S E E D E D C O N T E N TThe meeting with Trump, which was initially reported by @ VanityFair , marks the culmination of months of @ KimKardashian West's behind-the-scenes efforts to free # AliceMarieJohnson . pic.twitter.com/EyGwQ2vct1 http:// bit.ly/2xpZ1mT
The week Trump went full dictator and no one tried to stop him
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The week Trump went full dictator and no one tried to stop him | Will Bunch
Will Bunch
It sounds bad when you describe it this way: The president of the United States explicitly violating a government rule to divulge secret jobs data , causing a billions-of-dollars move in the world’s financial markets. It’s become something of a tired cliché (which, of course, plays right into the scheme) to point out that if Barack Obama or George W. Bush had done this, it would have sparked angry denunciations, wall-to-wall coverage on cable news, and maybe a congressional hearing or two.
But when President Donald J. Trump (as our leader likes to casually refer to himself ) does it, it’s pretty far down the weekly list of rule-breaking, “norm”-shattering, dignity-obliteration, truth-abolition and assorted misdemeanors and occasional high crimes that have not only defined America’s 45th presidency, but have flooded the system and short-circuited the ability of our institutions such as the media, Congress and the courts to process it all in real time.
Why did Trump tweet, “Looking forward to seeing the employment numbers at 8:30 this morning” on Friday, tipping off the American people — and investors — that the jobs numbers he’d previewed the night before would be good news ? Was Trump aware that his tweet — 69 minutes before the Labor Department released the report — violated not only long-standing presidential practice but a 1985 rule laid down by the Office of Management and Budget ? Possibly not. Does Trump, with his clique of billionaire friends, give anyone else this insider information? Who is going to check?
The main reason that Trump violates long-standing norms and established rules, or tells so many easily disprovable lies from the presidential podium, is because he knows that no one will stop him. And that exercise of unchallenged power isn’t just a weird quirk of the Trump presidency. It is, rather, its driving force.
One word describes the massive erosion of American democracy that’s accelerated in recent days. And I’m not talking about anything that Roseanne Barr tweeted or even the C-word (which, by the way, is uncalled for and never appropriate ) — the epithets that managed to dominate the TV news cycle in a culture that loves fighting its culture wars.
No, I’m talking about forbearance , and if that word lulls you to sleep, maybe that’s part of the problem. What that term means — and it’s laid out brilliantly by political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt in their 2018 best seller with the chilling title, How Democracies Die — is “ not deploying one’s institutional prerogatives to the hilt, even if it’s legal to do so .” In other words, an American president can launch a nuclear first strike, add justices to pack the Supreme Court, fire prosecutors investigating him or his family or, failing that, issue full pardons to his allies or even perhaps himself. There are no laws and clauses in the Constitution to stop him from doing these things. Only tradition and a sense of what’s right and what’s good for America.
The American experiment has survived for 242 years because even past presidents who violated some of our democratic norms in the worst ways possible still held onto this larger sense of forbearance. Even Richard Nixon, who spied on his enemies and obstructed justice when his burglars were caught, turned over the White House tapes when the Supreme Court ordered him to do so and resigned when the evidence on those tapes was incriminating.
But Trump is already doing some of the dangerous things described above. Forbearance is not in his vocabulary. Here’s three unusually alarming things from just last week.
— Trump is abusing his pardon power to reward his friends and other high-profile celebrities. If the president is deploying any of his institutional prerogatives “to the hilt,” it’s the blanket power to issue pardons and clemency in federal cases, as granted by the Constitution. That power is a remarkable opportunity to overturn a perceived past injustice and reward redemption — but also to benefit a president’s cronies, or even help protect the chief executive himself from prosecution.
One of the so-called democratic norms that’s evolved over American history is a formal pardon-review process to prevent the potential abuses. Past presidents waited on recommendations from the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney — a lengthy process that typically includes a five-year waiting period to allow an applicant to prove he or she is contributing to society. The process has sometimes sparked frustration; many urged Obama, for example, to move sooner than he did to right some of the excesses of the latter 20th-century “war on drugs.”
Trump has paid no attention to process, or tradition. He’s issued pardons for people not yet brought to justice — the Arizona ex-sheriff Joe Arpaio, a Trump supporter who’s shown no remorse for the charges that he defied court orders to racially profile Latinos — and people who aren’t giving back to society, like the also remorseless and generally despicable , conservative, outrage-generator Dinesh D’Souza, pardoned just last week . The only guiding principle, it seems, is being a friend or political supporter of Trump or — in the (deserved) case of late boxer Jack Johnson — getting recommended by a celebrity friend of Trump, Sylvester Stallone .
