With all the adults in the Oval Office either retired or fired, with impeachment in progress, an election in the offing and scandals and investigations galore, America is witnessing Trump being Trump on steroids. Trump has taken on the task of governing America while facing his challenges with only a meager team of sycophants who slavishly and unthinkingly assist him while the spineless Republican legislators stand by as he trashes the Constitution and places his personal agenda ahead of that of “We the People”.
The forum for Trump’s impeachment enquiry is the nation of Ukraine which had been off the radar until he reintroduced it with his and his team’s corrupt and bribery attempt to enroll a vulnerable ally to assist in him in his reelection. In answer to the escalating evidence of his sleaze his tactics are in tune with his lifelong philosophy, (if that term can be used in relation to Trump), firstly, to deny then sometimes in the next sentence, claim that which he denied is perfectly legitimate and acceptable, what follows is attack and finally, deflection. This panoply of defenses is now in full operational mode. Thus far in the impeachment enquiry the needle has decisively moved against Trump but there is long way to go before the pitiful Republican legislators move to remove him.
The POTUS has a number of immediate objectives - avoid impeachment, be reelected and deliver to Russia the removal of sanctions against them. To effect the latter he has two major tasks, namely to prove that the whole intelligence establishment as was the Mueller investigation were wrong in their finding that Russia intervened in 2016. Next on the urgent agenda is to force Ukraine into a peace process with Putin. (Of course in addition he has to build a wall, fire the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, shoot refugees in the legs, address mass rallies, attack anyone who criticizes him and generally dish out ex tempore judgements on anybody or anything).
A key feature of his outlandish brazen style is to openly defy the law and constitution in the belief that because he is not hiding his behavior it is “legal”. Jay H. Ell believes that there is method in his madness. He also believes that the relationship between him and Putin is deep and corrupt beyond belief and that his desire to deliver to Putin the removal of sanctions will ultimately be his downfall. The avalanche of litigation and investigations now including impeachment will finally and mercifully put bedlam to rest. Even then The Don reminds Jay H. Ell of the little old lady who took a liver pill everyday and when she died they had to beat her liver to death.
Nevertheless it is not unreasonable to argue that Americans don’t quite know how to respond to this lunacy other than to opine he is unhinged, desperate and finally gone too far. Even his most vocal supporters believe his misguided, unprepared and woefully short staff will be his downfall. To date the prognostications that he is doomed have been premature - to put it at the most optimistic
It is in the milieu that “treasonous” Chairman Adam Schiff is conducting his impeachment enquiry into a Whistleblower complaint that Trump insanely claims that Adam Schiff wrote together with the Whistleblower who with his/her informants should be executed as spies. And this madness is barely commented upon because it is accompanied by a non stop stream of absurdity emanating from the POTUS that changes the headlines of the news at a giddy speed. Even the highly sophisticated digital up to the minute reporting of daily newspapers who are chronicling minute by minute the unhinged and deranged emanations that he spits out in the form of tweets, cannot keep up with the “Breaking News”.
TRUMP’S TEAM - THE ENABLERS
As a team he has an Attorney General, (AG), that is ad idem with him that his job definition is not to safeguard American society per se but rather to represent Trump. AG Barr who is running around the world to enlist the aid of foreign governments to prove that the Russians didn’t hack the 2016 election should be reminded that Nixon’s AG served time. Then there is a WhiteHouse Special Counsel whose main occupation is covering up for the President, inter alia hiding political embarrassing documents, rather than serving the public’s office of The Presidency. Counsellor Pat Cipollone who has taken on the partisan task of being the POTUS’S lawyer on impeachment should read what his Nixonian counterpart John Dean saw as his patriotic duty even at the expense of going to prison. Added to this corrupt duo is a Secretary of State, Pompeo, who aids and abets the Don’s manipulation of foreign policy and the power of America to serve the President’s ends. Chief of Staff Mulvaney rather than putting a leash on his charge does all his dirty work such as thwarting Congress’s decision to provide Ukraine with aid. Another inner circle apologist is His Secretary of Finance who is a regular participant on the Sunday morning talk shows sounding like his echo chamber.
If this motley crew are not bad enough the most iniquitous enabler of this madcap show are the Republican legislators led by Mitch McConnell Republican Leader in the Senate and Lindsey Graham whose volte face must be making his life long ally John McCain turn in his grave. McConnell is making moves at the moment anticipating the possibility that this train smash could hit the fan. On the House side there are three Congress enablers who are not to be dignified with having their names mentioned as well as the anemic Minority Leader of the House. Trump has denuded the membership of the Republican House of Congress. Forty percent of the Republican legislators that were there at Trump’s inauguration have either been defeated, resigned or are not standing again in 2020. However even this crowd have not banded together to do the patriotic thing relating to the country that Trump is changing the face of everything America claimed too have stood for.
Finally there is the Don’s TV lawyer, Rudi Giuliani, his consigliere, his personal lawyer who replaced the previous incumbent who is serving time for a crime that he executed at Trump’s behest. Giuliani is in sync with that celebrated sociopath Roy Kohn who was the infamous Senator McCarthy’s legal counsel as well as Trump and his father’s. Giuliani who is also Trump’s chief advisor adopts the same style and tactics as the POTUS.
Rudi's behavior too defies any rational critique and he is afflicted from whatever disease Trump is ultimately diagnosed with He is not a member of the US Government yet he his privy to classified information and is tasked with what should be official government business. So far he is the only one savvy enough to arm himself with a lawyer in the event of this whole mess turning sour. In truth he is not the only member of Trump’s non Senate ratified cabinet - there are the Fox late night three stooges - Hannity, Carson and Ingram whose drivel often becomes Presidential policy the next morning. The Don is nevertheless angry at Fox because their regular daytime newscasters are reporting the news as it is. He has, in case anyone understandably has missed it, lashed out against Fox concluding that as a result of their lack of slavish backing he may have to start his own TV Network.
