Lindsey Graham's Queer Predicament

"Lady G" with Trump.

Over the weekend I wrote about the latest round in the long running story about South Carolina's closeted U.S. Senator, Lindsey Graham - or "Lady G' or "Lady Graham" as the story has exploded across the twitter sphere.  In my post, I argued that the hypocrisy of closeted elected officials who support anti-gay policies and parties make them targets for "outing" and proper subjects of mainstream media investigation.  Sadly, many in the mainstream media are squeamish about the issue just as they use false equivalency as an excuse for not calling out politicians - think Donald Trump - for the liars that they are.  In a column Michelangelo Signorile makes the further argument that closeted politicians need to be outed because if they will lie about something so core as their sexual orientation, they will lie about many other things.  In Grahams case, I would argue that it also sets him up for blackmail by the crime boss in chief in the White House. Yes, Graham is terrified of the GOP base in his home state, but I suspect that he's even more afraid of whatever information Trump has on him. That fear makes him only too willing to sell out both his constituent and the nation.  Here are column highlights:

Let’s begin with Aaron Schock, while I have your attention.

First elected in 2008, he’s the disgraced, former Republican congressman from Illinois who stood against LGBTQ rights — including voting against “don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal, and coming out against marriage equality — though it was an open secret in Washington and in queer circles that he was gay throughout that entire time. There was discussion that he was gay even before the White House picnic in 2010 and the photo of him in white pants, teal belt and pink gingham shirt that went viral, but he’d denied it in 2004 in an interview.

Schock was allowed to present himself in the media as a bachelor whose college friends had all married while he was too busy in politics — but who would presumably marry when the right woman came along.

And yet, the open secret persisted. Schock denied he was gay again when I asked him on the floor of the Republican National Convention in Tampa in 2012 for a response to those who believe he is gay and that he had voted against his own people.

Schock resigned in 2015 after a report about his Downton Abbey-inspired office set off a chain of investigations about his lavish lifestyle using taxpayer dollars and campaign funds. He was eventually indicted on 24 counts ( though, with a good lawyer, he struck an outrageous sweetheart deal in which all charges were dropped if he paid back the IRS and his campaign).

Then, this past March, Schock finally came out as gay, after living it up as a private citizen for some time, visiting gay vacation destinations and party spots, enjoying the very liberation that he worked with our enemies to try to destroy.

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, too, has been discussed as gay for years, with those on both the left and the right hinting at it or saying it outright. He, too, has denied he is gay, most recently in 2018.

And yet, the discussion persists — as it did with Schock — and over the weekend, as reported by Towleroad, Twitter lit up with claims that an army of sex workers may be coming forward to speak out about Graham having hired them in the past, after gay adult film actor Sean Harding tweeted on Friday that it was time to reveal the truth about a “homophobic Republican Senator who is no better than Trump,” whom he referred to as “LG.” Harding claimed “every sex worker [he] know[s] has been hired by this man.”

“LadyG and “LadyGraham” — the alleged nicknames used by the sex workers — were soon trending, and tweets went viral that came from people claiming they had evidence, some of them claiming it was first hand. Harding, overwhelmed with inquiries, eventually set his Twitter feed to private, and on Sunday he tweeted:

Due to death threats against me and my family — and having my mom call me pleading to make it stop I will no longer be commenting on the LG story here. I know one individual has spoken to two prestigious media outlets with evidence but I'm not sure when that story will break.

It would be nice to think that mainstream media — or as Harding put it, “prestigious media outlets” — are finally getting it right, though I’ve learned not to hold my breath.

The closet, for powerful politicians, becomes a sort of practice run at the art of deception on a grander scale. And when you will sell out your own kind, there’s really no telling how low you will go.

Had journalists at mainstream outlets with vast resources, legal teams and researchers, been pursuing Schock for the hypocrisy of his anti-LGBTQ votes — and revealed that he was gay, with clear-cut evidence — it wouldn’t only have likely stopped an anti-gay hypocrite; it would likely have brought down a man who was spending campaign and taxpayer dollars to live in grand style and luxuriously travel around the world.

Back in 2006 when Mike Rogers, the founder of the site Blogactive — which exposed a slew of hypocritical, closeted gay politicians — revealed with detailed sources that Idaho GOP senator Larry Craig was gay, much of the mainstream media wouldn’t go near it.

They refused to follow up or track down the story further. It wasn’t until nine months later when “wide-stance” Craig was arrested for trying to have sex in an airport men’s room in Minneapolis that the mainstream media was all over it. Craig was then forced to resign, and the hypocrisy of the anti-LGBTQ Republican Party was on display.

But like Schock’s criminal activity, Craig’s arrest is the only thing that brought him down. If not for that action, involving criminal charges and thus a public record, he might still be in office, still railing against LGBTQ people. For much of the mainstream media, exposing a homophobe isn’t worth their time and effort — nor the resources of their newsrooms.

Even now, when the media is taking more seriously the issue of sexual harassment and tracking down stories of assault against women by powerful men, stories they once ignored but rightly now are focusing on — even when a story turns out to lose credibility — they still don’t see the story of the closeted hypocrite as one to investigate and report on.

Let me be clear: I’m not equating sexual harassment and assault with sexual orientation: I’m equating hypocrisy, deception and abuse of power that affects marginalized groups.

