Trump Is More Dangerous Than Ever

Yet a former Republican, Andrew Sullivan, has let loose with a lengthy column in New York Magazine that lays out his revulsion towards Donald Trump and the Mussolini like regime that is being propped up by Republicans who have as little regard for the Constitution as the Vichy French showed for the French Republic as the Nazis invaded France.  Interestingly, Sullivan who formerly threw cold water on talk of impeachment now takes the position that patriotic Americans have a duty to demand the impeachment of Donald Trump. The obstacle, of course, will be the Vichy Republicans in the U.S. Senate who place party and retaining power at any cost above the good of the country, the rule of law, and basic morality. Among the worse offenders are Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell who, were their mothers still living, seemingly would sell them into prostitution simply so as to not upset the foul and toxic base of the GOP as they face reelection in 2020.  In his column, Sullivan looks at the obstruction of justice committed by Trump to date and the even worse acts that can be anticipated now that those who restrained him are gone.  Here are column highlights (it ends with the words "impeach Trump now):

Yes, it was worth waiting for. The merit of the Mueller report is that it gives us the whole narrative again, a chance to review the last three years with new perspective and fresh eyes, to get above the daily drizzle of short-attention-span disinformation and lies. First of all, it lays out a foreign government’s extraordinary attempt to corrupt our democratic system — in very close and damning detail.

The Trump campaign had no problem with foreign interference if it could help them, were eager and hopeful it would occur, publicly encouraged it … but never initiated this or followed through. The scale of Moscow’s operation is as remarkable as the lack of evidence that the Trump campaign was actively in on it.

Why the mutual love between Trump and Russia? The answer is over-determined. Trump is an authoritarian; he reveres thugs and bullies and murderers and mobsters; he believes in an economy based on fossil fuels; he has a thing, believe it or not, for cult-worshipping kleptocracies. From Trump’s point of view, what’s not to like? Trump prefers Kim Jong-un to democratic leaders; and Bolsonaro and Duterte over May or Merkel. Putin has said nice things about him; and the CIA worried Trump might be compromised. Of course Trump prefers Putin to his own intelligence services. The idea that Trump could only be pro-Putin because Putin has some dirt on him is silly.

But to my mind, the conspiracy question is far less important than what Mueller discovered on obstruction of justice. Mueller quite rightly notes that obstruction of justice can easily occur even without an underlying crime. And his report, quite simply, is devastating. To be fair to the conspiracy believers, the lies and obstruction and abuse of power would, in most cases, suggest that the president is guilty of something criminal — and was obviously trying to cover it up.

He [Trump] merely had to believe that the investigation would cloud his presidency and subject him to an authority beyond his control. This is something we now know his psyche cannot tolerate. In a contest between his own diseased ego and the rule of law, there has never been any contest.

So of course he lied when he didn’t have to. And of course he tried to kill an investigation that might have embarrassed him, even if it would not convict him of a crime. Mueller spells it all out in agonizing detail.

Once the investigation began, and Trump realized he could be vulnerable on obstruction of justice, he stepped up the obstruction! Of course he did. He instructed White House counsel Don McGahn to get Mueller fired; he engaged in character assassination of potential witnesses; he “launched public attacks on the investigation and individuals involved in it who could possess evidence adverse to [him], while in private, [he] engaged in a series of targeted efforts to control the investigation.” Mueller cites ten separate cases of obstruction. In six of them, he establishes an obstructive act; a link with an official proceeding; and a corrupt intent. Which is to say there is no doubt that this is what Trump did six times. In another case, Mueller found substantial evidence of obstruction.

And then there is Trump’s persistent claim that a president is effectively above the rule of law. This is attorney general William Barr’s belief — that a president has total executive control over the administration of justice and can direct it away from himself for any reason with complete impunity.

The only reason he didn’t get rid of Mueller was because a handful of his underlings — Priebus, McGahn, and Sessions among them — resisted him. And so this is not just about past obstruction; it is about the very high likelihood of future obstruction. It’s about recrafting the rule of law into one where one man controls everything and can do anything he pleases.

All of this is an unprecedented series of impeachable offenses. It is a textbook definition of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” It is the story of a president assaulting the rule of law, attempting to manipulate the justice system, dangling pardons to induce perjury, and reflexively putting his own personal interests — or simply ego — before any interest of the country as a whole. Mueller openly states that his own investigation was thwarted by the president to the extent that the “the justice system’s integrity [was] threatened.” When a president openly threatens the integrity of the justice system, and says he has unlimited power to do so in the future, he not only can be impeached, he must be impeached.

I understand the prudential concerns about this. I share them. I worry about pushing Trump into outright insanity. And I worry that the contemporary GOP is all too happy to create a presidency — as long as it’s theirs — beyond the rule of law.

What are the consequences of not impeaching?

They are, it seems to me, real and immediate. Trump now has a Justice Department run by a loyalist who believes in total executive supremacy, and who has just revealed himself as a man willing to lie and deceive and distort to please his master. Every official who might have restrained this president is gone. There are almost no heads of agencies, and no dissent in the Cabinet. The country is effectively being ruled by a monarch and his court.

Foreign policy has been given to family members. The Fed is being rigged to remove professionals and install loyal toadies. The judiciary is being filled with judges who defer to presidential power in every circumstance. We have a president who only last week told his new acting DHS secretary, Kevin McAleenan, to break the law if necessary to stop asylum seekers from entering the country, and that he’d have his back and pardon him if he got into trouble. In any other time, that alone would demand impeachment. We know now, however, that this is just one instance of a clear pattern of lawlessness.

We also know that [Trump] the president will put his personal ego above even an investigation of an assault by a foreign power against our democracy — a threat far graver than lying under oath about an affair or passively covering up a two-bit robbery (the cause of the last two impeachments). It is a declaration that this president will not stop that foreign meddling from happening again, and will be happy if it helps reelect him. This is, quite simply, intolerable.

We have a president who is an instinctual criminal and liar, who threatens the integrity of our justice system and of our democratic elections, who is incapable of understanding the rule of law, backed by an attorney general who just outright distorted the findings of the special counsel.

What more do we need to know? To refuse to use the one weapon the Founders gave us to remove such a character from office is more than cowardice. It is complicity.

This disgusting man is not just a cancer in the presidency. His presidency is a cancer in our Constitution and way of life. How long do we let this metastasize even further? How long before we take a stand? Mueller has given us the road map. He has done his duty. Now it’s our turn to do ours: “to support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

There is no qualification in that oath of citizenship. Impeach Trump now.