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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on February 3, 2020 at 12:06 am
On October 4, 1943, SS Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler addressed SS officers stationed in Posen, Poland, about the ongoing campaign to exterminate the Jews of Europe.
He gave a similar speech two days later to an audience of Reichsleiters (national leaders) and Gauleiters (governors), as well as other government representatives.
Himmler intended to alert Reich officials of the extermination campaign the Schutzstaffel (“Protective Squads”)—otherwise known as the SS—and Wehrmacht (German army) had been waging since June, 1941.
The purpose: To make his listeners accessories to his monumental crimes—and to warn them there was no turning back.
Heinrich Himmler
Either Nazi Germany won the war that its Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, had unintentionally unleashed on September 1, 1939—or its topmost officials would themselves face extinction as war criminals.
Said Himmler:
“I want to also mention a very difficult subject before you, with complete candor. It should be discussed amongst us, yet nevertheless, we will never speak about it in public. I am talking about the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people.
“It is one of those things that is easily said: ‘The Jewish people is being exterminated.’…Most of you will know what it means when 100 bodies lie together, when 500 are there or when there are 1000. And to have seen this through and—with the exception of human weakness—to have remained decent, has made us hard and is a page of glory never mentioned and never to be mentioned….
“But altogether we can say: We have carried out this most difficult task for the love of our people. And we have suffered no defect within us, in our soul, in our character.”
Fast forward 76 years—to January, 2020.
On December 18, 2019, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives approved two Articles of Impeachment against President Donald Trump:
Article 1: Abuse of Power: For pressuring Ukraine to assist him in his re-election campaign by damaging former Vice President Joseph Biden, his possible 2020 Democratic rival; and
Article 2: Obstruction of Congress: For obstructing Congress by blocking testimony of subpoenaed witnesses and refusing to provide documents in response to House subpoenas in the impeachment inquiry.
Donald Trump
Trump’s defense in the House had consisted of:
- Refusing to testify himself;
- Refusing to produce witnesses on his behalf;
- Refusing to turn over requested documents;
- Claiming that Democrats were preventing him from testifying or producing witnesses;
- Ordering administration officials to not testify before the six House impeachment committees investigating his behavior.
Those government employees who testified did so voluntarily—and at risk of retaliation. Among these were:
- Ukraine ambassador Bill Taylor;
- Laura Cooper, the top Pentagon official overseeing Ukraine-related U.S. policy;
- Former White House official Fiona Hill; and
- Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.
They offered damning testimony against Trump.
When the trial began in the United States Senate on January 16, 2020, Trump’s legal team:
- Did not call any witnesses;
- Did not deny that Trump had sought to coerce Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into interfering with the 2020 election;
- Attacked Joseph and Hunter Biden as if they were on trial;
- Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul submitted a written question to presiding Chief Justice John Roberts that included the name of the alleged whistleblower to Trump’s coercion. Roberts refused to read it aloud;
- Paul raced outside the Senate and gave a press conference, where he named the alleged whistleblower—whose identity is protected by law.
Rand Paul
Perhaps even more frightening: One of Trump’s attorneys, Alan Dershowitz, offered Trump—and all future Presidents–a blanket of immunity worthy of a king:
“If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment. Every public official that I know believes that his election is of the public interest.”
Responding to that argument, House Manager Adam Schiff (D-CA) said: “It’s been a remarkable evolution of the presidential defense. It began with, ‘none of that stuff happened here.’ It began with ‘nothing to see here.’ It migrated to, ‘OK, they did seek investigations of the president’s political rival.’ And then it became OK.”
Meanwhile, the Senate majority of 53 Republicans vigorously supported Trump’s demand that no witnesses to his crimes be allowed to testify.
Among these: Former National Security Adviser John Bolton.
On December 29, 2019, The New York Times broke a sensational story:
In a forthcoming book, Bolton had written that Trump had told him, in August 2019, that he wanted to continue freezing aid to Ukraine until its officials began investigating the Bidens.
Despite—or because of—this bombshell report, Senate Republicans absolutely refused to admit the testimony of witnesses.
By following the same strategy as Heinrich Himmler, Trump has entangled Republicans in his own crimes.
His infamy is now theirs.
History has brutally condemned those Germans who, knowing the full extent of Adolf Hitler’s crimes, nevertheless signed on to perpetuate and conceal them.
History will render the same damning verdict against Senate Republicans who have provided similar cover for Donald Trump.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 22, 2020 at 12:21 am
According to a January 18 CNN story, President Donald Trump can’t understand why he’s been impeached.
“Why are they doing this to me,” an anonymous source quoted Trump as saying repeatedly. Over the weekend of January 18-19, Trump told people around him at Mar-a-Lago that he “can’t understand why he is impeached.”
For starters, he could read the legal brief that Democratic House managers filed with the Senate:
“President Donald J. Trump used his official powers to pressure a foreign government to interfere in a United States election for his personal political gain, and then attempted to cover up his scheme by obstructing Congress’s investigation into his misconduct.
“The Constitution provides a remedy when the President commits such serious abuses of his office: impeachment and removal. The Senate must use that remedy now to safeguard the 2020 U.S. election, protect our constitutional form of government, and eliminate the threat that the President poses to America’s national security.”
But Trump has completely dismissed such arguments, despite the overwhelming evidence backing them up.
Donald Trump
Trump has become internationally notorious as a liar. By December 16, 2019, The Washington Post reported that he had made 15,413 false or misleading statements.
But there is no reason to doubt his sincerity when he says he doesn’t know why he’s been impeached.
And backing up that assertion would be no less an authority than the late British historian and author, Robert Payne.
Payne authored more than 110 books. Among his subjects were Adolf Hitler, Ivan the Terrible, Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, William Shakespeare and Leon Trotsky.
In 1975, he published The Corrupt Society: From Ancient Greece to Present-Day America. Among the epochs it covered were the civilizations of ancient Greece, Rome and China; Nazi Germany; the Soviet Union; and Watergate-era America.
