In the “I told you so” department, Trump tweeted out his displeasure yesterday that US attorneys in charge of Roger Stone’s felony convictions recommended a 7 to 9 year sentence.  As a reminder, Stone was convicted of lying to Congress about his involvement with the hacking by Russians of the DNC server and coordinating with WikiLeaks, lying to the FBI, and federal witness tampering, not trivial convictions.  Not long after his tweet, Bouncing Bill Barr’s DOJ backpedaled the sentence saying it was reconsidering.  In response and protest, two federal prosecutors resigned.

It’s not like we didn’t know that this was going to happen.  Now the we have Trump Unchained, I’m shocked he hasn’t just given Stone an outright pardon, the Medal of Freedom, and an appointment as head of, say, the Bureau of Land Management.

The corruption of this administration is wide, deep, and getting wider by the moment.

This afternoon, in the style of a banana republic, Republicans in the Senate, aided and abetted by Chief Justice John Roberts, voted to support Trump’s lawbreaking and stonewalling by acquitting him of both articles of impeachment, after not hearing one witness.  Lamar Alexander was the nail in the coffin of the impeachment attempt, siding with corruption rather than The People.  Murkowski caving on witnesses was the crowning blow. Romney was the only Republican to stand on his hind legs and vote to convict the SOB on Article 1, he voted to acquit on Article 2.  Of course, the two Shitheads from Texas sided with the criminal.  What an embarrassment.  With this acquittal, the Senate has communicated to Trump that illegally using US taxpayer money to extort a foreign government for his own personal gain is fine.  Foreign interference in US elections is welcome. Lying to and stonewalling Congress is Okey Dokey.  Smearing good public servants for personal gain is appropriate, and using private individuals to form US policy is sweet.

The outcome was really never in doubt.  Corrupt Republicans, led by henchman Mitch McConnell, resisted seeing any evidence, hearing any witnesses, or honoring their oaths to be impartial.  Despite a large number of Americans wanting a fair trial, the Senate once again followed the orders of their masters who were at once stuffing their pockets full of money and threatening to put their “heads on a pike” should they dare oppose the president of the United States King Donald I Il Douche who is beholding only to Vladimir Putin, Erdogan, and Saudi princes.

If you think Trump acted badly after Barr successfully buried the Mueller report, you ain’t seen nothing yet.  On his way to prison, Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, predicted that he wouldn’t leave office quietly.  The Senate has now guaranteed that prediction.  Without guardrails, Trump will unleash a massive effort to tilt the election toward himself, threatening opponents, and welcoming the Russians or any other foreign power who ally themselves with him.  And, if by some remote chance this massive corruption results in an electoral loss, he will declare the election invalid and declare martial law.  What comes next we’ve seen before in Germany, Italy, multiple Central American states, and Cambodia.  And none of that was pretty.

I’m sad to say that the end of the great American experiment has come.  After decades of lies and propaganda pumped out by Fox Noise, Rush Limbaugh, and other talking heads, aided by Russian intelligence, the US government, led by abjectly corrupt Republicans, has weakened our country to the point that truth is unfindable; under McConnell, the US Senate is a wasteland of weirdos, liars, morons, and the cynically corrupt.  Much of the House is the same.  Trump played millions of Americans for chumps, and after years of stupidifying, they fell for it, suspending disbelief and accepting massive gaslighting as truth.  Corruption and criminality are now the norm. The vision of the Founders is dead, led to the grave by Trump, Mitch McConnell, his corrupt Republican Party, and enabled by the corrupt majority on the Supreme Court.

Everyone, even if they deny it, knows this was not a trial in any sense of the word.  It was a sham from the moment it passed from Nancy Pelosi’s hands into McConnell’s.  But we also something else – history will not be kind to those who did this.  Generations behind us will look at this time in our history and will pinpoint the precise time of death of the most remarkable experiment in self government in world history.

Dana Milbank has a great piece in the Washington Post this morning where he describes how Republican senators made a mockery of Trump’s impeachment trial, repeatedly violating their oaths and violating Senate rules.  Many didn’t even bother to show up during the House Managers’ presentations, or if they did, smacked on chewing gum or read magazines.  As I read these descriptions, what struck me was what a poor job Chief Justice John Roberts did, not even trying to get Republicans to follow their own rules in the trial.  Trump always whines about how everything is rigged against him; well, this trial was certainly rigged in favor of him even before it started.

In voting to block all witnesses and close the record, Republicans completed their corrupt mission of acquitting Trump even as they admitted that he is guilty.  Milbank’s best line of the the piece was when he described Lamar Alexanders illogical reasoning for refusing to hear any witnesses.  Alexander’s statement was whiplash inducing as described by Milbank:

“’There is no need for more evidence to conclude that the president withheld United States aid, at least in part, to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens; the House managers have proved this,’ Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) declared late Thursday. But the choice of ‘what to do about what he did,’ Alexander said, should be ‘in the presidential election.’ What an elegant solution! He accepts that Trump is guilty of cheating in the election — and, therefore, his fate should be determined by the very election in which he has cheated.”

Milbank nails it in those brief sentences by pointing out the idiotic reasoning behind not only Trump’s lawyers but his enablers in the Senate.  They admit Trump is guilty, yet either say it doesn’t rise to the level of impeachability or that the election should determine his fate.  How goddam stupid – if inviting, indeed extorting a foreign government to interfere in a presidential election is not impeachable, then nothing is.  Even more stupid is saying that the election he’s trying to rig is the one in which he should be punished.

