I am really too tired to try to write anything cogent today. The menu of things (most of them involving items from ‘The Authoritarian Playbook’) is extensive but I just don’t have it in me today.
- The commutation of the President’s friend, Roger Stone’s, sentence. If this doesn’t convince people how corrupt this president is and how the words ‘law and order’ should never be used in the same sentence as ‘Trump’, I don’t know what it will take. In addition, Roger Stone made his name as a ‘dirty trickster’ for the Republican party and he is now loose and on the street just prior to the election.
- The DOJ has moved/removed another person involved in investigating associates of Trump. The attorney leading the Eastern District of New York which was investigating issues surrounding Trump’s inauguration financing, has been moved.
- The newly appointed head of the agency that controls Voice of America is continuing his purge and has stated that the visas of international journalists working for VOA will not be renewed. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that Trump has railed against VOA in the past when it has been critical of Trump. The VOA was started during the Cold War and is supposed to provide objective, fact-based news that is broadcast around the world. It appears that it will now become a partisan voice for broadcasting Trump’s view of the world.
- Yesterday Trump said that he has directed the Secretary of the Treasury to examine the tax-exempt status of schools and universities stating that they have become hotbeds of far-left indoctrination rather than education!! If that’s not from ‘The Authoritarian Playbook’ I don’t know what is.
- And, of course, there is the ongoing pandemic that is infecting and killing Americans at an alarming rate with no national strategy in sight. (And I am still convinced that Trump will ultimately use this as a reason to declare a national emergency and unleash a host of powers prior to the election – I hope I am wrong. I really hope that I am wrong.)
It’s hard to know where to start so I’m just going to pass today and try to enjoy the next few days before my daughter and her mom head back to New York so my daughter can complete her senior year at NYU. I’ll re-engage in a day or two.
I hope to finish a book that I am currently reading, Broken: Can the Senate Save Itself and The Country, about how the Senate has deteriorated from a deliberative body that was once capable of legislating in a bi-partisan way to it’s current highly polarized state where obstructionism is the new norm and retaining power and pushing individual agendas are the main goals. And, then next week, Mary Trump’s book is due out. I’m not sure when my copy will arrive but I’m sure it will be ‘entertaining’ reading.
So, everyone stay healthy out there.
This is exactly what Nixon would have done if the Nixon’s tapes weren’t discovered and he stayed in office. He would have pardoned all the “Plummers”. Trump is using Nixon’s playbook and if he looses the election he will step down to allow Pence to pardon him of his crimes.