by
Gadfly
Today, House Managers conduct their closing arguments to convince the U.S. Senate to convict President Trump based on two Articles of Impeachment passed in the U.S. House of Representatives without a single Republican vote. In a calculated strategy by Speaker Pelosi to wait a month to send the “urgent” Articles to the Senate, Managers cry foul because the Senate will not allow additional witnesses, even though they chose not to pursue them during the House’s proceedings. Following a consistent pattern, Managers cite a New York Times article that says a leaked manuscript by former National Security Advisor John Bolton asserts quid pro quo in the infamous July 25, 2019 telephone call between President Trump and the newly elected Ukrainian President. The manuscript is still embargoed by the National Security Council pending a security review to prevent disclosure of classified information while also allowing Bolton to tell his story. Who leaked the manuscript? How come the Times provided no direct quotations from the manuscript?
If the House Managers’
argue that the public should hear from witnesses, then why has Congressman
Adam Schiff prevented the public release of the transcript from a hearing where
the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) testified? There were 18 witnesses. Seventeen transcripts have been made public—and
President Trump’s defense lawyers cited several of these transcripts to provide
to the Senate a clearer perspective and arguably weaken impeachment arguments. Schiff refuses to make public the IG testimony; yet, he argues that the President is not allowed executive privilege. Schiff forgets the President is not a prime minister in a parliamentary government.
What is so damaging about the
ICIG’s testimony? This is where the IG
provided information about the leaker (called a whistleblower in order to
legitimize a kangaroo court carried out in former President Obama’s terms, “by
the book.”). The picture about how
this “trigger” for an impeachment came about is not one Adam Schiff, on behalf
of his coconspirators, want the public to know.
What are the implications?
On Friday, The New York Times
published an opinion by David Leonhardt, “L’état, c’est Trump.” The title borrows from a French expression, “l’état,
c’est moi,” which translates into English, “the state, it is I” or “I am the
state.” The historical context relates
to King Louis XIV, who held absolute power for 72 years.
Leonhardt alleges Trump wields similar absolute power because the Republican majority in the Senate, apparently intimidated by Trump’s power, refused to go along with the tyrannical power exercised by the Democrat majority in the House of Representatives.
Leonhardt’s first paragraph states (bold italics are mine): “The United States is not an authoritarian country. President Trump has failed to carry out many of his authoritarian impulses — like, say, banning Muslims from entering the United States or jailing his political opponents.” Contrary to Leonhardt’s framing, the travel ban was against specific countries of the world that are known for Islamist terrorism and poor security screening practices. President Trump had his Constitutional legal authority blocked multiple times and through multiple courts, which he honored until the US Supreme Court ruled that the ban was legally authorized. An authoritarian (such as a predecessor who ruled by “a pen and a phone” and defied court rulings) would have ignored the judicial pushback. President Trump honored ALL court injunctions (over 40 so far) while appealing lower court rulings.
As for jailing political opponents, who has been jailed by President Trump’s Administration? No one. Yet, members within President Trump’s political orbit have been jailed—all stemming from the Democrat-fueled witch hunt called the Trump-Russia collusion: George Papadopoulos, Paul Manafort, and Michael Cohen. Carter Page escaped prosecution and now has his own lawsuit underway for being the victim of illegal surveillance. Lieutenant General Michael Flynn is still battling his own prosecution and has already been financially destroyed as he has had to finance his own legal defense. Roger Stone has also suffered prosecution after a CNN-aired raid on his home in the darkness of night by two dozen, heavily armed FBI agents. Leonhardt’s imagined “l’état, c’est Trump” was unable to thwart these efforts.
Leonhardt then says the following in his second paragraph:
And
yet, the events that have taken place in the Senate this week would nonetheless
have been unimaginable for most of our modern history. They are the
makings of authoritarianism — in which the party in power decides it can
reject democratic principles for the simple reason that it holds power.
Many
Americans in today’s America have not been taught lessons of our modern
history. Hitler and Mussolini did not
seize power. They exploited conditions
in democratic societies. They amplified
conditions (like identity politics, propaganda similar to today’s privileged
versus oppressed, etc.) to promote agitated populations while promising hope
and change. As I have written in
previous articles, the Soviet Communist International promoted democracies in
Eastern European nations because they could then use the weaknesses of
democracy to “democratically” advance socialism as the necessary transition to
communism. None of these developments
were advanced by an educated general public.
They moved forward by political elite.
In
her seminal work, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt devoted
a chapter about cronyism: “The Political Emancipation of the Bourgeoisie.” Do we see our nation’s billionaires and
social media giants aligning with Donald Trump?
Hitler and Mussolini’s agendas benefitted from what is called corporatism,
where money and political power align for self-interest.
Leonhardt
continues the morally superior smearing in his third paragraph:
A
majority of senators, all Republican, are not interested in hearing
evidence of presidential wrongdoing. Many are on the verge of accepting
Trump’s argument, made by his lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, that any action a
president takes to help his chances of re-election is, by definition, in the
national interest. The nation, according to this argument, is
indistinguishable from the president.
