Somewhere, a relieved James Buchanan must be smiling.
The Lessons of Theodore Roosevelt
To get out of our Second Gilded Age, look no
further than how we got out of the first one.
September 6, 2019
We’ve been rocked by scandals over the past year involving the
nation’s most wealthy and powerful. We’ve learned that a twisted
multimillionaire allegedly procured and raped girls in his Manhattan mansion
and on his private Caribbean Island; entitled celebrities and corporate
plutocrats paid millions of dollars in bribes to get their kids into elite
universities; pillars of the Hollywood and media establishments have used their
stature to sexually prey upon underlings; and, yes, our president was caught
lying about possibly violating campaign finance laws with hush money payoffs to
a porn star and Playboy bunny.
This moral corruption
is accompanied by the regressive government policies of a scandal-stained
administration. President Donald Trump is rolling back programs that protect
consumers, voting rights, the environment, and competitive commerce faster than
Congress can issue subpoenas. His cabinet includes 17 millionaires, two
centimillionaires, and one billionaire with a combined worth of $3.2
billion, according to Forbes. He
presides over the most corrupt administration in American history, one marked
by nepotism and self-dealing. His so-called “A Team” of senior officials has
undergone a record 75 percent turnover since he took
office—most of whom resigned under pressure, often caught up in
scandal.
Commerce Secretary
Wilbur Ross, whose net worth is estimated at $600 million,
reflected the arrogance and empathy deficit that typifies the Trump White House
during last winter’s record-long government shutdown. He suggested that federal
workers just take out loans until they got paid.
But nobody tops the
swamp king, Trump himself. Forget the sleaze, forget the obstruction of
justice, forget the constant dissing of Congress. His defying the
Constitution’s emoluments clause alone would, in a normally functioning
American democracy, make him the subject of impeachment. Instead, he flouts the
rules as if they don’t apply to him. If he gets his way and hosts next year’s
G-7 summit at Mar-a-Lago, we may as well send the Constitution to the shredder.
And yet, as more recent controversies have shown us, including the Varsity
Blues college admissions scandal and Jeffery Epstein’s sex trafficking racket,
this kind of indifference to moral values is not confined to government
grandees.
So, what gives? Is
America drowning in a marsh of unchecked corruption and entitlement brought on
by latter-day Louis XVI’s and Marie Antoinettes? Are the uber-wealthy out of
control? There’s something rotten in America and, if we don’t fix it soon, we
invite a new wave of national decline and social disintegration.
The good news is that
we have faced similar challenges before. Some prescriptions from a previous era
may provide a lodestar for a future Democratic president to steer the country
in the right direction. As Mark Twain, who coined the term “the Gilded Age,” once
said, “The external glitter of wealth conceals a corrupt political core that
reflects the growing gap between the very few rich and the very many poor.” He
was talking about the original Gilded Age, but that diagnosis could just as
easily apply to our current American condition.
The first Gilded Age
was marked by rapid economic growth, massive immigration, political corruption,
and a high concentration of wealth in which the richest one percent owned 51 percent of
property, while the bottom 44 percent had a mere one percent. The oligarchs at
the top were popularly known as “robber barons.”
Theodore Roosevelt, who
was president at the time, understood that economic inequality itself becomes a
driver of a dysfunctional political system that benefits the wealthy but few
others. As he once famously warned, “There can be no real
political democracy unless there is something approaching economic democracy.”
His response to the
inequities of his times, which came to define the Progressive Era, have much to
teach us now about how to sensibly tackle economic inequality. It’s worthwhile
to closely examine the Rooseveltian playbook. For instance, his “Square Deal”
made bold changes in the American workplace, government regulation of industry,
and consumer protection. These reforms included mandating safer conditions for
miners and eliminating the spoils system in federal hiring; bringing forty-four
antitrust suits against big business, resulting in the breakup of the largest
railroad monopoly, and regulation of the nation’s largest oil company; and
passing the Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act, which created the
FDA. He prosecuted more than twice
as many antitrust suits against monopolistic businesses than his three
predecessors combined, curbing the robber barons’ power. And he relentlessly
cleaned up corruption in the federal government. One-hundred-forty-six
indictments were brought against a bribery ring involving public timberlands,
culminating in the conviction and imprisonment of a U.S. senator, and
forty-four Postal Department employees were charged with fraud and bribery.
Now, we are in a Second
Gilded Age, facing many of the same problems, and, in some ways, to an even
greater degree. The gap between the rich and everyone else is even greater than
it was during the late 19th Century, when the richest two percent of Americans
owned more than a third of the nation’s wealth. Today, the top one percent owns
almost 40 percent of the nation’s wealth, or more than the bottom 90 percent
combined, according to the
nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research. The first Gilded Age saw the
rise of hyper-rich dynastic families, such as the Rockefellers, Mellons,
Carnegies, and DuPonts. Today, three individuals—Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and
Warren Buffett—own more wealth than the bottom half of the country combined.
And three families—the Waltons, the Kochs, and the Mars—have enjoyed a nearly
6,000 percent rise in wealth since Ronald Reagan took the oath as president,
while median U.S. household wealth over the same period has declined by three percent.
The consequences of
this wealth gap are dire. Steve Brill explains in his book Tailspin that,
by manipulating the tax and legal systems to their benefit, America’s most
educated elite, the so-called meritocracy, have built a moat that excludes the
working poor, limiting their upward mobility and increasing their sense of
alienation, which then gives rise to the populist streak that allowed
politicians like Trump to captivate enough of the American electorate.
Similarly, psychologist
Dacher Keltner’s research shows that power in and of itself is a corrupting
force. As he documents in The
Power Paradox, powerful people lie more, drive more aggressively, are more
likely to cheat on their spouses, act abusively toward subordinates, and even
take candy from children. Too often, they simply do not respect the rules.
