"But the same pathologies that abetted Trump’s political rise, animated his followers and became hallmarks of his turbulent single term have now, in the twilight of his presidency, left him a man diminished."
Up-to-date analysis of the local political landscape
"But the same pathologies that abetted Trump’s political rise, animated his followers and became hallmarks of his turbulent single term have now, in the twilight of his presidency, left him a man diminished."
We expect the newly inaugurated president to sign some 15 separate executive orders this afternoon, with more promised in the next weeks. The collective effort was characterized by Biden's aides as “undoing” and “reversing” policies implemented by Trump that were “harmful” or “inhumane.”
The Pandemic
Swiftly following his swearing in, President Biden plans to sign executive actions that will require masks on all federal grounds, and he will ask agencies to extend moratoriums on evictions and on federal student loan payments. He will urge Americans to don face coverings for 100 days while reviving a global health unit in the National Security Council — allowed to go dormant during the Trump administration — to oversee pandemic preparedness and response. He will also begin to reverse steps taken by President Trump to withdraw from the World Health Organization by dispatching Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease official, to speak at the international group’s executive board meeting tomorrow. He will create a White House Covid-19 response team that will coordinate across the federal government and with states on ramping up vaccinations, distributing more masks and gloves, expanding testing capacity, reopening schools and more.
Immigration
In an online lunchtime chat with the John Locke Foundation's Donna Martinez that was streamed live yesterday, Senator Thom Tillis claimed that he had not read the five paragraphs in the House's impeachment article against Donald Trump.Asked whether he'd vote to convict the president, Tillis -- an overcooked noodle, sliding off the spoon -- wouldn't answer yes or no.
A Reoccurring Feature on Who's Jumping Off Luxury Liner Trump
This guy. Michael Ellis, a lawyer and Trump loyalist, who had been an operative for Republican Rep. Devin Nunes and then graduated to the Trump White House in various roles (a lawyer for the National Security Council and then the White House’s senior director for intelligence), where he did what he could to stop the publication of John Bolton's book, "The Room Where It Happened." Ellis is said to have overruled the decision by a career official to clear Bolton’s book for publication, even though he had no formal training in the classification of national security information. Then the William Barr Justice Department, under pressure from Trump, sued Bolton to recoup his profits from the book.
Anyway ... this guy ... Michael Ellis has been forced on the National Security Agency in the last days of the Trump administration as the NSA's general counsel. Trump's last (acting) defense secretary ordered the NSA to hire Ellis, something the director of the NSA clearly didn't want to do -- to embed this political punk into the ranks of the Senior Executive Service, which will protect his job from a political firing by the Biden administration (though they can reassign his ass to a place where he can't continue to spy for Trump).
Mr. Ellis is seen as a smart lawyer. But the push to install him in a permanent government job puzzled some. According to former officials, he is likely to enter the general counsel’s office under a good deal of suspicion and will have an uphill battle to win the confidence of [NSA Director] General [Paul] Nakasone.
Mr. Ellis will be a member of the Senior Executive Service, a Civil Service job that has strong protections against firing. However, civil servants can be easily moved in the Defense Department, so he could be given a legal job elsewhere in the sprawling department — overseeing compliance with environmental regulations at a remote military base, for example. [NYTimes]
Gotta ask why Trump and his minions were so determined to give one of Twitterman's loyal foot soldiers such a prominent perch in the national spy agency. Gosh, it's almost like Trump wants to keep an eye on how, say, Russia may be faring under the new Biden administration.
And how many other Trump moles have been similarly installed for longterm spying in other government agencies?
A New Yorker reporter's footage from inside the Capitol riot is chilling, especially for revealing how the insurrectionists see themselves and congratulate their own testosterone.
The crisis in our nation wasn't just for that one day. Their devotion to the big lie becomes an enduring burden for the survival of the Republic.
