WASHINGTON — It was inevitable that the Scofflaw and the Law would clash.
Yet one of the most bizarre loops in Donald Trump’s dark, wacky rule over the Republicans is that he turned a party that was pro-law and order and anti-Evil Empire into one that wrecks the FBI and embraces Vladimir Putin. .
It is the biggest con of the greatest con man of the century: hijacking his own party.
Republicans are repeating “unhinged leftists from 1968,” noted The Atlantic writer Tom Nichols in “Morning Joe” on Friday. “‘The FBI is the enemy, the FBI is the Gestapo, the FBI is the enemy within.'”
President George HW Bush resigned his NRA membership for life when, just before the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, the NRA sent a fundraising letter calling federal agents “clothed thugs.”
“Your broadside against federal agents,” Bush wrote, “is a deep insult to my own sense of decency and honor; and it offends my concept of service to the country.”
Now, the idea that federal agents are “jack-booted thugs” is a GOP mantra.
During an insane Republican press conference on the hill Friday, Representative Elise Stefanik conceived the FBI leadership “that protected Hillary Clinton, James Comey and continues to protect Hunter Biden” and “who for years has perpetrated the false Russia hoax.”
Trump expects that kind of tribute. Peter Baker and Susan Glasser report in their new book, “The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021,” that Trump told his Chief of Staff John Kelly that he wished his generals were as loyal as Hitler’s.
It is now Pavlovian. Republicans do not even hesitate to protect Trump, even as he is under investigation for possible violation of the Espionage Act.
His casual attitude to classified material is nothing new. Mark Mazzetti of the Times wrote that “officials who gave him secret briefings occasionally withheld some sensitive details from him” because they saw him as a security risk.
The lord of Mar-a-Lago assumes that whether he is in or out of office, all top secret papers are his, to tweet, wave around, declassify or deploy as political weapons. He didn’t think he would appear as a traitor—the word he used to describe Edward Snowden—when he hid classified material in his Florida Xanadu, with its roughly 58 bedrooms and 33 bathrooms.
As an autocrat at heart, Trump simply confuses himself with the republic. That’s why he probably never thought he was inciting sedition on January 6 when he called on the mob to overthrow the government he led. Part of that crowd was Ricky Shifferwho was murdered by police on Thursday after he attacked an FBI office in Ohio after Trump condemned the agency raid.
Trump is also an expert at projection. As Peter Baker wrote in The Times: “During his four years in the White House, Mr. Trump sought to turn the country’s law enforcement apparatus into an instrument of political power to carry out his wishes.” Now he accuses the FBI of being a political weapon for his successor.
This egomaniac is dishonoring our democracy and tearing the country apart for his own benefit. Fundraising emails about the FBI’s search for Mar-a-Lago should have the headline, “Let’s Ruin America So We Can Make Some Money Out of It!” (Actually, Rupert Murdoch could use that as a chyron.)
The utterly spoiled Fifth Avenue slut who is used to living in gilded palaces and cheating his way to success portrays herself as the world’s greatest victim. By humiliating law enforcement and undermining the government, he perpetuates his dark vision that no one is legit and everyone is out to get him, making it easy for him to lie and cheat.
One of the more glorious aspects of this is that Merrick Garland, the man who kept Mitch McConnell off the Supreme Court, is now the one who can bring Trump to justice.
Trump is always whining that someone else should be in trouble, not him. On Friday, he made an unsubstantiated claim: “President Barack Hussein Obama has kept 33 million pages of documents, many of them classified. How many of them related to nuclear? Word is, a lot!”
Hussein?? word is???
Even after so many years of this poisonous folly, I remain amazed that the Republicans who were brutally smeared by Trump on his way up, such as Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham, are now canceling his smear again.
I hate being the one to break it. But, Donald, you are not the Republic. You are the one destroy the Republic. You are bad for America. Word is, a lot!