New Article: The Kavanaugh Nomination and Trumpworld Fascist Corruption
David Shasha
The Kavanaugh Nomination and Trumpworld Fascist Corruption
Before we get underway with the very grisly details coming from the surreal Kavanaugh hearings, I want to begin the discussion with a truly breathtaking example of malicious stupidity from resident New York Times Right Wing columnist Ross Douthat and his craven, pusillanimous attitude towards Trumpworld Evil:
Here is the complete column “The Impotent Executive,” which is so moronic and offensive that it requires little comment:
Amid the Resistance-y funeral rites of John McCain, the president’s latest Twitter rants against his attorney general and the wild White House stories being circulated by Bob Woodward’s latest book, it’s a good time to revisit a familiar and crucial subject. To what extent is Donald Trump an extraordinarily dangerous president whose authoritarian style is constantly enabled by his advisers and his party? Or, alternatively, to what extent is he an extraordinarily weak president, constrained by his appointees and his notional allies at almost every turn?
I’ve made the case for the second narrative before, arguing that Trump isn’t really in charge of his own presidency, and that the Republican Congress — or at least the Republican Senate — has constrained his behavior more than many Resisters acknowledge.
A year into his administration, I ran down the list of destabilizing or immoral moves that Trump promised during his campaign and pointed out almost none had actually happened — no return to waterboarding, no exit from NATO or Nafta, a hackishly implemented travel ban that only gestured at the promised Muslim-immigration shutdown, no change to the libels laws to shutter hostile newspapers, no staffing of the cabinet or the judiciary with unqualified cronies, no practical concessions to Vladimir Putin in Russia’s near abroad, and more. In general the Trump of early 2018 looked like a Twitter authoritarian but a practical weakling, hounded by a special counsel and unable to even replace his own attorney general because Senate Republicans said he couldn’t.
But the last six months have tested that argument. Trump has asserted more control over his presidency’s staffing decisions, ejected obvious establishment plants like H.R. McMaster and Gary Cohn in favor of faces he likes from cable TV. He’s pursued a version of the trade wars that he touted on the hustings; he’s disrupted summit meetings with allies and fallen prostrate before Putin; he’s conducted diplomacy with North Korea in a reality-television style; he’s attacked the Mueller investigation constantly and hired surrogates to take the attacks all the way to 11; he’s pursued a family-separation policy at the border that’s exactly the kind of cruelty that his campaign promised and that many Republicans promised to restrain.
So is it still fair to describe Trump as a hemmed-in weakling, a Twitter terror but otherwise constrained? My answer is still a qualified yes. The president has torn through a few of the restraints that bind him, and some of the stories that Woodward’s book tells (in which cabinet officials behave like Nixon’s cabinet in the waning days of Watergate, doing everything possible to sideline their boss) may belong more to the era of Cohn and McMaster than Larry Kudlow and John Bolton.
But Trump is still extraordinarily weak. Some of that weakness is invisible because we simply take it for granted; it’s just part of the scenery, for instance, that this White House has no legislative agenda, no chance of advancing any policy priority on the hill, barely two years into the president’s first term.
Some of the weakness shows up in his attempts to play the tough guy. The child-separation policy, for instance, was abandoned scant days after it was publicized, because the president lacked the support within his own party and within his own White House to actually see a draconian measure through.
Some of the weakness is implicit in Trump’s attempts to reassert himself against restraints imposed by his allies or advisers. The rants against Jeff Sessions for failing to be his wingman are at once a dereliction of normal presidential duties and an admission that the Senate won’t let him replace his own cabinet officials. The supine behavior beside Putin was at once a national embarrassment and a reminder that Trump’s obvious desire to be pals with Russia has no discernible influence on his administration’s actual Russia policy.