Robert Payne
Forty-one years before Donald Trump entered the White House, Payne offered a terrifying examination of the future President’s character.
In his chapter, “The Corrupt Individual,” Payne writes: “The corrupt man walks alone, gathering more and more power and wealth to himself, leaving a trail of destruction wherever he passes until he finally destroys himself.”
“One aspect of him is immediately recognizable: His contempt for his fellow men. Hence his ruthlessness, his celebration of himself at the expense of everyone else, his absorption in his own affairs to the exclusion of all other affairs.
“Hence, too, his secretiveness, his intense sensitivity to real or imagined slights, for his contempt does not exclude a certain fear. He is necessarily a conspirator who imagines that his fellow men are conspiring against him.”
The corrupt man holds human life in contempt. He does not care how many people he kills or destroys on his march to fame, wealth or power—and to maintain himself in any or all of them.
When a nation is weak and divided, “a tyrant arises to take advantage of their weakness and divisiveness. He comes usually from the middle or upper class.”
He quickly identifies himself with a political party offering revolutionary changes. Then he takes control of it and turns it into his vehicle to power.
“He acts decisively and ruthlessly, driving wedges between people and setting them in opposition to one another. He is the master of corruption, and if necessary he will seek to corrupt the whole state to maintain his power. His weapons are the familiar weapons of subversion, treachery, and lies.”
Tyrants plunge into dangerous foreign adventures because it allows them to assert power over others with almost no domestic oversight. This makes them feel important—and distracts their subjects from worrying about internal affairs.
Tyrants shout, “We need law and order!”—while they are the most lawless thieves and murderers.
Tyrants learn nothing from the past or their own failures. Their characters do not change or develop. They surround themselves with sycophants and regard disagreement as treason. Because others fear to approach them with bad news—such as their armies have revolted—tyrants live in a world of lies and delusions.
Only when it is too late do they learn how widely-hated they are—and how determined their enemies are to destroy them.
Writes Payne:
“In our own age it becomes more and more difficult to wage war against corruption. The corrupt tend increasingly to acquire power, and the uncorrupted want more and more to be left alone.
“This is why it is so necessary to recognize the corrupt individual, the potential tyrant, to observe him closely, and wherever possible, to destroy him.”
Most Americans ignore history, believing that it has nothing worthwhile to offer them. When American military advisers in Vietnam were warned that the French had fought a losing war against the Vietcong, they responded: “They didn’t kill enough Vietcong.”
When Americans think of Fascistic dictatorships, they think of Adolf Hitler’s Germany and Benito Mussolini’s Italy—both of which ended 74 years ago in 1945.
They don’t think that such a dictatorship could ever happen here—or that, under a Republican party obsessed with holding absolute power, it has already happened.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 8, 2020 at 12:35 am
For Donald Trump, becoming America’s “President-for-Life” is no joke—although he has often “joked” about doing just that. For example:
- In March 2018, he told Republican donors during a closed-door speech at Mar-a-Lago:[Chinese President Xi Jinping] “is now President for life. President for life. No, he’s great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”
- In May, 2019, Trump retweeted Evangelical leader Jerry Falwell Jr.’s suggestion that he’s owed “2 yrs added to his 1st term” due to distractions caused by the Robert Mueller investigation.
The ancient historian, Plutarch, warned in his biography of Alexander the Great:
“And the most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men; sometimes a matter of less moment, an expression or a jest, informs us better of their characters and inclinations, than the most famous sieges, the greatest armaments, or the bloodiest battles whatsoever.”
Plutarch
Odysses [CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D
And, in making these repeated statements, Trump has revealed his ultimate intention: To overthrow America’s constitutional government.
Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks offered a disturbing analysis of Trump’s character on the March 25, 2016 edition of The PBS Newshour:
“And so you really are seeing someone who just has an odd psychology unleavened by kindness and charity, but where it’s all winners and losers, beating and being beat. And that’s part of the authoritarian personality, but it comes out in his attitude toward women.”
Brooks’ analysis has been proven brilliantly accurate during the two years of Trump’s Presidency. He has attacked one person or institution after another—including officials within his own administration.
For example:
- Repeatedly and viciously attacking the nation’s free press for daring to report his growing list of crimes and disasters, calling it “the enemy of the American people.”
- Publicly siding with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin against American Intelligence agencies (FBI, CIA, National Security Agency) which unanimously agreed that Russia had subverted the 2016 Presidential election.
- Firing FBI Director James Comey for investigating that subversion.
- Shutting down the Federal Government on December 22, 2018—because Democrats refused to fund his “border wall” between the United States and Mexico. An estimated 380,000 government employees were furloughed and another 420,000 were ordered to work without pay. This lasted until January 25, 2019, when Trump caved to public pressure.
* * * * *
Since childhood, Trump has had an overwhelming sense of entitlement and his own importance.
Donald Trump
As a businessman, he demanded that his employees sign Non-Disclosure Agreements to prevent the outside world from learning of his crimes and follies. He has tried to continue that practice in the White House, even though it is flagrantly illegal.
More ominously, he identifies himself with the State—and thus deems anyone who disagrees with or opposes him as guilty of treason. And the penalty for treason has traditionally been death.
Furious that Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) mocked him during a session of the House Intelligence Committee, Trump tweeted:
“His lies were made in perhaps the most blatant and sinister manner ever seen in the great Chamber. He wrote down and read terrible things, then said it was from the mouth of the President of the United States. I want Schiff questioned at the highest level for Fraud & Treason…..”
He judged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “every bit as guilty as Liddle’ Adam Schiff for High Crimes and Misdemeanors, and even Treason.”
But now Trump faces a far greater threat than mere disagreement or criticism.
On December 18, 2019, the House of Representatives voted for two Articles of Impeachment to remove Trump from office: Abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The case has not yet been sent to the Senate, but that there will be a trial is a certainty.
Whenever Trump has been unable to buy or intimidate his way out of trouble, he has lashed out. And in Nancy Pelosi he faces an implacable foe and a master legislative tactician.
