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The Washington Post has yet another look at how Donald Trump and his loyalists are spending their last days at the levers of power. Not all of it, of course, because there’s just too much, but the highlights.
To be honest, it’s difficult to believe Donald set aside time for any of it. He has been singularly obsessed with delusional claims that the November elections were rigged against him, to the tune of millions and millions and millions of sneaky fake votes, because he is a malignant narcissist whose failure is causing him to decompensate into a sludgy puddle of make-believe. He and his top staff are engaged in a full-tilt campaign to overturn an election based on literally nothing but propagandistic falsehoods. He, and they, are spitting on their oaths of office as a full-time profession.
Rather than Mike Pence and the rest of Trump’s top staff stuffing him into a sack while delivering formal notice that the “president” has, alas, become so unstable as to be incapable of fulfilling his duties, a collection of fascist-minded House Republicans is egging him on, America’s violent underbelly of paramilitary frothers is taking Trump’s delusions as signal that their own plans for genocide will soon come to fruition, and the press is still describing all the details with a detached, neutral air that both recognizes Trump’s acts as unprecedented and attempts to play them down as (1) the impotent ravings of a man who is Too Sad Right Now or (2) not all that different from, say, the undignified spats between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.
Here’s the deal: The presidency of the United States is currently held by a leaking bag of garbage. Also, the bag is a psychopath with delusions of grandeur. The garbage bag is currently mulling, with his advisers, things like can the military enter the swing states Trump lost in November, seize the voting machines, and force the citizens to vote in a new election held according to whatever rules Trump’s federal forces can enforce? This is not likely to happen, mostly because even the staff that eagerly assisted him in a prior extortion scheme aimed at forcing a foreign power to cooperate with a scheme to falsely incriminate his election opponent still has reservations about partaking in crimes technically punishable by firing squad. But Trump is, still, mulling ways to not just declare the United States elections illegitimate and invalid (he’s already doing that, and daily), but enforce his claims using federal force.
On track two, and mind the gap, Trump’s collection of archconservative party-line Republicans, anti-democratic activists who have for decades worked to portray all challenges to Republican rule as inherently illegitimate, is hurriedly sabotaging the nation’s government by installing like-minded loyalists in positions where they cannot be easily dislodged, eagerly and gleefully using basement-tier conspiracy theories to amplify their own prior claims of non-Republican illegitimacy, and pushing forward last-minute actions intended to damage Biden’s ability to govern at all.
Even if, as with the Republican efforts to block the Federal Reserve from providing emergency pandemic aid the moment Joe Biden has taken office, it results in deaths.
These are not policy spats. These are organized efforts to delegitimize democratic elections and to sabotage the economy so as to delegitimize non-Republican leaders. Trump’s status as emotionally unstable buffoon is not a lucky coincidence making the rest of it slightly less dangerous, but an intentional choice made by a Republican electorate that demanded a cult-leader clown, the latest in a long-bubbling rebellion against government know-it-alls and book learners that has pushed an entire new crop of conspiracy clowns, con artists, and outright saboteurs into Congress.
The media, writ large, seems to find itself continually surprised when Trump and his top advisers take new steps even more contemptuous of laws and democracy than the last. It was evident when Republicans neutralized impeachment charges that the White House would take it as affirmation and redouble their efforts. It was evident when the White House purged increasing numbers of “disloyal” government watchdogs that the intent was to eliminate institutional resistance to doing once-shocking things. It was evident throughout the summer that the White House was more comfortable using propagandistic claims and bluster to downplay the severity of a nationwide pandemic than taking concrete steps to save lives. It was evident from Trump’s preelection, pandemic-era rallies that he intended to challenge the election if he lost by only a little; it was evident within days of the election that he now intended to challenge the results even after losing by a lot.
He will propose even more shocking things, and the media will pretend to be surprised by them. His White House and Republican Party allies will embrace those things, or at least hold their tongues while waiting to see whether his newest contemptible acts will, by some chance, bear fruit.
Trump reworked Syrian policy as a favor to an oligarch he had long courted as a possible real estate partner. Trump tasked his “lawyer” with producing evidence incriminating his rival, who subcontracted the job to Russian-allied organized crime. Trump has used both the Department of Justice and his own pardon powers to immunize his allies from the consequences of crimes committed for his own benefit or that push his own agenda.
I’m not saying that we should hold off on the retrospectives of all the malignant ways Trump’s White House and his Republican allies are attempting to sabotage government rather than hand it off to a rival intact. It’s fine. But there’s a month left, and Trump is continuing to re-tune his staff to include those willing to endorse even more radical schemes while jettisoning objectors. This is considerably more dangerous than it is being portrayed. Still.
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