To
suggest Republican Senators are not interested in hearing evidence of
wrongdoing is slanderous because Leonhardt presumes he knows what these
Senators believe. The problem with
presumption is that it is not based on known facts, but on one’s predisposition
and all its inherent biases. Those
closely following these political actions can see that the left is trying to
prove James Carville’s assertion in the Clinton impeachment effort that “a good
prosecutor can get any grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.” In my opinion, a fair trial would start with
the testimony, under cross examination, of the plaintiff’s allegation of a
crime. Yet, the so called whistleblower
has been put into the witness protection program. Republican Senators are fully aware of this
maneuvering; yet are made to feel guilty by House Managers if they don’t go
along with their tactics.
Rarely
have I heard, but it more accurately identifies the real crime for which
President Trump is being impeached, he was not ordained to win the election. If they can’t remove him now as a “clear and
present danger” (according to the left), then they will keep doing whatever
they can to keep him from being reelected.
Only the left can influence elections.
Leonhardt
and his anti-Dershowitz faction distort Dershowitz’s argument. First, he completely supports the President’s
Constitutional authority under Article II to carry out the political agenda for
which he was elected but not free to engage in bribery, treason or comparable crimes called high crimes and misdemeanors. Second, the
President campaigns and conducts his agenda for what he believes is in the
national interest. If his reading of
that national interest is correct, then it bodes well for his political
support. Call it self-interest, if you insist.
Does
anyone know of a politician that does not campaign or perform based on
self-interest? I know there are
exceptions, such as voting one’s conscience, knowing he or she may pay a price
in their next election. Colorado Senator
Corey Gardner is such an exception.
Today,
one of the House Managers spoke about the courage of a West Point graduate and
his testimony that was critical of President Trump. I wrote about the irony of the West Pointer’s
role in this article: “’Duty
Honor, Country’ versus Justification.” As a Service Academy graduate, I would be
interested in meeting with this West Point graduate to learn more about his
motivations. Of course, Service Academy
cultures have evolved over time. More
recently, West Point exposed cadets to toxic
masculinity. Of concern, the
injection of this type of social engineering is what C. S. Lewis wrote about in
the 1940s in his book, The Abolition of Man, where he talked about “men
without chests,” eunuchs, and the conditioners and conditioned. Of course, Lewis’s backdrop were the
authoritarian regimes that had emerged during this era.
As
the impeachment episode approaches its finish on Wednesday, let us not forget
actions taken before the 2016 presidential election to facilitate desired outcomes and efforts since: the Steele Dossier, FISA warrants to indirectly
spy on Trump through associates, and the Mueller investigation. We now know, based on Department of Justice
Horowitz’s investigation, that President Trump and those in his political orbit
were targeted and punished by members of our government and media (Lee Smith’s The
Plot Against the President provides detailed evidence of collusion between
government individuals and journalists to advance fake news).
Pundits
predict President Trump will be found not guilty by the Senate. Yet, this will not bring justice to the
President or America. The left will
argue that the Senate’s Constitutional obligation to try the case did not
reflect a fair trial, and this will be enough to raise funds for the 2020 Democrat
elections at all levels. The Mueller
investigation drew out its proceedings, which was successful in turning the
House of Representatives in 2016. Are
there enough registered Democrats with the capacity and prudence to understand
what is at play in America?
As
much as leftists like David Leonhardt want us to believe President Trump is an
authoritarian ruler, there is no evidence to support this belief. On the other hand, there is a concept that we
typically hear about as it relates to other nations, such as North Korea, Iraq,
Iran, Syria, and so forth: regime
change.
It
seems bizarre that an individual who the left believes to be an authoritarian apparently
lacks the power to reign in leaks and other efforts by members of his
Administration to undermine his authority. American Administrations have always
theoretically been a regime that reflects values of the public interest. In his book, The Plot Against the
President, Lee Smith concludes his investigative journalism with this
observation:
“Deep
State” is another way to describe what classical philosophers meant by the word
“regime.” It refers not only to a form
of government but also to the values and virtues that form of government prizes
and the leading persons who embody them.
Thus, many of the leading persons of the United States’ political
bureaucracy had starring roles in the coup (p. 333).
2020
elections will reflect to what extent an unelected authoritarian regime remains
in power. In the meantime, many
Americans wonder what will happen with the Barr-Durham criminal investigations—surely
some known members of the leftist regime should be held accountable to ensure
justice. It is quite possible that
Attorney General Barr will be constrained by potential accusations of political
bias and thus will wait until after the 2020 elections to press forward with
indictments and trials. The risk in
waiting is that if Democrats are successful in securing power in the Executive
and Legislative Branches, a new Attorney General may find ways of making Barr
and Durham investigations go away.
What
I am suggesting by the above paragraph is that the stakes are very high. Our Constitutional Republic remains on thin
ice because we clearly have an authoritarian regime: Democrats, an unelected bureaucracy, and an echo
chamber media. To this regime, power is
more important than truth and justice, even the public interest.
