Monday, June 13, 2022

"Treason Doth Never Prosper...."

Bill Stepien spent 5 years watching Donald Trump’s cruelty, pathological duplicity, irrationality, narcissistic personality disorder, buffoonery, and criminality. After that half-decade of evidence, this “professional” decided to accept a role as the campaign manager for Trump’s flagging re-election campaign.

And he didn’t just take some arm’s length consultancy providing powerpoint decks from the comfort of a Cape May beach house. He chose to sit in the big-boy chair as the man-child responsible for getting Trump four more years in power.

When he made that decision, at some level he knew—because we all knew, because Trump told us—that were his boss to lose, he wouldn’t go quietly into the night. He knew that Trump would go all manner of lengths to keep his grip on power, democracy be damned.

And yet on election night 2020, as this fate was coming to pass, Bill Stepien testified that he advised the president to give a measured statement about how it’s “too early to tell.” He wanted Trump to be dignified about how the team was “proud of the race we ran” and close by offering that he would have “more to say” after the votes came in.

LOLOLOL

Are you shitting me, Bill?

You thought Donald J. Trump was going to be gracious?
Yup. "Team Normal." Remind me again, what's the campaign against Liz Cheney largely based on?
"Not only did many of them not speak out, but when they did, they often backed up the president's claims," Cordes explained. "That's what's so jarring today, listening to their depositions. And let's just start with the former attorney general, Bill Barr. You know, he now says that he told the president in the starkest terms that these fraud theories were bogus and silly and based on complete misinformation."

"Well, at the time, in the months leading up to the election, he was saying something very different," she continued. "The attorney general was going out there and saying that mail-in ballot fraud could be widespread and that was something he was very concerned about even though that had never proven to be the case."

"About six weeks after the November election, listen to his first sentence in that resignation letter to the president," she said, reading the public letter: "I appreciate the opportunity to update you on vote fraud allegations and how those allegations will continue to be pursued."
 
"Very different from what we're hearing him say today," Cordes concluded.

CBS anchor Norah O'Donnell suggested that the deposition was "revisionist history" by the former attorney general.

"Absolutely," Cordes replied. "Either that, Norah, or yes, he was saying one thing to the president, and in private, he was saying that these claims were B.S. But as the attorney general of the country, he did not bother or wasn't willing come out there and say publicly that these allegations were baseless."

Rats and a sinking ship.  Cockroaches when the lights come on.  I'm watching "VICE" on Netflix, and reflecting about how, in my lifetime at least, it always involves Republicans and conservatives.  Scandal and indifference to everything but power and the "unitary executive" (which apparently Scalia sold to a credulous "C" student Dick Cheney) theory and all the corruption arising from the idea that if the right people wield power, then all is well with the world, I mean.

“Team Normal” is the latest example of a delusion that was ingrained deep within the Republican ruling class during the Trump era. It was filled with, as I categorized them in Why We Did It, “messiahs” and “junior messiahs” who told themselves they were one of the good ones, trying to nudge things in the right direction—from the inside. In this perverted mindset, the crazier things got, the more it proved that their nudging would be needed the next time things got out of hand. And so they soldiered on. Again and again and again.

Nah, man.  The deeply ingrained delusion within the Republic ruling class goes back to Nixon bombing Cambodia without Congressional authority (and why wasn't he impeached for that?).  It goes back to Gingrich impeaching Clinton just because he could.  It goes back to Cheney running intelligence operations as the Vice President (he gave himself that authority), and taking control of government on 9/11 because Bush was flying scared on Air Force One.  It didn't start with Trump; it doesn't end with Trump.

Trump is not even an aberration, or a culmination.  He's the logical result of efforts the GOP and conservatives in the GOP have been pursuing for almost a century.  But he doesn't end anything.  This investigation doesn't even start to put the brakes on.  What, the trial of Trump is going to toss Cruz and Gaetz and Gym Jordan and Kevin McCarthy and Gosar and MTG and Boebert and McConnell and most of the Senate GOP out of office?  Trump needs to be prosecuted, but is a successful prosecution going to change American political culture at all?

Yeah, sure....

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