The Country is Hanging By a Thread

January 29, 2020 (Wednesday)

Today, on the floor of the Senate, retired Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz said the quiet part out loud. Trying to argue that it was okay for Trump to withhold congressionally approved funds from Ukraine until Ukraine’s president agreed to smear Trump’s key rival in the 2020 election, Dershowitz said that Trump’s actions were in the public interest because Trump believes that his reelection is what’s best for the country. "Every public official that I know believes that his election is in the public interest… and if a president did something that he believes will help him get elected, in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment."

Dershowitz is so far out on a limb on this one he’s dangling out there on the fuzzy tips. Other legal scholars note that his interpretation of what is acceptable behavior from a president quite literally means that the president can do anything to stay in power. Republicans are flocking to Dershowitz’s argument, although some are willing to concede that if a president breaks a law, that would be an impeachable offense. That concession is marred in this case, of course, by the fact that the Government Accountability Office has concluded that Trump did, in fact, break a law by withholding funds from Ukraine, and also by the complication that currently, a 1973 Department of Justice memo does not permit a sitting president to be indicted. Trump’s lawyers are currently in court arguing that a sitting president cannot be investigated, either. So… how would we establish that a president had committed a crime?

In any case, this interpretation is so completely ahistorical and bonkers that lawyers and constitutional scholars are chewing it to bits all over the media tonight. If a president can do anything to get reelected, including using the power of the American government to pressure a foreign country into smearing a rival, under what possible circumstances would we ever have a change in president? He or his selected replacements will rule forever.

But this chilling perversion of the American presidency does say a great deal about today’s Republican leaders. They have bought into the idea that they, and only they, should rule. This has been a long time coming.

Before the midterm elections of 1970, it was pretty clear to President Richard Nixon’s advisors that Nixon needed a Hail Mary plan to rally voters around the increasingly beleaguered president. So Pat Buchanan and Lee Atwater quite deliberately drew voters to Nixon by accusing their opponents of being lazy, dangerous, and anti-American. 

This division of the electorate and the demonization of the “other” became standard Republican practice. In 1990, under Newt Gingrich‘s direction, GOPAC, the Republican state and local political training organization actually distributed a document called “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control” to elected Republicans. The document urged them to refer to Democrats with words like “corrupt,” “cheat” “disgrace,” “endanger,” “failure,” hypocrisy,” “intolerant,” “liberal,” “lie,” “pathetic,” “sick,” “steal,” “traitors,” “waste,” “welfare,” and—ironically, considering the Republicans current stand—“abuse of power.” 

This denigration of Republicans’ opponents has metastasized. Now, at the top of our political system, the president refers to those who challenge his power as “crazy… radical rage-filled, left socialists,” calling even staunch Republicans like former FBI Director James Comey and Special Counsel Robert Mueller Democrats when they oppose him. Republicans have gotten to a point where they believe that anyone who is not one hundred percent behind Trump is a dangerous, ungodly socialist and/or a baby killer.

If so, it is surely patriotic to make sure such people never hold power. Voter suppression, gerrymandering, lying, taking foreign money, asking a foreign government to smear a rival… as Dershowitz said, all of those things seem to be for the good of the country if you have demonized your political opponents. 

But really, where should you stop, if indeed you are protecting your country? Nixon famously used the FBI to investigate people who did not support his policies, believing that their opposition to him weakened his presidency and thus weakened America against the USSR. Under Woodrow Wilson, the Department of Justice rounded up 3000 immigrants they suspected of being leftists and deported more than 500 of them. And in 1868, southern Democrats convinced that Republican voters were a danger to society lynched more than 1000 black and white Republicans before the 1868 election. 

We are not yet at this point, but Dershowitz’s argument leads straight to it. In illustration, Republican senators today argued that there was no need to hear anything from former National Security Advisor John Bolton, who has indicated he is eager to testify that he heard Trump directly say he was withholding Ukraine aid until Ukraine’s leaders agreed to smear Biden, because it simply doesn’t matter. Even if Trump did it, they now say, there is nothing wrong with a president withholding funds to pressure a foreign government to dig up dirt on his rivals. 

It is not only the president who thinks it is okay to cheat to stay in power. So, apparently, do Republican lawmakers. This makes sense, of course, if they believe that the Democrats will destroy America. Better to destroy it themselves, first, and make sure that they are the ones who control the authoritarian government that rises from the ashes of democracy.

But regular Americans of all parties are pushing back to defend democracy, demanding that the Trump administration and Republican senators follow the law and our established precedents. It looks like Trump’s people are increasingly worried that they might lose power. 

You can see it in Trump’s frantic tweeting. Today, for example, he repeatedly touted what he considers economic victories (although economists disagree about that), and said that there was no point in allowing witnesses because “No matter how many witnesses you give the Democrats, no matter how much information is given, like the quickly produced Transcripts, it will NEVER be enough for them. They will always scream UNFAIR. The Impeachment Hoax is just another political CON JOB!” (Again, just to be clear, there has been no transcript of the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky released, and Col. Alexander Vindman, who was on the call, says the readout we have is incomplete and misleading.)

You can see it in the move of the White House today to repress Bolton’s book about his time in the White House. A top official from the National Security Council wrote to Bolton’s lawyer to say that the manuscript “appears to contain significant amounts of classified information,” including “top secret” information that “reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave harm to the national security.” It cannot be published in its current form. Bolton, of course, knows security rules and transmitted the manuscript to the White House with a letter saying he believed the manuscript was clean. Considering that the White House hid the July 25 call—as well as a number of other calls—on a secret server designed to protect national security, it’s hard for me to believe they are doing any else than hiding this book with a similar argument. 

You can see it in today’s news from Politico that Trump allies are so nervous about Trump’s falling poll numbers that they are holding events in black communities where organizers lavish praise on Trump as they hand out tens of thousands of dollars. (It is likely these are running afoul of federal elections laws, but since the Federal Elections Commission—the FEC—which is supposed to have six members, has fallen down to three during Trump’s term, it does not have a quorum and cannot meet.)

You can see it in the news tonight that it is likely Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has the votes he needs to make sure that, for the first time in American history, a Senate impeachment trial will not hear witnesses. If McConnell wins that vote on Friday, Senator John Thune (R-SD), the number two Republican in the Senate, says McConnell will quickly call the vote to acquit the president as early as Friday evening.

As I have written before, the Senate impeachment trial is just part of the continuing saga of this administration. The Ukraine Scandal broke just four months ago, and there are still nine more months before the election. Evidence continues to drop, with rumors circulating today, for example, that Bolton’s manuscript accuses Trump of working for the interests of another country rather than America. 

Last night, in a rally in New Jersey, Trump brought up his border wall again in an echo of 2016. Once again, he assured the audience that “the beautiful wall… is going up at record speed,” and that “Mexico is, in fact, you will soon find out, paying for the wall, okay?” In another piece of news today, part of the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico that has been undergoing repairs fell over in 37-mph wind gusts and fell into Mexico.