Photo via Donald Trump - donaldjtrump.com
Trump speaking to media at plane
We’ve never elected a president before with so many top advisors who were in danger of being denied confirmation before they would be permitted to advise the president or to run federal departments spending billions of dollars.
But then we’ve never elected a president before who would appoint so many accused sexual predators, rightwing conspiracy theorists and sketchy attorneys willing to risk their licenses falsely claiming President Biden stole the election four years ago after defeating Trump with the most votes in history.
Worse than that. Trump has made it clear firing special prosecutor Jack Smith and his team of prosecutors for bringing felony charges against Trump for the violent insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, and for stealing and concealing top secret government documents at Mar-a-Lago is just the beginning.
Retribution
While he’s at it, Trump’s major focus will be seeking retribution against both Biden and Smith by putting them in prison. As president again, Trump says he wants “to clean out ‘the bad guys, the people who went after me.’”
The difference, of course, is that President Biden had nothing to do with Trump’s prosecution. That was intentional. A president should play no role in criminal prosecutions. That’s especially true of political prosecutions, whether it involves favoritism for the president’s party or malice toward his opponents.
Biden’s Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland did the same thing by appointing Smith as a special prosecutor from outside the federal government. Smith conducted the grand jury that filed criminal charges against Trump for his part in the most deadly and destructive terrorist attack of the Congress of the United States in American history.
Violent Criminals
Smith can’t be prosecuted for doing the job he was hired to do —prosecuting the violent criminals who attacked the U.S. Congress and injured more than 140 Capitol police leading to at least five deaths. The American people witnessed the televised murder and mayhem by the crazed mob Trump sent to overthrow the election. In the immediate aftermath, even Republican leaders were demanding prosecution of all those involved including Trump.
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Here’s the most important thing about Trump’s obsession. Trump’s the only one cares about 2016. He’s never going to succeed in proving Biden stole that election because he didn’t.
It was only the glacier-like slowness of the criminal justice system to deal with the violent political insurrection Trump created trying to overthrow President Biden’s legitimate election four years ago that prevented Trump from going to trial for his part in the insurrection last March when it was originally scheduled.
Trump’s absurd nomination of the insurrection and election denying Congressman Matt Gaetz to be his attorney general for his second term was just the latest preposterous tactic by Trump to sabotage any attempt to prosecute Trump for his crimes against democracy. Under investigation by the Department of Justice for sex crimes himself, Gaetz was a leading advocate of locking up Smith’s entire team of prosecutors.
Ridiculously Unqualified
Gaetz was so ridiculously unqualified to be attorney general that Republican Senators refused to pretend otherwise. After Vice President JD Vance looked for eight days for enough votes to approve Gaetz, he gave up. Gaetz abruptly withdrew. His consolation prize was after Gaetz resigned from Congress Speaker Mike Johnson covered up the Ethics Committee Report on the investigation into Gaetz’s alleged sex crimes.
Within hours, Trump had replaced Gaetz with another Republican prosecutor, Pam Bondi, who has openly supported Trump twisting the Constitution to jail his enemies. As Florida’s attorney general endorsing Trump in in the 2016 primaries over her Senator Marco Rubio, she encouraged crowds at Trump’s rallies to chant “Lock her up” for the email server she chose to use. So Bondi might not stop Trump from trying to prosecute Biden and Smith, but she’s never been accused of any sex crimes.
That seems to be almost a requirement for Trump’s top picks to run government agencies. That’s why it will be interest to see whether Republican Senators have the same objections to the other alleged sexual predators he wants in his government—RFK Jr. as his health secretary and weekend Fox News to run the defense department. Trump doesn’t believe in defending against deadly diseases with vaccines or protecting democracies from Russian invasions anymore.
Don’t get me wrong, Trump can create a lot of damage to democracy while he’s wasting the most important moments of his second term as president lost in his own fantasies.
The most important thing is to use the resistance to Trump’s lame duck presidency to support the fact-based lawsuits against Trump’s attempts to roll back the Constitution. There will be plenty coming.