Gay Porn Star Threatens to Out Lindsey Graham

I have caught flack over the years for referring to GOP Senator Lindsey Graham as the "Palmetto Queen."  Generally, I believe that when one comes out is a personal decision with one exception: if you hold elected office and are in the closet and supporting anti-gay policies and/or anti-gay politicians, then you are open game for "outing."  It's a simple matter of exposing hypocrites.  Rumors have swirled around Lindsey Graham for years, but his self-prostitution to Donald Trump, a man who is waging war on LGBT Americans, has made outing him a high priority if he's a closeted gay and aiding those harming the LGBT community.   If Graham is a closeted hypocrite, then he deserves to be outed.  FitNews based in South Carolina) has details on the latest rumors about about Graham.  Here are excerpts:

Around the time most South Carolinians were sitting down to their evening meals on Thursday night, a gay porn star by the name of Sean Harding fired off a tweet that set tongues-a-wagging across the Palmetto State (and in the nation’s capital).

“There is a homophobic republican senator who is no better than (Donald Trump) who keeps passing legislation that is damaging to the LGBT and minority communities,” Harding tweeted. “Every sex worker I know has been hired by this man. Wondering if enough of us spoke out if that could get him out of office?” Wait … what?

“I cannot do this alone,” Harding added in a follow-up tweet. “If you’d be willing to stand with me against LG please let me know.”

Considering there is only one member of the U.S. Senate with those initials, speculation quickly turned (again) to U.S. senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has been dodging rumors like this for the better part of the last decade. This time, though, the allegation quickly took on a life of its own. By Friday afternoon, the hashtag “Lady G” – which is purportedly Graham’s nickname among male sex workers – was trending on Twitter.

Just when you thought 2020 couldn’t get any crazier, right?

For years (most recently in October 2018), Graham has denied being a homosexual.

“I know it’s really gonna upset a lot of gay men – I’m sure hundreds of ’em are gonna be jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge – but I ain’t available,” he famously told The New York Times Magazine in 2010. “I ain’t gay. Sorry.”

Still, the rumors have persisted … with many of Graham’s conservative opponents espousing the theory that he was being manipulated (or blackmailed) politically due to secrets surrounding his sexuality.

To be clear: This news outlet does not care about Graham’s sexual orientation. In fact, the sooner we can stop contemplating whatever might turn on the 64-year-old Central, S.C. native, the better.

We are much more concerned with Graham’s chameleon-esque inability to settle on a political orientation. An erstwhile #NeverTrumper, he flip-flopped and began supporting Trump in late 2017 when it became clear he was about to lose his seat.
Were we surprised? No … everything with this guy is calculation.

Thankfully, there are those in Trump’s orbit who are able to see this career chameleon for what he is … an ally in name only.

We think his votes are bad … and we would like to see him out of office. But we are not going to vilify him over something in his personal life without a damn good reason. Like abuse of power. Something involving tax money. Overt hypocrisy. Or maybe … a clown mask?

Graham is facing a tougher-than-expected fight this fall from Democrat Jaime Harrison, who has attracted significant national support (and raised some serious cash) in his bid to oust the third-term lawmaker. Harrison, incidentally, has been the focus of similar rumors over the years … which we care as much about as the rumors surrounding Graham.

Still, something about this particular installment of the “Lindsey Graham is about to be outed” rumor that seems … different. Lots of national reporters are clearly chasing it (including several who have called our news desk), and the chatter about numerous male escorts contemplating the consequences of violating alleged nondisclosure agreements seems curiously (disturbingly) specific.

Stay tuned … we will have to wait and see what the future holds for the senior senator from South Carolina as he battles the latest (and greatest) round of rumors.

Trump and His Congressional Enablers Must be Removed

Reportedly Donald Trump wants to use a 213 year old law to use military troops against American citizens protesting the continue problem of police officers murdering black males. Please understand, that I in no way condone rioters and looters who in my view undermine the cause that protesters seek to have addressed, But using the American military against citizens is like something out of Putin's Russia or Castro's Cuba.  Alarm bells should be sounding loudly and citizens who support civil liberties and the U.S. Constitution should be screaming for Trump's removal from office by any means necessary.  Trump - faced with growing public disapproval and a horrendously failed response to the Covid-19 pandemic is desperate and this threat could well be the sign that he is out to overthrow the government viewing himself as a dictator.  Whether or not the military leadership and rank and file troops would fire on civilians is one to which we can only hope the answer is "No."  A column in the Washington Post by a former Republican looks at Trump's willingness to use military force against civilians:  Here are column highlights:

President Trump somehow imagined it was a good idea to unleash law enforcement on peaceful demonstrators before the 7 p.m. curfew Monday night as he stepped into the Rose Garden to give a knockoff version of Richard M. Nixon’s “law and order” message.

[Trump] The president who called NFL protesters peacefully taking a knee “sons of bitches,” lied when he declared that he is a friend of peaceful demonstrators. The police firing rubber bullets and launching tear gas at protesters in Lafayette Square in front of the White House said otherwise. Then, as if the scene was not evidence enough of his desire to raise the level of violence, he pledged to deploy the U.S. military on U.S. soil, against U.S. civilians, if governors did not heed his incendiary advice to fill the streets with National Guard troops

It was later revealed that Trump instigated the assault on protesters specifically to make a gesture of walking to St. John’s church.

Nothing could be more representative of the dangerous narcissism of a president in over his head, resorting to threats of violence against a country he ostensibly is supposed to lead. The deliberate instigation of violence for his own photo op tells Americans how deeply twisted and deformed his character is.

Moreover, any attempt to use the military against civilians in this fashion would almost certainly be illegal and unconstitutional. Even under the Insurrection Act, federal troops would have to be invited into the states to suppress an actual rebellion. For Trump, the threat of force, however unrealistic, is his go-to move when his manliness is called into question — as it was when he fled to the bunker at the White House over the weekend.