Next month, the state executive committee of the North Carolina Democratic Party will vote on a new chair for the state party. The only announced candidate for the job right now is Bobbie Richardson, who is currently 1st vice chair and a former member of the NC House. She was appointed to the Dist. 7 House seat in 2013, won reelection in 2014 and 2016 but lost her seat (by a large margin) in the elections of 2018, after redistricting dissolved her old constituency and replaced it with a much whiter, more Republican electorate.
(The old Dist. 7 had been considered one of the most racially gerrymandered in the state. While redistricting generally across NC in 2018 made Democratic gains in the General Assembly possible, that redistricting hurt a handful of Democratic incumbents, and Richardson was one of those.)
Could Richardson be our Stacey Abrams? Would she have the vision and the juice to mount aggressive voter registration and outreach to find and motivate the people who haven't been participating in our civic contract? While Black voter turnout in North Carolina increased 4.1 points last fall over 2016, it wasn’t enough for Democrats to flip the state for Biden or to flip at least one chamber in the General Assembly. Some 68.4% of North Carolina’s Black voters cast a ballot in the 2020 elections, compared to 78.8% of white voters. That's the winning margin right there, all those votes left untapped.
Richardson spent 35 years teaching in North Carolina schools, with a wealth of preparation behind her including a doctorate in education leadership from UNC-Chapel Hill. She's been a stand-out leader in her community (which is clear from reading her bio), but can she bring a Stacey Abrams level of organizing and reform to the North Carolina Democratic Party?
I heard Fran Lebowitz say she worries about dying in such a manner that people will laugh. It's called "cosmic irony," that force in the universe looking to embarrass you in your last minutes. Like Nelson Rockefeller, dead of a heart attack in the secret apartment of his very young mistress. Like Sir Francis Bacon, a most arrogant but scientific Elizabethan, dead of pneumonia after stuffing a chicken with snow. Like Draco of Athens, literally killed by kindness, suffocating under a pile of gifts showered on him by grateful citizens. I could go on.
People laughed.
Like, say you're a proper and judgmental church lady. A garbage truck with your name on it may be stalking you in the streets. People will laugh, most likely in private but still.
I don't know if Donald Trump worries. Pariahs often don't. Pariahs lack the self-reflection to recognize any ironies, let alone the cosmic variety, but he should, if he could, avoid living in such a way as to invite the flying fickle finger of fate. Self-absorption paves the road for cruel hilarity.
Say, he blunders into Melania's bedroom in the middle of the night, and she mistakes him for a Mexican rapist and puts a bullet through his heart. Say, a judgmental young woman grabs him by the privates and precipitates an exploding aneurysm in his femoral artery. Say his smartphone catches fire and he's wearing clothes fashioned out of cellulose fibers, designed and sold as a brand by Ivanka.
Dreaming up those scenarios could be a parlor game. I remember when we had a similar one for Dick Nixon: "I won't be satisfied until he ________." It's a ghastly theater of revenge porn, not entirely unlike the scenarios the mob at the Capitol last week were playing in their heads as they went hunting for traitors.
Newly elected NC-11 Congressman Madison Cawthorn spoke at the Ellipse rally of Trumpists last Wednesday. Cawthorn said in part: “The Democrats, with all the fraud they have done in this election, the Republicans, hiding and not fighting, they are trying to silence your voice. Make no mistake about it, they do not want you to be heard. But my friends, when I look out into this crowd, I can confidently say, this crowd has the voice of lions. There is a new Republican Party on the rise that will represent this country, that will go and fight in Washington, D.C.”
Henderson County Sheriff George Erwin, who had worked hard for Cawthorn's election, couldn't stand it. He said about Cawthorn's speech, “Words mean things. You can inflame a group and you can calm a group by the words you used. To me, he inflamed,” Erwin said. “.... You rile people up and then afterwards, you’re going to say, ‘Well, this is appalling. This is appalling and I back the blue.’ No, you don’t. You fired these people up and the first line of defense was law enforcement. People are dead. You can’t take that back.”
