Nobody is making bigger fools of the GOP than Trump. Well, maybe they’re making fools of themselves but Trump is exposing how foolish they are. After acquitting Trump of charges that he asked Ukraine to dig up dirt on a political rival, Trump is now bragging about asking the Ukrainians to dig up dirt on his political rival.
It’s more explicit than OJ’s “If I Did It” admission. Back in November, Trump denied that he sent Rudy Giuliani to look into any matters in Ukraine. Yesterday, he defended sending Giuliani to do what he once said didn’t happen. But nothing matters anymore.
Republicans who at first denied anything happened now accept that the president can do whatever he wants. It’s okay for him to collaborate with foreign countries instead of our own Department of Justice to investigate Americans. It’s okay to withhold Congressionally approved aid to get personal or political favors. And it’s okay for him to instruct the Attorney General to intervene in criminal cases involving the president’s friends and political allies.
Maine Senator Susan Collins insisted that Trump has learned his lesson so he needed to be acquitted. What he really learned was that Congress has no spine and that Republicans fear him. His dismissal of Colonel Vindman and his brother was meant to humiliate and to send a warning to others that their obligation is to him, not the Constitution. Vindman could have been quietly reassigned but instead was publicly escorted from the White House. The modern GOP is apparently okay with that.
In North Carolina, Richard Burr released a statement saying Democrats failed to prove their case. Now, Donald Trump is bragging that they did. Burr sullied any legacy he might have had.
As for Tillis, he falls squarely in the toady category. He would gladly empty Donald Trump’s chamber pot if it got him a pat on the head. He stands for nothing and barely has a fig leaf covering his naked ambition.
So all those Republicans who claimed Trump didn’t do anything in Ukraine were used by the president and now made to look like fools or toadies. Fortunately for Trump, they’ve lost any sense of honor or dignity so they have no sense of shame. They will continue to roll over as Trump exerts increasing influence over career public servants and the institutions they work for. There’s nobody to restrain him.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
A man who is “Mean Spirited” and a bit “Touched in the Head” and “Lacks Common Gumption” ends his thoughts after facts fail, by allowing falsehoods to prevail.
NO MORE FAKE FACTS
NO MORE FAKE NEWS
Do not reelect such a man.
We must trump Trump !!!
Make America Good Again.
Mr. Hill,
Thank you. At least there are two of us (you and me) outraged by Trump and the GOP.
There will come a time, and probably sooner than later, when the president will be a Democrat. He or she may do some egregious thing, something that reasonable people might not put in the “high crimes and misdemeanors” category. But watch what the same GOP senators, at least those not up for re-election this year and those who survive another blue wave, do to that poor Democrat.
There will be hell to pay. The very GOP senators who gave cult leader Trump a pass will be all over the Democrat. Well, I am not going to stand for it. I am going to scream to the moon about the hypocrisy.
Every Republican senator except Romney needs to be sent packing by the voters. I suspect that won’t happen, but some like Collins, of Maine, and McConnell, of Kentucky, need to be turned out of office.
I attended college in Kentucky back in the day. I love that place and its people. They are not dumb. And Mitch McConnell was not always the politician he is today. But I pray my former Kentuckians will send his tail to the curb this year. Yes, I want Trump thrown from office, but i almost want McConnell defeated even more than Trump.
If you would allow me one more thing. I can think of few other parallels in terms of sheer guts than Senator Romney. They would include the eight senators chronicled in JFK’s “Profiles in Courage.” . Their thin ranks also would embrace the so-called “Fifth Circuit Four” who often are referred to simply as “The Four.” They were the judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that included at the time Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and the Panama Canal Zone.
Largely forgotten today, Chief Judge Elbert Tuttle and colleagues John Minor Wisdom, John Robert Brown, and Richard Rives, all but Judge Rives Republicans, struck down segregation laws and made ours a fairer and more just country in the 1950s and early 1960s. But those judges paid a tremendous personal price, as author Jack Bass chronicled years ago.
Now, it is expected that Senator Romney will become their kindred soul in terms of hatefulness, vituperation and sheer spite.
On the Democratic side in the Senate, I would include Sen. Doug Jones. Trump has a 60 percent favorability rating in Alabama. But I knew Senator Jones, a former U.S. attorney who took on the Klan and won, would do the right thing. I simply knew it. Doing the right thing is in this man’s DNA. In some ways, his was an even more courageous act that the Romney vote. But I am not going to split hairs. As an ordinary citizen and very common man, I thank Romney, Jones, Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, for doing their duty in the impeachment trial and honoring the two oaths they took — one as U.S. senators, the other to do “impartial justice” in the trial. God bless them!