A (REPUBLICAN) SUCKER BORN EVERY MINUTE

by Vijaya Chandrasoma

Donald J. Trump, aka President-eject, aka Uncle Scam, con man extraordinaire, is planning the release of yet another book, a sequel to his Art of the Deal. The new book will aptly be named the Art of the Con, and will be in two parts. Part I will list the scams during his presidency – violations of the emoluments clause, playing golf on the taxpayers’ dime, selling his brand to adversaries like China to obtain trademarks (daughter Ivanka’s specialty), using the presidency to get financing for failing real estate projects from Saudi Arabia (son-in-law Kushner) and Russia (Trump), money laundering and God only knows what else. Just last week, Washington D.C. Attorney General’s office deposed Ivanka Trump for an ongoing investigation into gross abuse of inauguration funds in January 2017.

Part II will describe the schemes he has contrived to make money from his electoral defeat. In spite of universal acceptance that the 2020 election was one of the fairest in the history of the United States, Trump and his team have been falsely alleging widespread voter fraud and manipulations of electronic voter machines by Republican and Democratic election authorities. He has convinced, without a shred of evidence, an alarming number of Republicans that the election has been stolen from him. In spite of the fact that every allegation of voter fraud brought by the Trump campaign to date has been thrown out by Republican and Democratic judges.

Trump released a video of a 46-minute diatribe last Wednesday, a litany of outrageous lies on the only subject – voter fraud – that has consumed him since his humiliating defeat. He has made no reference, provided no guidelines to mitigate the worst health crisis the United States has suffered in its history. Nearly 15 million cases and 280,000 deaths have been reported, the highest levels since the onset of the virus. Not one word from this president, either of empathy or guidance, for over a month. He has taken no steps to bring relief to millions of Americans through a stimulus bill to help people facing loss of their homes and unable to even put food on the table for their families. Not one word. Just a million words whining about his delusion of a stolen election, as he continues his homicidal negligence of the raging pandemic.

To make matters worse, Attorney General William Barr, who has devoted the entirety of the tenure of his office prostituting himself, lying to cover up the gross abuse and crimes of his Leader, provided the “December Surprise” when he was caught red handed telling the truth. He disputed Trump’s baseless claims about a rigged election. His statement that the “US Department of Justice has uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could change the outcome of the 2020 election”, was as unexpected as it was totally against past form. Barr is aware that he has but seven weeks to be removed from his position. Perhaps he is, even at this late date, trying to repair the reputation he has destroyed by slavishly enabling Trump’s criminal excesses during the period of his incumbency as Attorney General. Too little, too late. But his willingness to incur Trump’s certain wrath and his imminent dismissal may be an indication that the rats are finally jumping off the sinking ship.

Barr may have closed the coffin on the evidence-free claims of the Trump team of a stolen election. But the con goes on. Trump recently sent an appeal to his 70 million Republican voters asking for financial contributions to help him overturn an “obviously rigged election”. The Final Notice of this appeal, begging for cash contributions from Republicans, states, “chip in $25 to help us assemble a massive legal effort that will ensure that our democratic process prevails”.

Amazingly, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, the con is working. The Trump campaign has to date collected more than $200 million from these gullible Republicans, who still believe that the election has been stolen. The money so received by the Trump campaign will be used not only for legal expenses in fighting the election result but, according to the fine print at the bottom of the appeal, could and will be used to pay for campaign expenses and to cover Trump’s considerable personal debt. Trump’s complete discretion in the use of these funds is beyond question. For a man who has been convicted, before he was elected president, of stealing money from children’s cancer charities, abusing funds received from devoted supporters would be child’s play.

Trump has now devised a “Pardons for Cash” confidence trick. Court records reveal that the Justice Department is investigating a pardon bribery scheme. Trump is believed to be offering presidential pardons, for cash, to those senior government officials, close associates and lobbyists alleged to have committed crimes out of the loyalty demanded by Trump. There are no depths this evil man will not plumb, no soul he will not sell down the river, to make a buck.

A White House source says that we could expect a “flurry of pardons” before Trump leaves office. The joke currently doing the rounds in Washington: The White House is now the most courteous workplace in D.C. Everyone is going around saying “pardon me”!

