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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Only Thing Keeping Trump Out of Jail
We cant look to Donald Trump for guidance or wisdom in the wake of Tuesdays twin blows to his presidency. We know that hes going to go down fighting to the end, snarling back at his foes and anyone else who gets in his way. We know hell continue to deny the facts, the evidence and the truth, until someone takes away his power, and finally, his microphone. That day is not here yet, but it is measurably closer than it was a week ago. America knows that two more of the presidents men are crooks.
The people who really matter as Trumps damnable presidency starts to implode are those who always have held in their hands the power to determine his fate: Congressional Republicans. Does the conviction on tax fraud and bank fraud charges of former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort erode their support for this administration? How about the fact that Trumps former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, implicated the president during his plea colloquy in federal court? Will Republicans, at last, save themselves, and America, from this rogue White House?
Its anyones guess.
Weve reached the part of the story where Trump, if he were not the president, would surely be a federal criminal defendant charged with campaign finance violations and likely others. Let that sink in as the administration continues to pitch itself as the law and order White House. Trumps legal troubles are only going to get worse now that he is linked, in court and under oath, to admitted criminal conduct. It doesnt matter if Cohen isnt formally cooperating with prosecutors (though I bet he is). Cohens already done enough public damage.
What will Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell do now that Cohen has essentially corroborated other evidence linking Trump to multiple hush-money payments? Is he prepared to campaign this fall on behalf of a party led by an unindicted co-conspirator who successfully (until now anyway) paid off a woman not to tell her story of an illicit affair? What about Speaker Paul Ryan? He is going to go back home to Wisconsin and do, what, exactly? Tell voters that they should re-elect Republican incumbents so they can return to Washington and continue to cover up Trumps crimes and the administrations rank corruption?
What about all those feckless Republicans running in gerrymandered House districts that suddenly are competitive for the first time in a long time? Are any of them going to have the courage to do something now that its even clearer that this is the most corrupt administration in the nations history? Is there a point at which Trumps legal problems are so profound that his perceived political power among his fellow Republicans weakens? If that doesnt happen now, then when?
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-cohen-manafort-714430/
Wwcd
(6,288 posts)Carl Bernstein, Pulitzer Prize winner on his WaPo coverage of Watergate, just said on CNN, "Republicans on Capitol Hill have been Craven , they have enabled Trump's cover-up, they have enabeled his continuing lie without calling him in to account, and they may or may not paid dearly in terms of their political lives, but this a moment of truth for the Republican Party."
Snip
"What we are seeing is a type of sewage bubbling up from the White House swamp"
librechik
(30,676 posts)Not to mention donor dollars.
Solly Mack
(90,779 posts)makes our government a joke. A mockery. A complete sham.
This failure to act exposes the complicity of those who would rather feather their own nest than to protect the tenets of our democratic republic.
They have weakened our democracy and left us open to greater abuses from a criminal president.
They have chosen to sacrifice all things good about America to make prosperous all things bad.
They have long ceased to be the other political party who still shared the values of democracy and have, instead, morphed into the opposition - period. They have become the enemy to the principles of democracy, operating contrary to the rules and laws that govern our nation, eroding the strength of the republic; taking aim at the heart of our country - the people.
With their lies and revisions, with their embracing of the prolific liar and criminal currently in office, they have waged war on the citizenry. For power and personal gain - they have not only warped the ideals of liberty and justice, but have actively sought to bend the minds of the people to accept governmental actions that are alien to the bedrock of our foundation; a subversion of the national character enshrined in the Bill of Rights, and hard fought for and won by the people to secure the "blessings of liberty".
They seek to rule the people and not govern by the will of the people.
They have, in short, become traitors to America. Not mere blips and glitches along the way to forming a "more perfect union" but impediments to progress - to realizing the full measures of freedom and equality.