If anyone in America had any doubt as to his intentions — to foment violence, to increase racial animosity, to glorify himself at the expense of the national good — Monday’s events should silence them. Democrats and any Republicans with a modicum of decency should denounce the stunt, call for a full review of the incident and conduct congressional oversight. We hope a strong bipartisan assembly of elected officials joins the protesters at the White House, and that one or more civil rights groups will file suit for use of excessive force and deprivation of the peaceful protesters’ rights of assembly and free speech. You are either for Trump or for democracy at this point.

It does not take much imagination to conclude Trump is attempting to escalate violence around the country so he can deploy the military. This is the conduct of a tin-pot dictator — someone resorting to violent suppression of our most closely cherished rights.

More than ever, we should all recognize that, as former vice president Joe Biden put it, this is an election about the soul of our country and the survival of peaceful self-governance.

Trump's malfeasance and threat to constitutional government as noted in the previous column has a conservative stalwart like George Will calling for his removal in another column in the Washington Post.  Here are excerpts:

This unraveling presidency began with the Crybaby-in-Chief banging his spoon on his highchair tray to protest a photograph — a photograph — showing that his inauguration crowd the day before had been smaller than the one four years previous. Since then, this weak person’s idea of a strong person, this chest-pounding advertisement of his own gnawing insecurities, this low-rent Lear raging on his Twitter-heath has proven that the phrase malignant buffoon is not an oxymoron.

Presidents, exploiting modern communications technologies and abetted today by journalists preening as the “resistance” — like members of the French Resistance 1940-1944, minus the bravery — can set the tone of American society, which is regrettably soft wax on which presidents leave their marks. [Trump's] The president’s provocations — his coarsening of public discourse that lowers the threshold for acting out by people as mentally crippled as he — do not excuse the violent few. They must be punished. He must be removed.

Social causation is difficult to demonstrate, particularly between one person’s words and other persons’ deeds. However: The person voters hired in 2016 to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” stood on July 28, 2017, in front of uniformed police and urged them “please don’t be too nice” when handling suspected offenders. His hope was fulfilled for 8 minutes and 46 seconds on Minneapolis pavement.

The nation’s downward spiral into acrimony and sporadic anarchy has had many causes much larger than the small man who is the great exacerbator of them. Most of the causes predate his presidency, and most will survive its January terminus. The measures necessary for restoration of national equilibrium are many and will be protracted far beyond his removal. One such measure must be the removal of those in Congress who, unlike the sycophantic mediocrities who cosset him in the White House, will not disappear “magically,” as Eric Trump said the coronavirus would. Voters must dispatch his congressional enablers, especially the senators who still gambol around his ankles with a canine hunger for petting.

In life’s unforgiving arithmetic, we are the sum of our choices. Congressional Republicans have made theirs for more than 1,200 days. We cannot know all the measures necessary to restore the nation’s domestic health and international standing, but we know the first step: Senate Republicans must be routed, as condign punishment for their Vichyite collaboration, leaving the Republican remnant to wonder: Was it sensible to sacrifice dignity, such as it ever was, and to shed principles, if convictions so easily jettisoned could be dignified as principles, for . . . what?

In 2016, the Republican Party gave its principal nomination to a vulgarian and then toiled to elect him. And to stock Congress with invertebrates whose unswerving abjectness has enabled his institutional vandalism, who have voiced no serious objections to his Niagara of lies, , , , ,
 Those who think our unhinged president’s recent mania about a murder two decades ago that never happened represents his moral nadir have missed the lesson of his life: There is no such thing as rock bottom. So, assume that the worst is yet to come. Which implicates national security: Abroad, anti-Americanism sleeps lightly when it sleeps at all, and it is wide-awake as decent people judge our nation’s health by the character of those to whom power is entrusted. Watching, too, are indecent people in Beijing and Moscow.

An

Lindsey Graham's Transformation From Trump Critic to Lap Dog

Few members of the Republican Party have more debased themselves and prostituted themselves to Donald Trump than South Carolina's Lindsey Graham, a/k/a the Palmetto Queen. Graham went from critic of Trump to apologist and cheerleader seemingly simply so as to not offend the racist and knuckle dragging base of the GOP in his home state.  Honor, integrity and simple honesty were all jettisoned as Graham raced to pander to Trump and the ugliest elements of the GOP base.  A new ad by a PAC working for Graham's defeat in his reelection bid in November highlights Graham's two faced conduct and the limitless way Graham willing prostitutes himself to Der Trumpenführer.  A piece in The Advocate looks at Graham's moral and ethical decline.  Here are article excerpts: 

A new ad opposing the reelection of U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina uses his own words against him, noting that he’s gone from calling Donald Trump a “kook” and a “bigot” to deeming him “a damn good president.”

The ad highlighting “the two faces of Lindsey Graham,” from a super PAC called Lindsey Must Go, contrasts “old Lindsey” with “new Lindsey.” It shows, among other things, “old Lindsey” referring to Trump as “a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot,” then “new Lindsey” saying the president “deserves the Nobel Peace Prize and then some.”

The three-term Republican senator is facing a serious challenge this year from Democrat Jaime Harrison. Super PACs can’t coordinate with candidates, but Harrison is likely to benefit from the ad, Jonathan Capehart writes in The Washington Post.

“We believe that we can make the case that Lindsey Graham has been a failure to South Carolina,” Harrison told Capehart a few months ago. The ad, Capehart writes in a Friday column, “makes the case better than anyone else could — especially since Graham does all the talking.”

Graham has always been a solid conservative, but he once exhibited at least a degree of integrity and was one of the few Republicans willing to criticize Trump; now he’s become a sycophant. “Here’s a guy that many of us had tremendous respect for. Because when John McCain was alive, we thought in the end of the day he would do the right thing for either the state or the nation when the rubber met the road,”

“But what we have now seen is that this guy’s only interest is in Lindsey O. Graham. His only interest is being in the middle of things, to have power.”