Trump has also been exploring the possibility of granting “pre-emptive pardons” to himself and his family. In fact, one of Trump’s closest advisers, Fox’s Sean Hannity has advised the president to use the presidential pardon for his own protection and that of his family, predicting the specter of a perennial “witch hunt”. And the lawyer who has been spearheading his efforts to overturn the election, Rudi Giuliani, is reputed to be pleading for a “pre-emptive blanket pardon”, a phrase rarely heard in legal circles.

Laurence Tribe, Harvard University Professor of Law wrote in the Washington Post: “The Constitution specifically bars the president from using the pardon power to prevent his own impeachment and removal”. However, there is an opposing view: that a presidential pardon is an executive act, not a judicial one. As such, Article 1 of the Constitution provides no limitations to presidential powers in the executive act of self-pardon. The courts will ultimately be required to make a ruling on a question singularly devoid of precedent.

Unfortunately, Trump’s lies have dangerous consequences. The head of election cybersecurity, Chris Krebs, a Republican and a Trump appointee, recently had the temerity to announce that the 2020 election was “the most secure in American history”. He was immediately fired by Trump for doing his job. A member of Trump’s legal team, Joe DiGenova, made the following statement on Trump-allied Newsmax TV: “Anyone who thinks the election went well, like that idiot Krebs who used to be the head of cybersecurity, that guy is a Class A moron. He should be drawn and quartered. Taken out at dawn and shot”.

Thanks to dangerous comments like this made by DiGenova, Fox News and Trump loyalists since the election debacle, numerous election officials and Democratic loyalists have received death threats from the Trump militia. Though such threats have been widely reported, they have elicited no response or condemnation from Trump or the leadership of the Republican party.

The dangers faced by people for simply doing their jobs, whose families have been threatened with violence, prompted an outburst of unscripted and emotional fury from Georgian voting system official, Gabriel Sterling, a Republican, at a press conference last Monday:

“It has to stop. Mr. President, you have not condemned these actions or this language. Senators, you have not condemned this language or these actions.

“This is elections. This is the backbone of democracy, and all of you who haven’t said a damn word are complicit in this. This has to stop. We need you to step up, and if you’re going to take a position of leadership, show some”.

Sterling said that he had received death threats, and was currently under police protection. Thugs have been driving in caravans, honking threateningly, past the home of Georgian Republican Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger’s home, for the “crime” of refusing to sign the Georgia state election for Donald Trump, against the will of Georgian voters and the Constitution. Threats of a sexually explicit nature have been received by Raffensperger’s wife on her cellphone. A voting machine technician falsely accused of altering votes in Georgia has been threatened by tweets, calling him to be “hung for treason”, and a noose with his name on it placed outside his house.

Sterling concluded his moving plea with this warning:

“Mr. President, you need to stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence. Someone’s going to get hurt. Someone’s going to get shot. Someone is going to get killed. And it’s not right”.

When questioned about Sterling’s outburst, White House Press Secretary Kayliegh McEnany used the “Both Sides” defense, made famous by Trump, when he said that “there were very fine people on both sides”, after the violent white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017; one side representing violent white supremacists and anti-Semites, which resulted in the murder of a young woman; the other side protesting these vile forces. McEnany stated that the White House deplored violence on both sides. The other side exists only in Trump’s delusions.

Neither Trump nor the Republican leadership has condemned the incendiary threats of Trump attorney DiGenova. Trump responded to Gabriel Sterling’s outburst by merely retweeting his statement, adding that the election was rigged. No condemnation of the death threats, probably because they were carried out on his instructions.

In a desperate move to prove the unprovable, the Trump team is now putting the Republican controlled Senate into grave danger, exhorting voters in Georgia to protest the result of the 2020 election by boycotting the vital elections for two Senate seats in January. Compliance with these instructions by Republican voters will gift the two Georgian seats to the Democrats, who will then have control of the Senate. With the White House and the House of Representatives already under Democratic control, Trump would have afforded unfettered freedom for the Biden/Harris administration to carry out its agenda, without being blocked at every turn by a hostile Senate.

Trump may have finally and unwittingly taken the first step to Make America Great Again.