Desperate to avoid impeachment and the cascade of damning news as more of his crimes are revealed almost daily, he has hit upon the most powerful “remedy” of all: War.
What can be even more attention-grabbing than an expected trial of the President of the United States? A fullscale war between the United States and Iran, a country America has been at odds with since 1979.
Moreover, by going this route, he can take revenge, Matt Bevin-style, on those Americans who dared elect Democratic members of Congress to oppose him.
An all-out war between nuclear-armed America and an Iran now coming into its own as a nuclear power will last for years and leave untold numbers of hated “liberals” as incinerated or blasted corpses.
And just as he dodged the draft during the Vietnam war, Trump expects to dodge the calamity he is trying to unleash.
Surrounded by Secret Service agents, able to be whisked into heavily-fortified bunkers or onto a high-tech Air Force One, he stands an excellent chance of doing so.
With enough national carnage and confusion, he might live out his dream to become “President-for-Life”—simply because there won’t be any opposition capable of challenging him.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 7, 2020 at 12:04 am
On November 5, Kentucky voters refused to re-elect Republican Governor Matt Bevin. To get revenge, he issued more than 650 pardons to hardened criminals before he left office on December 9.
He claimed these were people he would not hesitate to welcome as neighbors, co-workers or members of his church.
Among those pardoned:
- Convicted killer Patrick Baker, who had served two years of a 19-year sentence for reckless homicide and robbery in the slaying of a Knox County man in front of his family. Baker’s brother held a campaign fundraiser for Bevin in July 2018 that raised $21,500.
- Micah Schoettle, a convicted child rapist. In 2018, a judge sentenced Schoettle to 23 years in prison. But Bevin said he made his decision partly because the hymen of the nine-year-old victim was still intact.
“This is perhaps more specific than people would want,” Bevin said in a radio interview. “But trust me. If you have been repeatedly sexually violated as a small child by an adult, there are going to be repercussions of that physically and medically.”
Studies show that most child victims do not show evidence of physical damage and that examination of the tissue is not a reliable test of sexual activity.
Matt Bevin
- Leif Halvorsen, who confessed to a triple murder in 1983. Bevin removed Halvorson from death row and commuted his sentence to life in prison.
- Dayton Jones was serving a 15-year sentence after he and three other men pleaded guilty to sodomizing an unconscious teenage boy at a party and videotaping the incident. Then they posted the video on social media.
Bevin said there was “no evidence” showing that Jones was present at the assault because he did not appear in the video.
Under Kentucky state law, people can directly apply to the govern’s office for clemency. While most states require a board review to decide who gets their sentences reduced or pardoned, Kentucky does not.
“You have police, FBI, judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers, hours and hours of work undone on the whim of one person,” Leland Hulbert, who prosecuted a case for an individual pardoned by the governor, told The New York Times. “It’s almost like a godlike power.”
Defending his pardons, Bevin told The Washington Post: “I’m a big believer in second chances. I think this is a nation that was founded on the concept of redemption and second chances and new pages in life.”
These hardened criminals whom Bevin has given “a second chance” will be preying on Kentuckians for decades to come.
Apparently, President Donald Trump has learned something from Bevin’s departing act.
Donald Trump
On September 9, 2019, the House Foreign Affairs, Intelligence and Oversight and Reform committees began investigating his attempted extortion of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.
On July 25, 2019, Trump had “asked” Zelensky to do him a “favor”: Find embarrassing “dirt” on former Vice President Joseph Biden and his son, Hunter.
Hunter had had business dealings in Ukraine. And Joe Biden might be Trump’s Democratic opponent for the White House in 2020.
To underline the seriousness of his “request,” Trump had withheld $400 million in military aid Congress had approved for Ukraine, which is facing an increasingly aggressive Russia.
But then a CIA whistleblower filed a complaint about the extortion attempt—and the media and Congress soon learned of it.
The ensuing Congressional investigation triggered nonstop Trump abuse of Democrats generally and especially of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff.
Nancy Pelosi
On December 18, 2019, the House of Representatives impeached Donald Trump along party lines.
On December 24—a day when most Americans were celebrating the alleged birthday of Jesus Christ—Trump threw a tantrum at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla.:
“She [Pelosi] hates the Republican Party. She hates all of the people that voted for me and the Republican Party and she’s desperate. She’s doing a tremendous disservice to the country, and she’s not doing a great job. And some people think she doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
And on Christmas Day, Trump tweeted: “Why should Crazy Nancy Pelosi, just because she has a slight majority in the House, be allowed to Impeach the President of the United States? Got ZERO Republican votes, there was no crime, the call with Ukraine was perfect, with ‘“no pressure.’ She said it must be ‘bipartisan…
“‘…& overwhelming,’ but this Scam Impeachment was neither. Also, very unfair with no Due Process, proper representation, or witnesses. Now Pelosi is demanding everything the Republicans weren’t allowed to have in the House. Dems want to run majority Republican Senate. Hypocrites!”
Even before the Democratic House took its first steps toward impeaching him, Trump was enraged that they might even want to do so.
On May 30, 2019, he raged at reporters: “I don’t see how they can because they’re possibly allowed, although I can’t imagine the courts allowing it. I’ve never gone into it. I never thought that would even be possible to be using that word. To me, it’s a dirty word—the word impeach. It’s a dirty, filthy, disgusting word.”
Seven months later—on December 18—“impeachment” would become more than a word. It would become reality.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on December 12, 2019 at 12:11 am
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) has a sense of history that many of his colleagues—especially Republicans—would do well to acquire.
Since September, he has headed an investigation into President Donald J. Trump’s attempt to extort foreign interference on his behalf in the 2020 election.
Adam Schiff
In July, 2019, he told his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to withhold almost $400 million in promised military aid for Ukraine, which faces increasing aggression from Russia.
On July 25, Trump telephoned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to “request” a “favor”: Investigate Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, who has had business dealings in Ukraine.
The reason for such an investigation: To find embarrassing “dirt” on Biden.
