Category Archives: Politics

One of the Men Who Brought Down Nixon Reacts to the New Tape

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A CNN host spoke to Carl Bernstein, one of the reporters who broke the Watergate story, to get his reaction to today’s news:

CNN:  Carl, is this deja vu for you to hear this kind of audiotape of the president of the United States, the sitting president … ?

Bernstein: It’s not deja vu. This is something far worse than what occurred in Watergate. We have both a criminal president of the United States . . . and a subversive president of the United States at the same time. This one person subverting the very basis of our democracy and willing to act criminally in that subversion. But more important, what we hear on this tape — this is the ultimate smoking gun tape — it is . . . the evidence of what this president is willing to do to undermine the electoral system and illegally, improperly and immorally try to instigate a coup in which he remains the president of the United States. 

And in any other presidency, any other presidency, this tape would be evidence enough to result in the impeachment of the president of the United States, his conviction in the Senate of the United States, and, really, an immediate call by the members of Congress, including the members of his own party, that he resign immediately. That’s really what we ought to be hearing from Republicans at this moment. Mr. President, resign. Leave the White House. This is unconscionable, it is wrong and we of your party will not permit it. We’re not going to hear that. We might from a few Republicans, but that’s what’s really called for here.

And the one thing we should recall from Watergate, it is that the heroes of Watergate were Republicans who would not tolerate Richard Nixon’s conduct.

Now There’s a Tape, Just Like Nixon’s

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The appearance today of a recording in which the president commits criminal offenses —  assuredly not for the first time — moved Jennifer Rubin and Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post to both comment. Below is a mixture of their responses (along with a few italicized comments from me):

When President Txxxx allegedly tried firing special prosecutor Robert S. Mueller III, refused to respond to lawful subpoenas during the investigation into the 2016 election and committed the other acts to obstruct justice documented in the Mueller report, he arguably violated his oath, broke the law and committed impeachable conduct.

When he tried to extort [the] Ukrainian President (“I would like you to do us a favor though 
”) to create dirt to use against now President-elect Joe Biden and stonewalled Congress’s demands for evidence, he again violated his oath, engaged in impeachable conduct and broke the law.

In neither case did Republicans recognize the facts before them. In neither case did they act to remove him.

[A president who] began his presidency trying to obstruct justice [is] ending it trying to obstruct democracy, and with an alarmingly large cadre of co-conspirators.

Some of this attempted obstruction is being conducted, as is so often the case with Txxxx, in plain sight; Txxxx’s anti-democratic conduct is so flagrant and so repeated that we become inured to how abnormal and unacceptable it is. Thus he has claimed massive fraud without basis, unleashed a barrage of litigation lacking the facts and the law to back him up, and riled up his believers to subscribe to the mass delusion that the election was stolen from him.

Behind the scenes, things are even worse, with the craziest of Txxxx’s crazy advisers pushing the president to pursue unimaginable possibilities such as declaring martial law or invoking the Insurrection Act to unleash the military to quell violence that he himself has sought to stir up.

That the ten living former secretaries of defense felt compelled to come together in an op-ed decrying any use of the military in an effort to prevent the peaceful transfer of power underscores the peril of the moment. These aren’t just Democratic appointees — they are conservatives such as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, and the two secretaries Txxxx ousted for being insufficiently compliant, James Mattis and Mark ­Esper.

And now . . . we have a chilling glimpse of Txxxx’s delusional private arm-twisting in his frenzy to cling to power.

The Post reports: “President Txxxx urged fellow Republican Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, to ‘find’ enough votes to overturn his defeat in an extraordinary one-hour phone call Saturday that election experts said raised legal questions.” In the call, Txxxx asked Raffensperger to change the certified vote that was subject to multiple recounts: “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”

In fact he threatened him. The Post reports, “During their conversation, Txxxx issued a vague threat to both Raffensperger and Ryan Germany, the secretary of state’s general counsel, suggesting that if they don’t find that thousands of ballots in Fulton County have been illegally destroyed to block investigators — an allegation for which there is no evidence — they would be subject to criminal liability.” Txxxx, sounding like a mobster as he often does, said, “That’s a criminal offense. And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer.” Nice career, there Brad. Shame if anything happened to it.

