A lengthy and excellent summary of the corruption of the office of the presidency by the enablers of Trump and Trump himself by Robin Alperstein + My Comment

 

My Comment: Below is Robin Alperstein's lengthy and excellent post about the all inclusive actions of Trump's enablers assisting him in an unconstitutional attempt to overturn a presidential election and overthrow the US government to install Trump as permanent Marshall Law president. It is a summary of the poisonous mendacity of those who enable Trump as he attempts to overturn a resounding election placing Joe Biden at the center of the winner's circle against the loser Trump.  These unconstitutional acts to subvert the election are a cancer on democracy.  They are utterly deplorable as is Trump himself with all his delusions of power and his never ending monumental corruption of the office of president! His presidency bends towards monumental injustice, mendacity and treasonous subversion.  History's note will define Trump justly as that.  January 20, 2021 cannot come fast enough for me.

By: Robin Alperstein

Michael Flynn, newly pardoned for his lies to the FBI and anything and everything connected to the Russia investigation (thus ensuring his role in obstructing justice on behalf of Trump in connection with that investigation can never be prosecuted), has decided to up the ante on his demented jeremiads against Hillary and Obama from the 2016 presidential campaign and instead incite the violent overthrow of the United States Constitution, by urging Trump to "declare martial law" (a power he does not have) and hold a military-overseen "re-vote" (a power it does not have; the states run elections per the Constitution), i.e., a coup. He is joined in this sedition by Trump attorney Lin Wood.

The danger here lies in the seditious and destabilizing public calls to destroy our system of government. Uncowed by his prosecution and emboldened by the DOJ's corruption under Barr and Trump's corrupt abuse of the pardon power to reward Flynn for his loyalty and obstruction, Flynn demonstrates yet again why he should never ever have been put in place as National Security Advisor. He is an unhinged and corrupt disgrace, a menace whose every public statement is testament to the threat he poses to our national security and our struggling democracy.

If anything, the ongoing, Republican-led assault on our Constitution and the legitimacy of President-elect Biden, who won 51%-47%, demonstrates that Biden cannot just ignore the depredations of the Trump administration and the criminal actors who engaged in them.

They will never sideline themselves; they never slink away in shame or even ignominy -- instead, they become false heroes to the right and they double-down on their own vileness, and those who watch learn from them and plot their own next moves, while Trump supporters and their channelers in the rightwing ecosphere whip each other into escalating frenzies of rejection of democracy.

Whether they are murderous racist teenagers who slaughter protestors in the street or the attorney general who called on the U.S. military to potentially do the same, whether they are slick and shameless public liars like Kayleigh McEnaney or more demented and bumbling ones like Rudy Giuliani, whether they are the architects of grotesque human rights violations reminiscent of Nazi Germany like Stephen Miller or weasley apparatchiks like Emily Murphy, whether they are corrupt, nepotistic Hatch Act violators potentially trading, for personal gain, information obtained through security clearances that should never have been granted, like Jared Kushner, whether they are flagrant abusers of the public coffers like Scott Pruitt (remember him), or whether they are part of Trump's legal clownshow like the brazen disinformation-peddler Jenna Ellis or leopard-print-wearing loony Sidney Powell, these grotesque actors and the Republicans clamoring in the wings to support them with their lies -- such as Josh Hawley, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, Nikki Haley, and so many more, so very many, carrying the torch of lies, obstruction, and attacks on our system that will be its undoing -- THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT GOING TO STOP. They will continue their normalization of lying attacks on Biden, their attacks on Democratic voters, their assault on the Constitution and democracy itself, unless they are prosecuted for their crimes under a Biden administration and STOPPED.

Republicans like Josh Hawley and Nikki Haley and Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and their ilk -- well-heeled and highly educated elites who like to pretend they are god-fearing people, and who would never be so crass as Flynn in their demand for the overthrow of the U.S. government -- prefer to launder their assaults on our nation and the right to vote of people of color in coded letters to their constituents and lock-step talking points about letting "the process" play out or counting "legal votes" or newfound dog whistles like "ballot harvesting." The Hawleys and Tom Cottons and John Thunes and Mike Rounds of the world are quietly building on the rightwing conspiracy-complex-arsenal to attack our new president and vice president and wage war on the majority's right to self-governance by promising supporters to "restore" the very election integrity that they are still allowing their vile leader to undermine.

And meanwhile, their peers are not even quiet about their support for democratic overthrow -- sitting senators Perdue and Loeffler baselessly attacked fellow Republican and Trump supporter, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, for not illegally throwing the election to them or to Trump. These are sitting senators publicly lambasting an elected public official for refusing to fraudulently call a valid election a fraud to sow doubt about it for them and for Trump. This is both reprehensible and now fully normalized, both through the fact that it has happened and that other Republicans have generally not condemned them or Trump, and it's the playbook we are now going to see used by practically every Republican who loses. Look at John James in Michigan, who eventually conceded but spread a host of lies and false fraud attacks for weeks before he did, echoing the destructive talking points of Trump and others.

So many "at long last, have you no sense of decency" moments have come and gone without a shred of change from Trump or a single one of the lickspittles or power-mad accomplices who have made him possible, that it cannot be plausibly argued that there is any such decency among the Republican leadership. We can find it, in tiny and far-flung examples, among some lower-level state officials in MI, PA, GA, and AZ, or the odd governor of a Democratic state. But that's it. And while that proved to be enough this time around, Republican leaders have every incentive to ensure that next time around, it is not. Their failure to stand up for Joe Biden isn't about Joe Biden -- it's about the Constitution and whether we have a democracy. The Republican leadership has shown time and again that it is not interested in either; instead, it is interested in the pretense of both as a figleaf for its larger project of minority rule and the endless transfer of wealth into the pockets of their donors.

P.S. In the comments are links to Hawley's letter to a constituent, which exemplifies the walk-the-line laundering of pernicious democracy-subverting lies that are, along with corruption and racism, Trumpism's, and thus the GOP's, lifeblood.

P.P.S. Also in the comments, a Joe Welch-esque "it has to stop" 4 minute press conference by the Georgia Deputy of Secretary of State, demanding that Trump and other Republican leaders stop inciting violence. Really worth watching. It also appears to have had a marginal impact, along with Raffensberger’s presser yesterday (also in comments below): per the Hill, the White House now at least purports to condemn threats of violence against election workers. But of course this is too little, too late, and totally perfunctory, like Trump's initial reaction to the murder of Heather Hyer. The damage that Trump and other members of his party have done remains, is ongoing, and is metastasizing across the party before our eyes.

P.P.P.S Flynn's sedition comes even as the news explodes of the DOJ's bribery-pardon scheme investigation and as trial balloons about preemptive pardons for the Trump spawn are floated. Note that the Constitutionality/legitimacy of a preemptive pardon is not a given.

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