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Sheriff George Erwin |
William J. Burns, to head the Central Intelligence Agency
Burns has been a career diplomat in the State Department. He led secret talks with Iran that led to the famous nuclear deal that Trump promptly destroyed. Burns has a reputation for nonpartisanship and has held key diplomatic posts in both Democratic and Republican administrations.
NYTimes: Mr. Burns also served as the ambassador to Russia from 2005 to 2008, making him a keen observer of President Vladimir V. Putin. Russian interference in American elections has been one of the most important intelligence issues in recent years. In all, Mr. Burns did two tours in Moscow and speaks Russian. Mr. Burns, currently the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has been vocal in his belief that American diplomacy has been damaged during the Trump administration.
Intercepted email: Democratic officials in the 5th District of N.C. have drafted a letter address to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, urging disciplinary action against Congresswoman Virginia A. Foxx for her activities last Wednesday. This is part of the letter:
Ms. Foxx has claimed to object “out of an abiding respect for the Constitution” in reflection of supposed “violations of Article II, Section I of the Constitution” in which there is no stated direction as to how the states’ manage their election process regarding Presidential electors. The reality is that the Republican Members’ publicly stated goal in raising multiple objections to states’ electors certification was to overturn the election in favor of the defeated President Trump. This action goes against the intent of the Electoral Count Act of 1887, which sought to minimize Congressional involvement in election disputes. This grossly un-democratic attempt to subvert the will of the people reflects a violation of her duty as called to in the Amendment XIV of the Constitution, Section 3:
“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States,shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
As constituents of Ms. Foxx, we want to be very clear that we do not feel adequately represented by an individual who would publicly stand with insurrectionists. We want to make clear that this is not done in hopes to undermine the recent election that Rep. Foxx fairly won despite many similar election process changes in our great state of North Carolina that were done in Pennsylvania. The sheer hypocrisy in challenging the results of Pennsylvania, where Biden won, but not North Carolina, where Trump was victorious, is obvious in their ultimate intentions: disregarding the will of the majority of Americans as reflected in the Electoral College totals. We recognize that due to targeted gerrymandering by the NCGOP-lead NC General Assembly any replacement for Ms. Foxx in the Fifth District would come from special election that a Republican candidate is favored to win.
Therefore, we respectfully request that the House of Representatives conduct an investigation for Ethics Violations regarding Ms. Foxx’s aforementioned Acts of Sedition. If the 2/3rds vote necessary for expulsion cannot be secured, we request that the House of Representatives formally censure Ms. Foxx on behalf of her constituents in the 5th Congressional District.
Martin Walsh, to be Secretary of Labor
Currently and for the last seven years, the mayor of Boston and a former top union leader (the Boston Building and Construction Trades Council, an umbrella group for unions). He's a personal friend of Joe Biden.
Virginia Foxx, who has a limited vocabulary, immediately attacked Biden's choice: “Marty Walsh’s background in organized labor signals that he will work to deliver on left-wing campaign promises.” Imagine that! Delivering on campaign promises.
Boston Globe: "Organized labor has played a pivotal role in Walsh’s life and political rise. He was 21 years old when he became a member of the Laborers’ Union Local 223 in Boston, which his father had joined in the 1950s after emigrating from Ireland and his uncle later led. Walsh, who was a state representative for 16 years, went on to also serve as president of the union, then was the head of the Building and Construction Trades Council. When he first ran for mayor in 2013, unions fueled his campaign with financial contributions and volunteers."
Gina Raimondo, to be Secretary of Commerce
Currently and since 2014, the governor of Rhode Island.
Politico: Raimondo is a former venture capitalist who worked at a fund backed by Bain Capital. She also started her own venture firm in Rhode Island, where she worked before being elected general treasurer of Rhode Island in 2011. During the presidential primary of 2020, she threw her support behind former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, serving as national co-chair for the well funded but ill-fated campaign.
