2/2/2022: I swear, someday, I’m going to stop blogging about Donald J. Trump. The problem is that on an almost daily basis, he reminds me that he’s a profoundly warped human being.
And yet many Americans love him.
At such times, I am reminded of a book on Adolf Hitler that I read in graduate school. Based in part on a psychological study conducted by the U.S. Army after the war, it was titled The Psychopathic God.
Before I proceed, I should note that I have repeatedly said one should not compare world leaders to Hitler – unless those evil leaders have or had their own gas chambers up and running.
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“Tell me what company you keep and I’ll tell you who you are.”
Cervantes
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I don’t mean Trump is as bad as Hitler. I am not aware of any murders he has committed. I only mean to say that his ability to hate scares me more than any other American politician in my lifetime.
We were fortunate to have a system in place during his first term that was able – barely – to keep his worst inclinations in check.
How bad was it – and how bad would it be if we were fool enough to let the man within a thousand miles of the White House in 2024? In just the last week, we’ve had Trump promise that if we elect him again, he has plans to pardon those who attacked the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021.
This comes in the midst of ongoing investigations in hundreds of cases related to the riot. Dozens of individuals have been charged with assaulting police. At least eleven defendants face charges of “seditious conspiracy.” That is, plotting to overthrow the U.S. government by means of violence.
Do all those defendants now hear the siren song of pardons yet to come, somewhere down the road? Does that encourage them to drag out matters legally – or hold back information that might damage the former president and his top advisors, if they have it? Is Trump hinting again that people who remain loyal, even those who beat police, threaten to kill the former vice president, and commit perjury, will pick up a “Get Out of Jail, Free” card when the Orange God returns to office?
Floating the idea of a pardon has worked for Trump before. Ask eight-time felon Paul Manafort and seven-time felon Roger Stone about the joys of presidential forgiveness. Stone is under suspicion again – related to the Jan. 6 attack. And Stone deserves special mention for racking up one of those particular felonies, during the days of the Mueller investigation, tow it, for witness tampering. That involved telling another potential witness he was going to kill the man’s therapy dog, and sending threatening emails.
“Prepare to die cocksucker,” Stone wrote.
Ask Alex Jones, who admitted recently that he plead the Fifth “almost a hundred times” when forced (under shadow of subpoena) to testify before the House Select Panel investigating the Jan. 6 attack. As Jones put it, he was asked “pretty reasonable questions.” His interrogators, he added, were “polite, but they were dogged.” He claimed he wanted to answer every question, but feared to do so, lest answers be twisted and made grounds for a perjury rap.
Now, visions of sugar plumb pardons are dancing in Alex’s head.
In the same way, you have Professor John Eastman, who might normally be sweating under the armpits. Congressional investigators have demanded documents related to his part in a plot to overturn the 2020 election. That plot included having VP Pence avoid asking courts questions beforehand – about the legality of the plan – and then going ahead and refusing to count the electoral votes from select states. Eastman refused to comply with a congressional subpoena.
Now a judge has ordered him to review 1,500 pages of documents per business day, set aside any that might involve executive privilege for judicial review, and send the rest on to investigators. That includes 19,000 emails.
Eastman has already appeared before Congress to testify. A source tells reporters he plead the Fifth 146 times. (See: 9/22/21 and 12/16/21 for more on Dr. Eastman.)
We don’t need a source to find out how Stone handled similar questioning. He proudly assured reporters that he plead the Fifth to every question members of the Select Panel posed.
Also pleading the Fifth was former Department of Justice underling Jeffrey Clark. In the waning days of Donald J. Trump’s time in office, Clark floated the idea of having DOJ send a misleading letter to Georgia lawmakers stating that DOJ was investigating serious voter fraud allegations in their state. For that reason, Clark wanted DOJ to say, they should refuse to certify the results of the election – which has since been validated by three recounts – and gift the state’s electoral votes to Mr. Trump.
The problem with Clark’s plan, with Eastman’s argument in favor of Pence overturning the electoral count, and with Trump’s plan to pardon all his pals, is that you’re looking at the broad outlines of a South American or African-style coup. For instance, Attorney General Bill Barr, and, after he resigned his position, acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, had already informed the president, and Mr. Clark, that there had been no serious fraud in the Georgia election.
Or any of the other states where Team Trump was trying to prove, legally, that a loaf of stale, moldy bread was a gourmet dinner.
“For us to remain a nation of laws, not men.”
Even Sen. Lindsey Graham, as groveling a sycophant as ever crawled the halls of the U.S. Senate, finally balked at taking a bite of moldy bread. Appearing on “Face the Nation,” he was asked by host Margaret Brennan to comment on the idea of pardons for the rioting bunch from Jan. 6.
“No, I don’t want to send any signal that it was OK to defile the Capitol,” he assured her. There are other groups with causes that might want to go down the same “violent path” if this batch got pardoned. “I think it’s inappropriate. ... I don’t want to do anything that would make this more likely in the future.”
Like clockwork, America’s Psychopathic God exploded. First, he attacked the senator from South Carolina. “Well, Lindsey Graham’s wrong. I mean, Lindsey’s a nice guy, but he’s a RINO,” Trump said in an interview on Newsmax. “Lindsey Graham doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about if he says that.” Trump once again described the attackers on Jan. 6 as “patriots.”