Mic
✔ @mic
Mic
✔ @mic
Ahead of Wednesday’s meeting, @ Mic was able to reach # AliceMarieJohnson in prison via email. pic.twitter.com/VFe29D2ve8
This week, the president made headlines by meeting in the Oval Office with fellow reality-TV icon Kim Kardashian West, who appealed for criminal justice reform and pleaded for a pardon for Alice Marie Johnson, a 63-year-old great-grandmother and model inmate, volunteering in her prison’s hospice, serving a life sentence for a first-time, nonviolent drug arrest . Trump listened — and then instead went out and pardoned D’Souza and told reporters he might issue clemency or a pardon for two people he worked with on TV’s The Celebrity Apprentice , former Illinois govenor Rod Blagojevich and lifestyle guru Martha Stewart .
Each Trump pardon — technically legal, even as they obliterate any sense of process or fairness — lowers our resistance for the day when Trump may offer a pardon to players in the scandals surrounding his own 2016 presidential campaign or his close allies. If and when — and Trump’s recent moves are pointing to “when” — a pardon is issued to someone like already-pleaded-guilty ex-national security adviser Michael Flynn or under-investigation Trump lawyer Michael Cohen , Trump will surely say they were “treated very unfairly” — just like his TV pal Blago.
— Trump’s lawyers are now out there openly saying they believe the president of the United States is above the law. This weekend, the New York Times published a 20-page letter that Trump’s personal attorneys sent to special counsel Robert Mueller seeking to avoid an interview with the prosecutor, which includes the stunning claim that it’s impossible for the White House to obstruct justice because, in the end, the president is justice .
The secret letter, drafted in January, argues that Trump has sweeping constitutional powers, including the ability to kill off a probe into criminality in his own campaign — to, “if he wished, terminate the inquiry, or even exercise his power to pardon.” That means, they argue, it’s also within Trump’s rights to fire Mueller or the prosecutors overseeing him — even though a similar move by Nixon in 1973 triggered a flurry of impeachment resolutions.
L’Etat, c’est moi . Trump and his lawyers are claiming the rights, and the powers, of a king — not a democratically elected president. The lesson of Watergate and Nixon’s ultimate resignation was supposed to be that no president is above the law — a lesson that got muddled when Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon. Forty-four years later, Team Trump is dropping an H-bomb on what’s left of that apparently quaint notion.
— It’s easy to overlook that the pace of Trump’s assorted untruths and out-and-out lies is actually increasing. The Washington Post last month reported that the president had made 3,251 false or misleading claims since becoming president . Just last week, Trump allegedly made 35 false statements at one rally in Nashville. Among the week’s more outrageous Trump lies is an Orwellian claim that the administration’s new policy of prosecuting immigrant asylum seekers at the border and taking their kids away is somehow the fault of a law passed by Democrats .
Donald J. Trump
✔ @realDonaldTrump
Put pressure on the Democrats to end the horrible law that separates children from there parents once they cross the Border into the U.S. Catch and Release, Lottery and Chain must also go with it and we MUST continue building the WALL! DEMOCRATS ARE PROTECTING MS-13 THUGS.
Trump is wearing down the American people, one lie at a time. He is chipping away at our notion of what constitutes American justice, one crony pardon at a time. And he is eroding the foundation of our democracy, to make it so weak that by the time he makes his inevitable moves to nullify the Mueller investigation, the remaining frayed house of cards may be too weak to fight back.
Trump is doing very little with his presidency but to dictate things. He wakes up every morning and dictates lies, then he dictates arbitrary justice, and then he dictates unilateral policies — trade wars with our allies in Canada or in Europe, requiring power plants to burn dirty fuels like coal , or ripping little kids from their mommies and daddies at the border — that could never win political or legislative support, because they lack common sense or morality, or both.
Hour by hour, lie by lie, dictate by dictate, Donald Trump is becoming an American dictator. And recent days have proved what many of us have long feared: That no one knows how to stop this. Not the Republicans or Democrats on Capitol Hill who, for different reasons, are too cowed politically to take substantive action. And not a news media that doesn’t have the mechanisms for informing the public when a president is a compulsive liar . Maybe things will change after the November midterm election — but there’s no guarantee, and that feels like a long time away.
The best we can do right now is write down this week’s outrages (as some intrepid souls, especially Amy Siskind , started doing on Day One) and create the record for future generations that will wonder how the hell this possibly happened. And brace ourselves for the week to come.
Published: June 3, 2018 — 1:44 PM EDT
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Any comments complaining about the fact that something was seeded about Donald Trump will be removed.
Sorry John, but this is the new "business as usual".
The United States is now a kleptocracy on the model of Russia.
Banana republics look down on us.
There is no other polite way to describe this article except insanely ridiculous. It reinforces the suggestion that leftist ideology is a product of mental incapacity.