Raimondo, if approved by the Senate, will preside over a sprawling, diverse department, whose functions include forecasting the weather, managing ocean fisheries, and setting international product standards. She will also be landing in the middle of several international trade disputes that were begun during the tenure of Trump's Secretary Wilbur Ross.
Merrick Garland, to be Attorney General of the United States
Garland, 68 -- most famous probably for being the Supreme Court nominee who never got a hearing, an early casualty of Trump-style bullying and a pelt on McConnell's shield.
Garland first worked at the justice department in 1979 as an assistant to Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti. He later became a federal prosecutor and in the Clinton administration served as a senior Justice Department official. Clinton appointed him to the D.C. bench of the US Court of Appeals.
He knows violent white supremacists. He played a leading role in the investigation and prosecution of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols for the Oklahoma City bombing. His grandparents, Russian Jews, fled the Tsar's pogroms in the early 20th century. Garland was raised in conservative Judaism where he learned caring and protection for the weak. In 1983, as a lawyer in private practice, he won the case in the Supreme Court which mandated seat belts in all autos.
He looks too moderate for some progressives, but he looks foursquare to me. Nina Totenberg described him as "a moderate liberal, with a definite pro-prosecution bent in criminal cases." For post-Trump, that sounds promising. SCOTUSblog: "Judge Garland's record demonstrates that he is essentially the model, neutral judge. He is acknowledged by all to be brilliant. His opinions avoid unnecessary, sweeping pronouncements." Garland has a reputation for collegiality, and according to Wikipedia, his opinions rarely draw a dissent. "Some Biden advisers have come to view him as well-suited to restore norms of nonpolitical decision-making at the Justice Department" (WashPost).
Lisa Monaco, for the No. 2 position of Deputy Attorney General
She, too, is a department veteran. She served as the Assistant Attorney General for National Security from 2011 to 2013 and as the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General. Before that she worked as a prosecutor, then served as a senior adviser to Robert Mueller when he was FBI director. She also served in the Obama White House as the chief counterterrorism advisor to the president.
She worked as a research coordinator for the Senate Committee on the Judiciary from 1992 to 1994 under then chairman Joe Biden, where she especially worked on the Violence Against Women Act. As a member of the Justice Department's Enron Task Force, she led the trial team in the prosecution of five former Enron executives. (Corporate corruption has got to be a target-rich area after four years of Trump.)
For the Russian interference she's well equipped. She was President Obama's chief cybersecurity advisor and drove the policy decision to create the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in 2015.
Wikipedia: President and Chief Executive Officer of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. Previously the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General and appointed to head of the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice by Barack Obama, a position she held until January 20, 2017 (ahem).
Before all of that, she was a civil rights lawyer and the Deputy Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, where she oversaw its national criminal justice reform efforts. She also served as assistant counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Throughout her career, she has drawn support from a wide range of liberal and conservative activists, as well as law enforcement leaders, for building collaborative support and finding common ground on policing and criminal justice reform.
I happen to know something about Gupta's very first case as a young lawyer working for the NAACP, because it involved people of color just 25 miles from where I grew up in the Texas Panhandle. She defended some 40 African Americans and six white or Latino people who were romantic partners of African Americans in Tulia, Tex., seat of Swisher County and a little town well known to me because it had a public swimming pool. The 40 Tulia defendants had been convicted by all-white juries on drug dealing charges. In almost every case, the only evidence was the testimony of an undercover agent, Tom Coleman. Coleman did not use wiretaps or marked money, and records showed that he had "filed shoddy reports." He had previous misdemeanor charges for stealing gasoline from a county pump and "abuse of official capacity." Gupta won the release of her clients in 2003, four years after they were jailed, then negotiated a $6 million settlement for those arrested.
