More Than Trump

Chris Christie, former governor and presidential candidate and (still) Donald Trump sycophant, has been on a charm offensive with major news outlets, Nicole Wallace's credible interview notwithstanding.  He believes Trump did a lot of swell things as President and was a far better choice for the office than Hillary Clinton. And he condemns Joe Biden as President but acknowledges the latter was duly elected. So everything is forgiven.

Christie's perspective might be a little credible were Donald Trump the only problem facing the country. However, the latter is not the sole problem and may not be the primary one.

On Wednesday, 207 of 210 Republicans, 98.6%, voted against censuring and removing from committee assignments Representative Paul Gosar for having threatened the life of one of his colleagues, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In voting "present," David Joyce of Ohio refused, along with the two Republicans ( Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger) who oppose the violent overthrow of the government, to defend a man so odious he's hated by his own family.

Then there is Steve Bannon, who unlike Trump has never been President and never will be, a man so odious that he has called for the beheading of Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI director Robert Wray. (I don't like either myself, but really.) Now

Republicans are rallying around former White House adviser Stephen K. Bannon after his indictment on charges of contempt of Congress on Friday, warning that Democrats’ efforts to force Bannon to comply with what they say is an unfair subpoena paves the way for them to do the same if they take back the House in 2022.

Bannon, like former president Donald Trump, has refused to comply with an order from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection to turn over records and testify about his actions leading up to the attack, when a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol trying to stop the certification of President Biden’s electoral college win....

Many GOP leaders, however, are seizing on Bannon’s indictment to contend that Democrats are “weaponizing” the Justice Department, warning Democrats that they will go after Biden’s aides for unspecified reasons if they take back the House majority in next year’s midterm elections, as most political analysts expect.

“For years, Democrats baselessly accused President Trump of ‘weaponizing’ the DOJ. In reality, it is the Left that has been weaponizing the DOJ the ENTIRE TIME — from the false Russia Hoax to the Soviet-style prosecution of political opponents,” Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), the third-ranking House Republican, tweeted Saturday.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) suggested that Republicans would seek payback if the GOP regained control of the House, signaling that in challenging the doctrine of executive privilege, Democrats were making it easier for Republicans to force Biden’s top advisers to testify before a future GOP Congress.

This claim is suspect because it comes from a Trump flunkie, but is stunning if true:

Former White House communications director Alyssa Farah riled up former President Donald Trump by telling CNN that he admitted his election defeat to Joe Biden was legitimate.

“He told me shortly after that he knew he lost, but then folks got around him,” she told CNN’s Pamela Brown on Saturday. “They got information in front of him, and I think his mind genuinely might have been changed about that, and that’s scary because he did lose.”

Donald Trump may have been less radical, less intent on allowing Joe Biden to assume the presidency, than were people around him. Chew on that awhile.

House Republicans and GOP bureaucrats are different in degree but not in kind from Chris Christie, who excuses the January 6 insurrectionists with "I don't think they would've gone there if they thought the election had been fair."  (Most of the media has interpreted this as Christie criticizing Trump's role in the insurrection. They were born yesterday.)  Donald Trump, Republicans in state legislatures curbing the right to vote, the former New Jersey governor, and GOP politicians from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico, are sending a clear message:  representative democracy must have no home in the United States of America. 

 

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