Joe Biden
But then a CIA whistleblower filed a complaint about the extortion attempt—and the media and Congress soon learned of it.
On November 25, Schiff sat for an extended interview with Jake Tapper, CNN’s political correspondent.
What would it mean if Republicans uniformly oppose any articles of impeachment against Trump? asked Tapper.
Schiff replied that the vote would be a matter of conscience—and history: “It will have very long-term consequences, if that’s where we end up.
“And if not today, I think Republican members in the future, to their children and their grandchildren, will have to explain why they did nothing in the face of this deeply unethical man who did such damage to the country.”
Donald Trump
In the classic 1960 movie, “Judgment at Nuremberg,” Burt Lancaster, as Ernst Janning, the once distinguished German judge, confesses his guilt and that of Nazi Germany in a controlled, yet emotional, outburst.
“My counsel would have you believe we were not aware of the concentration camps. Not aware? Where were we?
“Where were we when Hitler began shrieking his hate in the Reichstag? When our neighbors were dragged out in the middle of the night to Dachau?
“Where were we when every village in Germany has a railroad terminal where cattle cars were filled with children being carried off to their extermination? Where were we when they cried out in the night to us? Were we deaf? Dumb? Blind?
“My counsel says we were not aware of the extermination of the millions. He would give you the excuse we were only aware of the extermination of the hundreds. Does that make us any the less guilty?
“Maybe we didn’t know the details, but if we didn’t know, it was because we didn’t want to know.”
Adam Schiff is clearly hoping to avoid such an infamous fate for his own country.
In his bestselling 1973 biography, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler, British historian Robert Payne harshly condemned the German people for the rise of the Nazi dictator:
“[They] allowed themselves to be seduced by him and came to enjoy the experience….[They] followed him with joy and enthusiasm because he gave them license to pillage and murder to their hearts’ content. They were his servile accomplices, his willing victims.”
On November 8, 2016, millions of ignorant, hate-filled, Right-wing Americans catapulted Donald Trump—a man, charged conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks, with an “odd psychology unleavened by kindness and charity”—into the Presidency.
Upon taking office in January, 2017, Trump began undermining one public or private institution after another.
- He repeatedly and viciously attacked the nation’s free press for daring to report his growing list of crimes and disasters, calling it “the enemy of the American people.”
- He brutally attacked American Intelligence agencies—such as the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency—which unanimously agreed that Russia had interfered with the 2016 Presidential election.
- He repeatedly attacked Seattle U.S. District Judge James Robart, who halted Trump’s first Muslim travel ban.
- He fired FBI Director James Comey for refusing to pledge his personal loyalty to Trump and continuing to investigate Russian subversion of the 2016 election.
- He intended to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller in 2017, but was talked out of it by aides fearful that it would result in his impeachment.
- He has lied so often—13,435 times by October 14, 2019, according to the Washington Post—he’s universally distrusted, at home and abroad.
- On December 22, 2018, he shut down the Federal government—because Democrats refused to fund his “border wall” between the United States and Mexico.
- An estimated 380,000 government employees were furloughed and another 420,000 were ordered to work without pay. This lasted until January 25, 2019, when Trump caved to public pressure.
So why have Republicans almost unanimously stood by Trump despite the wreckage he has made of American foreign and domestic policy? Fear that they will lose their privileged positions in Congress if they don’t.
This could happen by:
- Their being voted out of Congress by Trump’s fanatical base; or
- Their being voted out of Congress by anti-Trump voters sensing Republican weakness if he’s impeached.
Future historians—if there are any—will similarly and harshly condemn those Americans who, like “good Germans,” joyfully embraced a regime dedicated to:
- Celebrating Trump’s egomania;
- Using the White House to further enrich Trump;
- Siding with Russia and North Korea against America’s oldest allies, such as NATO;
- Depriving America’s poor of their only source of healthcare; and
- Further enriching the ultra-wealthy.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on December 4, 2019 at 12:42 am
In 1996, Newt Gingrich, then Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, wrote a memo that encouraged Republicans to “speak like Newt.”
Entitled “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control,” it urged Republicans to attack Democrats with such words as “corrupt,” “selfish,” “destructive,” “hypocrisy,” “liberal,” “sick,” and “traitors.”
Newt Gingrich
Even worse, Gingrich encouraged the news media to disseminate such accusations. Among his suggestions:
- “Fights make news.”
- Create a “shield issue” to deflect criticism: “A shield issue is, just, you know, your opponent is going to attack you as lacking compassion. You better…show up in the local paper holding a baby in the neonatal center.”
In the memo, Gingrich advised:
“….In the video “We are a Majority,” Language is listed as a key mechanism of control used by a majority party, along with Agenda, Rules, Attitude and Learning.
“As the tapes have been used in training sessions across the country and mailed to candidates we have heard a plaintive plea: ‘I wish I could speak like Newt.’
“That takes years of practice. But, we believe that you could have a significant impact on your campaign and the way you communicate if we help a little. That is why we have created this list of words and phrases….
“This list is prepared so that you might have a directory of words to use in writing literature and mail, in preparing speeches, and in producing electronic media.
“The words and phrases are powerful. Read them. Memorize as many as possible. And remember that like any tool, these words will not help if they are not used.”
Here is the list of words Gingrich urged his followers to use in describing “the opponent, their record, proposals and their party”:
- abuse of power
- anti- (issue): flag, family, child, jobs
- betray
- bizarre
- bosses
- bureaucracy
- cheat
- coercion
- “compassion” is not enough
- collapse(ing)
- consequences
- corrupt
- corruption
- criminal rights
- crisis
- cynicism
- decay
- deeper
- destroy
- destructive
- devour
- disgrace
- endanger
- excuses
- failure (fail)
- greed
- hypocrisy
- ideological
- impose
- incompetent
- insecure
- insensitive
|
- intolerant
- liberal
- lie
- limit(s)
- machine
- mandate(s)
- obsolete
- pathetic
- patronage
- permissive attitude
- pessimistic
- punish (poor …)
- radical
- red tape
- self-serving
- selfish
- sensationalists
- shallow
- shame
- sick
- spend(ing)
- stagnation
- status quo
- steal
- taxes
- they/them
- threaten
- traitors
- unionized
- urgent (cy)
- waste
- welfare
|
Yes, speaking like Newt—or Adolf Hitler or Joseph R. McCarthy—“takes years of practice.”