For example, in
monitoring an urban traffic intersection, Keltner found that drivers of the
least expensive vehicles virtually always yielded to
pedestrians, whereas drivers of luxury cars yielded only about half of the
time. He cites surveys covering 27
countries that show that rich people are more likely to admit that it’s
acceptable to engage in unethical behavior, such as accepting bribes or
cheating on taxes.“The experience of power might be thought of as having
someone open up your skull and take out that part of your brain so critical to
empathy and socially appropriate behavior,” says Keltner.
That’s why we need to
reform our political system if we are to survive the rampant amorality and
lawlessness of the Second Gilded Age. Simply put, so very few should not wield
so much sway over so many.
One of the first
priorities of an incoming administration should be to narrow the wealth and
income gap. French economist Thomas Picketty favors a progressive annual wealth
tax of up to two percent, along with a progressive income tax as high as 80
percent on the biggest earners to reduce inequality and avoid reverting to “patrimonial capitalism” in which inherited
wealth controls much of the economy and could lead essentially to oligarchy.
The leading 2020
Democratic candidates favor raising taxes, as well. Elizabeth Warren has
proposed something commensurate to Picketty’s two percent wealth tax for those
worth more than $50 million, and a three percent annual tax on individuals with
a net worth higher than $1 billion. She has also proposed closing corporate tax
loopholes. Joe Biden wants to restore the top individual income tax rate to a
pre-Trump 39.6 percent and raise capital gains taxes. Bernie Sanders has
proposed an estate tax on the wealth of the top 0.2 percent of Americans.
Following Theodore
Roosevelt’s example, we need to aggressively root out the tangle of corruption
brought on by Trump and his minions. This has already begun with multiple and
expanding investigations led by House Democrats into the metastasizing
malfeasance within the Trump administration. Trump’s successor, however, should
work with Congress to appoint a bipartisan anti-corruption task force to
oversee prosecutions and draw up reform legislation to prevent future abuses.
“Of all forms of tyranny, the least attractive and the most
vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of a plutocracy,” Roosevelt
once warned. The free market has made America the great success it is today.
But history has shown that unconstrained capitalism and a growing wealth gap
leads to an unhealthy concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. When the
gap between the haves and the have-nots goes unchecked, populism takes hold,
leading to the election of dangerous demagogues like Trump, and the disastrous
politics they bring with them. It is not too late to reverse course. But first,
we need to re-learn the lessons from our first Gilded Age if we are going to
get out of the current one.
This Is No Ordinary Impeachment
By Andrew Sullivan
This is
not just an impeachment. It’s the endgame for Trump’s relentless assault
on the institutions, norms, and practices of America’s liberal democracy for
the past three years. It’s also a deeper reckoning. It’s about whether the
legitimacy of our entire system can last much longer without this man being
removed from office.
I’m
talking about what political scientists call “regime cleavage” — a decline in
democratic life so severe the country’s very institutions could lose legitimacy
as a result of it. It is described by one political scientist as follows: “a
division within the population marked by conflict about the foundations of the
governing system itself — in the American case, our constitutional democracy.
In societies facing a regime cleavage, a growing number of citizens and
officials believe that norms, institutions, and laws may be ignored, subverted,
or replaced.” A full-on regime cleavage is, indeed, an extinction-level event
for our liberal democratic system. And it is one precipitated by the man who is
supposed to be the guardian of that system, the president.
Let us
count the ways in which Trump has attacked and undermined the core legitimacy
of our democracy. He is the only candidate in American history who refused to
say that he would abide by the results of the vote. Even after winning the 2016
election, he still claimed that “millions” of voters — undocumented aliens —
perpetrated massive electoral fraud in the last election, and voted for his
opponent. He has repeatedly and publicly toyed with the idea that he could
violate the 22nd Amendment, and get elected for three terms, or more.
He
consistently described a perfectly defensible inquiry into Russia’s role in the
2016 election as a “witch hunt” and a “hoax,” demonizing Robert Mueller, even
as Mueller, in the end, couldn’t find evidence to support the idea of a
conspiracy with Russia (perhaps in part because Trump ordered no cooperation,
and refused to testify under oath). Trump then withheld release of the full
report, while his pliant attorney general distorted its content and wrongly
proclaimed that Trump had been entirely exonerated.
In
the current scandal over Ukraine, Trump is insisting that he did “nothing
wrong” in demanding that Ukraine announce investigations into Joe and Hunter
Biden, or forfeit desperately needed military aid. If that is the president’s
position — that he can constitutionally ask any other country to intervene on
his behalf in a U.S. election — it represents a view of executive power that is
the equivalent of a mob boss’s. It is best summed up in Trump’s own words:
Article 2 of the Constitution permits him to do “anything I want.”
We have
become so used to these attacks on our constitutional order that we fail to be
shocked by Trump’s insistence that a constitutional impeachment inquiry is a
“coup.” By any measure, this is an extraordinary statement, and itself an
impeachable offense as a form of “contempt for Congress.” We barely blink
anymore when a president refuses to cooperate in any way, demands his
underlings refuse to testify and break the law by flouting subpoenas, threatens
to out the first whistle-blower’s identity (in violation of the law), or
assaults and tries to intimidate witnesses, like Colonel Alexander Vindman.
He seems
to think in the Ukraine context that “l’état c’est moi” is the core American
truth, rather than a French monarch’s claims to absolute power. He believes in
the kind of executive power the Founders designed the U.S. Constitution to
prevent. It therefore did not occur to Trump that blackmailing a foreign
country to investigate his political opponents is a classic abuse of power,
because he is incapable of viewing his own interests and the interests of the
United States as in any way distinct. But it is a core premise of our liberal
democracy that the powers of the presidency are merely on loan, and that using
them to advance a personal interest is a definition of an abuse of power.
