I set myself the task of mocking the idiocy of President Trump every day;
but I often point out ways in which he is dangerous.
Today is one of the dangerous days:
9/4/18: Just when you think President
Trump might make it through an entire day without trampling on the rule of law,
he puts on his golf spikes and starts poking fresh holes in the U.S. Constitution.
What now, you ask?
First, Trump puts his fat orange thumb on the
Twitter button and pushes down hard on the scales of justice. This time he’s
upset about the indictments of two Republican members of Congress.
Tappity-tap go the presidential digits:
Two long
running, Obama era, investigations of two very popular Republican Congressmen
were brought to a well publicized charge, just ahead of the Mid-Terms, by the
Jeff Sessions Justice Department. Two easy wins now in doubt because there is
not enough time. Good job Jeff......
....The
Democrats, none of whom voted for Jeff Sessions, must love him now. Same thing
with Lyin’ James Comey. The Dems all hated him, wanted him out, thought he was
disgusting - UNTIL I FIRED HIM! Immediately he became a wonderful man, a saint
like figure in fact. Really sick!
And there in one tidy package you glimpse the
“beauty” of Trump.
In just 95 words, without even checking grammar,
employing the kind of “logic” any fifth grader could demolish, the
President of the United States manages to:
1.
Undercut faith in the Department
of Justice
2.
Sow doubt about the fairness of
the courts
3.
Disrespect the rule of law
4.
Hint that Obama still can’t be trusted
5.
Not mention the indicted men by
name
6.
Not talk about why they were indicted
7.
Label Comey a liar (and hope his fans
aren’t keeping track of all the president’s lies—which are bountiful)
8.
Call Democrats “sick” (a favorite
Trump Twitter ploy)
9.
Insult Sessions without having
the nuts to fire him
It’s a giant package of stupidity, wrapped in
a bow of ignorance; but there are a surprising number of Trump lovers who swallow
it down.
(Note the “retweets” and “likes” when I
checked at 9:22 this morning.)
I know it probably won’t help the greatest
Trump lovers; but let’s try to sort this out in a sensible fashion. The
Department of Justice is run by a Republican appointed by President Trump.
Trump can remove Sessions—and we all know burns
with desire to do so. He doesn’t dare, at least until after the midterms. If he
were to fire Sessions now most Americans, including many of his supporters
would see it as increasingly clear proof of his intent to obstruct justice.
Sessions gets it first. Trump puts a total stooge in his place.
Devin Nunes, maybe?
Presto: The stooge fires Special Counsel
Robert Mueller and the “witch hunt” is ended.
No more annoying rule of law!
In the battle to conquer at least some small
part of ignorance, I would like to point out that F.B.I. Director Wray, a
Republican, appointed by Trump, has said repeatedly that the Mueller investigation
is not a witch hunt.
Indeed, even on the president’s favorite cable
news channel, where logic usually goes to die, real journalists are increasingly
restive. Brit Hume, senior political analyst at Fox, quickly counters Trump’s pair
of tweets with one of his own: “Will DJT never
learn that an attorney general’s job is not to play goalie for a president or
his party, or any party for that matter?”
Amen to that.
I could also try to point out to rabid Trump
fans that Obama is not some Muslim, born-in-Kenya, steal-all-the-guns
boogieman. But that would require a great expenditure of words. The logic would
still be lost.
So let’s point out that the Department of
Justice regularly investigates politicians of all stripes.
Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) was indicted
on fourteen felony counts in April 2015, when Obama was in the White House. Menendez
managed to survive a
trial, although this blogger thought he was a crook.
In many cases, however, the Department of
Justice gets its man or woman. Prosecutors indicted Sheldon Silver,
a powerful New York State legislator in 2015. This time they managed to prove that
Silver was a bribe-taking bum, who pocketed millions of dollars over a period of
ten years. Silver survived a first trial, only to be convicted in a second this
past May.
You can easily look this all up. Trump could look
it up himself, except for the fact he has the same intellectual curiosity as a
clam.
And, unlike a clam, he’s a shameless liar.
 |
| No insult intended to clams. |
If you’d like to be both appalled and amused go
to Wikipedia for a list of “American
federal politicians convicted of crimes.”
(There’s an even longer list of state and
local politicians; but for our purposes today we can move on.)
Under Mr. Obama, the Department of Justice
went after miscreants in bipartisan fashion. Anthony Weiner, a Democrat, was
famously convicted after sending pictures of his weenie to a 15-year-old girl.