And to the dismay of both Republicans and Democrats, Donald Trump has learned his lessons well.
On May 27, 2016, conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks analyzed the use of insults by Republican Presidential front-runner Donald Trump. He did so with his counterpart, liberal syndicated columnist, Mark Shields, on The PBS Newshour.
“Trump, for all his moral flaws, is a marketing genius. And you look at what he does. He just picks a word and he attaches it to a person. Little Marco [Rubio], Lyin’ Ted [Cruz], Crooked Hillary [Clinton].
“And that’s a word. And that’s how marketing works. It’s a simple, blunt message, but it gets under.
“It sticks, and it diminishes. And so it has been super effective for him, because he knows how to do that. And she [Hillary Clinton] just comes with, ‘Oh, he’s divisive.’
“These are words that are not exciting people. And her campaign style has gotten, if anything…a little more stagnant and more flat.”
Donald Trump
MARK SHIELDS: “Donald Trump gratuitously slandered Ted Cruz’s wife. He libeled Ted Cruz’s father for being potentially part of Lee Harvey Oswald’s assassination of the president of the United States, suggesting that he was somehow a fellow traveler in that.
“This is a libel. You don’t get over it….”
Hillary Clinton wasn’t the only Presidential candidate who proved unable to cope with Trump’s gift for insult. His targets—and insults—included:
- Former Texas Governor Rick Perry: “Wears glasses to seem smart.”
- Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush: “Low Energy Jeb.”
- Vermont U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders: “Crazy Bernie.”
- Ohio Governor John Kasich: “Mathematically dead and totally desperate.”
Trump has reserved his most insulting words for women. For example:
- Carly Fiorina, his Republican primary competitor: “Look at that face. Would anyone vote for that?”
- Megyn Kelly, Fox News reporter: “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever.”
- California Rep. Maxine Waters: “An extremely low IQ person.”
- Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi: “MS-13 Lover Nancy Pelosi.”
Only one candidate has shown the ability to rattle Trump: Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.
As Mark Shields noted on The PBS Newshour.
“Elizabeth Warren gets under Donald Trunp’s skin. And I think she’s been the most effective adversary. I think she’s done more to unite the Democratic party than either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders.
“I mean, she obviously—he can’t stay away from her. He is tweeting about her.”
And David Brooks offered: “And so the tactics…is either you do what Elizabeth Warren has done, like full-bore negativity, that kind of [get] under the skin, or try to ridicule him and use humor.”
A May 12, 2016 story on CNN—“Elizabeth Warren Gives Trump a Dose of His Own Medicine on Twitter”—noted: “Whenever Trump criticizes her, Warren fires right back at him, sometimes twice as hard.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 29, 2019 at 12:16 am
On July 25, 2019, President Donald J Trump tried to extort a “favor” from Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine: Find embarrassing “dirt” on former Vice President Joseph Biden and his son, Hunter.
Hunter had had business dealings in Ukraine. And Joe Biden might be Trump’s Democratic opponent for the White House in 2020.
Joseph Biden
To underline the seriousness of his “request,” Trump had withheld $400 million in promised military aid to Ukraine, which is facing an increasingly aggressive Russia.
But then a CIA whistleblower filed a complaint about the extortion attempt—and the media and Congress soon learned of it.
On November 22, 2019, Mark Shields—a liberal syndicated columnist—and David Brooks—a conservative one for The New York Times—reached disturbingly similar conclusions about the corruption reveled by hearings of the House Intelligence Committee.
DAVID BROOKS: “I think Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani, I don’t think it ever occurred to them that this was unethical. What strikes me [is] that everyone was in the loop, that this was not something they tried to hide.
“This was just something they thought was the way politics gets done or foreign policy gets done, that there’s no division between personal gain and public service.”
MARK SHIELDS: “What I have underestimated….is the fear that Donald Trump exercises over Republicans.I mean, people talked about Lyndon Johnson being a fearsome political leader. They don’t even approach. I mean, he strikes fear into the hearts of Republicans up and down the line. And I think that….has been eye-opening in its dimensions.”
Nor is there any reason to hope that the GOP will reign Trump in.
In a November 14 column, “Republicans Can’t Abandon Trump Now Because They’re All Guilty,” freelance journalist Joel Mathis warns: “Trump’s abuses of power mirror those of the GOP as a whole. Republicans can’t turn on him, because doing so would be to indict their party’s entire approach to politics.”
For example:
- At the state level, GOP legislatures have passed numerous voter ID laws over the last decade. Officially, the reason has been to prevent non-citizens from voting. In reality, the motive is to depress turnout among Democratic constituencies.
- When Democrats have won elections, Republicans have tried to make it impossible for them to carry out their policies. In Utah, voters approved Medicaid expansion at the ballot box—but Republicans nullified this.
- In North Carolina, Republican legislators prevented voters from choosing their representatives. Instead, Republican representatives chose voters through partisan sorting. In September, the state’s Supreme Court ruled the legislative gerrymandered district map unconstitutional.
The upshot of all this: “The president and his party are united in the belief that their entitlement to power allows them to manipulate and undermine the country’s democratic processes….
“In the meantime, it is probably best to give up waiting for that impeachment-induced moment—a Watergate—when Republicans realize their duty to country and come around to opposing him. The president and today’s GOP share the same sins. It will be difficult for them to abandon each other.”
That appears to be the judgment of Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Concluding the proceedings for November 21, Schiff attacked Republicans’ total rejection of the overwhelming evidence linking Trump with extortion:
Adam Schiff
“But apparently, it’s all hearsay. Even when you actually hear the president….that’s hearsay. We can’t rely on people saying what the president said. Apparently, we can only rely on what the president says, and there, we shouldn’t even rely on that either….