There
are valid criticisms and defenses of Trump’s policy choices, but his policies
are irrelevant for an impeachment. I actually support a humane crackdown on
undocumented immigration, a tougher trade stance toward China, and an attempt,
at least, to end America’s endless wars. But what matters, and what makes this
such a vital moment in American history, is that it has nothing to do with
policy. This is simply about Trump’s abuse of power.
He
lies and misleads the American public constantly, in an outright attempt to so
confuse Americans that they forget or reject the concept of truth altogether.
Lies are part of politics, but we have never before seen such a fire hose of
often contradictory or inflammatory bald-faced lies from the Oval Office. He
has obstructed justice countless times, by witness tampering, forbidding his
subordinates from complying with legal subpoenas, and by “using the powers of
his high office, engaged personally and through his close subordinates and
agents, in a course of conduct or plan designed to delay, impede, and obstruct”
both the Mueller and now the Ukraine investigations. (I quote from Article 1 of
Nixon’s impeachment.) Trump has also “failed without lawful cause or excuse to
produce papers and things as directed by duly authorized subpoenas issued by
the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives … and willfully
disobeyed such subpoenas.” (I quote from Article III of Nixon’s impeachment.)
He has declared legal processes illegitimate if they interfere with or
constrain his whims and impulses.
This
is not just another kind of presidency; it is a rolling and potentially
irreversible assault on the legitimacy of the American regime. If the CIA finds
something that could reflect poorly on him, then the CIA is part of the “deep
state coup.” Ditto the FBI and the State Department. These are not
old-fashioned battles with a bureaucracy over policy; that’s fine. They are
assaults on the legitimacy of the bureaucracy, and the laws they are required
to uphold. These are definitional impeachable offenses, and they are part and
parcel of Trump’s abuse of power from the day he was elected.
And
most important of all, Trump has turned the GOP — one of our two major parties
with a long and distinguished history — into an accomplice in his crimes.
Senator Lindsey Graham, perhaps the most contemptible figure of the last couple
of years, even says he will not read witness transcripts or follow the proceedings
in the House or consider the evidence in a legal impeachment inquiry, because
he regards the whole impeachment process as “BS” and a “sham.” This is a
senator calling the constitutional right of the House of Representatives to
impeach a president illegitimate.
And the
GOP as a whole has consistently backed Trump rather than the Constitution.
Sixty-two percent of Republican supporters have said that there is nothing
Trump could do, no crime or war crime, no high crime or misdemeanor, that would
lead them to vote against him in 2020. There is only one way to describe this,
and that is a cult, completely resistant to reason or debate. The tribalism is
so deep that Trump seems incapable of dropping below 40 percent in the national
polls, and is competitive in many swing states. The cult is so strong that
Trump feels invulnerable. If Trump survives impeachment, and loses the 2020
election, he may declare it another coup, rigged, and illegitimate. He may
refuse to concede. And it is possible the GOP will follow his lead. That this
is even thinkable reveals the full extent of our constitutional rot.
Trump
has fast-forwarded “regime cleavage.” He is appealing to the people to render
him immune from constitutional constraints imposed by the representatives of
the people. He has opened up not a divide between right and left so much as a
divide over whether the American system of government is legitimate or
illegitimate. And that is why I don’t want to defeat Trump in an election,
because that would suggest that his assault on the truth, on the Constitution,
and on the rule of law is just a set of policy decisions that we can, in time,
reject. It creates a precedent for future presidents to assault the legitimacy
of the American government, constrained only by their ability to win the next
election. In fact, the only proper constitutional response to this abuse of
executive power is impeachment. I know I’ve said this before. But on the eve of
public hearings, it is vital to remember it.
None
of this presidential behavior is tolerable. If the Senate exonerates Trump, it
will not just enable the most lawless president in our history to even greater
abuses. It will deepen the regime cleavage even further. It will cast into
doubt the fairness of the upcoming election. It will foment the conspiracy
theory that our current laws and institutions are manifestations of a “deep
state” engineering a “coup.” It will prove that a president can indeed abuse
his power for his personal advantage without consequence; and it will set a precedent
that fundamentally changes the American system from a liberal democracy to a
form of elected monarchy, above the other two branches of government.
I wish
there were another way forward. But there isn’t. And this, though a moment of
great danger, also contains the glimmers of renewal. Removing this petty,
shabby tyrant from office goes a long way to restoring and resetting the
Constitution as a limit on power and a guarantee against its wanton future
abuse. It must be done. With speed, with vigor, and with determination.
Is Trump the Worst President in History?
by Richard Striner
As the
chance of getting rid of Donald Trump — through impeachment or by voting him
out — continues to dominate the headlines, the historical challenge
is compelling. No president has been a greater threat to the
qualities that make the United States of America worthy (at its best) of our
allegiance.
The rise of
Trump and his movement was so freakish that historians will analyze its nature
for a long time. From his origins as a real estate hustler, this
exhibitionist sought attention as a TV vulgarian. Susceptible
television viewers found his coarse behavior amusing. Then he announced that he
was running for the presidency and it looked for a while like just another
cheap publicity stunt.
But
his name-calling tactics struck a chord with a certain group of
voters. Our American scene began to darken. Before
long, he was hurling such vicious abuse that it ushered in a politics of
rage. As his egomania developed into full megalomania, the “alt-right”
gravitated toward him.
The
“movement” had started.
More
and more, to the horror of everyone with power to see and understand, he showed
a proto-fascist mentality. So alarms began to spread: mental health
professionals warned that he exemplifies “malignant narcissism.”