“Lindsey Graham has done both the impossible and the unthinkable: He went from being the late John McCain’s best friend to Donald Trump’s best friend,” Jimmy Williams, senior adviser to the Lindsey Must Go PAC, told the journalist. “We’re simply tired of his snarling, revengeful, dirty payback politics down here, and I promise you we will do whatever we legally can to make his last nine months in the U.S. Senate a miserable hell.”

Why Trump's Impeachment and Removal Is Necessary

The book "Mortal Republic" one is presented with the fall of the Roman Republic and its descent into a dictatorship under Augustus Caesar and his successors.  The fall did not happen over night, but it involved and undermining of the institutions, norms, and practices and practices of the Republic, a move towards calling for violence against political opponents, and a division of the populace into hostile factions.  These are precisely the things we are witnessing under Donald Trump and Senate Republicans who bear sharp parallels with members of the Roman Senate who closed their eyes to abuses of power and office in order to further short term interests (many latter would lose their lives and or property as autocratic rule grew).  At a number of stages, the collapse of the Roman Republic could have been averted had principle and political courage won out.  A piece in New York Magazine makes the case of why Trump's impeachment and removal from office is essential to stop the collapse of the American Republic. Here are  article highlights:

This is not just an impeachment. It’s the endgame for Trump’s relentless assault on the institutions, norms, and practices of America’s liberal democracy for the past three years. It’s also a deeper reckoning. It’s about whether the legitimacy of our entire system can last much longer without this man being removed from office.

I’m talking about what political scientists call “regime cleavage” — a decline in democratic life so severe the country’s very institutions could lose legitimacy as a result of it. It is described by one political scientist as follows: “a division within the population marked by conflict about the foundations of the governing system itself — in the American case, our constitutional democracy. In societies facing a regime cleavage, a growing number of citizens and officials believe that norms, institutions, and laws may be ignored, subverted, or replaced.” A full-on regime cleavage is, indeed, an extinction-level event for our liberal democratic system. And it is one precipitated by the man who is supposed to be the guardian of that system, the president.

In the current scandal over Ukraine, Trump is insisting that he did “nothing wrong” in demanding that Ukraine announce investigations into Joe and Hunter Biden, or forfeit desperately needed military aid. If that is the president’s position — that he can constitutionally ask any other country to intervene on his behalf in a U.S. election — it represents a view of executive power that is the equivalent of a mob boss’s. It is best summed up in Trump’s own words: Article 2 of the Constitution permits him to do “anything I want.”

We have become so used to these attacks on our constitutional order that we fail to be shocked by Trump’s insistence that a constitutional impeachment inquiry is a “coup.” By any measure, this is an extraordinary statement, and itself an impeachable offense as a form of “contempt for Congress.” We barely blink anymore when a president refuses to cooperate in any way, demands his underlings refuse to testify and break the law by flouting subpoenas, threatens to out the first whistle-blower’s identity (in violation of the law), or assaults and tries to intimidate witnesses, like Colonel Alexander Vindman.

He seems to think in the Ukraine context that “l’état c’est moi” is the core American truth, rather than a French monarch’s claims to absolute power. He believes in the kind of executive power the Founders designed the U.S. Constitution to prevent.

There are valid criticisms and defenses of Trump’s policy choices, but his policies are irrelevant for an impeachment. I actually support a humane crackdown on undocumented immigration, a tougher trade stance toward China, and an attempt, at least, to end America’s endless wars. But what matters, and what makes this such a vital moment in American history, is that it has nothing to do with policy. This is simply about Trump’s abuse of power. He lies and misleads the American public constantly, in an outright attempt to so confuse Americans that they forget or reject the concept of truth altogether. Lies are part of politics, but we have never before seen such a fire hose of often contradictory or inflammatory bald-faced lies from the Oval Office. He has obstructed justice countless times, by witness tampering, forbidding his subordinates from complying with legal subpoenas, and by “using the powers of his high office, engaged personally and through his close subordinates and agents, in a course of conduct or plan designed to delay, impede, and obstruct” both the Mueller and now the Ukraine investigations. (I quote from Article 1 of Nixon’s impeachment.) Trump has also “failed without lawful cause or excuse to produce papers and things as directed by duly authorized subpoenas issued by the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives … and willfully disobeyed such subpoenas.” (I quote from Article III of Nixon’s impeachment.) He has declared legal processes illegitimate if they interfere with or constrain his whims and impulses. These are not old-fashioned battles with a bureaucracy over policy; that’s fine. They are assaults on the legitimacy of the bureaucracy, and the laws they are required to uphold. These are definitional impeachable offenses, and they are part and parcel of Trump’s abuse of power from the day he was elected.

And most important of all, Trump has turned the GOP — one of our two major parties with a long and distinguished history — into an accomplice in his crimes. Senator Lindsey Graham, perhaps the most contemptible figure of the last couple of years, even says he will not read witness transcripts or follow the proceedings in the House or consider the evidence in a legal impeachment inquiry, because he regards the whole impeachment process as “BS” and a “sham.” This is a senator calling the constitutional right of the House of Representatives to impeach a president illegitimate.

And the GOP as a whole has consistently backed Trump rather than the Constitution. Sixty-two percent of Republican supporters have said that there is nothing Trump could do, no crime or war crime, no high crime or misdemeanor, that would lead them to vote against him in 2020. There is only one way to describe this, and that is a cult, completely resistant to reason or debate. The cult is so strong that Trump feels invulnerable. If Trump survives impeachment, and loses the 2020 election, he may declare it another coup, rigged, and illegitimate. He may refuse to concede. And it is possible the GOP will follow his lead. That this is even thinkable reveals the full extent of our constitutional rot.