Rick Renzi, a Republican congressman, was acquitted on 15 felony charges! At
last, an innocent politician….or, not. He was found guilty on 17 other felony
counts. Dennis Hassert, a former Republican lawmaker was convicted of paying
off a wrestler he had sexually assaulted when Hassert was coaching in high
school. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL), scion of a famous Democratic clan, was nailed
for a felony after misusing $750,000 in campaign funds. Trey Radel (R-FL) got
busted for cocaine possession. Chaka Fattah (D-PA) got nailed on 23 felony counts.
Michael Grimm (R-NY) pled guilty to a single count of felony tax evasion. In return,
Grimm avoided trial on nineteen additional counts and was sentenced to eight
months in jail.
Still, if you like audacity, all hail Mr. Grimm!
Fresh out of the slammer, he decided to run for Congress again in 2018.
Alas, for those of us who like to make fun of
Republicans, Grimm went down to defeat in a June
primary.
It’s not hard to understand any of this,
really. You just have to do a little reading—and a little less tweeting, if you’re
president. We want the Department of Justice to go after as many crooks in
government as they can find and convict them when the evidence merits it.
If a Republican is stealing—it’s a taxpayer’s
dollar. It’s the same dollar if a Democrat steals it.
Or a Whig.
The two congressman indicted, but not named
by Trump in his tweets, are Chris Collins (see: 8/8/18) and Duncan Hunter (see: 8/22/18).
I suspect the president didn’t want to name
them simply because some of his supporters might google their names and not
come away impressed by what they’d find. Collins has been accused of insider
trading—and just to give you a taste—he and a few of his relatives and in-laws
are accused of dumping stock they owned just before the price plunged. Collins
and his crew kept their losses to a minimum and “chumps” got stock that
promptly lost 90% of its value.
Hunter was indicted—along with his wife—and charged
with misusing campaign funds (the same crime with which the Democrat, Jesse
Jackson Jr., was charged). Among their many felonious indiscretions, the
Hunters were accused of using $600 in campaign cash to fly a pet bunny along a
family vacation.
That vacation was, of course paid for with
campaign donations.
Less humorous, and just as flagrantly
illegal, was the time Mr. and Mrs. Hunter purchased personal clothing at a golf
course gift shop and claimed they had really been buying golf balls for “wounded
warriors.”
It is true, of course, that the U.S. system
of justice is imperfect. Collins and his pals, and the Hunters may even prove
to be innocent; but the rule of law requires they be indicted if the evidence
indicates crimes have been committed. Again, this is not hard to grasp; and you
can’t grasp the truth if your too lazy to do anything but tweet, as Trump does
every day, and read stupid tweets, as too many of his fans do, also every day.
The U.S. system of justice may be the best in
the long history of the world; but problems abound—because it’s a system of men
and women, not just a system of laws. Innocent individuals have been convicted of murders and sent
to death row. Illegal immigrants do sneak into our country and do sometimes commit
heinous crimes. See, for example, the tragic story of Mollie
Tibbetts. Native-born Americans also commit heinous crimes. They shoot down concert
goers in Las Vegas, mow down members of a church congregation in Sutherland Springs
and massacre teachers and little children at Sandy Hook Elementary School. In
our system of justice even the most terrible criminals are accorded the fairest
possible trials. Real criminals sometimes get off when a dozen jurors can’t be positive they committed crimes they probably
committed. Occasionally, police have been known to plant evidence. Prosecutors
suppress exculpatory material.
A crime lab technician forges test results. Poor defendants
are often ill-served by bad lawyers—including one who repeatedly fell asleep during trial. Rich
white people generally get off with lighter
sentences and darker individuals get fined
in similar cases or carted off to jail. More than two thousand men and women,
convicted of crimes in past years, have been set free when new DNA evidence was used to exonerate them.
Those two thousand plus individual exonerated
had already spent an average of 8.8 years behind bars.
So, you see: You learn a lot about how the
U.S. courts function if you’re not simply too lazy to read.
You won’t learn anything, really—and you
might end up dumber, in fact—if you are gullible enough to believe most of the president’s
tweets.
Postscript:
With the
attention of the public directed elsewhere yesterday, Rudy Giuliani announced that once
Special Counsel Mueller completed his investigation and reported to Deputy Attorney
General Rob Rosenstein, the White House would assert executive privilege.
In other words, the president would try to
suppress any findings and the public would never see them.
Of course, President Trump insists he and his closest aides have
nothing to hide. Even a clam wouldn’t fall for that line of b.s.
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