Gupta's previous tenure at the Department of Justice was marked by several high profile matters that included the investigations of the Ferguson, Baltimore, and Chicago police departments; the appeals of the Texas and North Carolina voter ID cases; the challenge to North Carolina’s HB2 law and other LGBTQ rights litigation; enforcement of education, land use, hate crimes, and other statutes to combat Islamophobia and other forms of religious discrimination; etc.
Clarke's parents immigrated to Brooklyn from Jamaica. She got her B.A. from Harvard and her law degree from Columbia. After graduating from law school she joined the Department of Justice as a prosecutor and a trial lawyer on voting rights, hate crimes, and human trafficking cases. She won a landmark decision in the D.C. Circuit that found hateful on-line trolling a compensible tort.
More a student of politics than a student of government, so I'd rather speculate on what now happens to the Republican Party than on how our system survives for the next dozen days. (Yes, I could also speculate on what now happens to the Democratic Party, but I don't write romance novels.)
You know what else was going on in this nation on Wednesday? The winter meeting of the Republican National Committee, at an expensive venue on Amelia Island, Florida. (I'm told a mere jigger of good Kentucky whiskey cost $24.) And do you know what Donald J. Trump was doing Thursday morning? He was all rah-rah-team on a speakerphone direct to the winter session attendees and also in a later canned video. Curiously, the events of the day before no longer existed anywhere in the universe. Poof. No national emergency, no potential public embarrassment for politicians who condoned the mob. During the breakfast session on Thursday morning, Trump complained about the media and never once mentioned the storming of the Capitol.
Trump also sent along to the winter meeting a 2-minute video of himself standing in the White House colonnade. He bragged about the popularity of the party, about his 74 million votes, about women (of all things) who won seats in the House, and about the expedited coronavirus vaccine. Again, he did not mention the insurrection meant to keep him in the White House.
In other words, Jesus! Not only did Trump lie by omission, like Land O Lakes wouldn't melt in his mouth, but he also displayed his total lack of interest in self-examination. His crippling ineptitude with self-awareness is the hallmark of this very stable genius. He seemed not to know yesterday what he now looks like. He doesn't understand that many of the delegates attending the winter meeting were already secretly disgusted with him, some of them beginning to speculate on whether the Trump blessing in 2020 might be a liability or no advantage for a candidate.
Self-examination? That video speech "to the nation" yesterday evening, which Trump let his daughter Ivanka talk him into, included these words:
"America is and must always be a nation of law and order. The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy. To those who engaged in the acts of violence and destruction, you do not represent our country. And to those who broke the law, you will pay."
This is what we get from a president who can't see himself and for whom none of what he said is true -- its insincerity underlined by his monotone while reading it.
Here's the political question: Just how much of what's left of the GOP can actually see itself any clearer than Trump sees himself? Does the wider GOP, not just the Party brass on Amelia Island, see that its brand has become so hated by voters that the Party is forced to suppress the vote of those who hate them in order to win elections -- imposing hurtles like photo I.D., doing purges of voter rolls, moving precincts and limiting access to early voting, drawing maps that divide and conquer?
Maybe in states of the former Confederacy, where Trumpism is strongest -- like North Carolina -- the adherence to Trump's big lie may hang on longer than in the Midwest and the industrial North. (Incidentally, I operate with this definition: belief in Trump's lies plus a proclivity for bullying equals "Trumpism.") I hear that the braggadocio of the Capitol stormers sprouts today on social media, with more and more of the guys (and a few of the gals) posting selfies of their brave deeds taken while trashing the Capitol. They clearly think they're totally in the clear and unaccountable. Because they're white.
Is that the Republican Party of 2022?
It's worth noting that at the winter meeting in Florida, the crowd of GOP leaders "had a lackluster response" when former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley criticized Trump. “He was badly wrong with his words yesterday,” Haley said. “And it wasn’t just his words. His actions since Election Day will be judged harshly by history.” Judged harshly by history -- who he? -- but not necessarily openly dissed by the GOP's top officials. The all-in Trumpist cheerleader, National Chair Ronna McDaniel, has been endorsed by Trump for another term, which she ardently desires, and she therefore has no rivals to head the Party for another two years.