Never
before in American history has the presidential office passed into the hands of
a seditionist. And the use of this term is
appropriate. With no conception of principles or limits — “I want”
is his political creed —he mocks the rule of law at every turn.
At a
police convention in 2017, he urged the officers in attendance to ignore their
own regulations and brutalize the people they arrest. He pardoned
ex-Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was convicted of criminal contempt of
court. He appointed Scott Pruitt to head the EPA so he could wreck
the agency and let polluters have the spree of their lives.
Trump
is fascinated by powerful dictators with little regard to human rights or
democracy. He compliments Vladimir Putin and hopes to invite that murderer
to stay in the White House. He likes Rodrigo Duterte of the
Philippines, a tyrant who subverts that nation’s democracy.
So,
Trump certainly has the personality of a fascist. But he is not
quite as dangerous as other authoritarians in history.
In the
first place, he lacks the fanatical vision that drove the great tyrants like
Hitler and Stalin to pursue their sick versions of utopia. He is
nothing but a grubby opportunist. He has no ideas, only
appetites. The themes that pass for ideas in the mind of
Donald Trump begin as prompts that are fed to him by others — Stephen Miller,
Sean Hannity, and (once upon a time) Steve Bannon. To be sure, he would fit
right in among the despots who tyrannize banana-republics. But that
sort of a political outcome in America is hard to envision at the moment.
Second, American
traditions — though our current crisis shows some very deep flaws in our
constitutional system — are strong enough to place a limit on the damage Trump
can do. If he ordered troops to occupy the Capitol, disperse the
members of Congress, and impose martial law, the chance that commanders or
troops would carry out such orders is nil.
Third,
Americans have faced challenges before. Many say he is our very worst
president — bar none. And how tempting it is to
agree. But a short while ago, people said the same thing about
George W. Bush, who of course looks exemplary now when compared to our presidential
incumbent.
The
“worst president.”
“Worst,”
of course, is a value judgment that is totally dependent on our standards for
determining “badness.” And any number of our presidents were very
bad indeed — or so it could be argued.
Take
Andrew Jackson, with his belligerence, his simple-mindedness, his racism as
reflected in the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Take all the
pro-slavery presidents before the Civil War who tried to make the enslavement
of American blacks perpetual: John Tyler, Franklin Pierce, James
Buchanan. Take James K. Polk and his squalid war of aggression against
Mexico. Take Andrew Johnson, who did everything he could to ruin the
lives of the newly-freed blacks after Lincoln’s murder.
The
list could go on indefinitely, depending on our individual standards for
identifying “badness.” Shall we continue? Consider
Ulysses S. Grant and Warren G. Harding, so clueless in regard to the
comparatively easy challenge of preventing corruption among their
associates. Or consider Grover Cleveland and Herbert Hoover, who blinded
themselves to the desperation of millions in economic
depressions. And Richard Nixon, the only president to date who has
resigned the office in disgrace.
Which
brings us to Trump.
However
incompetent or even malevolent some previous American presidents were, this one
is unique. The Trump presidency is a singular aberration, a defacement of norms
and ideals without precedent. However bad some other presidents were
all of them felt a certain basic obligation to maintain at least a semblance of
dignity and propriety in their actions.
Not
Trump.
Foul
beyond words, he lurches from one brutal whim to another, seeking gratification
in his never-ending quest to humiliate others. He spews insults in every
direction all day. He makes fun of the handicapped. He
discredits journalists in order to boost the credibility of crackpots and
psychopathic bigots. He accuses reporters of creating “fake news” so
he can generate fake news himself: spew a daily torrent of hallucinatory
lies to his gullible followers.
He
amuses himself — with the help of his money and the shyster lawyers that it
pays for — in getting away with a lifetime’s worth of compulsive frauds that
might very well lead to prosecutions (later) if the evidence has not been
destroyed and if the statute of limitations has not expired.
So
far, however, he is always too brazen to get what he deserves, too slippery for
anyone to foil.
Anyone
with half of ounce of decency can see this wretched man for what he
is. They know what’s going on, and yet there’s nothing they can do
to make it stop. And that adds to Trump’s dirty
satisfaction. Any chance to out-maneuver the decent — to infuriate them —
quickens his glee. It makes his victory all the more rotten, incites
him to keep on taunting his victims.
It’s
all a big joke to Donald Trump, and he can never, ever, get enough of
it.
The
question must be asked: when in our lifetimes — when in all the
years that our once-inspiring Republic has existed — have American institutions
been subjected to such treatment? How long can American morale and
cohesion survive this?
Nancy
Pelosi has said that in preference to seeing Trump impeached, she would like to
see him in jail. Current Justice Department policy — which forbids
the indictment of presidents — makes it possible for Trump to break our
nation’s laws with impunity. Impeachment is useless if the Senate’s
Republicans, united in their ruthlessness and denial, take the coward’s way
out.
So the
prospect of locking him up may have to wait. But the day of
reckoning for this fake — this imposter who will never have a glimmer of clue
as to how to measure up to his office — may come in due time. Then
the presidential fake who accuses his victims of fakery will live with some
things that are real: stone walls, iron bars, a nice prison haircut,
and the consequences of his actions.
Field of
Anonymous Trump Donors Getting Crowded
|
WASHINGTON
-- Last year, when a "senior administration official" wrote an
anonymous New York Times opinion piece -- "I Am Part of the Resistance
Inside the Trump Administration" -- the unknown author's essay prompted
praise and approbation.
Now, we
learn, it has spawned a book.
"The
dilemma -- which (Trump) does not fully grasp," Anonymous wrote in
September 2018, "is that many of the senior officials in his own
administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his
agenda and his worst inclinations. I would know. I am one of them."