Pressuring a campaign official to change the vote is a federal offense [it’s a Georgia offense too]: “A person . . . who in any election for Federal office 
 knowingly and willfully deprives, defrauds, or attempts to deprive or defraud the residents of a State of a fair and impartially conducted election process …” is subject to imprisonment of up to five years.

Threatening Raffensperger with criminal consequences is also arguably extortion: “Whoever, with intent to extort from any person, firm, association, or corporation, any money or other thing of value, transmits . . . any communication containing any threat to injure the property or reputation of the addressee . . . or any threat to accuse the addressee or any other person of a crime, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.”

Georgia has counted its votes three times, once by hand, but Txxxx told Raffensperger, “There’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.” He warned that Raffensperger and his chief lawyer were running “a big risk” of criminal liability by failing to find voter fraud.

The man who sparked a special counsel investigation by urging the FBI director to “go easy” on his fired national security adviser, the man who triggered his own impeachment by soliciting a foreign leader to help him dig up dirt on Biden — this man will never learn [or change, as Rep. Adam Schiff memorably argued during the impeachment “trial” a year ago].

Really, why should he? There are never any real consequences.

Which brings us to Txxxx’s co-conspirators.

Vice President Pence . . . is constitutionally obligated to preside over [Wednesday’s] joint session of Congress to certify Biden’s electoral college victory. Pence’s chief of staff . . . issued a statement Saturday night saying that Pence “welcomes” congressional efforts “to raise objections and bring forward evidence” at the session. . . .

And the dozen or more Republican senators . . .who are turning what should be a ceremonial event into a constitutional circus. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, defending his move to object to the certification, could summon only Pennsylvania’s use of mail-in ballots when the state’s constitution “has required all votes to be cast in person, with narrowly defined exceptions.” The state legislature passed a law allowing no-excuse mail-in voting. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, without getting into the merits, threw out a challenge to the law.

“These are very serious irregularities, on a very large scale, in a presidential election,” Hawley intoned. This man calls himself a “constitutional lawyer” and a conservative? In our federal system, what happens in Pennsylvania is up to Pennsylvania. The legislature acted. The court rejected a challenge. The state certified Biden’s win. Hawley proffered not a scintilla of evidence of fraud. What is he arguing — that the votes of more than 2.5 million Pennsylvanians should now be invalidated?

Not to be outdone — or outmaneuvered in the 2024 presidential sweepstakes — Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, joined by 10 colleagues, is pressing for a commission to conduct an emergency 10-day audit of the election results, again, with no evidence to justify such a last-minute step.

Instead, Cruz, like Hawley, uses the very voter fears that Txxxx so carefully nurtured and his allies have stoked to justify the need for extraordinary intervention. Speaking to Fox News . . . , Cruz cited “unprecedented allegations of voter fraud” — allegations that emanate from Txxxx and his allies — that he said have “produced a deep, deep distrust of our democratic process across the country.” This is the arsonist calling the fire department to put out the blaze that he kindled.

“I think we in Congress have an obligation to do something about that,” Cruz lectured. “We have an obligation to protect the integrity of the democratic system.”

Oh please. No one has done more over the past months to undermine the integrity of the democratic system than Txxxx and his enablers. And if Cruz is actually worried about the integrity of the democratic system, he [should] start with the president.

There must be a response to a president who exploits his office for the purpose of overthrowing an election. The evidence is on tape. The next attorney general should move forward, if for no other reason, to deter further attempts at such reprehensible conduct. I would suggest impeachment as well, which could include a ban on holding office in the future, but we know already Republicans will defend anything Txxxx does [even if he declares himself King Donald the First and makes Ivanka his queen].

[If you choose to endure it, the Post has the audio and a transcript.]

Old Leader, New Leader, Same Country

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People who know the president predicted that his aberrant psychology wouldn’t allow him to acknowledge defeat — and that he would do everything possible to protect his fragile ego. If his public actions and statements weren’t enough evidence of his diseased mind at work, we now have tape of one of his private discussions.

