I am hopefully only one of MILLIONS of Americans who have spent the time to read the indictment released by Jack Smith in the case of United States v Donald Trump filed on August 1, 2023. My first commentary on the indictment Trump Indictment #3: Themes and Takeaways published yesterday included this point:
In reality, "Republican" today is something else entirely, on a different dimension than traditional "left / right" dynamics. Unfortunately, our political processes at the federal and state level have been corrupted by rules which protect a two-party scheme. Those rules assume the two parties were roughly equal in power and roughly balanced in their policies with the average being BETWEEN them. The policies coming out of that altered dimension of the current Republican base bear no resemblance to anything experienced in America in its entire history and, if allowed to take root, may literally bring about the end of that history as we currently know it.
After pondering this indictment and the larger absurdity of the United States of America being put into the very position of an indictment of a former President triggering untold chaos in our democracy, it becomes very clear NO SINGLE PERSON can do this much damage. The roots of all of the crimes leading up to the January 6, 2021 riot at the United States Capital are far deeper and wider than five or ten fringe losers hanging around a corrupt President.
The Republican Party itself has metastasized into a cancer throughout America, distorting its political, social and moral senses and pursuing all means necessary and available to enhance the rights of the extremely (obscenely) wealthy while literally spitting on any and all mechanisms in a civil democratic society intended to provide equity and fairness to average citizens. The Republican Party itself was an unindicted co-conspirator in the January 6 coup attempt and has been mentally conditioning its members for that event for over fifty years. A review of its actions and key leaders over that period reflects a trend of continuous, intensifying contempt for the rule of law, individual rights and true patriotism.
Want a history lesson?
1968 -- Richard Nixon ran for President promising a "secret plan" to end the unpopular war in Vietnam. In reality, he was instructing campaign aide H.R. Haldeman to work with South Vietnamese contacts to RESIST peace negotiations being promoted by President Johnson. TREASON
1969 -- Instead of a secret plan to END the war in Vietnam, Nixon escalated the war beginning immediately after inauguration via Operation Menu, a covert bombing of Cambodia plan lasting from March 1969 to May 1970. History subsequently found part of the goal of the campaign was to spook North Vietnam into thinking Nixon was crazy to encourage a larger settlement. SEPARATION OF POWERS
1970 -- Four days of protests by hundreds of students at Kent State University in Ohio ended after National Guard troops deployed to the campus by Republican Governor Jim Rhodes opened fire on the crowd, killing four and wounding nine others. The protests were triggered by Nixon announcing more aggressive ground force attacks in Cambodia in April of 1970. The prior fourteen months of bombing was not yet known by most of the American public. CIVIL RIGHTS
1972 -- Richard Nixon, running high in the polls but paranoid of any potential humiliation of losing, approved illegal break-ins at the Watergate Hotel based headquarters of the Democratic National Committee to plant listening devices, etc. to collect intelligence on the Democratic campaign. ELECTION INTERFERENCE
1974 -- Investigations of the Watergate break-ins identify the existence of two and a half YEARS of tape recordings in the Oval Office describing nearly every detail of the planning of the initial crime and subsequent attempts to block its discovery. Every detail except eighteen mysteriously missing minutes. Discovery of the documentation of the planning and destruction of crucial segments triggered demands for Nixon's resignation, which came on August 9, 1974. CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY. OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE
1974 -- Gerald Ford issued a full pardon to Richard Nixon. The key language? Now, THEREFORE, I, GERALD R. FORD, President of the United States, pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, have granted and by these presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9,1974. That wasn't just a pardon for the specific, still incompletely understood crimes of Watergate. That was a pardon of ANY crimes he might have committed during his entire term. OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE
1980 -- Ronald Reagan's campaign leadership negotiated with Iran to RETAIN American hostages to make President Carter look weak and to avoid a possible "October Surprise." TREASON
1986 -- Ronald Reagan and the CIA explicitly ignored Congressional bans on funding for Contra militants in Nicaragua by hatching a scheme that sold weapons to Iran, violating other US law, then delivering the cash proceeds directly to Contra forces outside Congressional supervision. TREASON. SEPARATION OF POWERS.