Graham stood by his comments later, saying what every Republican should be saying, but in Graham’s case, saying it three years too late, at least. “For us to remain a nation of laws, not men, we must speak with one voice when it comes to politically motivated violence,” he said. “All Americans are entitled to have a speedy trial and their day in court, but those who actively engage in violence for whatever political cause must be held accountable and not be forgiven.”
Nor was the senator from South Carolina alone – although most Republicans chose to duck and cover when the topic of pardoning insurrectionists was posed. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, at least, was blunt. Asked by a CNN reporter if those arrested should be pardoned, he replied succinctly: “Of course not.”
What did Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell think? The free press wanted to know. And Mitch was asked. (A writer for the Washington Post believes his answer was evasive. Mr. Blogger disagrees.) First, McConnell said again that Donald J. Trump lost the 2020 election. Second, McConnell said that the goal of the rioters was to “prevent the peaceful transfer of power.”
No one is ever going to claim that Sen. McConnell is a forceful speaker. But in his own no-charisma way, he was clear. “One hundred and sixty-five people have pleaded guilty to criminal behavior,” he said. “None of the trials have been finished yet, but 165 have pleaded guilty to criminal behavior.” As the Post notes, “145 of those pleas were misdemeanors. Twenty pleaded guilty to felonies, including six who admitted to having assaulted law enforcement officials.”
“My view is, I would not be in favor of shortening any of the sentences for any of the people who pleaded guilty to crimes,” McConnell explained.
How did that compare with other top Republicans’ answers? Clearly, most want to remain “top Republicans,” and that means weaseling out of jams where truth might offend one’s base. Sen. Ron Johnson, running for reelection in a battleground state this year, said he hadn’t seen Trump’s statements. And you assume he didn’t want to. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri said he would “never judge the appropriateness or not of [Trump’s] comments. … That’s not my role.”
So, you could assume that if Trump had said he believed the entire Obama family should be murdered and their heads spiked on the fence in front of the White House, Sen. Hawley wouldn’t judge?
Not his role?
Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana said he listened to Trump’s comments, “and I didn’t really think much about it. Because he says a lot of things that, at the rallies, that I don’t know if he means it or not. So I don’t know if that’s helping or not.”
Trump means every word. He’s already pardoned several felons who committed felonies in an effort to protect him.
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ALSO DREAMING OF PARDONS to come – Rep. Matt Gaetz. Innocent until proven guilty, of course. And Rep. Gaetz has not yet been charged, let alone convicted. He may be as innocent as any bleating little lamb. But he has to be getting sweaty in the groin area. A second sleazebag in the investigation into sex-trafficking of a minor, Joe Ellicot, a Florida collectibles dealer, has taken a plea deal. In December 2020, “Big Joe,” as he’s sometimes called, was served a subpoena by a federal grand jury, related to matters “involving commercial sex acts with adult and minor women, as well as obstruction of justice.”
Also included in that subpoena: Rep. Gaetz.
As Politico notes,
Ellicott agreed to plead guilty…to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of distributing a controlled substance — Adderall. In exchange, Ellicott will “cooperate fully with the United States in the investigation and prosecution of other people” and to testify against them, according to his agreement.
Ellicot’s mugshot goes up beside that of former Gaetz “wingman,” Seminole County, Fla., Tax Collector Joel Greenberg.
Mr. Greenberg is facing serious jail time, for sex-trafficking a teenager, and defrauding local taxpayers. So, like all these other miscreants, he might want to call the toll free Pardon Hotline at Mar-a-Lago.
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WHY EXACTLY, am I reminded of the book about Hitler, despite the absence of poisonous gas? Trump’s attacks on those investigating him should unnerve all thinking Americans. This past weekend, Trump blasted prosecutors in New York, Washington D.C., and Georgia who are looking into his fiscal sins in the former case, and his political sins in the second and third instances. “If these radical, vicious racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal,” Loser Don screamed at a recent rally in Texas, “I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protests we have ever had in Washington, D.C., in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere because our country and our elections are corrupt.”
Then he ramped up the hate. Sounding like a Mafia don, Don insisted those investigating his possible crimes were involved in “prosecutorial misconduct.” He called them “vicious horrible people,” adding, “They’re racist and they’re very sick,” he continued. “They’re mentally sick.”
If he could have put a bloody horse’s head in some prosecutor’s bed, you know Don would have done it, and then boasted about it with his pals.
In Fulton County, Georgia, prosecutor Fani T. Willis was forced to ask the F.B.I. for added protection for her staff and herself, as they delve into what would appear, from the evidence we have so far, to be a brazen attempt by Trump to steal the Georgia election.
POSTSCRIPT: As long as I consider Trump to be a menace, I’ll keep blogging. And speaking of menaces, you can understand why Ms. Willis might be worried about her safety. Earlier this month, the Justice Department announced the arrest of a Texas man who was already one or two steps ahead of Loser Donald, and ready to open fire in the name of freedom.
Prosecutors allege that Chad Christopher Stark posted on Craiglist in January, saying: “Georgia Patriots it’s time to kill” [unnamed Georgia official].
“Georgia Patriots it’s time for us to take back our state from the Lawless treasonous traitors,” Stark added. “It’s time to invoke our Second Amendment right it’s time to put a bullet in the treasonous Chinese [Official A]. Then we work our way down to [Official B] the local and federal corrupt judges.”
And for good measure, he warned: “Remember one thing local law enforcement the key word being local ... we will find you oathbreakers ... we’re going to make examples of traitors to our country.”
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