Official White House Photo by Andrea Hanks
President Donald J. Trump salutes Marine One from the Blue Room Balcony of the White House Monday, Oct. 5, 2020, following his return from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
Republicans can no longer pretend President Trump is not a dangerous madman aspiring to political dictatorship now that he’s publicly demanded the U.S. Justice Department indict and jail his presidential opponent Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama and previous opponent Hillary Clinton. Even Trump’s corruptly compliant Atty. Gen. William Barr is refusing to participate in such a criminal assault on American democracy weeks before the presidential election. Perhaps the only way left for Trump to prevent a legitimate election may be to encourage the lawless militias supporting him to kidnap voters.
Trump attacks democracy so relentlessly as president, it’s no longer surprising when he crosses over into the dangerously deranged. Here’s a totally deadpan sentence from The Washington Post on Trump demanding the mass imprisonment of leading Democrats: “The president’s calls for the Justice Department to target his political opposition in the heat of a presidential campaign is a jarring moment without precedent in modern American history.” You think?
“The behavior would be shocking in a normal presidency, but Trump has literally been doing this for years,” said Harvard Law School Professor Jack Goldsmith, a Justice Department official in the George W. Bush administration. “So it is reprehensible, but not shocking.”
Vile Hatemongers
The venue where Trump unleashed his unpresidential attack was just as unpresidential. It was a vitriol-filled, two-hour talk show appearance with Rush Limbaugh, the vile radio hatemonger who refers to the Democratic ticket as “Joe and the Hoe.”
As Biden continues to widen his double-digit lead over Trump, the president’s public behavior grows ever more bizarre. Since returning to the White House after being hospitalized with COVID-19, Trump now wants Biden barred from running and charged with treason for colluding with Obama and Clinton to thwart Trump’s election.
Here’s an actual crazy, incoherent tweet sent by the president of the United States last Thursday: “Wow!!! NOW DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS, THE BIGGEST OF ALL POLITICAL SCANDALS (IN HISTORY)!!! BIDEN, OBAMA AND CROOKED HILLARY LED THIS TREASONOUS PLOT!!! BIDEN SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED TO RUN — GOT CAUGHT!!!”
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Wow, indeed. All those screaming capital letters and multiple exclamation points certainly make that appear to be a perfectly reasonable argument for the Nov. 3 presidential election to be cancelled. It’s too bad Twitter doesn’t have a Crayola font.
Trump Embarrassed?
Trump was desperately hoping Barr would release a pre-election report implicating Democrats in all the heinous crimes Trump says they committed without ever identifying what they might be. But Barr says that’s not happening. “I’m very disappointed,” Trump told Limbaugh. “I think it’s a terrible thing. And I’ll say that to (Barr’s) face ... It’s a disgrace. It’s an embarrassment.” (Boy, it sure is.)
The irony is while Trump obsesses about imaginary Democratic crimes that didn’t happen four years ago, FBI and Homeland Security officials are increasingly alarmed about the rise in domestic terrorism endangering Americans right now from violent white supremacists and armed militias egged on by Trump himself.
The FBI just issued federal charges against six men conspiring to kidnap Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and hold her for “trial” — a euphemism among such groups usually leading to execution. Michigan issued state anti-terrorism charges against seven more attempting to recruit 200 men to storm the Capitol, attack law enforcement and take hostages in hopes of igniting “a civil war.”
Promoting Violence
Many of the conspirators were recruited during a series of armed demonstrations in the Capitol this spring protesting Whitmer’s stay-at-home order to protect the public in the pandemic. Trump encouraged those anti-government protests, tweeting “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” After the plot against her was revealed, Whitmer called out Trump for refusing to condemn violent citizen militias during his debate with Biden. Instead Trump told such groups to “stand back and stand by!” Whitmer said hate groups hear Trump’s words as “a rallying cry.”
One of the few consistencies throughout Trump’s erratic, chaotic presidency has been his continuing reluctance to condemn armed, deadly white violence committed by supporters attracted to his racist attacks on prominent black leaders, urban neighborhoods and black and brown immigrants. That pattern has been consistent from Charlottesville, Va., in the first year of Trump’s presidency to Kenosha, Wis., in what hopefully will be the last.
The words and behavior of the president of the United States have consequences. Wealthy country club Republicans primarily concerned with cutting their own taxes made a devil’s bargain half a century ago by following Richard Nixon’s cynical strategy of letting lowlife, white racists who objected to civil rights into their party.
Now in 2020, they’re stuck with Trump’s dangerous, madman presidency and formerly respectable, mainstream, Republican women in Waukesha County are giving a standing ovation as if she were Gold Star mother to Wendy Rittenhouse for driving her 17-year-old son Kyle to Kenosha armed with an illegal assault rifle he used to kill two protesters against racial violence and wound a third.