1988 -- George H.W. Bush hired a Presidential campaign staff headed by 1970s Nixon acolyte Lee Atwater with support from figures such as Paul Manafort and Roger Stone and proceeded to run a notoriously dirty campaign against his primary opponents and the eventual Democratic candidate. Among the lowlights, confirmation from reporter Robert Novak that Atwater asked him to spread rumors that Michael Dukakis' wife had mental health issues.
1994 -- Tom DeLay and Grover Norquist launch the "K Street Project" as a means for extracting campaign contributions from large corporations on a barely disguised "pay to play" basis and seeding outgoing Republican politicians and staffers into top positions at lobbyist firms and corporations in general. CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY. ELECTION FRAUD
1995 -- Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House and immediately adopts a scandal-driven agenda, ultimately resulting in the Ken Starr investigation into Whitewater which later snowballed into a sexual scandal that triggered the impeachment of President Clinton. Gingrich led his House peers to believe impeachment would preserve control of the House in the 1998 elections. In fact, Republicans lost the House and Gingrich decided to resign his seat at the beginning of 1999. Within months, all of the following became known about Gingrich: He cheated on his first wife in 1974 with a volunteer staffer on his Congressional campaign. He eventually divorced wife #1 in 1980 by notifying her a day after surgery for uterine cancer. He remarried in 1981 and was cheating on wife #2 during the impeachment of Clinton with a 30-year old House staffer. After leaving office in 1999, he divorced wife #2 then married mistress #2. SEXUAL HYPOCRISY
1995 -- Newt Gingrich adopted recurring fiscal terrorism as a core legislative tactic by halting negotiations over spending on education, health and environmental protections leading to two short government shutdowns in November 1995 and between December 16, 1995 to January 6, 1996. LEGISLATIVE EXTORTION
2000 -- GW Bush leverages a similar cadre of 1970s Nixon era acolytes for his Presidential campaign. One memorable victory for Bush in the primaries over rival John McCain in the South Carolina primary was partly attributed to push-polls conducted shortly before the primary asking primary voters if their choice would be affected if it was known John McCain had an illegitimate child. No smoking gun found, but the only candidate that benefited was Bush. If they're willing to do this to fellow Republicans, what are they willing to do to anyone else?
2001 -- GW Bush meets with Vladimir Putin, peers into his soul and decides Putin is a man the US can deal with. GLOBAL GEOPOLITICAL MALPRACTICE and INCOMPETENCE
2001 -- GW Bush ignores a Presidential Daily Briefing entitled "bin Laden Determined to Attack US", leaving the entire US flatfooted for an unprecedented multi-state terrorist attack one month later. INCOMPETENCE
2001 -- GW Bush fails to focus on killing bin Laden in caves at Tora Bora and instead launches war in Afghanistan, repeating the exact same mistake made by the Soviet Union in 1979 that arguably resulted in the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. The Soviet war lasted nearly ten years and cost the equivalent of roughly $50 billion dollars (18 billion rubles in 1979 money). America doubled down on the failure, spending nearly twenty years in the country and spending roughly $2.313 TRILLION dollars. Any benefits of the American effort collapsed across the country the same WEEK as the US withdrawal on August 30, 2021. GLOBAL GEOPOLITICAL MALPRACTICE and INCOMPETENCE
2003 -- GW Bush is cowed by his own Vice President and national security staff and allows known false information about the existence of WMD ingredients in Iraq to be used in a United Nations meeting and in a televised address to the American public as justification for launching a war in Iraq. At this point, the US not only doesn't know where bin Laden is, Bush publicly stated in a March 20, 2002 press conference he had no particular fixation on bin Laden and those focusing on him did not understand the true mission of his war on terror. GLOBAL GEOPOLITICAL MALPRACTICE and TREASON
2003 -- GW Bush appoints Paul Bremer as "Provisional Coalition Administrator" of now-occupied Iraq in May of 2003, reporting to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Bremer's first two decrees removed any Baath party members from any government position -- however menial or important to public services like electricity, water, sewer -- and dismantled the entire Iraqi army. The resulting chaos triggered a civil war, led to the emergence of the Islamic State (ISIS) as a multi-state military terrorist organization that eventually outdid al Qaeda in destruction in the region. As a direct consequence, US forces were trapped in the country trying to preserve a "win" for eight years, costing $2.4 trillion dollars. GLOBAL GEOPOLITICAL MALPRACTICE
