The Larger Issue
by tristero
As bad as extorting Ukraine to help his 2020 chances is — and that’s really, really bad — I think the larger, more lasting issue is Trump’s deliberate destruction of the whistleblower program within the Federal government.
This particular whistleblower complaint just might become public (although right now, the complaint itself has been lost in the dangling of the release of phone transcripts, a different issue entirely). So what? The Democrats will slow-drag it and the Senate will never impeach him. There are no real consequences on the horizon.
Going forward, government employees wishing to alert Congress regarding additional abuses by Trump and his cronies know very well that nothing will protect them from Trump’s wrath. They would likely not only be risking their career, but their savings, if not their freedom, when they try to protect themselves from Trump’s onslaught.
In short, Trump has completely locked down the government. And you can be sure that there are far worse abuses ahead than putting children in cages and subverting elections. But we won’t be hearing about them until it is far too late to do anything about them.