Trump has fast-forwarded “regime cleavage.” He is appealing to the people to render him immune from constitutional constraints imposed by the representatives of the people. He has opened up not a divide between right and left so much as a divide over whether the American system of government is legitimate or illegitimate. And that is why I don’t want to defeat Trump in an election, because that would suggest that his assault on the truth, on the Constitution, and on the rule of law is just a set of policy decisions that we can, in time, reject. It creates a precedent for future presidents to assault the legitimacy of the American government, constrained only by their ability to win the next election. In fact, the only proper constitutional response to this abuse of executive power is impeachment. I know I’ve said this before. But on the eve of public hearings, it is vital to remember it.

The Humiliation of Lindsey Graham, a Trump Political Prostitute

Lindsey Graham - who willingly sold his soul.

One of the confounding things about Donald Trump sycophants and Republicans trying to outdo each other in give Trump political fellatio is that throughout his tawdry career, Trump has never shown true loyalty to anyone. It is all about Trump 24/7 and those who toss aside integrity and what little shred of honor today's Republicans can claim sooner or later find themselves tossed aside and disposable.  The same holds true in the international realm.  Trust Trump and any believe what he says and it's only a matter of time before the betrayal unfolds.  Ask the Syrian Kurds who allied with the United States only to find Trump summarily decide to withdraw American troops and aid and throw the Kurds to the mercy of Turkey.  Or ask Lindsey Graham who has prostituted himself to Trump more than almost any other congressional Republican in order to (i) remain "relevant" and (ii) stay in the good graces of the racists and Christian extremist in South Carolina that are keys to Trump's base.  A piece in Politico Magazine looks at Graham's self-degradation seemingly for little return.  Here are excerpts:

It was a cri de cœur from Lindsey Graham, the lament of the sycophant scorned.

President Donald Trump’s decision to abandon our Kurdish allies in Syria by leaving them undefended against a Turkish invasion was, Graham tweeted, “a disaster” and a “nightmare.”

As Monday morning wore on, he expanded his indictment. Betraying the Kurds would force them to align with the Assad regime and Iran and would ensure the comeback of ISIS. It would be, he tweeted, “a stain on America’s honor,” and a virtual surrender to the terrorists. . . . “By abandoning the Kurds we have sent the most dangerous signal possible — America is an unreliable ally and it’s just a matter of time before China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea act out in dangerous ways.“ . . . In his cruelest cut of all, he compared Trump with Barack Obama.

Graham’s disappointment was palpable, but understandable, given all that he has given up to avoid this moment.

For the past several years, Graham has transformed himself from one of Trump’s fiercest critics, into one of his most reflexive defenders. Even by the cynical and shape-shifting standards of Washington, Graham’s metamorphosis has been a thing of wonder. The senator once known as John McCain’s best friend in the Senate, transformed himself into Trump’s shinebox, willing to ingratiate himself with rationalizations and praise even as Trump became increasingly erratic.

During the 2016 campaign, Graham had called Trump a “nutjob” and a loser,” as well as a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.” He predicted that if the GOP nominated him, “we will get destroyed … and we will deserve it.”

But as McCain faded from the scene, Graham seemed to shift his affections to the man who so publicly insulted McCain.

In moments of candor, Graham tried to explain the deal he thought he was making. When Mark Leibovich asked him earlier this year what had happened to him, Graham explained:

“Well, OK, from my point of view, if you know anything about me, it’d be odd not to do this,” he said.  I asked what “this” was. “ ‘This,’ ” Graham said, “is to try to be relevant.”

Like many others in his party, staying “relevant” was central to their political calculations. Capitulating to Trump meant that Graham would become a rock star in the increasingly Trumpist party and virtually assured of reelection in South Carolina next year.

He would also have the president’s ear. And this was at the heart of Graham's bargain.

Others made the same calculation, but Graham made the uber-tradeoff, because the stakes were so high. What did it matter if he had to endure temporary embarrassments, abase himself on cable television, or even become a political punchline, if he could stop Trump from impulsive decisions regarding Russia or North Korea? Or Syria?

The world saw Graham as a craven, cringing Uriah Heep. Graham saw himself as someone who could save the world, or at least the Kurds. . . . . He was not simply the adult in the room; he was the adult BFF in the room, who would temper Trump’s worst instincts.

And then came Trump’s decision.

Despite Graham’s compulsive turd-polishing of the past few years, Trump didn’t even consult him before making the decision to abandon the Kurds. Graham, who had given up so much self-respect to prevent just this outcome, was not even in the room. He didn’t even get a text.

This is the thing about Faustian bargains. The price is high and the rewards turn out to be illusory. They end badly.

This week, Lindsey Graham, found that out the hard way. I wonder what they’ll talk about the next time they go golfing together.

The Republican Art of Selling One's Soul

Image by Ben Wiseman.

Moral bankruptcy and a willingness to prostitute one's self in exchange for fleeting power are now hallmarks of today's Republican elected officials. Honor, honesty, and adherence to basic morality no longer matter.  And then there is the putrid party base that is consumed with racism, hatred of those they deem "other" and pushing a hideous form of Christianity that flushes Christ's gospel message down the toilet.  As a former Republican, I continue to be dismayed at how many one time political colleagues have sold their souls and are making a mockery of the values they once claimed to uphold.  A column in the New York Times looks at some prominent Republicans - Mike Pompeo, an supposed evangelical Christian, in particular - who embody this total moral rot that has consumed the GOP.  Here are column excerpts:

There’s no way that Mike Pompeo actually venerates Donald Trump. I doubt he even likes the president much.