2004 -- CBS aired a report in April of 2004 identifying systemic physical / sexual abuse and torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq conducted by US military personnel against claimed Iraqi insurgents. Bush Administration officials initially claimed the abuses were isolated instances and did not reflect formal policies. In reality, the same practices were identified in other "black sites" operated by the CIA in multiple countries specifically to avoid criminal exposure under US law. In reality, the Bush Administration had thoroughly analyzed strategies for torture as part of "advanced interrogation techniques" and had a secret policy signed in August of 2002 before launching the Iraq invasion. HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS
2006 -- Majority Leader Tom DeLay is forced to surrender his Majority Leader role then eventually resigns after being indicted on federal money laundering charges. He led efforts to launder corporate contributions banned in Texas state races by first passing those contributions through the Republican National Committee before shifting the money to state races. CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY. ELECTION FRAUD
2006 -- Mark Foley is forced to resign after numerous examples reach media outlets about inappropriate emails and texts being sent to underage House pages, sexual liasons with pages after reaching age 18 and age 21, and intoxicated visits to the dormitory used to house pages. The accounts date back to at least 1995. Curiously, two of Foley's pet legislative topics involved pornography and sexual predators. SEXUAL ABUSE.
2007 -- After Republicans lose control of the House in the 2006 midterm election, Speaker Dennis Hastert resigns his seat in Congress to go into the private sector. In May of 2015, Hastert was indicted and pleaded guilty to lying to federal agents and structuring bank payments to hide hush money payments being made to former students he had sexually assaulted while working as a wrestling coach at a high school in the early 1980s. The real damage to Americans brought about by Hastert was his parliamentary rule (known as the "Hastert Rule") that blocked any legislation from reaching a vote on the full House floor unless it obtained a majority of the Republican vote. This has been followed by every Republican House Speaker since, allowing a MINORITY to block legislation supported by a MAJORITY in the branch of Congress that is DESIGNED to be the most responsive to voter interests. SEXUAL ABUSE. CONSTITUTIONAL MALPRACTICE
2016 -- Candidate Donald Trump explicitly encourages Russian meddling in the 2016 election. ELECTION THUGGERY.
2017 -- Within two months of inauguration, Trump officials began creating a formal policy to separate children from parents at immigration retention locations, purely to amp up the psychological stress on would-be migrants as a deterrent to slow illegal immigration. Implementation began within weeks and by August 2017, reports reach the US Attorney's office in Texas of children not being able to be re-matched with their parents due to the failure to create ANY documentation at the time of separation or assign tracking IDs to allow location and reunion. By June of 2018, DHS confirmed over 2000 families had been separated just between April 19 and May 31 of 2018 while other stories emerged about HUNDREDS of children being housed in metal cages inside a warehouse in McAllen, TX. The policy was officially rescinded by Trump in 2018 yet continued in practice into 2019. HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATION. (Caveat, the Biden Administration continued to separate children when parents had a criminal record or active criminal case or major health issue. As of 2023, nearly 1000 of 1600 children had not been reunited with parents.)
2019 -- In January 2019, documents submitted to a court handling the criminal prosecution of Paul Manafort on charges of money laundering, conspiracy against the United States and lying to federal agents failed to redact information that confirmed Manafort, while acting as Trump's campaign chair in the 2016 race, met with a Russian operative in 2016 to discuss a plan by which Russia would gain control of eastern Ukraine via political subterfuge. TREASON.