Critics
on the right called the author a coward for penning a piece under the cloak of
anonymity. Critics on the left pounced on the author's failure to openly
denounce Trump -- the only act that they would consider courageous.
Trump
branded the piece "TREASON" and urged then-Attorney General Jeff
Sessions to find the dirty rat.
Journalists
did not miss the irony in the author's identification as a "senior
administration official." The Trump White House was indignant, even though
the press office routinely conducts briefings after directing reporters to
identify the briefers as "senior administration officials." Then Team
Trump denounced the press for relying on unnamed sources.
I saw
the piece as confirmation that good people worked in the administration out of
a sense of public service -- and that some stayed because they felt a duty to
curb Trump's worst instincts. The book deal, alas, suggests the unknown civil servant has
a hunger for self-promotion, as well as a poor sense of timing.
For one
thing, the Mueller report tells voters everything they need to know about
Trump. To wit: There was no collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. And
Trump frequently pushed those around him to do his dirty work, and they often
failed to do his bidding.
Former
campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, for example, chose not to tell Sessions to
"unrecuse" himself from the Russian probe, lest Trump fire him.
Instead, Lewandowski passed on the assignment to a White House aide, who also
chose not to act.
In
words that echoed the New York Times piece, special counsel Robert Mueller
wrote, "The president's efforts to influence the investigation were mostly
unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the
president declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests."
Trump
voters don't care. They believe the Russian probe was a witch hunt. Who can
blame them? Mueller allowed the investigation to slog on long past any
reasonable suspicion that Moscow was pulling Trump's strings. Federal officials
throwing everything they've got at Trump isn't really a good look right now.
The field
of anonymous Trump accusers is getting crowded. In August, an identity-shielded
whistleblower came forward with a complaint that "the president of the
United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a
foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election." It was in reference to a July
25 phone call during which Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky
to look for political dirt that could be used in next year's presidential race.
The
unidentified whistleblower's lawyer said he represents another unidentified
whistleblower. Democrats argue these individuals must be shielded for their own
protection, but everyone knows they'll be feted as heroes when their identities
-- predictably -- are revealed.
Book
deals? You know it.
Perhaps
the anonymous New York Times author decided to cut a deal to beat the pack of
Ukraine scolds.
House
Democrats have even been holding impeachment hearings behind closed doors to
question known individuals. After releasing damning tidbits, they've yet to
release full testimony. In contrast, Trump made public a rough transcript of
the July 25 conversation.
If
there's something voters don't know that Anonymous thinks they need to, he or
she could pen another op-ed, not a bestseller -- or better yet, with an
election a year away, come forward and face the wrath of the right in the light
of day.
Of
course, Anonymous has an agent. Matt Latimer told CNN that the author of the 272-page
"A Warning," published by Twelve, a division of Hachette,
"refused the chance at a seven-figure advance and intends to donate a
substantial amount of any royalties to the White House Correspondents
Association and other organizations that fight for a press that seeks the
truth."
As a
member of the association, I suppose I should be grateful and not at all
curious about how much of the proceeds will go to worthy causes. If only I knew
whom to thank.
Contact
Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com or 202-662-7391. Follow
@DebraJSaunders on Twitter.
The Kitchen-Table Case for Impeaching Trump
The president’s abuses of power are
materially hurting regular people.
After months of waiting,
the House Judiciary Committee has finally voted to open an impeachment inquiry
into President Donald Trump. With that tedious “will-they-or-won’t-they”
question out of the way, the logical next question is: can impeachment succeed?
The answer is a resounding yes. But getting there will require a strategic
reorientation away from a sluggish and legalistic examination of Trump’s
offenses via recalcitrant witnesses and toward a broader consideration of how
his systemic abuses of power have materially hurt regular people.
The
continued reticence of so many Democrats, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to
support impeachment is based on two premises. The first is that impeachment is
modestly unpopular, which is true, so far as it goes. The second is the conventional wisdom that
impeaching President Clinton backfired on House Republicans.
Look
a little closer at the second contention, however, and it quickly falls apart.
The case against Trump is vastly stronger than that against Clinton. While Clinton’s alleged crimes were largely
committed in the interest of avoiding embarrassment, Trump’s represent clear
abuses of power with malignant implications. The second flank of the
argument—that impeaching Clinton “backfired” on Republicans—is more myth than reality.
Republicans may have lost the House in the next election cycle, but Clinton’s
impeachment was a nontrivial factor in Al Gore’s 2000 loss. Therefore, we join
other observers in choosing to view this “example” as evidence in
support of impeaching Trump.
But
the polling argument is particularly short-sighted. Voters take cues from
political leaders about how to react to political events. For months, the
overwhelming cue on impeachment from Democratic leaders like Pelosi, Chuck
Schumer, and Joe Biden has been to stand down. This inhibition has created a negative
feedback loop in which impeachment-phobic lawmakers convince voters not to
support impeachment, and then point to lukewarm public support to justify their
passivity. Rinse and repeat.
Five
months after the release of the Mueller report, this message has pretty well
stuck. After all, if the special counsel’s findings were so serious, they
should have been acted on immediately, right? Much as a gourmet meal is never
as good reheated, Democrats cannot expect to ignore evidence of impeachable
conduct in the spring and have it be as fresh and tasty when zapped in the
autumn. Just take a gander at this week’s House Judiciary hearing with Corey
Lewandowski to see how unappetizing this fare has become.
While
the Mueller report surely provided enough evidence to justify impeaching Trump
on substantive grounds, hesitant lawmakers have largely drained it of much of
its political force (and impeachment is an inherently political process).