Pompeo graduated first in his class at West Point decades ago, a feat that suggests enormous reserves of discipline, a profound respect for tradition and a talent for self-effacement when the circumstances warrant it. Trump possesses none of those qualities.

Pompeo is an evangelical Christian, steeped in the very dictums that Trump has spent a lifetime mocking with both his words and his deeds. And Pompeo has long believed in the importance of American military intervention abroad, the kind of activist role that Trump railed against during his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

In fact Pompeo, who was then a congressman from Kansas, supported Marco Rubio — and publicly praised him, while disparaging Trump . . . . he sounded an alarm that Trump would be “an authoritarian president who ignored our Constitution.” He urged Republicans to come to their senses and resist the lure of the surging Trump campaign. “It’s time,” he said, “to turn down the lights on the circus.”

But the lights continued to burn bright, so Pompeo just put on a clown suit, put away his ethics and finagled a big role under the Big Top.

He had plenty of company in that transformation. It’s the wonder of the Trump era and one of the saddest, scariest themes of the impeachment inquiry so far: the teeming crowd of sellouts and suck-ups who eagerly traded principle for position and are in some cases doubling and tripling down on that transaction, to a point where it’s fair to ask if there was ever much principle to begin with.

I’m looking at you, Lindsey Graham, who somehow decided that Trump was the new John McCain, which is like deeming tripe the new tenderloin. Hell, I’m looking at most of the Republicans in the Senate.

Pompeo, who first signed on as Trump’s C.I.A. director and then flattered his way to secretary of state, is a paragon of these lackeys-come-lately, and he’s especially vivid proof of how easily and completely the lure of power can overwhelm any call to conscience.

Pompeo had a heady shot at a vaunted job that almost surely wasn’t going to come his way any other time. So he lunged for it, then demonstrated with his obsequiousness that doing good and doing right were never high on the agenda.

He wrote an op-ed article that essentially broke with his fellow Republicans to promote Trump’s view that Saudi Arabia’s butchery of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi shouldn’t give anyone pause. What are a few severed body parts among allies?

He listened mutely to that July 25 phone call between Trump and the Ukrainian president, decided to ignore what he heard and then claimed — until a few days ago — that he was utterly in the dark about any pressure on Ukraine to kneecap Joe Biden.

Had he spoken up or pushed back, he would have risked ending up on the outside, among the swelling Trump administration diaspora. He preferred the inside, with its glossier trappings and cushier thrones. . . . Better to be a wretched part of history than no part at all.

The tale sounds familiar because it is. It’s the story of Faust, who sold his soul for renown, then endured the ugliness of that deal. It’s also the story of too many of Trump’s Republican enablers to count.

Few people remember anymore, but just years before she became the dark empress of “alternative facts,” Kellyanne Conway was a respected, reasonably mainstream, uncontroversial Republican pollster and strategist. Just months before she joined Team Trump, she correctly labeled him “vulgar,” said that he wasn’t presidential, called him a liar and demanded his tax returns. Then he offered her the lofty job of managing his presidential campaign — and all the television airtime that came with it — and she turned herself into a kowtowing cartoon. She’ll never be seen the same way again. Was the ride really worth it?

[Lindsey] Graham was oddly and briefly honest about this in an interview with The Times’s Mark Leibovich, framing his kinship with Trump, whom he once called “the world’s biggest jackass,” as part of his career-long quest “to try to be relevant.” This quest now involves the insistence that Trump, rather than abusing the presidency to dig up imagined dirt on a political rival, is the victim of some setup.

You can hear Graham’s version as predictably loopy illogic from a senator up for re-election next year in the deep-red state of South Carolina, but it’s more than that. It’s the fee for being able to get the president on the phone, for being invited to play golf with him, for feeling the rush of access, for crowing about your perch at the epicenter of the action.

He and Pompeo will have insider anecdotes to last the rest of their lives. They’ll need just as long to convince themselves that they didn’t overpay.

The Process of Impeachment is Now Inevitable

Trump's racist and religious extremist base will likely stand by him no matter what the coming impeachment inquiry reveals. The base's hatred of others and desires for special rights to ignore the law take precedence over all else. Likewise, political prostitutes like Lindsey Graham, a/k/a the Palmetto Queen, will continue their political fellatio of Donald Trump as they look over their shoulders worrying about a potential primary challenge.  Honor, decency, the rule of law, and their oaths of office mean nothing to them. Yet this willful blindness to the truth and conscious decision to stand by a lying - and likely criminal - con-artist  will not stop the impeachment process that Trump has unleashed on himself.  Indeed, as a former Republican columnist notes, Trump has basically plead guilty through his release of a redacted transcript of his shake down/bribery call to the president of Ukraine.  One can only imagine what an un-redacted copy will reveal.  Here are highlights from the column that loos at the now unstoppable impeachment process:

For the first time in American history, the president has pleaded guilty to an impeachable offense.

This is effectively what happened when the White House released the readout from President Trump’s July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. There is now no question that Trump asked the leader of a foreign country to investigate Joe Biden and his son — a request that was made in the context of a broader discussion of U.S. aid to Ukraine. This was the use of American power and diplomacy, not to serve the interests of the country, but for personal and selfish gain. It constitutes corruption of the first order.

Impeachment may be inadvisable. It may apply a cheese grater to the nation’s partisan wounds. The process may be conducted foolishly. It may feed a Republican thirst for revenge against a future Democratic president. It may motivate Trump’s base to salivating enthusiasm. The broad, American middle may yawn and switch to ESPN.