2019 -- In a July 25 phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump attempts to extort Zelensky and the country of Ukraine into harming his suspected 2020 Democratic opponent Joe Biden. Trump offers to actually ship weapons and materiel already approved by Congress in exchange for Zelensky publicly announcing criminal investigations into Joe Biden and Hunter Biden. Trump is impeached for this action but acquitted by a Republican controlled Senate. TREASON. ELECTION THUGGERY
2020 -- Donald Trump delays early attempts to protect Americans infected with COVID aboard a cruise ship, preferring they remain offshore as someone else's problem so "his numbers" for COVID still look low. Trump explicitly ignored an 69-page entire emergency response plan created during the Obama Administration specifically for pandemic events based on lessons learned from outbreaks of SARS, Ebola and Zika. The lack of coordination and missing sense of urgency allowed the virus to spread exponentially while the entire world lacked any effective treatments much less vaccines to prevent it. Over 1,135,919 American deaths resulted. PUBLIC HEALTH MALPRACTICE.
2020 -- Donald Trump loses the 2020 Presidential election by 7 million votes and immediately launches multiple criminal conspiracies across SEVEN states to reject the certified votes of MILLIONS of Americans to replace their electoral collage slate with fake electors to allow him to remain in power. The schemes involve DOZENS of Republican lawyers and probably HUNDRES of state level Republican Party officials all willing to sign / forge any document to keep their Republican in power in the absence of ANY valid evidence of fraud. TREASON. CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY.
2021 -- After losing EVERY official court challenge (dozens of them), Trump continued to attempt to strong-arm his own Vice President into violating the Constitution by withholding certification of the Electoral College ballots to allow the constitutional chaos to be used as an excuse to toss some of the state slates back to state legislatures to try to fake a win. After it becomes clear Pence would not agree to that, Trump literally speaks in front of MAGA protestors gathered in front of the White House and icites them to march on the Capital. A riot ensues at the Capital, rioters physicaly break into the Capital building, beat DC and Capital police and ransack the House and Senate chambers threatening to hang Mike Pence and Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Trump watches it unfold on TV for HOURS without communicating any request for the violence to stop. At the same time, his co-conspirators are still contacting key Republican representatives and Senators attempting to get them to follow the plan to derail the electoral college certification. Those efforts continued until 11:00pm EST. TREASON. INSURRECTION. OBSTRUCTION OF AN OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT PROCEEDING
What are the takeaways from this fifty year indictment of Republicanism?
Treason, corruption, fraud, grift, sexual abuse / hypocrisy, and plain lust for power are not anomalies of players within the Republican Party. They are nearly ubiquitous across the years and all regions of the country.
These behaviors have been magnified and reinforced because they have been REWARDED. Giant corporations reward them with campaign money for enacting tax reductions and eliminating pesky regulatory hassles regarding worker safety, environmental protection and financial transparency. Ignorant voters reward them by continuing to vote them into office as long as the party can identify "others" who can be blamed for what they lack. These voters seem perfectly happy allowing more of the fruits of their labor to flow to the top as long as they can "punch down" on someone else and feel good about their relative plight.
There is still a significant probability that Trump and his co-conspirators could escape justice. Procedural delays could defer all of these cases past the election and 2025 inauguration, allowing either Trump or a Republican President to pardon Trump. A single juror loyal to Trump and the MAGA cult could prevent convictions on these charges.
The fact that Trump is currently leading all Republican competitors for the 2024 nomination by double digits makes it clear anyone still calling themselves a "Republican" is likely beyond rational reason and reach. There are only two pools of potential voters that matter. Those labeling themselves as "independent" and those disturbed enough by Republican actions to avoid public identification with the party but still willing to go along. It is up to those groups to contemplate this extended history of Republican treason, criminality, self-dealing and arrogant incompetence and evaluate where this trend is headed if Republicans continue to control any levers of government at any level.
The operation of our legislative branch has been so distorted by centuries of habit around two-party government which has NO basis in the Constitution that neither incumbent party would voluntarily surrender its control. Both parties have evolved their internal DNA to prioritize self-preservation of the party even above the interests of its supposed voters. At this point in history, the Republican party has outlived its usefulness and must be destroyed -- by the only mechanism which cannot be thwarted. The ballot box. Republican operative Grover Norquest has been famous for decades for summarizing his ultimate political goal this way -- to cut the funding and support for the federal government until it shrinks to a point where it is small enough to drown in a bathtub. The United States of America has reached that point with the Republican Party. It must be eliminated -- and replaced with a party driven by ethics and morals.
WTH