The illogic is gobsmacking.

Another great read, this time by David Frum about Trump’s lawbreaking to retaliate against the person identified as reporting his past lawbreaking.  Must read.

Christianity Today, mouthpiece of the evangelical movement since Billy Graham founded it in 1956, finally turned on Trump last week when its editor in chief, Mark Galli, published “Trump Should Be Removed from Office” laying out the case against him that most normal people have understood for years.  While lying that Trump “…didn’t have a chance to offer his side of the story…,” Galli did say,

The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents. That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.

The reason many are not shocked about this is that this president has dumbed down the idea of morality in his administration. He has hired and fired a number of people who are now convicted criminals. He himself has admitted to immoral actions in business and his relationship with women, about which he remains proud. His Twitter feed alone—with its habitual string of mischaracterizations, lies, and slanders—is a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused.

This is not the first time that the magazine has weighed in on impeachment, but the first time it has come down of the side against a Republican.  In 1973 it offered milk toast support of the process but remaining neutral on Nixon’s impeachment, and in 1998 supported Clinton’s removal.  Galli used the same reasoning this time to call for Trump’s removal.  At least he’s being intellectually honest, which doesn’t hold with other publications like the Christian Post, which stubbornly remains in Trump’s corner.

The piece in the Christian Post published on Monday repeats the willful blindness we’ve come to expect from evangelicals who’ve been happy to look the other way on Trump’s moral bankruptcy and criminality just because they’re getting judges who believe that the Earth is flat and only 4,000 years old as well as in the subjugation of women.  In their piece, the senior editors bashed Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, AND Beto O’Rourke, calling their words on Trump supporters and religions a “…toxic emotional and spiritual stew…”  Their ultimate justification for overlooking Trump’s conduct? He was elected.  Essentially, they repeated Trump’s own argument that, since he was elected, he is immune from all legal scrutiny or even investigation of his criminality and corruption.

The piece is so poisonous that Napp Nazworth, another editor at the Christian Post, threw up his hands and abruptly resigned, tweeting out, “Announcement: Today, rather abruptly, I was forced to make the difficult choice to leave The Christian Post. They decided to publish an editorial that positions them on Team Trump. I can’t be an editor for a publication with that editorial voice.”  He continued that editors had in the past worked through disagreements, but now has “chosen to represent a narrow (and shrinking) slice of Christianity.

What we’re witnessing is actual Christians beginning to find their voice against the falsehood of Falwell’s political lobbying company masquerading as a church.  Although evangelical support of Trump remains over 80%, Trump is starting to lose that edge he’s enjoyed up until he got caught red handed extorting a foreign government to gain domestic political advantage.  Evangelicals (I know many personally) have been hijacked by the Fox Noise version of Republican Jesus filled with the spirit of assault rifles, anti-vaxing, gay bashing, and Bible thumping.  It’s high time that actual Christians find their voices and speak up against this corruption of Christianity, or at least vote against it in the voting booth.

Today, one of our readers reminded us of this post from October 7, 2017 about how Rex Tillerson was then opposing Trump’s support for doing away with US bribery laws.  In view of what we’re going through right now, we thought it would be timely to repost.  Here it is:

Moral Bankruptcy – October 7, 2017

One of the rising stories in the war between Trump and Tillerson has underlined the actual issue at the core of this administration – moral bankruptcy.  We all know that Trump is a complete waste of oxygen, a Grade A Shitbag, and every other pejorative one can conjure.  What is he, though, at his essence?  At his center, Trump is totally devoid of any decency or empathy and worse (if that’s even possible), he is morally bankrupt.  The case in point is the disagreement that has been simmering between Trump and Tillerson since the beginning of this train wreck; Trump’s desire to legalize bribery.

One of Trump’s core issues is a law that he wants reversed: the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.  The FCPA was passed in 1977 in an attempt for the United States to lead the world in reducing what was then blatant corruption and bribery in international business.  The law is enforced by the SEC and DOJ and has greatly reduced corruption because, under the law, business leaders are personally liable should their companies get caught paying bribes.  For years, Trump has railed against the law, calling it a “horrible law and it should be changed.” Trump says that not being able to pay bribes to foreign officials makes us uncompetitive.

Fortunately for us, but unfortunately for Tillerson, Rex disagrees with Trump.  In a White House meeting in February, Tillerson dared to do just that with Trump after he complained about the act, saying that bribery was key to success.  Tillerson stood his ground and even related a story to him about how he refused to bribe a Yemeni state official when he was CEO of Exxon.  The deal got done anyway.

What this story reveals is not only the importance of actual adults like Tillerson, Kelly, Mattis, and others to keep Trump in check, but the critical need that they do so.  Trump is the very definition of corruption.  He is so self absorbed and completely saturated by his corruption that he actually wants to weaken US policy so HE’LL make more money.  Just thinking about having this cretin at the levers of power sends cold chills down my spine.  This man is not only evil; his corruption is a cancer on our society.

This disaster can’t end soon enough; in the meantime, as much as I disagree with Tillerson on any number of policy issues, I also see his value as the last defense against Trump burning down what’s left of our republic.  He, and those like him owe it to the rest of us to stay in place until we can excise this disease from office by either criminal charges and/or resignation.