A number of pundits and legal professionals got bent out of shape over President Trump’s Tweet yesterday concerning the recent indictments of Republican Representatives Collins and Hunter:
[tweet https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1036681588573130752]
For example, Steven Benen:
After more than a year and a half in the White House, Donald Trump genuinely seems to believe that the federal justice system should shield the president’s political allies – not only because of their partisan allegiances, but also because, in Trump’s mind, the attorney general should weigh electoral considerations before allowing criminal suspects to be charged.
Sally Yates, who served as acting attorney general before Trump fired her last year for giving the White House good advice, described the president’s rhetoric as “nothing short of an all out assault on the rule of law,” and I’m hard pressed to imagine how any fair minded observer would disagree.
Of course, it’s also easy enough to interpret this as another attempt to stir up the Trump base. The idea is to keep the emotional subsystem swirling about, aka “System 1”, and not let System 2, or the intellectual system, kick in[1].
And, in fact, I do not credit the President with enough self-awareness to realize how what he writes may be interpreted. He may realize it, but even then he may not follow the consequences that the maelstrom that follows the collapse of the system we’ve built to so painfully over the last 200+ years would destroy not only him, but his family. He’s in immediate survival mode at the moment, proceeding on a plan he may think is clever, but has little basis in the realities of the moment.
But I think this is a great moment to take the measure of those in control of Congress. It’s clear that he’s calling for his own supporters to receive a break from the Federal law enforcement system, and in the past he’s whined about his political opponents not being investigated.
This is inciting corruption.
Any competent Congressional leader of any party should be calling for, and if they have the power, convening impeachment proceedings right now. Any excuse given in the past has been shredded and disregarded by competent observers. The fact that neither Ryan nor McConnell are not moving to remove this President is a measure of how far removed they are from the proper and required exercise of the powers of their offices. Whether it’s from fear for the fate of their party, their personal electoral fates (but Ryan is retiring at the end of this term), or fear for their personal safety matters not a whit.
And, as a further measure, the failure of the common Republican member of Congress stands as a further condemnation of the Republican members of Congress and the GOP itself. To my mind, this is due to the team politics concept that I’ve mentioned before, but perhaps I’m staring through my prism too much.
So, until November, it’s up to the Republicans to decide if they’re going to be responsible in governance – or prove they’re completely unworthy of the position. Their fate as an American political party is extraordinarily dependent on their decisions in the next few weeks.
1This is from the book The Persuaders, which describes our cognitive apparatus as coming in two systems, #1 being the quick, fight or flight response, which is not rational but often serves best in emergency situations, while #2 is the rational, but slower, response. It’s a good book.