And some of his weakness is presumably visible only behind the scenes and won’t be revealed until the next tell-all book, when it’s Bolton and Kudlow’s turn to leak — though we get tastes already, as in this newspaper’s recent account of how Bolton maneuvered successfully behind the scenes to shield the NATO summit’s final communiqué from his boss’s aggressive NATO skepticism.
All of this points to the case that Trump-skeptical Republican lawmakers can still offer, if pressed, in defense of their own approach to this strange presidency.
Yes, they would say, the president is erratic, dangerous, unfit and bigoted. But notwithstanding certain columnist fantasies you can’t impeach somebody for all that — or for pretending to be a dictator on Twitter, for that matter. And by the standards of any normal presidency we still have him contained.
Sure, the trade wars are bad, but every president launches at least one dumb trade war. We stopped the child migrant business, his other immigration moves are just stepped-up enforcement of the law, we’ve stepped back from the brink (however bizarrely) with the North Koreans, we’re still sanctioning the Russians.
Meanwhile he’s nominated the most establishment Republican jurist possible to the Supreme Court, and we won’t even let him fire his own attorney general, let alone Bob Mueller.
Look, we’re not enabling an American Putin here. We’re just babysitting the most impotent chief executive we’ll ever see, and locking in some good judges before the Democrats sweep us out.
I could continue this ventriloquization, but instead I’ll just point to its most substantial flaw: It assumes that Trumpian weakness will never breed Trumpian desperation, and that this president will be content with his impotence even in the face of a Mueller indictment of someone in his inner circle or a Democratic House’s investigation that threatens disgrace and ruin for his family. It assumes that Trump will never, even in a desperate hour, put his party’s attempts to contain him gently to a firmer sort of test.
It’s understandable that Republicans want to make this assumption. It’s understandable that they want to manage their way through this presidency, to prod and press and redirect rather than confronting and resisting. And so far that strategy has worked out better than one might reasonably have feared.
But we still have two years and four months left of this administration. And before it ends, I suspect the harder test will come.
Douthat is doing his best Officer Barbrady: “Nothing to See Here.”
All is well for Douthat because his man Kavanaugh is up for a lifetime appointment, so things cannot be so bad!
Douthat really does love Trump and has a very interesting way of saying it.
Perhaps Douthat would like to take a look at what his Trumpworld Nothing Burger actually looks like in real time:
Zachary Braiterman’s pictures are more to the point than his confusion over what it all means:
On the other hand, thinking more self-critically, I stopped myself at a certain point to ask who, in fact, were wearing these shirts. Because among all “those people” buying these shirts only a few were wearing them at the Fair. We saw maybe 4 or 5 or 6 Trump shirts on any given day, which is not a lot compared to the tens of thousands of people visiting the fairgrounds on that any given day. Shirts for guns were more common than for Trump. Maybe all those Trump shirts and other rightwing swag sold at the Fair were taken back home as memorabilia, trophies, talismans, or simply as gifts for friends and family. And even these shirts and swag expressed less confidence than one might have assumed at first glance. Provocatively in your face, they were self-conscious and maybe self-pitying. They were less “Make America Great Again” and more “If You Are Offended by Trump, You Won’t Like Me” or If You Are Offended by This Flag, I’ll Help You Pack,” of which there were two versions, American and Confederate.
Given that Braiterman is a Jewish Academic, it is somewhat odd – and perhaps disturbing – that he is taking an inventory of the Trumpworld Alt-Right racists and their paraphernalia rather than seeing exactly how those items are designed to intimidate those attending the Fair, as well as to assert American identity in an exclusively KKK/Nazi key.
First, the spectacle defines what Trumpworld really is.
Second, this reality is one that is not open to “critical analysis,” but must be actively fought against and rejected.
It is indeed quite unclear how the Jewish community – whether it is Liberal Academics like Braiterman, or the usual Synagogue FOX News Fascists that we will all be encountering in this Holiday season – is dealing with Trumpshock.
Evil is not open to speculation!
That is something we should have learned by now.