Where do the Larry Hogans of the Republican Party go? Where do the Bob Orrs?
A Reoccurring Feature on Who's Jumping Off Luxury Liner Trump
Hard to keep up in the aftermath of Trump's attempt on Wednesday to overthrow the democratic government of the United States.
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Mick Mulvaney |
A Reoccurring Feature on Who's Jumping Off Luxury Liner Trump
Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao (and wife of Mitch McConnell) and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos are resigning over the Trump-inspired insurrection Wednesday at the US Capitol.
A Reoccurring Feature of Who's Jumping Off Luxury Liner Trump
Stephanie Grisham, a longtime Trump family loyalist who served as White House press secretary and most recently as the first lady’s chief of staff; and Anna Cristina Niceta, the White House social secretary, separately announced their resignations last night.Representative Virginia Foxx straddled, an awkward position for a supposedly dignified 70-something congresswoman to take.
On the first objection to the Electoral College votes from Arizona, following debate which resumed after the insurrection last night, Foxx voted not to sustain the objection. On the second objection to the Electoral College votes from Pennsylvania, Foxx voted "yea" to sustain the objection. That vote in the US House didn't happen until almost 4 a.m. this morning.
The congresswoman wants to have it both ways. But we feel sure she'll be soliciting those presidential autographs from Joe Biden.
What happened yesterday at the Capitol is the culmination of Trump's morally defective presidency. His supporters who stormed and ransacked the building believed his lies and became complicit in his attempt at a coup.
Trump stoked his ego by causing thousands to break the law for his sake and in his name. He must have reveled in the scene, until the scene became too stomach-churning even for him -- if it ever did.
“Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election,” Trump lied in a tweet on December 20. “Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” They showed up by the thousands for a rally on The Ellipse, as did Trump, who urged them repeatedly to march on the Capitol. He even said he'd be marching with them. He didn't. He retreated to the warmth and safety of the White House while an insurrection unfolded on Capitol Hill.![]() |
This Trump-inspired insurrectionist has his foot up on Nancy Pelosi's desk. He later had his photo taken holding up a piece of her mail he had stolen from the office. |
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They think they are doing something righteous. That delusion and abandonment of reality will be the great burden of the Biden administration and will weigh heavily on all of us. |
A 50-50 split in the US Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris the tie-breaker, and Mitch McConnell no longer the 500-pound tortoise sitting on every progressive initiative. This morning may be the first time I've really felt hopeful in months.
The apparent wins of Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff are particular triumphs of the amazing Stacey Abrams, who after she lost the Georgia governor race in 2018 against Brian Kemp, what did she do? She started Fair Fight and began the voter registration and get-out-the-vote drives that first turned Georgia blue for Joe Biden and then made it possible for him to get his cabinet confirmed and his appointments of federal judges approved.
I'm hearing Abrams may run for Georgia governor again in 2022.
NYTimes reporter Michael Schmidt has written the best book I've read on the Trump era, or ever hope to read -- "Donald Trump v. The United States: Inside the Struggle To Stop a President." Schmidt hasn't just written a kind of political thriller based on his granular Washington reporting, coupled with amazing access to a particular White House official, White House Counsel Don McGahn. McGahn was trying to herd the wrong man who had gotten himself into the wrong place at the wrong time, a new president who was trying to wield absolute power like the monarch he was in his own mind. That's a sizzling tale in Schmidt's handling. But his book seems greater than that. It's grade A history and will live as a valuable chronicle of what we've been through as a nation. Schmidt's style -- crystalline, propulsive, clarified like the best basting butter.
