Before we examine the further Trumpification of our government of laws not of men, let’s have a look at what the architects of this national disaster don’t have to say about their responsibility for it.
Charlie Pierce (via Driftglass) on Tuesday noted this post last Sunday from the NH Journal:
National #NeverTrump leader Bill Kristol, founder of the conservative Weekly Standard magazine, confirmed to NHJournal that he is part of the effort, which involves tens of thousands of New Hampshire voter contacts and a six-figure budget.
“Yup. I’m happy to have joined with some others to help remind New Hampshire independents, who might be accustomed to voting in the Republican primary, that this year, they may be able to make more of a difference by voting for a responsible and electable candidate in the Democratic primary,” Kristol said.
Oh, hell no, cried Pierce, skeptical of Never Trump allies diving into “the vital work of slaying the monster they all spent 40 years creating.”
Cook Political’s Dave Wasserman (h/t Digby) calculates New Hampshire independents responded to Kristol’s prodding:
While Kristol, et. al. are mucking about in the Democrats’ primaries, their faux-tanned, reanimated corpse is drowning “and justice for all” in the lake. Feeling bulletproof after surviving impeachment, Trump has launched a personal vendetta against all them what done him wrong. He’s bending the executive branch to his will to make it happen:
In the span of 48 hours this week, the president has sought to protect his friends and punish his foes, even at the risk of compromising the Justice Department’s independence and integrity — a stance that his defenders see as entirely justified.
Trump complained publicly about federal prosecutors’ recommended prison sentence for one of his longtime friends and political advisers, Roger Stone. After senior Justice Department officials then overruled prosecutors to lighten Stone’s recommended sentence, the president congratulated Attorney General William P. Barr for “taking charge” with an extraordinary intervention.
Next Trump sought to intimidate the federal judge in the Stone case, badgering her on Twitter for previous rulings, and attacked the four prosecutors who resigned from the case in apparent protest of the Justice Department’s intervention. Then Trump floated the possibility of a presidential pardon for Stone, who was convicted by a jury in November of tampering with a witness and lying to Congress.
Trump in his spare time is urging retaliation against FBI officials who participated in the Russia investigation.
“We are now truly at a break-glass-in-case-of-fire moment for the Justice Dept.,” tweeted David Laufman, former Chief of Counterintelligence & Export Control at a Justice Department that still believed justice was in its mission statement. Now its job is whatever Trump tweets it is.
“I didn’t speak to them, by the way. Just so you understand,” Trump said of the Justice Department. “They saw the horribleness of a nine-year sentence for doing nothing.”
Now that he’s president, Trump code-speaks via Twitter. His followers know what he wants done and they do it without being ordered. Trump gets what he wants and plausible deniability to boot.
Ego the Celestial (Kurt Russell) from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 hoped to reshape the entire galaxy into Himself. Donald Trump is way ahead of him in that department. He’ll soon be branding D.C. federal offices with TRUMP in gold letters. Republicans will help him do it.
When Kennedy was elected, when he was assassinated, when the rest of the 1960s happened (the civil rights movement, the Great Society, more assassinations, riots, and the moon landing), and then Watergate in the mid-1970s, I was too young to fully appreciate what it was like to live through history. Now I can. It’s as exhausting as it is frightening.
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