This afternoon, The Washington Post published an extraordinary story (probably behind a paywall) describing the president’s attempt to force the state of Georgia to declare him the winner of last month’s election:

“‘I just want to find 11,780 votes’: In extraordinary hour-long call, Txxxx pressures Georgia secretary of state to recalculate the vote in his favor”

President Txxxx urged fellow Republican Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, to “find” enough votes to overturn his defeat in an extraordinary one-hour phone call Saturday that election experts said raised legal questions.

The Washington Post obtained a recording of the conversation in which Trump alternately berated Raffensperger, tried to flatter him, begged him to act and threatened him with vague criminal consequences if the secretary of state refused to pursue his false claims, at one point warning that Raffensperger was taking “a big risk.”

Throughout the call, Raffensperger and his office’s general counsel rejected Trump’s assertions, explaining that the president is relying on debunked conspiracy theories and that President-elect Joe Biden’s 11,779-vote victory in Georgia was fair and accurate.

I saw online comments to the effect that Georgia state law makes election tampering a crime punishable by up to three years in prison and that the president is guilty of extortion as well. He probably won’t be prosecuted in Georgia after he’s forced out of office in 17 days because Georgia’s governor and attorney general are Republicans. But there is now further reason to investigate and prosecute the crimes he and his administration have committed at either the state or federal level.

The Post story has a remarkable ending:

. . . [The president] continued to make his case in repetitive fashion, until finally, after roughly an hour, [Secretary of State] Raffensperger put an end to the conversation: “Thank you, President Txxxx, for your time.”

I guess that could merely be an example of Southern hospitality, or maybe Secretary of State Raffensperger said it sarcastically, but at least once I’d like to hear somebody speak to this maniac without the deference due his office.

In this case, Raffensperger might have responded with something like “Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us, Mr. President, but the God’s honest truth is that you should never have been president. After they drag you out of the White House kicking and screaming a couple weeks from now, you should seek treatment for your narcissism, your delusions, your willingness to lie about everything to everybody and your profound corruption. Psychiatrists can do wonders, although sociopaths are hard to treat. In your case, it’s still worth a try. You might be able to use an insanity defense to avoid prison.”

One other thought. Various Republican politicians have promised to play the fool for the president’s rabid supporters on Wednesday. That will somewhat delay the moment when Congress declares Biden the winner of the Electoral College. I think the only thing left for the president to do at that point is to declare a national emergency, based on the premise that the election is being stolen. Fortunately, the military has sworn to defend the Constitution, not a particular president, so I think we’ll be in safe hands. After four excruciating years, we’ll have a new leader, although we’ll still be the same screwed up country.

Starting the Year on a Positive Note

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It’s not 100% positive, of course, but it’s something to keep in mind (any port in a storm). From Paul Krugman of The New York Times:

The next few months will be hell in terms of politics, epidemiology and economics. But at some point in 2021 things will start getting better. And there’s good reason to believe that once the good news starts, the improvement in our condition will be much faster and continue much longer than many people expect.

OK, one thing that probably won’t get better is the political scene. Day after day, Republicans — it’s not just Dxxxx Txxxx — keep demonstrating that they’re worse than you could possibly have imagined, even when you tried to take into account the fact that they’re worse than you could possibly have imagined. . . .

But on other fronts there’s a clear case for optimism. Science has come to our rescue, big time, with the miraculously fast development of vaccines against the coronavirus. True, the United States is botching the initial rollout, which should surprise nobody. But this is probably just a temporary hitch, especially because in less than three weeks we’ll have a president actually interested in doing his job [and is an actual human being].

And once we’ve achieved widespread vaccination, the economy will bounce back. The question is, how big will the bounce be?

Our last economic crisis was followed by a sluggish recovery. Employment didn’t return to 2007 levels until 2014; real median household income didn’t regain the lost ground until 2016. And many observers expect a replay of that story, especially if Republicans retain control of the Senate and engage, once again, in economic sabotage under the pretense of being fiscally responsible.

But the crisis of 2020 was very different from the crisis of 2008, in ways that make our prospects look much better this time around.

The last economic crisis involved a Wile E. Coyote moment: The private sector suddenly looked down, realized that there was nothing supporting extravagant housing prices and extremely high levels of household debt, and plunged. The result was an extended period of depressed spending. The only way to have avoided multiple years of high unemployment would have been sustained, large-scale fiscal stimulus — and the [Republicans] prevented that.