To
overcome this damage, impeachment backers will have to make opposition to
impeachment untenable with voters, thereby short-circuiting the aforementioned
negative feedback loop. That means focusing on the ways in which Trump’s
corruption has made life harder and more dangerous for millions of Americans.
In other words, impeachment should focus above all on his failure to carry out
his constitutional duty under Article II,
Section 1 of the Constitution “to take care that the laws be faithfully
executed.” By emphasizing how impeachment is relevant to the “kitchen-table”
issues that keep regular people up at night—like low wages or exorbitant
healthcare premiums—the House Judiciary Committee can inspire a swell of
grassroots pressure that will give reluctant legislators no choice but to back
the effort.
The issues tackled in
Mueller’s report, like obstruction of justice, are removed from people’s
day-to-day lives. Of course, there is nothing inherently insufficient with such
a basis for impeachment; were it not for the Democratic leadership’s
opposition, impeachment proceedings would have begun in April. Still, more
Americans agonize over how to pay back their student loans, or whether to incur
the costs of seeing a doctor when uninsured, than discuss “the role of law.”
The Mueller report, therefore. likely strikes most Americans as “political” and
is less likely to inspire new broad-based support for
impeachment.
The
same goes for the proposed lines of inquiry in Judiciary’s newly expanded investigations. The committee will reportedly examine
Trump’s alleged abuse of presidential pardons, hush-money payments, and use of
office for personal enrichment. While these scandals are undoubtedly important,
they don’t penetrate the lives of ordinary people.
That
doesn’t mean that Democrats should not pursue any of these alleged crimes; the
public deserves to know as much as possible about any president’s corruption,
and Congress is best suited to furnish those answers. But these matters should
not sit alone at the center of the Democrats’ case for impeachment. An
impeachment inquiry is a way to control the national conversation. While bills
passed by House Democrats predictably get little attention from most of the
media, an impeachment hearing is guaranteed to achieve the scarcest political
resource in 2019—the attention of voters.
Given
that platform, lawmakers have a lot to choose from. In light of recent
revelations that the number of uninsured people has risen for the first
time since 2009, lawmakers might want to start by investigating how
Trump has undermined the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
You
might say that Trump’s health care moves are reprehensible, but are they really
impeachable? Ask Thaddeus Stevens, the Pennsylvania representative who was the
catalyst behind Andrew Johnson’s impeachment and the author of an article of impeachment accusing Johnson of failing
to “take care” that the Tenure of Office Act be faithfully executed. Other
articles accused Johnson of offenses including insulting Congress and
unlawfully firing his Secretary of War, but this one got at his most serious
transgression: failing to honor and enforce the laws as Congress had
intended.
Trump
has made no secret of his disdain for Obama’s healthcare law, but whether he
likes it or not, it’s his duty to administer it unless and until Congress
passes a new one or repeals it. Rather than faithfully carrying out that
responsibility, Trump has sought to destroy the law. On his first day in
office, he signed an executive order directing
agencies to use all of the tools at their disposal to undermine the statute—and
they have faithfully complied. His administration also shortened the open enrollment period, cut ACA’s advertising budget, and slashed tax credits for enrollees. Trump is not coy about his
intentions. “I have just about ended Obamacare,” he once said. Congress should demonstrate its commitment
to improving Americans’ health care access by nailing Trump for his
considerable efforts to “end” a lawful program by executive action that he
could not repeal legislatively.
There
are other matters that need a deeper probe. Lawmakers should investigate
whether Trump’s administration has intentionally slowed the allocation of aid
to Puerto Rico. Last week, as Puerto Ricans braced for Hurricane Dorian’s
potential landfall, many did so without a proper
roof over
their heads, surrounded by many other reminders of Hurricane
Maria’s destruction. This hardly seems like an accident: two years after Maria,
the scandal-riddled Federal Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA) has only approved funding for nine projects out of 10,000 applications.
Meanwhile, in an unprecedented move, the executive branch is holding up a
Community Development Block Grant for Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) headed for
the U.S. territory. The administration’s refusal to effectively administer this
recovery aid is not some distant problem. Puerto Ricans (including the diaspora
living in Florida and elsewhere on the U.S. mainland) feel it every day in the
way of destroyed roads, damaged schools, the lack of a proper roof over many of
their heads, or having been forced to leave the island altogether.
It
seems impossible to imagine that Trump’s failure “to take care” is unrelated to the animus he has
shown toward Latinx communities since the day he announced his presidential campaign. More broadly, it is even
harder to argue that a president can faithfully execute the law under our
Constitution when he openly views the government’s obligations to people as
dependent on their race or religion—as his “Muslim ban” makes evidently clear.
Lawmakers
should also look into Trump’s decision to allow three unconfirmed, unqualified,
Mar-a-Lago members to essentially run the Department of Veterans’ Affairs from the resort. Has
Trump’s reliance on his paying customers to run the VA in any way hurt the
millions of veterans who rely on the department’s services each year? The
public has a right to know. The House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs opened an investigation into these puppeteers last winter, but
the administration’s stonewalling appears to have hindered meaningful progress.
Trump’s
appointees have harmed regular people in myriad other ways. Take, for example,
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ failure to administer loan forgiveness
programs, even after having been ordered by a court to do so. That has left thousands of people suffering
under the crushing yoke of student loans they were promised would be
discharged. At the same time, her department’s laughable oversight of loan servicers is delaying forgiveness for hundreds of thousands more. Given her
absolute disregard for her responsibilities as Education Secretary, why has she
not been removed? Quite clearly, Trump feels no compunction about running afoul
of his obligation to “take care” to execute the law, even if that means flat
out ignoring court orders.