“We should imagine he said something about actually fighting corruption, instead of what he actually said, which was, ‘I want you to do us a favor, though. I want you to look into this 2016 CrowdStrike conspiracy theory, and I want you to look into the Bidens.’
“I guess we’re not even supposed to rely on that because that’s hearsay….That would be like saying you can’t rely on the testimony of the burglars during Watergate because it’s only hearsay, or you can’t consider the fact that they tried to break in because they got caught. They actually didn’t get what they came for, so, you know, kind of no harm, no foul. That’s absurd.
“The difference between [Watergate and Trump’s attempted extortion of Ukraine] is not the difference between [Richard] Nixon and [Donald] Trump. It’s the difference between that Congress and this one. And so, we are asking, where is Howard Baker? Where are the people who are willing to go beyond their party to look to their duty?
“But the other defense besides ‘It failed, the scheme failed, they got caught,’ the other defense is ‘The president denies it.’ Well, I guess that’s case closed, right?
“….This president believes he is above the law, beyond accountability. And in my view, there is nothing more dangerous than an unethical president who believes they are above the law.”
* * * * *
Those who lament that the United States has become a polarized nation must realize there is only one choice: Either Americans will remain free—or they will be enslaved by a ruthless political party convinced it is entitled to manipulate and undermine the country’s democratic processes;
There is no middle ground.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 28, 2019 at 12:26 am
On November 14, the CNN website showcased an opinion piece by Jane Carr and Laura Juncadella entitled: “Fractured States of America.”
And it opened:
“Some worry that it’s already too late, that we’ve crossed a threshold of polarization from which there is no return. Others look toward a future where more moderate voices are heeded and heard, and Americans can find better ways to relate to each other. Still others look back to history for a guide—perhaps for what not to do, or at the very least for proof that while it’s been bad before, progress is still possible.”
Then followed a series of anecdotes. The sub-headlines summed up many of the comments reported.
- “I was starting to hate people that I have loved for years.”
- “Voting for Trump cost me my friends.”
- “I feel like I’m living in hostile territory.”
- “Our children are watching this bloodsport.”
- “A student’s Nazi-style salute reflects the mate.”
- “Our leaders reflect the worst of us.”
- “I truly believe I will be assaulted over a bumper sticker.”
- “It already feels like a cold war.”
Abraham Lincoln warned: “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half-slave and half-free. It will become all one thing or all the other.”
America now faces such a choice:
- To submit to the tyrannical aggression of a ruthless political party convinced that they are entitled to power to manipulate and undermine the country’s democratic processes; or
- To fiercely resist that aggression and the destruction of those democratic processes.
Consider the face-off between President Donald J. Trump and Army Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman.
Vindman is is a United States Army officer who serves as the Director for European Affairs for the United States National Security Council. He is also a witness to Trump’s efforts to extort “a favor” from the president of Ukraine.
Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman
Адміністрація Президента України [CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)%5D
In July, 2019, Trump told his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to withhold almost $400 million in promised military aid for Ukraine, which faces increasing aggression from Russia.
On July 25, Trump telephoned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to “request” a “favor”: Investigate 2020 Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, who has had business dealings in Ukraine.
The reason for such an investigation: To find embarrassing “dirt” on Biden.
“I was concerned by the call,” Vindman, having overheard Trump’s phone call, testified before the House Intelligence Committee. “I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen, and I was worried about the implications for the U.S. Government’s support of Ukraine.
“I realized that if Ukraine pursued an investigation into the Bidens and Burisma, it would likely be interpreted as a partisan play which would undoubtedly result in Ukraine losing the bipartisan support it has thus far maintained. This would all undermine U.S. national security.”
Trump denounced Vindman as a “Never Trumper”—as if opposing his extortion attempt constituted a blasphemy. Republicans and their shills on the Fox News Network attacked him as well. As a result, he sought protection by the Army for himself and his family.
Donald Trump
On November 15, conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks and liberal syndicated columnist Mark Shields summed up the different reactions by Republicans and Democrats to Trump’s extortion attempt.
Their forum: The PBS Newshour. While they often reach different conclusions on the same matter, on this occasion they found themselves in virtual agreement.
David Brooks and Mark Shields on “The PBS Newshour”
DAVID BROOKS: “The case is very solid and airtight that there was the quid pro quo. All the testimony points to that. And, mostly, you see a contrast. The first two gentlemen that testified on the first day, they were just upstanding, solid public servants.
“I felt like I was looking back in time, because I was looking at two people who are not self-centered. They cared about the country. They were serving. They had not partisan axe to grind. They were just honest men of integrity.
“And I thought we saw that again today with [former Ambassador to Ukraine] Marie Yovanovitch. And in her case, the day was more emotional, because you got to see a case of bullying against a strong, upstanding woman.
“And so I thought she expressed—like, the heavy moments of today where when she expressed her reaction to how badly she was treated. And so that introduces an element of emotion and pathos into what shouldn’t be just a legal proceeding. It should be something where people see the contrast between good people and bad people.”
MARK SHIELDS: “There’s a sense of outrage building. This is a story of corruption, corruption not in Ukraine, corruption in the United States.
“I mean, why? Why did they go to such lengths to denigrate, to attack, to try and destroy and sabotage the career of a dedicated public servant [United States Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovich], a person who had put her life on the line? Why did they do it? What was it, money? Was it power?”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on October 23, 2019 at 12:06 am
On January 27, 1944, Adolf Hitler—Nazi Germany’s Fuhrer—called an assembly of his principal generals from the Russian front.
The war he had started on September 1, 1939, was not going well for the Fatherland.
Germany faced the two-front war that Hitler himself had warned against in Mein Kampf: With the Americans and British closing in from the West, and the Russians inexorably closing in from the East.