No rational person could otherwise reach the conclusions this article posits.
and just to correct one of the more blatant lies it contains. Neither the president nor his lawyers stated or suggested that decisions made about DOJ personnel or investigations are authorized as “above the law”. The Constitution specifically places authority over the DOJ in the presidency which includes hiring and firing, and choosing to begin or end investigations.
Thus any such actions by a president are ACTING WITHIN THE LAW
The greatest issue facing the nation today is Donald Trump's lack of forbearance. It is understandable given that he is a psychologically impaired extreme narcissist, but it is not tolerable.
The greatest issue facing our nation is the cumulative loss of liberty as Marxist statism usurped the liberty the founders sought to give us and made us subjects of the state rather than free and sovereign citizens
I haven't lost any liberty and I doubt you have either.
What freedoms have been taken away from you?
It begins with the income tax which changed us from free citizens to subjects
125 years ago you didn’t have to ask permission from the Government to:
• Collect rain water for your home
• Use a transportation vehicle
• Build a home or renovate it
• You didn’t have to pay tax upon tax, upon tax with already taxed money including being forced to pay money that has been taxed into a government retirement system and then taxed again on that same money if you live above the poverty line
• You didn’t have to ask permission (from the government) and pay to get married, obtain licenses, certificates or permits to fish, hunt, own a gun, become a carpenter or any other trade or profession
• You didn’t have to ask permission to protest or redress government, or sell a product
The government didn't pass laws and regulations saying that they not you own and control the water on your own land (put into effect by comrade Obama)
The government didn't order you to buy a commercial product under threat of penalty
The government didn't control freedom of speech
You didn't have your income taxed by the 16th Amendment forcibly under threat of penalty and/or imprisonment
The government didn't regulate or ban what you eat, drink, or inhale
You can virtually do “NOTHING” without being extorted by the Government and obtaining their permission first.
If you still think your “FREE” you are deluding yourself.
You live in an open air prison as free range humans who now live as subjects of the state thoroughly manipulated and controlled by the illusion of a free society.
125 years ago the world was simpler.
Duh.
Sorry, not all the items that you have a grievance over apply to me, but I don't consider even the ones that do to have taken away my freedom.
If you're really that much of an anarchist, I suggest you move somewhere the rules of civilized society don't apply.
Mankind created government to protect us from those you wish completely deregulated. Grow up.
Im not an anarchist.
I'm a Christian minarchist (a distinct type of libertarianism) who believes govt should be as small as possible. National defense, a uniform system of justice (court system), protection of creativity (patents), a uniform monetary system, and negotiation of treaties and trade. That is the legitimate function of our central govt. I oppose all drug laws, censorship, laws against prostitution, or laws on marriage and divorce. These are private moral issues and not the purview of government
Christian libertarianism describes the synthesis of Christian beliefs concerning free will, human nature, and God-given inalienable rights with libertarian political philosophy. It is also an ideology to the extent that its supporters promote their cause to others and join together as a movement. In contrast to the Christian left and the Christian right respectively, they believe charity and enforcement of personal-level morality should be the purview of the (voluntary) church and not the state. These responsibilities must not be abrogated, though any non-governmental organization (NGO) not publicly financed is free to pursue them as well.
Secular libertarianism, socialism, fascism, and crony capitalism are strongly opposed, as is theocracy. The latter does not include merely being influenced by Christian concepts; whereas in a theocracy, government derives its powers from a divine or religious authority directly exercising governmental control. The use of force is never justified to achieve purely political, social, or religious goals, but is reserved solely to uphold natural rights.
It doesn’t mean that the government has to control every aspect of our lives
Then you are no different from any slave who loves being a slave
Then you are no different from any slave who loves being a slave
it's been said. If sheep could vote, they would vote for who feed them. In spite of their inevitable following slaughter.
This is your canned reply to everything. Move to Somalia or Haiti if you want less government.
You are not in danger of becoming a slave to the government, so drop the hyperbole.
It does mean that applying 125-year-old criteria to today is just plain foolish.
Trump was not given the sobriquet, "The Original Short Fingered Vulgarian", for nothing at all...
No Siree, Trump earned it the olde fashioned way. By having himself crowned King of Vulgaria...
"But when President Donald J. Trump (as our leader likes to casually refer to himself ) does it, it’s pretty far down the weekly list of rule-breaking,"
Good gawd...how ridiculous. If it were truly rule breaking, the left wing loonies in the media and blogs would be shitting themselves with delight with another "we got him now" moment. The only one doing that is the author of the article and those that seed the same types of articles.
Nowhere did President Trump give the jobs numbers. He simply said stayed tuned. He did not give the actual numbers, he did not say, :"hey, my numbers this month are great", etc, etc.