We are all now in the center of the Trumpocalypse.
The news cycle has spun out of control, with events piling upon events. To sum up for posterity, the White House tried to quash a whistleblower complaint that Trump was holding up military aid for Ukrainse to force them to manufacture political dirt for him to use on Joe Biden. To prove his innocence, a couple of weeks ago Trump had the White House release a transcript proving ... well, proving that he was holding up military aid for Ukrainse to force them to manufacture political dirt for him to use on Joe Biden.
Very shortly thereafter, the US House finally opened an official "impeachment inquiry."
I'm not even going to try to track down the higgledy piggledy that ensued, except to say that the muck gets deeper and deeper as Trump flails about and the GOP tries to duck and cover and avoid the truth.
The elected officials of the Republican Party have been supporting a deeply corrupt, lawless man as their President. Why? In exchange for tax cuts for their billionaire patrons and crazy-ass right wing judges to appease the Evangelical wing of the party. That's what they care about, and that's what they got.
As near as I can tell, elected Republican officials are all okay with that deal. In 2018 billionaires paid less in overall taxes as a percent of their income than all other income groups. Republican appointed judges are overturning decades and centuries of decided law to benefit their party's financial benefactors. And in the face of overwhelming evidence of corruption and abuse of power, the entire Republican controlled US Senate doesn't make a peep beyond Mitt Romney tweeting that the denials "strain credulity." Give Mitt another few months and he may express "concern" about it all.
In the midst of this chaos, I'll commit a bit of prognostication and punditry:
My best guess is still that Mitch McConnell eventually decides his best chance to keep control of the Senate is to give Trump the boot. If so, the final collapse of this rapidly deteriorating house of cards may be fast, in the form of a discussion with Pelosi and a deal to bring one clean, direct charge swiftly through the House and Senate to remove him, and to leave the rest of the disaster that is GOP control in Washington stand in place. They have an easy charge to prove with Ukraine, and the 20 or so GOP Senators that are up for re-election can go home and pontificate about how they hated to do it, but they believe deeply in the rule of law and Donald Trump had -- inadvertently, they're sure -- overstepped his bounds, and how President Pence is healing this glorious nation of ours, God Bless America.
Then they will try like hell to bury every other thing that happened during the Trump administration, while Fox News treats the name Donald Trump like, "New phone. Who 'dis?"
But what do I know? I never thought the Republican Party would ever nominate a sociopath like Trump. Go figure, electing one of the worst human being in America to the Presidency has turned out to be a horrible, corrupt disaster. Who could have possibly see that coming?
If nothing else, we owe Donald Trump thanks for proving that the rot in the Republican Party political structure runs all the way to the core. The GOP is irredeemable. If they were a corporation they would literally change their name and rebrand. Since they all live in the Fox News bubble, I can only assume they'll add another bald eagle to their iconography and ooze on.
At the outset my only hope for the Trump Administration was that we might somehow make it out of this disaster without a nuclear exchange in Korea or the Middle East and without a needless war that would lead to hundreds or thousands of deaths. Despite the deteriorating world condition I thought we might make it. But last night's White House statement that we're abandoning the Kurds has made me lose even that hope.
Not a very cheery blog post. But the world isn't in a very cheery state this morning.
P.S. And then, literally as I was writing it, this gem of a tweet came along from Trump. This is a deeply disturbed mind, cracking under pressure. Things are going to get worse before they get better.
And here we are, just 24 hours later, and the White House has announced they "will not participate in the impeachment inquiry."
ReplyDeleteSo, as near as I can tell we're now officially at a full-blown constitutional crisis. It'll be interesting to see what happens next, but I've had more than enough of living in interesting times, thank you.