Rows of generals sat before Hitler in the dining room of a converted inn, near his Wolf’s Lair military headquarters, near the East Prussian town of Rastenburg,
Hitler and his generals
Hitler spoke about the crucial role war played in the life of nations, and how important dynamic leadership and racial purity were to a nation’s morale. He boasted that powerful new weapons would soon be available for turning the tide of the conflict: New radar equipment, new submarines, new torpedoes.
Victory would emerge after May, 1944. Meanwhile, his armies must hold out.
And then he threw down a challenge:
“If the worst comes to the worst and I am ever abandoned as Supreme Commander by my people, I must still expect my entire officer corps to muster around me with daggers drawn—just as every field marshal or the commander of an army, corps, division or regiment expects his subordinates to stand by him in the hour of crisis.”
Suddenly, the unbelievable happened: For the first time since he had taken command of Germany almost 11 years earlier, he was loudly interrupted.
“And so it will be, Mein Fuhrer!”
The voice belonged to Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, the military genius who had crafted the successful conquest of France in June, 1940.
Erich von Manstein
Hitler hoped that Manstein had meant to reassure him of the generals’ loyalty.
But Martin Bormann, his toadying chief secretary, cautioned otherwise: The generals had interpreted the outburst to mean that the worst would indeed come to the worst.
As indeed it did.
Seventy-five years later, another powerful dictator, fighting for his life, issued a similar challenge to members of his political party.
President Donald Trump faced an impeachment inquiry from Democrats in the House of Representatives. And he believed that his fellow Republicans in the United States Senate and House were not supporting him vigorously enough.
So, on October 21, 2019, he lectured them during a meeting of his Cabinet. “The two things they [Democrats] have: They’re vicious and they stick together. They don’t have Mitt Romney in their midst. They don’t have people like that.”
Romney, the United States Senator from Utah, is the only Republican who has said he might be open to impeaching Trump. He has also called Trump’s calls for Ukraine and China to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, “appalling.”
Joe Biden is a potential White House rival for Trump in 2020.
“I watched a couple of people on television today,” continued Trump. “They were talking about what a phony deal it is. What a phony investigation it is.
“And Republicans have to get tougher and fight. We have some that are great fighters, but they have to get tougher and fight because the Democrats are trying to hurt the Republican party for the election, which is coming up, where we’re doing very well.”
Donald Trump
The following day, October 22, Trump doubled down on the unfairness of the impeachment inquiry he was facing.
Reaching out to his fanatical base, he took to Twitter: “So some day, if a Democrat becomes President and the Republicans win the House, even by a tiny margin, they can impeach the President, without due process or fairness or any legal rights.
“All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here – a lynching. But we will WIN!”
By comparing a Constitutionally-sanctioned process to an illegal “lynching,” Trump hoped to strip the impeachment inquiry of its legitimacy.
Trump’s slander came on the same day that William Taylor, the former ambassador to Ukraine, testified before House lawmakers behind closed doors for more than nine hours.
Reading a 15-page statement, Taylor said that he had grown increasingly alarmed as American officials tried to coerce Ukraine into investigating Joe and Hunter Biden. And he laid out a series of events that directly tied Trump to a quid pro quo with Ukraine.
Specifically:
- Trump insisted that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy “go to a microphone and say he is opening investigations of Biden and 2016 election interference.”
- Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union told Taylor that “everything was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance.”
Trump’s White House secretary, Stephanie Graham, responded with more slanders:
“President Trump has done nothing wrong—this is a coordinated smear campaign from far-left lawmakers and radical unelected bureaucrats waging war on the Constitution. There was no quid pro quo.
“Today was just more triple hearsay and selective leaks from the Democrats’ politically-motivated, closed door, secretive hearings….
“President Trump is leading the way for the American people by delivering a safer, stronger and more secure country. The do-nothing Democrats should consider doing the same.”
Adolf Hitler’s demands for loyalty-unto-death by his generals didn’t save him from final destruction.
There’s an increasing chance that Trump’s similar demands on Republicans may not save him, either.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on October 22, 2019 at 12:05 am
Since taking office as President on January 20, 2017, Donald Trump has continued to hurl threats of violence against those he hates.
“Trump’s language of violence started with immigrants when he launched his presidential campaign in 2015,” wrote Washington Post Reporter Eugene Scott. “There is a direct line from his language to real violence against immigrants and other innocent Americans caught in the maniacal mass shootings of the past year.
“And this cancer is spreading: to Congress, to the media, to the intelligence community, to foreign allies. There is no end in sight as Trump becomes increasingly unhinged and the GOP remains frozen in abject silence.”
On October 2, 2019, Journalist Nina Burleigh wrote: “Since 2015, TV-watching Americans have been subject to the deimatic spectacle of more than 400 rallies (at least 80 since his election) in which Trump sometimes openly and more often coyly urged supporters to violence. These spectacles have conditioned many Americans to fear him and his more enthusiastic supporters.”
Supporters giving the “Seig Heil” salute to Donald Trump
“Over the last few days, the President’s rhetoric of violence and hate has spread,” stated an October 3, 2019 press release by America’s Voice, a liberal immigration group.
“As Jamelle Bouie noted yesterday, ‘Over the weekend, in a rage over impeachment, President Trump accused Representative Adam Schiff of ‘treason,’ promised ‘Big Consequences’ for the whistle-blower who sounded the alarm about his phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and shared a warning — from a Baptist pastor in Dallas — that impeachment ‘will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.’”
Trump’s opponents have good reason to fear. And not simply the public demonstrations by the President’s fanatical base. They should fear the secret fantasies of the Right.
Those secret fantasies have been revealed in a series of Right-wing videos featuring graphic acts of violence against those whom the Right—and Trump—hate.
From October 10 to 12, 2019, attendees of the American Priority Conference at the Trump National Doral Miami resort enjoyed many of those videos.
One of these, “The Trumpsman,” featured a digitized Trump shooting, stabbing and setting fire to such liberals—and even conservatives—as:
- Former President Bill Clinton
- Former Vice President Joe Biden
- Former Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton
- Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi
- Former President Barack Obama
- Vermont United States Senator Bernie Sanders
- Utah Senator Mitt Romney
- The late Arizona Senator John McCain
And legitimate news media—such as CBS, BBC, ABC, CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post—were also depicted as among Trump’s victims.
