Speculation abounds about the pardon spree Donald Trump is planning to execute in the last days of his presidency. But it’s an indication of how norm-busting and corrupt it will be that Attorney General William Barr decided to resign before Christmas to avoid any association with it. After all, this is the same Barr who facilitated so many of Trump’s norm-busting and corrupt practices, he will go down in infamy as the most lawless attorney general in US history.
But, as past (or projection) is always prologue with him, the pardon Trump granted Rod Blagojevich earlier this year speaks volumes. To refresh your memory, here is the venal outburst that made then Governor Blagojevich of Illinois infamous:
They are unwilling to give me anything but appreciation. F*** them! I’ve got this thing and it’s f***ing golden, and, uh, uh, I’m just not giving it up for f***in’ nothing. I’m not gonna do it. And I can always use it. I can parachute me there, motherf***er Obama… F*** him. For nothing? F*** him.
(The New York Times, December 27, 2008)
That was how FBI wiretaps caught him cussing out members of then President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team for ignoring this pay-to-play offer. Because Blagojevich was hell-bent on extorting a king’s ransom for the US Senate seat Obama had just vacated. As governor, he had executive power to appoint Obama’s replacement.
But we don’t need wiretaps to know that Trump is using his executive power for personal benefit. Because, pardoning Blagojevich was so self-serving (and self-incriminating), it prompted former US attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan and NBC legal analyst Barbara McQuade to warn that:
Trump’s pardons of Rod Blagojevich and others [are] meant to convince America [that] corruption is OK. …
By inuring the public to the harm of fraud and corruption, the president can convince his base of supporters that these are not serious crimes.
(NBC, February 20, 2020)
Except that they needed no convincing. After all, Trump had already been caught red-handed trying to extort political favors from the president of Ukraine. Yet nearly 12 million more Americans voted to re-elect him this year than voted to elect him in 2016. What’s more, like cash cows, they’re happily baring their teets as Trump milks them to fund his post-presidency slush fund.
President Trump’s political operation has raised more than $170 million since Election Day, using a blizzard of misleading appeals about [widespread election fraud] to shatter fundraising records set during the campaign. …
The surge of contributions has come largely from small-dollar donors, campaign officials say, tapping into the president’s base of loyal and fervent financial supporters, who tend to contribute the most when they feel the president is under siege or facing unfair political attacks.
(The Washington Post, December 1, 2020)
Frankly, this is just the 1000th reason why I’ve always dismissed the self-sacrificing, self-abnegating idiots who support Trump as a bunch of hopeless MAGA suckers. But Americans can derive some consolation from the fact that over 15 million more of them voted to oust him this year than voted to reject him in 2016.
By the way, apropos of pardons, I fully expect him to wait until January 20 to announce pardons of everyone in his inner circle, including himself. His pettiness and spitefulness are such that he’ll find the opportunity to raining on Joe Biden’s inaugural parade irresistible. Not to mention that the timing will make it difficult for the media to dedicate too much coverage to his controversial pardons.
Still, it shall redound to America’s eternal shame that Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah was the only Republican who had the moral clarity and political balls to impeach him. Shamefully, other Republicans behaved as they have throughout Trump’s presidency, namely as if they were cult members avenging their cult leader – who can do no wrong.
Further to McQuade’s warning, by doing so, they not only vindicated his venal deeds (and deals known and unknown), but gave him carte blanche to use his executive power for personal benefit. And he clearly has done, and continues to do so. This is why we should fully expect Trump to be wheeling, dealing, and pardoning during this presidential transition in ways that make what Blagojevich did during the one in 2008 look petty by comparison.
Meanwhile, reports that Russia has been using the Covid-19 pandemic as cover to execute cyber attacks on the United States have left all of Washington “shocked, shocked.” No doubt this is because US “intelligence” agencies have publicly conceded that these attacks are the most intrusive and sustained in history.
A cyber attack believed to be tied to Russia continues to pose a ‘grave risk’ to government networks and the private sector, according to an ominous warning issued Thursday by the Department of Homeland Security. …
‘This … actor has demonstrated patience, operational security, and complex trade-craft in these intrusions.’
Officials also are reviewing compromises at the Department of Energy, including the National Nuclear Security Administration, which manages the country’s nuclear weapons stockpile.
(USA Today, December 17, 2020)
In other words, it’s not “the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming” this time. It’s the Russians are here, the Russians are here; and they’ve been here for a long, long time. After all, they executed similar attacks on the 2016 presidential election with impunity. Therefore, nobody should be shocked that they took that open and notorious feat as a veritable invitation to stick around and cause as much mischief as possible.