He tells the tale of more than just McGahn. Other Trump administration figures also attempted to restrain Trump, like James Comey, who didn't last too long. We have to admit that those attempts to restrain Trump were largely unsuccessful-- Trump still got himself impeached and is right now plotting God knows what for this coming Wednesday. Last Saturday, Trump, with North Carolinian Mark Meadows on the line, solicited Georgia elected officials to commit electoral fraud.
But for a time -- the heart of Schmidt's book -- Don McGahn attempted to hold Trump back. He was the one top aide who could have a shouting match with Trump and keep his job. He called Trump "King Kong," and not as a complement. In McGahn's eyes, Trump became just another celebrity bimbo, susceptible to flattery and lacking a moral core. McGahn was particularly repulsed when Trump pardoned a woman because fellow celebrity Kim Kardashian made the suggestion. In the end, and because Trump's first set of defense team lawyers (John Dowd and Ty Cobb) had offered Mueller total access to White House aides -- because Trump had told them he'd done nothing wrong and they chose to believe the biggest liar in the Western Hemisphere -- McGahn covered his butt and told the Mueller team everything he thought the Mueller team was going to find out eventually anyway. Plus McGahn had come to the conclusion that Trump was setting him up to take the fall. McGahn blabbed in secret to Mueller's team for over 30 hours and just incidentally implicated Trump in criminal obstruction of justice. Whether any Federal prosecutor anywhere, even six months from now, chooses to pursue charges on that evidence is a forlorn hope.
Trump has been a threat to democracy itself and essentially unstoppable (except for the intercession of the voters, a fact that Donald Trump doesn't accept and that right now he's scheming to overturn). Schmidt sums up the Trump persona better than anyone: "He was thin-skinned, but somehow impervious to things that would -- and did -- destroy more normal candidates. He couldn't take a punch, yet he could survive a beating better than anyone else."Now this McGahn fellow ... not someone I intend to heroize. He's a libertarian, apparently a pretty notorious one. He wanted to see government regulation dismantled and the Wild Wild West restored to capitalism, and he had extracted a promise from Trump to take the job of White House Counsel: Trump had to give McGahn a free hand to select Supreme Court nominees, along with all Federal district judgeships. McGahn came up with the names and McConnell pushed them through, often over the objection ("Not Qualified") of the American Bar Association. Trump got through a staggering 230+ judicial nominees, almost all of them McGahn's personal picks.
Schmidt understands The Trump Way -- "a cascading chaos" of daily whims and petty grudges, distractions and head-scratching detours and deadends. That daily churn of novelty actually "dulls the senses" for us bystanders, and normal people with allegiance to normal values forget to be shocked.
Schmidt ends his account in the summer of 2019 with Attorney General William Barr's commandeering of the Mueller report to Trump's benefit. Schmidt's book went into production months before the November election, and it was published last August. Schmidt didn't know how the election would turn out, but he seems resigned that Trump will survive yet again. I'm prepared to say he hasn't. And I can only hope that Michael Schmidt is already prepping a volume two, to get us all the way through this aberration.
Of all the books written about the Trump
...the Russian hack and release of Democratic Party email; independent political actors and camnpaign affiliates back-channelling with WikiLeaks; a sustained and coordinated Russian attack on U.S. electoral systems; clandestine Russian exploitation of social media to target hot-button voter issues; a campaign foreign policy adviser [George Papadopoulos] who knew about the Russian hacks before we did and lied to us; another campaign adviser [Carter Page] with longtime connections to Russian intelligence personnel who couldn't keep his story straight; a former campaign manager [Paul Manafort] with huge debt and troubling ties to Russian and pro-Russian Ukrainian government figures; a former national security advisor [Mike Flynn] who had lied to us about his contacts with Russia and had been forced to resign because of it; an attorney general [Jeff Sessions] who had had contacts with Russia that he had not disclosed during his confirmation hearings.
And on top of it all, at the pinnacle of this heap of perfidy and treachery, sat a president who had lied to the public, cozied up to Russia, and, once he became aware of them, attempted to block our investigations at every turn.