The video was produced by Rightists who believed it reflected what Donald Trump would do to his enemies if only he could get away with it. And given his near-constant calls for violence against his critics, they were absolutely correct.
But the video’s critics are wrong to call for its suppression.
On the contrary—it should be widely seen for what it is: The Mein Kampf of Donald Trump and his fanatical followers, in and outside the Republican party.
Like Adolf Hitler’s autobiography, it depicts the future America can expect if the Right gains the power to live out its murderous fantasies. And the fantasy Right-wingers prize most: The brutal extermination of everyone who refuses to submit to their Fascistic tyranny.
“The Trumpsman” is part of a growing genre of pro-Trump memes that routinely earn thousands of views on sites like YouTube and Twitter. Many superimpose the faces of Trump and his chief supporters slaughtering Democrats, liberal celebrities and/or members of the media.
The event’s organizer, Alex Phillips, hurriedly claimed that the “unauthorized video” was shown “in a side room” at the American Priority Conference.
But there is an upside to this exercise in Right-wing porn. Democrats could easily run TV ads showing limited clips from “The Trumpsman” video.
Unfortunately, the majority of Democrats lack the courage to attack their Right-wing enemies with the same ruthlessness used against them. That’s why they lost most Presidential elections of the 20th century.
Americans should be constantly warned: These videos were not made by liberals to parody the values and goals of the Republican party and its Right-wing supporters.
These videos were made by Right-wingers—and reflect the true values and intentions of the Republican party and its Right-wing supporters.
The boiler-plate rhetoric that gushes out of Republican conventions—about love of family, God and flag—is the public mask of the Right.
The videos that depict Right-wingers ruthlessly slaughtering anyone who dares to disagree with them reflect the real face of the Right.
Of course, most Americans never imagined that a President would:
- Fire an FBI director for investigating Russian subversion of a Presidential election.
- Openly call on a foreign enemy nation—China—to investigate his political rival for the White House.
- Accuse his Congressional critics of treason—a crime punishable by death.
Trump’s opponents should stop deluding themselves that: “Surely he’ll never do that.”
Whatever it is they fear he will do, he will do.
Like all predators, he will stop only when he meets a stronger opponent.
Bureaucracybuster's Blog 
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TRUMP: “MY CRIMES ARE NOW YOUR CRIMES”
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on February 3, 2020 at 12:06 amOn October 4, 1943, SS Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler addressed SS officers stationed in Posen, Poland, about the ongoing campaign to exterminate the Jews of Europe.
He gave a similar speech two days later to an audience of Reichsleiters (national leaders) and Gauleiters (governors), as well as other government representatives.
Himmler intended to alert Reich officials of the extermination campaign the Schutzstaffel (“Protective Squads”)—otherwise known as the SS—and Wehrmacht (German army) had been waging since June, 1941.
The purpose: To make his listeners accessories to his monumental crimes—and to warn them there was no turning back.
Heinrich Himmler
Either Nazi Germany won the war that its Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, had unintentionally unleashed on September 1, 1939—or its topmost officials would themselves face extinction as war criminals.
Said Himmler:
“I want to also mention a very difficult subject before you, with complete candor. It should be discussed amongst us, yet nevertheless, we will never speak about it in public. I am talking about the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people.
“It is one of those things that is easily said: ‘The Jewish people is being exterminated.’…Most of you will know what it means when 100 bodies lie together, when 500 are there or when there are 1000. And to have seen this through and—with the exception of human weakness—to have remained decent, has made us hard and is a page of glory never mentioned and never to be mentioned….
“But altogether we can say: We have carried out this most difficult task for the love of our people. And we have suffered no defect within us, in our soul, in our character.”
Fast forward 76 years—to January, 2020.
On December 18, 2019, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives approved two Articles of Impeachment against President Donald Trump:
Article 1: Abuse of Power: For pressuring Ukraine to assist him in his re-election campaign by damaging former Vice President Joseph Biden, his possible 2020 Democratic rival; and
Article 2: Obstruction of Congress: For obstructing Congress by blocking testimony of subpoenaed witnesses and refusing to provide documents in response to House subpoenas in the impeachment inquiry.
Donald Trump
Trump’s defense in the House had consisted of:
Those government employees who testified did so voluntarily—and at risk of retaliation. Among these were:
They offered damning testimony against Trump.
When the trial began in the United States Senate on January 16, 2020, Trump’s legal team:
Rand Paul
Perhaps even more frightening: One of Trump’s attorneys, Alan Dershowitz, offered Trump—and all future Presidents–a blanket of immunity worthy of a king:
“If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment. Every public official that I know believes that his election is of the public interest.”
Responding to that argument, House Manager Adam Schiff (D-CA) said: “It’s been a remarkable evolution of the presidential defense. It began with, ‘none of that stuff happened here.’ It began with ‘nothing to see here.’ It migrated to, ‘OK, they did seek investigations of the president’s political rival.’ And then it became OK.”
Meanwhile, the Senate majority of 53 Republicans vigorously supported Trump’s demand that no witnesses to his crimes be allowed to testify.
Among these: Former National Security Adviser John Bolton.
On December 29, 2019, The New York Times broke a sensational story:
In a forthcoming book, Bolton had written that Trump had told him, in August 2019, that he wanted to continue freezing aid to Ukraine until its officials began investigating the Bidens.
Despite—or because of—this bombshell report, Senate Republicans absolutely refused to admit the testimony of witnesses.
By following the same strategy as Heinrich Himmler, Trump has entangled Republicans in his own crimes.
His infamy is now theirs.
History has brutally condemned those Germans who, knowing the full extent of Adolf Hitler’s crimes, nevertheless signed on to perpetuate and conceal them.
History will render the same damning verdict against Senate Republicans who have provided similar cover for Donald Trump.
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