After this review of the Trumpworld horrorshow, we get to the opening of the corrupted Kavanaugh Senate hearing:
Kavanaugh is as Far Right Wing a wingnut as you can get.
But more than this, he has a very long record of partisan Republican hackery, and his document trail is being manipulated by the Trumplackeys in the Senate – that means the Republicans in the Senate who will all likely vote to confirm this crooked operative.
So, we had the document thing:
Then we had the disgusting spectacle of Kavanaugh’s true face – belying his fake “Carpool Dad” image – when he was confronted by Parkland High School shooting dad Fred Guttenberg and obstinately refused to acknowledge him or shake his outstretched hand:
The moment encapsulated the craven partisanship of the Trumpscum Kavanaugh and his obeisance to the NRA:
But as the questioning got underway, we saw the usually impotent Democrats get a spine.
First, they took on the issue of the suppressed documents:
New Jersey Senator Corey Booker went after Kavanaugh on the Race Issue:
https://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2018/09/booker_hammers_judge_kavanaugh_over_civil_rights.html
Hawaii Senator Mazie Hirono, with a specific eye towards her Republican colleague from Alaska Lisa Murkowski, took Kavanaugh on with a document providing conclusive evidence of his rejection of rights for the indigenous people of both Hawaii and Alaska:
And then there was the volatile issue of Roe vs. Wade which is a critical issue for both Murkowski, as well as Maine Senator Susan Collins:
It appears that Kavanaugh has been lying in the hearings and on his trips to Capitol Hill with his bromantic handler Don McGahn, and that his position of Abortion is not at all what he said it was.
We now have the documents to prove it.
And let us not forget Vermont Senator Pat Leahy, who accused Kavanaugh of participating in the theft of documents while in the Bush 43 White House:
But the one that was most surprising to the vile Kavanaugh was California Senator Kamala Harris asking whether the nominee spoke about the Mueller Probe to the Kasowitz law firm which represents Trump himself:
https://www.vox.com/2018/9/6/17826498/kamala-harris-kasowitz-question-kavanaugh-hearings
It is indeed very curious that these wingnut Conservative extremists avoid presenting their own records with transparency, when it would make more sense for them to be proud of what they believe in.
But let us not expect moral rectitude from such degenerate people.
Kavanaugh is a complete slimeball who apparently does not seem to know what hit him.
We should recall that his name did not appear on Trump’s Supreme Court pick list until Mueller actually began his investigation:
It has become pretty obvious that Trump chose Kavanaugh for his expansive and immoral view that the president is Above the Law:
https://www.thenation.com/article/brett-kavanaugh-argued-sitting-president-law/
It is unclear if the Democrats will end up derailing the Kavanaugh nomination, but they are working hard and smart to do all they can to have him rejected.
As we witnessed the three-ring Kavanaugh hearings circus, we were still reeling from Trump’s ongoing contempt for the Rule of Law.
Indeed, there is no peace for the wicked:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/03/politics/donald-trump-jeff-sessions-justice-department/index.html
It is important to consider Trump’s emphatic rejection of the Rule of Law when considering what is happening with Kavanaugh and the potential implications for the highest Court in the land.
Trump has been going after his hand-picked Attorney General for some time now, but his latest attack moves us into truly scary territory.
Here is the treasonous tweet-in-full from the idiot-in-full:
Two long running, Obama era, investigations of two very popular Republican Congressmen were brought to a well publicized charge, just ahead of the Mid-Terms, by the Jeff Sessions Justice Department. Two easy wins now in doubt because there is not enough time. Good job Jeff......
Trump has decided the Justice Department should not prosecute the crimes of Republican allies of his.
As we know, he has not been so generous with his Democratic enemies:
Justice has now become a relative concept for the Republican Party.
And we now have the possibility of a president under criminal investigation who might be able to choose a Supreme Court Justice to shield him from the full effect of the Law.
This is officially a Banana Republic.
David Shasha