This Sentence Is Possibly the Purest Distillation of What Motivates Authoritarian Apparatchiks
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
This Sentence Is Possibly the Purest Distillation of What Motivates Authoritarian Apparatchiks
Step right up, Jeffrey Clark.
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Yes, inflation is bad and the Democrats are currently cruisin' for a bruisin' at the end of this year. But have you seen the fash? The fascism. It seems bad also. The depravity of it. The daily exhibitions of what people are capable of in pursuit of wealth and power. The complete lack of the witty repartee that I can only assume accompanied the machinations of Octavian and other republic-wreckers of the past. Wait, I've just been rewatching HBO's Rome . Maybe none of those giants of the history books had to say much more than, " RIGGED! It's DISGUSTING what Mark Antony has been up to!"
Anyway, one of the increasingly well-known power freaks at the center of the national debacle of Donald Trump's post-election lifestyle was a guy named Jeffrey Clark. Ol' Jeff was a relatively obscure lawyer at the Department of Justice who saw a chance to change his station in life by becoming, as my colleague Charles P. Pierce would say, hacko di tutti hacki . A new report from the Washington Post details an incident three days before January 6 wherein the people actually running the Department of Justice, Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, rushed to the Oval Office when they heard Clark had secured a meeting with El Jefe. In an episode that brings to mind the 2004 Hospital Showdown featuring James Comey and Robert Mueller, these two (relative) public servants attempted to stop Clark from causing more damage than he already had.
Clark reportedly loved the idea of throwing out actual American citizens' votes in key swing states, you see, and having those legislatures appoint electors who'd vote for Trump in contravention of the will of the people. He offered to send a letter to those legislatures saying, in the institutional voice of the United States Department of Justice, that the department had "identified significant concerns" about the vote in their states. Needless to say, these concerns were not related to any actual evidence that any court had given credence. Also, Rosen and Donoghue told Trump it was a crock.
If this Post report—based on "court filings, depositions, Senate and House reports, previously undisclosed emails, and interviews with knowledgeable government officials"—is accurate, this episode may have served up one of the purer distillations of the authoritarian apparatchik impulse you will ever see:
As Rosen and Donoghue listened, Clark told Trump that he would send the letter if the president named him attorney general.
And there you have it. Make me AG and I'll do your dirty work. Or, put differently: I want to be a player in your fully fledged authoritarian outfit. Because again, it's worth repeating that if they'd succeeded in stealing this election, it's impossible to believe there would ever have been an honest election in this country again. This is not a thing you come back from. The king does not retire, and a president who holds power without getting elected is hardly different, in any meaningful way, from a man in a crown. This was also sorted out in Mark Antony's time.
But yes, gas and food prices are way up, and Democrats are likely to get wiped out in the midterms.
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"Clark reportedly loved the idea of throwing out actual American citizens' votes in key swing states, you see, and having those legislatures appoint electors who'd vote for Trump in contravention of the will of the people. He offered to send a letter to those legislatures saying, in the institutional voice of the United States Department of Justice, that the department had "identified significant concerns" about the vote in their states. Needless to say, these concerns were not related to any actual evidence that any court had given credence. Also, Rosen and Donoghue told Trump it was a crock.
If this Post report—based on "court filings, depositions, Senate and House reports, previously undisclosed emails, and interviews with knowledgeable government officials"—is accurate, this episode may have served up one of the purer distillations of the authoritarian apparatchik impulse you will ever see:
funny how the self described defenders of the US Constitution always seem to have a POTUS in place so willing and eager to subvert it. second time in half a century now. trumpski makes nixon look like an amateur...