All of this matters, especially if it increases the chances of Trump’s reelection. But it matters like a fate, not like a choice. In T.S. Eliot’s “Murder in the Cathedral,” a priest says of unfolding events, “Let the wheel turn.” Archbishop Thomas Becket later comments: “The fool, fixed in his folly, may think/ He can turn the wheel on which he turns.”

Trump’s clearly impeachable offense has given the partisan instincts of elected Democrats the added justification of principle. The whistleblower complaint has affirmed those concerns and expanded their scope. This makes the process of impeachment inevitable. Now, the actors are merely choosing what roles they will play.
Trump’s role is to push and push until he meets firm resistance to his abuse of power — something he has rarely experienced.

Note that Trump’s call with Zelensky came during the denouement of the investigation of Russian influence. . . . . Consider this a moment. Trump gloated about beating the charge that he conspired with a foreign government to win an election, during a call in which he proposed to conspire with a foreign government to win reelection. The man is immune to ethical instruction. And further, Trump thought that releasing the readout of the call would somehow be exculpatory. He has spent so many years in the trash heap of corruption that he can no longer recognize the stench.

Republicans who defend or excuse him are providing permission for his radical redesign of public life. This is perhaps the saddest result of Trump’s corruption: turning good men and women into the bodyguards of a petty, cruel, lawless, would-be autocrat.

Because Trump has chosen to be transparently corrupt, congressional Republicans cannot dispute the facts of the case (as they did during special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation). They may still insist: No quid pro quo . But this is more of a rally chant than an argument. Trump’s request for foreign help to win the 2020 election was not like Belgium asking Uruguay for a favor. It was a global superpower asking a country dependent on U.S. military aid — which had just been withheld in a “review” — for favors. Trump pointedly reminded Zelensky that “the United States is doing quite a lot for Ukraine.” Trump’s requests were made in an atmosphere of menace.

The American people will ultimately decide whether this disturbs or bores them. Whatever the outcome, the wheel has begun to turn.

.

I disagree with the columnist's statement that Trump turned good men and women into bad individuals.  Trump had no role in that transformation.  Every man and woman who decided to side with and protect and apologize for Trump is responsible for their own conscious decision.  They knew right from wrong yet chose to support what was wrong. They deserve no pity or understanding. They deserve to be treated most harshly by the long lens of history - not unlike those who chose to support Hitler, Nixon and other foul individuals. The GOP hypocritically preaches about personal responsibility.  Now, each of these Trump enablers and sycophants needs to be held accountable. 

Trump Destroys American Greatness From Within

The Trump/Pence regime's slogan is "make America great again" and many of those who support this toxic regime strut around patting themselves on the back for being "real Americans" and viewing themselves as great patriots.  Meanwhile they and the regime they support - a mix of a would be Hitler and the Three Stooges - are destroying America from within.  In their minds, American greatness equates solely to maintaining and/or restoring white privilege and bullying the less fortunate and non-whites and non-Christians.  Worse yet, blinded by their hatred of others be they blacks, gays, Hispanics and anyone else they deem as "other," they are silently permitting the institutions that made America great (despite its many failings) are being eroded and/or destroyed by the narcissistic occupant of the White House and Republicans only too happy to lick his boots so as to avoid a primary challenge by the ugliest elements in today's GOP. Rather than being patriots, these Trump supporters are subversives and, if support for the U.S. Constitution defines the government, are actively supporting its overthrow.  A column in the New York Times looks at this destruction of America from within.  Here are highlights:

It’s hard to work up much sympathy for the hollowed-out husk of a human being that is Mitch McConnell, or Lindsey Graham for that matter. This country is a harder, colder, more meanspirited place because these senators would rather bootlick a bully than stand for the principles they once espoused.

Surely, they know the price of their vassalage. To serve Donald Trump is to lose all self-respect. You lie for him. You cover for him. You hate for him. John Boehner, the former House speaker, has more honor as a mercenary for marijuana than the elected Republicans shoveling dirt over the grave of the Constitution.

But Americans should care about a more lasting and damaging corrosion — the destabilizing of venerable institutions. It’s one thing to corrupt a politician, the natural osmosis of the species. It’s quite another to debase the foundations of a great democracy.
It started on Day 2, when the hapless liar, newly subsidized by taxpayers, tried to conscript the National Park Service into the fantasy that his crowd was the largest ever.

After the inauguration debacle, Trump moved on to bigger targets — the judiciary, the military, the press, and the professional class of bureaucrats who have made the United States a model for competence and incorruptibility in the Civil Service.

With William Barr, Trump now has an attorney general who doesn’t care how much lasting damage he does to truth, justice and the American way. His mandate as the nation’s top prosecutor is to carry out Trump’s private vendettas.

Next week, the House will vote on whether to hold Barr in contempt for defying the constitutional role of oversight by the legislative branch. Get used to it. Barr is marshaling the enormous legal muscle of the people’s Justice Department as a political hit squad. He’ll use the law, which he ignores when it suits him, to try to imprison public servants who launched an early investigation of Russian attempts to subvert an American election.

No matter that an earlier presidential quisling, failed Kansas gubernatorial candidate Kris Kobach, could find no evidence of another of Trump’s fictions, millions of illegal voters. Barr’s job is to muddy the origins of the Russian investigation enough to frame career public servants as traitors.

Normally, the courts would be bulwarks against the barbarians. And indeed, many judges have stood up to some of Trump’s most outlandish and illegal behavior. But the Trump effect, turning everything he touches to a cheap commodity, is to denigrate the legal arbitrators as “Obama judges” or “Mexican” judges. You’re with him or against him.