WHAT HAS TRANSPIRED SINCE THE IMPEACHMENT PROCESS - TRUMP IS TRUMP AS THE WORLD AROUND INCLUDING MURDOCH’S FOX BEGINS TO SOUR
Within just over a week following the announcement of an impeachment enquiry revelations have intensified apace. Witnesses have corroborated the original Whistleblower complaint and another complaint has emerged relating to the interference in the auditing of Presidential tax returns. Yet another potential Whistle Blower has emerged who claims to be within the White House orbit. Trump has responded with his inbuilt stratagem - deny that that he was demanding a “quid pro Quo” from Ukraine, then argue that he was perfectly entitled to do so. Following his own playbook he attacked the corruption of Schiff, Pelosi, the Whistleblower and informants and deflected by calling for more investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails and into his potential political opponent Joe Biden’s nepotism.
The backing of the POTUS from Republicans has been strangely absent except for Lindsey Graham. Even the House troika of apologists are not available on camera for interviews. The key Trump echo chamber, Fox’s Murdoch empire, however has gone rogue. Murdoch's Wall Street Journal is publishing exposes while the news component of Fox is blandly reporting the news as it is. Significantly The Fox News daily online report is prognosticating that Trump has “had it”.
The following is from the online Fox News Halftime Report October 4:
“The News these days is pretty grim for the Trump Administration and the Republicans in Congress.
The central claim of the whistleblower who came forward to authorities was that President Trump was pressuring America’s Ukrainian allies for dirt on Trump’s chief political rival, Joe Biden.
It has not only been proven true, the president is now doing it right out in the open. He’s even added China to the list of foreign powers he wants to provide opposition research on the Democratic front runner.
Worse, newly related texts between American diplomats show that senior State Department officials believed that Trump was conditioning U. S. aid to the long-beleaguered former Soviet republic on the provision of anti-Biden goodies.
But the potentially worse development so far, it is now alleged that Trump’s personal defense lawyer was dangling a promise of an official diplomatic White House visit to the White House for the Ukrainian President for a public statement from the Ukrainian leader for a public statement to investigate Biden and his family business dealings in Kyiv……..”
Mitch Romney is emerging as the Republican leader in the Senate that who will take on Trump. He has nothing to lose and is the de facto face of what the GOP used to represent. In fact he was the Republican Presidential nominee in 2012.
Within ten days of announcing the enquiry the public mood has swung in favor of the impeachment enquiry. There are more of the electorate that are in favor of impeachment at this stage of the proceedings than were in the Nixon and Clinton enquiries. There is a ten percent swing against Trump already and his general approval rating is slowly dropping.
AT THE END OF THE DAY
The GOP legislators will have to decide whether to run their re election campaigns defending Trump or defending their decision to axe him. As matters stand they are hanging in with the boss. As the revelations escalate they have to be rethinking the issue daily. Pelsosi has wisely chosen as the only matter for impeachment a foreign policy congress decision on where there was almost unanimous bipartisan support - the backing of ally Ukraine against enemy Russian imperialism. Trump for reasons that are still not clear has as top of his ‘to do’ list lifting sanctions against Russia. This exacerbates the antipathy that the GOP confide in private that they have for him.
As Fox News Halftime Report pointed out Trump is not giving the GOP legislators any room for maneuver - it is “My leader right or wrong…unlike Bill Clinton’s team in 1998 who knew they had to give Democrats a chance to denounce the President’s scuzzy behavior thereby strengthening his position in the Senate..…”. Clinton bolstered his standing among the electorate, his approval rating going up to eighty percent and the GOP lost seats in the midterms - the only occasion in memory when an opposition President was in the White House.
As matters stand Trump will be the GOP’s nominee for President and he is exactly who Pelosi wants to run against. With each day that passes his chances of reelection decrease. The Mob Boss of the Republican Party is not going to fade away and die. He is not going to do a Nixon, who after all was an institutionalist, nor is he going to be contrite like a Clinton, whose impeachment in history will go down as political.
The Don is accelerating into a height of fantasy that has never been reached before in American history. He will stop at nothing. He is at this moment implicating self righteous, fawning and obsequious, Vice President, Mike Pence. In so doing he is signifying to McConnell et al, “You axe me Pence goes too and Speaker Pelosi is constitutionally next in line to be President”.
Where Trump has been successful is that the Democrats, playing by the usual rules of politics, respond to his attacks, deflections and justifications. They have to ignore his outporings.
The Democrats need to hold public hearings. So far these have been stopped by Trump but now there is a distinct possibility that particularly the State Department officials and a reservoir of retired and fired Trump administration would testify before the cameras. Maybe just maybe the wily Pelosi wants matters just as they are because Trump is whom she would like to run against. He can rant and rave to his adoring cult but he has lost those who put him over the top.
As the way of the world goes this controversy will have damaged Biden. It took him a week to respond to the smears against him and his son. He should have from day one called for investigations into Ivanka, Jared and Don Jnr. He is still the favorite but has been steadily losing his grip on the Democratic nomination which is still undecided. Elizabeth Warren will be the one to beat but it’s a long long way from here to November 2020.
This drama is moving so fast that even Trump and Giuliani have to be worried. Watch out as the significance of the Ukraine saga unfolds.
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