House members must not
only persuade voters to embrace impeachment with the righteousness of their
case, but also with the urgency of their actions. That means issuing subpoenas
far more liberally—and suing when necessary to enforce them without delay.
Indeed, the fact that Trump admits “we are fighting all the subpoenas” reflects
acknowledgement that he is undermining Congressional oversight, which was
itself a key element of the third article of impeachment
against Richard Nixon.
Basic
political horse sense suggests that investigating how Trump’s team is hiding
evidence of their alleged lawlessness would help generate attention to the
actions they are covering up. If pursued effectively, such a probe can impose a
steep political cost.
Ultimately,
Congress should view its investigatory scope broadly. It should vigorously
examine as many instances of Trump’s corruption as possible. But his crimes
against the American people should sit at the center of their effort.
To
treat them as secondary, as lawmakers have done thus far, misses the larger
point. The intentional harm Trump has inflicted on Americans, whom he is tasked
with protecting, represents by far his most egregious violation of his
Constitutional oath of office. Lawmakers should respond accordingly.
The (Full) Case for
Impeachment
A menu of high crimes and misdemeanors.
The crimes for which impeachment is the prescribed punishment are notoriously undefined. And
that’s for a reason: Presidential powers are vast, and it’s impossible to
design laws to cover every possible abuse of the office’s authority. House
Democrats have calculated that an impeachment focused narrowly on the Ukraine
scandal will make the strongest legal case against President Trump. But that’s
not Trump’s only impeachable offense. A full accounting would include a wide
array of dangerous and authoritarian acts — 82, to be precise. His violations
fall into seven broad categories of potentially impeachable misconduct that
should be weighed, if not by the House, then at least by history.
I. Abusing Power for
Political Gain
Explanation: The single most
dangerous threat to any democratic system is that the ruling party will use its
governing powers to entrench itself illegitimately.
Evidence: (1) The Ukraine scandal is fundamentally about the president abusing his authority
by wielding his power over foreign policy as a cudgel against his domestic opponents.
The president is both implicitly and explicitly trading the U.S. government’s
favor for investigations intended to create adverse publicity for Americans
whom Trump wishes to discredit. (2) During
his campaign, he threatened to impose policies harmful to Amazon in retribution
for critical coverage in the Washington Post. (“If I become president, oh do they have problems.”) He has
since pushed the postmaster general to double rates on Amazon, and the Defense Department held up
a $10 billion contract with Amazon, almost certainly at
his behest. (3) He
has ordered his officials to block the AT&T–Time Warner
merger as punishment for CNN’s coverage of
him. (4) He
encouraged the NFL to blacklist Colin Kaepernick.
II. Mishandling
Classified Information
Explanation: As he does with
many other laws, the president enjoys broad immunity from regulations on the
proper handling of classified information, allowing him to take action that
would result in felony convictions for other federal employees. President
Trump’s mishandling of classified information is not merely careless but a
danger to national security.
Evidence: (5) Trump has habitually
communicated on a smartphone highly vulnerable to foreign espionage. (6–30) He has reversed 25 security-clearance
denials (including for his son-in-law, who has
conducted potentially compromising business with foreign interests). (31) He has turned
Mar-a-Lago into an unsecured second White House and even once handled news of North Korea’s
missile launch in public view. (32) He gave
Russian officials sensitive Israeli intelligence that blew “the most valuable
source of information on external plotting by [the] Islamic State,” the Wall Street Journal reported. (33) He tweeted a
high-resolution satellite image of an Iranian launch site for the sake of
boasting.
III. Undermining Duly
Enacted Federal Law
Explanation: President Trump has abused his authority either by distorting the
intent of laws passed by Congress or by flouting them. He has directly ordered
subordinates to violate the law and has promised pardons in advance, enabling
him and his staff to operate with impunity. In these actions, he has undermined
Congress’s constitutional authority to make laws.
Evidence: (34) Having failed to
secure funding authority for a border wall, President Trump unilaterally ordered funds to be moved from other budget accounts. (35) He has undermined regulations on
health insurance under the Affordable Care Act
preventing insurers from charging higher rates to customers with more expensive
risk profiles. (36) He
has abused emergency powers to impose tariffs, intended to protect the supply chain in case of war, to seize
from Congress its authority to negotiate international trade agreements. (37–38) He has ordered
border agents to illegally block asylum seekers from
entering the country and has ordered other aides to
violate eminent-domain laws and
contracting procedures in building the border wall, (39–40) both times
promising immunity from lawbreaking through presidential pardons.
IV. Obstruction of
Congress
Explanation: The executive branch
and Congress are co-equal, each intended to guard against usurpation of
authority by the other. Trump has refused to acknowledge any legitimate
oversight function of Congress, insisting that because Congress has political
motivations, it is disqualified from it. His actions and rationale strike at
the Constitution’s design of using the political ambitions of the elected
branches to check one another.
Evidence: (41) Trump has refused to abide by a
congressional demand to release his tax returns, despite an unambiguous law granting the House this authority.
His lawyers have flouted the law on the spurious grounds that subpoenas for his
tax returns “were issued to harass President Donald J. Trump, to rummage
through every aspect of his personal finances, his businesses and the private
information of the president and his family, and to ferret about for any
material that might be used to cause him political damage.” Trump’s lawyers have
argued that Congress cannot investigate potentially illegal behavior by the
president because the authority to do so belongs to prosecutors. In other
litigation, those lawyers have argued that prosecutors cannot investigate the
president. These contradictory positions support an underlying stance that no
authority can investigate his misconduct. (42) He has defended his refusal to
accept oversight on the grounds that members of Congress “aren’t, like,
impartial people. The Democrats are trying to win 2020.” (43) The president has
also declared that impeachment is
illegal and should be stopped in the courts (though,
unlike with his other obstructive acts, he has not yet taken any legal action
toward this end).