This 2020 crisis, by contrast, was brought on by a headwind out of nowhere, in the form of the coronavirus. The private sector doesn’t seem to have been particularly overextended before the pandemic. And while we shouldn’t minimize the hardships faced by millions of families, on average Americans have been saving like crazy, and will emerge from the pandemic with stronger balance sheets than they had before.

So I’m in the camp that expects rapid growth once people feel safe going out and spending money. Mitch McConnell and company will, no doubt, do what they always do when a Democrat occupies the White House, and try to sabotage the recovery. But this time the economy won’t need support as badly as it did during the Obama years.

And I suspect, although with less confidence, that the boom will go on for a long time. Why? Because like a number of other people, I’m getting optimistic about the future of technology.

The years that followed the 2008 crisis weren’t just marked by sluggish job growth. They also coincided with a period of technological disappointment. As [one entrepeneur] put it, it was an era in which we wanted flying cars but got 140 characters instead. . . . That is, we were doing some flashy stuff pushing information around, but not making much progress in the material world, which is still where we mainly live.

Lately, however, I’ve been hearing a lot of buzz around new physical technologies that reminds me of the buzz about information technology in the early 1990s, which presaged the productivity surge from 1995 to 2005. Biotechnology finally seems to be coming into its own — hence those miraculous vaccines. There has been incredible progress in renewable energy; I’m old enough to remember when solar power was considered a hippie fantasy, and now it’s cheaper than fossil fuels. There’s room for more skepticism about the near-term prospects for things like self-driving vehicles and lab-grown meat, but the fact that we’re even talking about such innovations is a good sign for the future.

This new wave of innovation doesn’t have much to do with policy, although progress in renewables can be partly attributed to the Obama administration’s promotion of green energy. But the Biden administration, unlike its predecessor, won’t be anti-science and won’t try desperately to preserve the coal-burning past. That will help us take advantage of progress.

I’m less confident in my techno-optimism than I am in my expectations for a rapid employment recovery once we’ve been vaccinated. But all in all, there’s a pretty good chance that Joe Biden will preside over an economy that surprises many people on the upside. 

Good Riddance

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Snippets from our last day of 2020 (I dare you):

As the U.S. confronted a new wave of infection and death through the summer and fall, the president’s approach to the pandemic came down to a single question: What would it mean for him? (NY Times)

We came all this way to let vaccines go bad in the freezer? America did not plan how to get millions of people vaccinated. (NY Times)

For months, Americans who despaired about the country’s coronavirus-suppression efforts looked desperately to the arrival of a vaccine for a kind of pandemic deliverance. Now that it has arrived, miraculously fast, we are failing utterly to administer it with anything like the urgency the pace of dying requires — and, perhaps most maddeningly, failing in precisely the same way as we did earlier in the year. America’s vaccine rollout is already a disaster. (NY Magazine)

Txxxx returns to Washington early as allies plot challenge to Biden victory. (The Guardian)

Whenever the MAGA set whines over someone calling for the Republican Party’s demise, one need only point to the fleet of prominent Republicans who have demonstrated their contempt for democracy. [Senator] Josh Hawley reminds us that the GOP is the sedition party. (Washington Post)

The stock market is ending 2020 in record territory, even as the virus surges and millions go hungry. (Washington Post)

Year ends on low note as 787,000 more Americans file for unemployment (The Guardian)

[Senator] McConnell refuses to budge on $2,000 stimulus checks. “Just give us a vote on the House-passed bill, and we can vote on whatever right-wing conspiracy theory you like,” [Senator Schumer] said on the Senate floor. (CNBC)

What did the Democrats win? The minority repeatedly thwarting the will of the majority is intolerable and untenable. (NY Review of Books)

Bomb cyclone in northern Pacific Ocean breaks all-time records. (Washington Post)

Knausgaard returns, with a collection of earnest, tedious, minor essays. Is excessive literary production a social offense? (NY Times)

For psychics, a year like no other: “Everybody wants to know what’s coming”. (Washington Post)

2021 is going to be like the math professor who took over for Ted Kaczynski. (Conan O’Brien)

Happy New Year!