This is dangerous stuff. And it gets worse. The most disgusting of the recent corruptions is the attempt to make the military another extension of presidential vanity. The White House wanted to “minimize the visibility” of the U.S.S. John S. McCain while Trump was in Japan. So, a family name synonymous with sacrifice on behalf of country was covered up so that President Bone Spurs would not be offended. Kim Jong-un has to be jealous.

You would think that matters of the soul would be harder for the soulless occupant of the White House to tarnish. After a round of golf last Sunday, a disheveled-looking Trump abruptly showed up at a church in Virginia. The White House said Trump wanted parishioners to pray for victims of a recent mass shooting. Instead, they were asked to pray for Trump. The pastor later said he had been blindsided.

The same cannot be said for the man who oversees the Census Bureau, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. He’s trying to use a mandate of the Constitution, the decennial census, to shore up power in the Electoral College and Congress for the aging white men of Trump’s base.

Any day now, the Supreme Court will rule on Ross’s effort to insert, into the census form that goes out to every household, a citizenship question, something that hasn’t been asked since 1950. It could mean that about 6.5 million people would go uncounted — citizens and noncitizens.

This is a blatant abuse of power and of an otherwise benign government agency, affecting not just the number of representatives or electoral votes each state gets, but also the fate of numerous cities dependent on federal billions in mostly blue America.

We’ve had a census every decade since 1790, after the colonies threw off a king and created a governing document establishing an independent judiciary, a legislative branch that writes the rules of the land, and asserting that no man is above the law. To the present occupant of the White House, it’s only a piece of paper.

Frighteningly, far too many Americans are simply looking the other way or bloviating that they stay out of politics because they don't like politics - just like many "good Germans" did as Hitler rose to power. Citizenship imposes obligations as well as privileges, one of which is to be informed and support constitutional government. Too many Americans prefer watching mind numbing reality TV and sitting on their asses.  Be very afraid. 

Lindsey Graham’s Shamelessness

Lindsey Graham, a/k/a the Palmetto Queen - a study in hypocrisy.

One of the things that has been illuminating about Donald Trump and his candidacy and toxic and pathologically lying regime is just how morally bankrupt so many Republicans have proven to be.  For reasons I still cannot grasp - other than fear of the increasingly ugly GOP base - those who once pretended to have some basic understanding of both decency and constitutional and legal norms have shown themselves only too eager to prostitute themselves for Trump.  Among the worse is Senator Lindsey Graham who flatly stated the standard for removal of a president from office during the Clinton impeachment debacle.  Indeed, under Graham's own enunciated standard an indictable crime was not a prerequisite for use of impeachment to "cleanse the office" and "restore honor and integrity to the office [of the presidency]."  Now, faced with far more egregious conduct by Trump, Graham has thrown aside his own standard and is only too willing to look the other way and whine a far different song.  A column in the Washington Post looks at Graham's shameless hypocrisy.  Here are highlights: 

One difficulty about a career in politics is that the longer you’re in the business, the longer a track record of quotes and video your opponents can scour to undercut you. It’s something former vice president Joe Biden is contending with as he enters the Democratic primary, and it’s an obstacle his old Senate colleague Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) has run into in the wake of the Mueller report.

On CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Graham spoke to host Margaret Brennan; naturally, much of the interview focused on Attorney General William P. Barr’s planned testimony to Congress this week. As the new chair of the Judiciary Committee, Graham has shown enthusiasm for thoroughly investigating some scandals through to the end, such as the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server. He showed the same enthusiasm during President Bill Clinton’s impeachment, when he was one of the House’s prosecutors during Clinton’s trial in the Senate.

But Graham’s doggedness has disappeared when it comes to a Republican White House, replaced by a deliberate ignorance. “From my point of view, I’ve heard all I need to really know,” he told Brennan. He reiterated the sentiment again and again, especially regarding Trump’s ordering then-White House counsel Donald McGahn to fire Mueller. “It doesn’t matter,” he told Brennan. “I don’t care what he said to Don McGahn. … I don’t care what happened between him and Don McGahn. … No, I’m — I’m done.”
 Asked what he wants the Barr hearings to focus on, Graham replied, “Does the report support his summary? Does the report actually indicate there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians?” Graham left out, of course, that Mueller made no finding regarding the nonlegal concept of “collusion,” only one regarding the higher standard of criminal conspiracy. And he left out that there was significant evidence that individuals associated with the Trump campaign conspired with WikiLeaks over the release of stolen Democratic emails.

Democrats are suggesting that a president who orders his staff to obstruct an independent investigation maybe shouldn’t be president — hardly a crazy standard.

Then Graham had to face his past, as Brennan played his words from the Clinton impeachment trial:

The point I am trying to make is you don’t even have to be convicted of a crime to lose your job in this constitutional republic, if this body determines that your conduct as a public official is clearly out of bounds in your role. Thank God you did that, because impeachment is not about punishment. Impeachment is about cleansing the office. Impeachment is about restoring honor and integrity to the office.

Graham tried to reconcile his hypocrisy. “What President Clinton did was interfere in a lawsuit against him by Paula Jones and others, hide the evidence, encourage people to lie. So, to me, he took the legal system and turned it upside down.”

Note the words “encourage people to lie.” Note that Graham didn’t say, “People lied with his encouragement.” That Clinton allegedly told people to lie was enough for Graham (then and now), regardless of whether the Democratic president’s entreaties were successful. But this president is a Republican, so Graham’s standard changes.

Graham is far from the first hypocritical politician. But the South Carolina senator particularly prides himself on being no-nonsense and on his legal experience. That he has opted for such an obvious double standard is especially shameless.

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.