V. Obstruction of Justice
Explanation: By virtue of his control over the federal government’s
investigative apparatus, the president (along with the attorney general) is
uniquely well positioned to cover up his own misconduct. Impeachment is the
sole available remedy for a president who uses his powers of office to hold
himself immune from legal accountability. In particular, the pardon power gives
the president almost unlimited authority to obstruct investigations by
providing him with a means to induce the silence of co-conspirators.
Evidence: (44–53) The Mueller report contains ten instances of President Trump engaging in
obstructive acts. While none of those succeeded in stopping the probe, Trump
dangled pardons and induced his co-conspirators to lie or withhold evidence
from investigators. Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen testified to
Congress that Trump had directed him to lie to it
about his negotiations with the Russian government during the campaign to
secure a lucrative building contract in Moscow. And when Cohen stated his
willingness to lie, Robert Costello, an attorney who had worked with Rudy
Giuliani, emailed Cohen assuring him he could “sleep well tonight” because he
had “friends in high places.” Trump has publicly praised witnesses in the
Russia investigation for refusing to cooperate, and he sent a private message
to former national-security adviser Michael Flynn urging him to “stay strong.”
He has reinforced this signal by repeatedly denouncing witnesses who cooperate
with investigators as “flippers.” (54–61) He
has exercised his pardon power for a series of Republican loyalists, sending a
message that at least some of his co-conspirators have received. The
president’s pardon of conservative pundit
Dinesh D’Souza “has to be a signal to Mike
Flynn and Paul Manafort and even Robert S. Mueller III: Indict people for
crimes that don’t pertain to Russian collusion and this is what could happen,”
Roger Stone told the Washington Post. “The special counsel has awesome powers, as you know, but the
president has even more awesome powers.”
VI. Profiting From Office
Explanation: Federal
employees must follow strict rules to prevent them from being influenced by any
financial conflict. Conflict-of-interest rules are less clear for a sitting
president because all presidential misconduct will be resolved by either
reelection or impeachment. If Trump held any position in the federal government
below the presidency, he would have been fired for his obvious conflicts. His violations are so gross and
blatant they merit impeachment.
Evidence: (62) He has
maintained a private business while holding office, (63) made decisions
that influence that business, (64) and
accepted payments from parties both domestic and foreign who have an interest
in his policies. (65) He
has openly signaled that these parties can gain his favor by doing so. (66) He has refused
even to disclose his interests, which would at least make public which parties
are paying him.
VII. Fomenting Violence
Explanation: One of the
unspoken roles of the president is to serve as a symbolic head of state.
Presidents have very wide latitude for their political rhetoric, but Trump has
violated its bounds, exceeding in his viciousness the rhetoric of Andrew
Johnson (who was impeached in part for
the same offense).
Evidence: (67) Trump called for
locking up his 2016 opponent after the election. (68–71) He has clamored for the deportation of
four women of color who are congressional
representatives of the opposite party. (72) He has described a wide array of
domestic political opponents as treasonous, including the news media. (73–80) On at least
eight occasions, he has encouraged his supporters — including members of the
armed forces — to attack his political opponents. (“I have the support of the
police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump — I
have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough until they go to a certain
point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”) (81) He has threatened
journalists with violence if they fail to produce positive coverage. (“If the
media would write correctly and write accurately and write fairly, you’d have a
lot less violence in the country.”) (82) There
have been 36 criminal cases nationwide in which the defendant invoked Trump’s
name in connection with violence; 29 of these cited him as the inspiration for
an attack.
*This article appears in the October 14, 2019, issue of New York Magazine. Subscribe Now!
PRESIDENT of the UNITED STATES DONALD TRUMP: pathological
liar, swindler, con man, huckster, golfing cheat, charity foundation fraudster,
tax evader, adulterer, porn whore chaser and servant of the Saudis dictators
THE TRUMP FAMILY FOUNDATION SLUSH FUND…. Will they see
jail?
VISUALIZE REVOLUTION!.... We know where they live!
“Underwood is a
Democrat and is seeking millions of dollars in penalties. She wants Trump and
his eldest children barred from running other charities.”
ANN COULTER
TRUMP’S PARASITIC
FAMILY
Jared’s BFF, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
(MBS), and the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Muhammad bin Zayed (MBZ), refer to
Jared as “the clown prince.” Bone-cutter MBS assured those around him that he
had Jared “in my pocket.”
Following meetings at the White House
and also with the Kushners over their 666 Fifth Avenue property, former Qatari
Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim reported back to the emir that “the
people atop the new administration were heavily motivated by personal financial
interest.”
“Truthfully,
It Is Tough To Ignore Some Of The Gross Immoral Behavior By
The President” WASHINGTON
POST
Trump's sister
quits as a federal judge 10 days into formal probe of her possible role in
massive family tax scam that could have ended in her impeachment
·
Trump's older sister resigned as an appellate
court judge shortly after a probe opened into her involvement in a family
tax scheme
·
·
10 days ago an investigation into whether
Maryanne Trump Barry violated judicial conduct rules launched
·
·
The case was closed after Barry resigned
because retired judges are not subject to the rules
·
·
Barry had not heard a case in two years after
transitioning to inactive shortly after Trump's inauguration
·
·
The Trump siblings were probed after an
investigation found they were involved in a tax scheme related to the transfer
of their father's real estate empire
·
President Donald Trump’s older sister Maryanne Trump Barry, 82,
retired as a federal judge just days after an investigation opened into her
possible role in family tax fraud scheme.
Barry
was a federal appellate judge in the third district, which includes
Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, and the investigation could have led to
her impeachment