Trump— not to mention his actual crime family— is the most corrupt occupant of the White House in history. If Nixon were alive today, he’d be mortified that he is so often compared to Trump. So how does Trump respond? By claiming Biden is the most corrupt president in American history. Biden isn’t the most anything in American history… just a run-of-the-mill, mediocre president, nothing like Trump. But because Trump was impeached twice and indicted several times— who can keep count any longer?— he’s demanding that his congressional allies/puppets impeach Biden. There's no reason to-- and it was once a grave step to take but I suppose they can. Trump threatened to back a primary opponent to any Republican who opposed him on this. Do a handful have the guts to stand up to him? Um... not that I can think of. A jackass like Nancy Mace (R-SC) is running around with her hair on fire screeching that if they impeach Biden, it will be the end of their majority. And yet, every single bit of evidence predicts that Mace will be the first member to run onto the floor to vote aye.
Gary Bass, author of the forthcoming Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia, and a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton, just wrote authoritatively that Trump “governed as authoritarians do around the globe: enriching himself, stoking ethnic hatreds, seeking personal control over the courts and the military, clinging to power at all costs… He has compared the FBI agents investigating him to the Gestapo and smeared Smith as ‘deranged,’ while crudely warning an Iowa radio show that it would be ‘very dangerous’ to jail him since he has ‘a tremendously passionate group of voters.’ Yet Trump will find that Smith has dealt with the likes of him— and worse— before. The American prosecutor is well equipped to pursue the vision of a predecessor Robert Jackson, the eloquent Supreme Court justice who served as the U.S. chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, who declared in his opening address there: ‘Civilization asks whether law is so laggard as to be utterly helpless to deal with crimes of this magnitude by criminals of this order of importance.’”
Yesterday, John Bresnahan tried ginning up some sympathy for Trump sycophant Kevin McCarthy. He described Trump’s unhinged hysteria as “a growing problem for Speaker Kevin McCarthy and vulnerable GOP lawmakers, who find themselves in a difficult situation politically. Trump— fresh off a revised federal criminal indictment with more charges possible in Washington and Georgia— said this during his Saturday night rally in Erie, Pa.: ‘Any Republican that doesn’t act on Democrat fraud should be immediately primaried and get out… If they’re not willing to do it, we’ve got a lot of good, tough Republicans around. People are going to run against ‘em, and people are going to win. And they’re going to get my endorsement every single time. They’re going to win cuz we win almost every race when we endorse.’ Trump also called for linking additional Ukraine aid to whether ‘the FBI, DOJ and IRS turn every scrap of evidence they have on the Biden crime family’s corrupt business dealings.’ We’ll note that this is similar to what Trump was impeached for the first time— conditioning Ukraine aid on Biden-related investigations.”
Let’s put this in perspective because it’s easy to just gloss over— the former president and GOP frontrunner for the 2024 nomination is calling for the impeachment of the sitting president and threatening rank-and-file Republicans who don’t support this effort. It comes as Trump could be indicted for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection, during which he tried to overturn his loss in the 2020 election to Biden. Got it?
McCarthy and the House GOP leadership have tried to walk a very narrow line on this, but Trump seems determined to force them into action.
House Republicans speak constantly about— and fundraise off every day— Biden’s alleged corruption. McCarthy raised the prospect of opening an impeachment inquiry against Biden last Monday night, only to back away the next day, at least somewhat. McCarthy was also cautious during a later GOP conference meeting, telling his Republican colleagues that the leadership will wait to see what congressional investigators find before moving forward.
Meanwhile, a big part of the House legislative agenda— cutting spending by tens of billions of dollars— is stalled, with the prospect of a government shutdown looming in September.
Having Trump threaten his 2024 vulnerables— who aren’t rushing to sign onto any impeachment push— is potentially disastrous for McCarthy and the Republican leadership.
Here’s Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE):
“Speaker McCarthy is in the right spot on this. He said last [Wednesday] that the Judiciary and Oversight Committees will continue to investigate the most recent allegations, which are serious. He said it is too early for an impeachment inquiry. I believe the speaker is right. Let’s not follow Pelosi’s example by cutting corners on impeachment.”
…[O]nly a fraction of House Republicans are backing the various impeachment resolutions that have been introduced already, although the drumbeat is growing louder every day on the right. Trump’s latest comments are his most aggressive yet in warning McCarthy about the fallout for the speaker if it doesn’t happen soon.
So someone outside of the DC cesspool is supposed to have sympathy-- any sympathy-- for Kevin McCarthy, the most craven and worthless speaker in living memory? Sure, the Republicans will elect someone worse— even much worse— if Trump decides to depose McCarthy. Good! Let them take another step towards following Trump over the cliff like the pathetic lemmings most of them have turned out to be.
Greg Sargent looked at the some new polling from the NY Times and Fox News yesterday and came to the conclusion that McCarthy is in trouble. The Trumpists in his conference are demanding he defend the Justice Department and impeach Biden, “apparently to muddy the waters around Trump’s culpability.” The problem for McCarthy is that most Republicans believe Trump is innocent (or say they do). Sargent blames Fox News pointing out that “Huge majorities of those who turn to Fox News as their main source believe all those things, while sizable percentages of [Republican primary voters] who rely on mainstream news sources do not:
91 percent of those who rely on Fox do not think Trump committed serious crimes. Only 5 percent think he did. Among those who rely on mainstream sources, those numbers are 52 percent and 38 percent.
83 percent of those who rely on Fox think Trump merely exercised his right to contest his 2020 loss, vs. only 12 percent who say he threatened American democracy. Among voters who rely on mainstream news, those numbers are 58 percent and 37 percent.
85 percent of those who rely on Fox say Republicans must stand by Trump, vs. only 9 percent who disagree. Among those who rely on mainstream sources, those numbers are 49 percent and 46 percent.
Sargent wrote that “We will never know whether the GOP primary electorate would have been this in thrall to the doctrine of Trump’s absolute innocence if Republican leaders had condemned his conduct at earlier points. But the role of Fox News and right-wing media in this disaster for democracy seems painfully clear.”