Yet you’d be forgiven the impression that those responsible for preventing such attacks are feeling more shock and awe than shame and anger. But how can anyone in US cyber command or national security look at themselves in the mirror, let alone face their Russian counterparts, without shrinking in shame?
And this, just when you thought America could suffer no worse than having the Trump show, masquerading as a presidency, make it an international laughingstock. But it is now a certifiably dysfunctional, dystopian, and defenseless mess. Superpower?! Hell, even the Roman Empire was never this, er, messed up before the fall. Evidently that “shining city on a hill” was just the flickering embers of a supernova.
Of course, just as Trump spent the past four years pretending the cyber attacks in 2016 never happened, he is pretending these attacks are not happening now.
All fingers are pointing to Russia as the source of the worst-ever hack of U.S. government agencies. But President Donald Trump, long wary of blaming Moscow for cyberattacks, has been silent.
The lack of any statement seeking to hold Russia responsible casts doubt on the likelihood of a swift response and suggests any retaliation — whether through sanctions, criminal charges or cyber actions — will be left in the hands of President-elect Joe Biden’s incoming administration.
(The Associated Press, December 18, 2020)
Remarkably, Republicans excused his silence with respect to the attacks in 2016 as a symptom of his congenital narcissism, which simply would not allow him to admit that Russia helped him get elected. No doubt they are now huddling to conjure up an excuse for this betrayal of his oath to preserve, protect, and defend the United States.
The problem is that only congenital narcissism explains practically everything Trump does, or fails to do. But even Republicans still have enough common sense to know they cannot offer that to excuse his unconscionable silence with respect to these cyber attacks, let alone Covid-19, which is executing a veritable 9/11 against Americans every day these days. The death toll is now over 310,000 – more than the number of Americans killed in World War I, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq … combined.
By all political and medical accounts, basic presidential leadership could have prevented nearly 90 percent of those Covid deaths. Yet this commander in chief is pretending Covid-19 does not exist, which is why he’s offering neither battle cries nor consoling words.
Exhibit A: Trump has posted hundreds of tweets since Election Day on November 3. But less than 1 percent of them mentioned Covid-19 – and then only to propagate hackneyed lies about it. Except that this only reflects his pathological projection, which I suspect I was the first commentator to “diagnose” in “Forget the Clinton Foundation. Shut Down the Trump Organization!” on August 26, 2016.
After all, he spent much of this year telling supporters that Democrats were hyping Covid just to make him look bad (congenital narcissism), and that they won’t mention it ever again after Election Day (projection).
And all that silence and artful dodging, despite this:
President Lyndon Johnson declared a war on poverty. President Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs. Now President Donald Trump has gone to war with a virus. … ‘The fight to slow the spread of COVID-19 is our big war. … I view it as a, in a sense, a wartime President,’ Trump said.
(Time, March 19, 2020)
As indicated above, Democrats impeached Trump one year ago today based on clear and convincing evidence of all kinds of high crimes and misdemeanors. Republicans acquitted him. But, in doing so, they telegraphed their intent to be complicit no matter what law Trump breaks or norm he destroys – Covid deaths, national security, or even American democracy be damned.
In fact, the way Republicans are enabling Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of this year’s “most secure” presidential election make them seem every bit as beholden to Russian President Vladimir Putin as Trump.
But there is a silver lining. And no, it’s not in the person of Joe Biden. Instead, it derives from the fact that the number of foreign allies Trump has alienated is surpassed only by the number of domestic supportershe has alienated.
He has easily burned more bridges than any political leader in US history. Which means that, when prosecutors begin indicting citizen Trump (as many are chomping at the bit to do), the only character witnesses he’ll be able to call will be conspiracy nuts and white supremacists.
Yes, the very witnesses who judges across the country, of all political stripes, including ones he himself appointed, laughed out of court. This, when he called them (in over 60 court cases) to support his claims that Biden relied on widespread fraud to defeat him in a landslide in this year’s presidential election.
Having said all that, I don’t mind sharing that I woke up every morning expecting to learn that Trump’s hopelessly venal, treacherous, and incompetent/AWOL leadership has caused the United States to suffer far worse than the ravages of Covid-19 and Russia’s unrelenting cyber attacks … combined. Therefore, if this is the worst things get before he leaves office, I think we should all thank our lucky stars.
The flame of American democracy and world leadership has been reduced to flickering embers, but it has not been extinguished. And, without Trump flicking cold water at it every day, a mere spark will soon return those embers back to a flame.
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