That ship sailed when he left office and Congress’ impeachment and conviction powers expired. (Because today’s Senate Republicans failed to do what their 1974 predecessors were prepared to do: vote to convict and remove a president of their own party.)
The only remaining accountability mechanism is the legal system. What the House Select Committee *can* do is try to create the political conditions that make it easier for DOJ to indict, prosecute, and win convictions against Trump and his key allies.
*Even if that happens* there’s still an excellent chance Ron DeSantis (or someone like him) gets sworn in as president in January 2025, having won the election. It’s just that *if* that happens—and Trump has been disgraced and discredited—there’s a better chance we’ll still have free and fair elections in 2028.
Agreed. I was screaming that here the day after the election in November of 2020 when people were still telling themselves and each other that Trump had been defeated and that democracy had prevailed.
I guess we’ll see. And by see, I mean we’re probably fucked.
The longer term problem is with a highly flawed constitution, and the massive voter apathy!
In the California primaries last week, less than 20% of registered voters voted.
It is basically a failed state, but like the Roadrunner, we are still not looking at the ground below!
Today’s SCOTUS ruling gutting EPA is another pointer to an essentially failed state. No difference between the Taliban and the Republican party and its henchmen!
Maybe someone could wake Garland up from his nap? You’d think Biden might do it, but someone will need to wake him up first. It’s sleepy old men, all the way down.
WTF? Really?? You are bringing the GOP “sleepy Joe” schtick here?
Eighteen months ago the sitting president entered into a conspiracy consisting of himself and his supporters, fascist gangs, several members of Congress, state officials around the country, major TV and radio outlets, and numerous billionaires, whose purpose was to end American democracy and replace it with fascist one-party rule forever. And the conspiracy is still going on and is in control of the Supreme Court and likely will take over control of both houses of Congress in less than a year. Once they do they will impeach Biden and we’ll have a year of both sides do it until the presidential election, which Trump will win. Meantime, if we’re lucky, the Supreme Court will return the country to the good old days of 1890 – that’s the best case, the more likely case is we’re about to see first-hand what 1930s Italy was like.
And Biden keeps talking about his good friend Mitch McConnell while Garland tells us he’s watching the J6 hearings with interest. And a cup of coffee, no doubt.
Has Biden made one speech or taken one action to lead this country back from the brink it’s about to slide over? No, he ignores it as if he’s got more important things to do.
Check out Marcy Wheeler at emptywheel.net, or any of the other journalists and bloggers who are closely following the Jan. 6 prosecutions. It’s a massive conspiracy with hundreds of cases being prosecuted during a pandemic. Even with all those obstacles, it’s already clear DOJ is closely investigating more than half a dozen of Trump’s closest associates, and they way they’re building their cases makes clear that they’re doing so in such a way as to keep open the possibility of indicting Trump.
I’m not happy about the pace either, but it was 1975 before Nixon’s closest co-conspirators were convicted during Watergate, and that was months after he’d already left office *and* it was a much smaller and simpler conspiracy.