This news, I mean really big news, is what I call “Shades of
Nixon” is Trump today as revealed in this story from
Politico with this headline:
“Where are all of the arrests?” Trump demands AG Barr lock up his political
foes
The day-long run of
tweets and retweets marked the most frantic stretch of Trump’s public activity
since he left Walter Reed.
President Donald J. Trump
mounted an overnight Twitter blitz demanding that AG Barr jail his political
enemies as he called out allies he says are failing to arrest his rivals
swiftly enough.
My Notes: Closely related
topics: Barr
election interference Trump's 2017 rant about intraparty “enemies list” seen
here and his
laundry list.
Trump twice amplified supporters’ criticisms of Barr, including one featuring a meme calling on him to “arrest somebody!” He wondered aloud why his rivals, like former President Obama, Nominee Joe Biden, and former Nominee Hillary Clinton hadn’t been imprisoned for launching a “coup” against his administration.
Trump unleashed several dozen tweets on the subject over the past 24 hours in part saying: “Where are all of the arrests? Can you imagine if the roles were reversed? Long term sentences would have started two years ago. Shameful!”
By early afternoon (October 7),
Trump was letting loose his frustrations in an all-caps missive that seemed
aimed at nobody in particular.
“DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS, THE BIGGEST OF ALL POLITICAL SCANDALS (IN HISTORY)!!! BIDEN, OBAMA AND CROOKED HILLARY LED THIS *TREASONOUS PLOT!!! BIDEN SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED TO RUN - GOT CAUGHT!!!”
* I NOTE: Treason is the only crime specifically defined in the Constitution (Article III, Section 3). It is punishable by death and has rarely been charged in modern times. Trump has a penchant for accusing his political foes of treason including most recently Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA).
Schiff led the House Intelligence Committee chairman in the
impeachment efforts against the president. While presidents often criticize
their predecessors, it’s highly unusual for one president to accuse another of
treason.
The day-long run of tweets and retweets marked the most
frantic stretch of Trump’s public activity since he left the presidential suite
at Walter Reed Medical Center and returned to treatment at the White House.
They also underscored the degree to which Trump remains fixated on his
grievances over the Russia probe, and often on obscure aspects of that
investigation that are unintelligible to all but its most careful followers.
Since late Tuesday (October 6), Trump has vowed to
declassify all documents he claims will show improper activity by Obama and his
intelligence advisers — before quickly reversing himself and suggesting he had
already done so “long ago” — and repeatedly cited Russian intelligence
services’ claims that Clinton “stirred up” the Trump-Russia collusion scandal
that has dogged his presidency.
A Justice Department
spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment about whether Trump had
ever directly asked Barr to order the arrest of his rivals or if his tweet suggesting
as much had veered into territory that Barr once said made his job
“impossible.”
In past interviews, Barr has signaled that he has no
intention of prosecuting senior Obama officials, though he has
cast doubt on the motives behind the Russia probe and launched an investigation
into its origins. The review Barr ordered has disappointed Trump in recent
weeks as the U.S. attorney tapped to lead it, John Durham, has signaled he
might not pursue the kinds of high-profile prosecutions the president and his
allies are demanding.
Also, Durham’s deputy in the review, veteran DOJ prosecutor Nora
Dennehy, quit the faltering effort and returned to the private sector.
Also noteworthy: Trump’s
tweet barrage was particularly jarring when set against the political backdrop.
Biden has widened his lead over Trump in recent polls, as the president’s
support has eroded among women, seniors and other voting blocs that helps him
scratch out a victory in 2016.
Trump flummoxed his allies by summarily shutting down — also
via Twitter — negotiations over a coronavirus stimulus bill, only to backtrack
hours later by calling on Congress to pass more targeted measures.
I NOTE: The NASDAQ and S&P fell 500 points when Trump made that
announcement on October 6 – then he backtracked and told Congress to find a
better way.
However, Trump has made clear that he remains focused on
punishing perceived enemies regardless of the political cost.
While recovering at Walter Reed, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told Fox News that Trump had kept busy that morning in part by directing the declassification of documents related to the Russia probe.
Those
are files he claimed were conclusive proof that Clinton had concocted the
notion that his campaign team had ties to Russia even though the Senate
Intelligence Committee (bi-partisan report) and Mueller’s team both rejected
the allegations as unverified.
Significant and Related:
In releasing those documents, Trump’s own hand-picked DNI, John Ratcliffe
(R-TX), acknowledged the documents were tied to and sourced from Russian
intelligence, might have been “exaggerated
or even fabricated” to deflect
from Russia’s own efforts in the 2016 election interference shenanigans.
(Note: My emphasis
added).
My 2 cents: This story basically stands alone as reported (again
with my emphasis added to fit the blog), and yes, it is damn scary. So, why
hasn’t people around Trump like Barr and now Ratcliffe, too, and many others,
simply packed up and resigned and show some dignity and leave Trump and stand
law and order, right and wrong, and the people they profess to serve – the country
– and not one man like Trump?
I simply do not understand their fake hypocritical patriotism. That’s all I can say today about this story.
I leave with this about this “enemy of people” crap from Trump: Former
AZ Senator Jeff Flake (R) was correct when he once said: Trump’s phrase, “enemy
of the people,” is indelibly linked to Stalin. The term in Russian is “vrag
naroda,” and it not only meant death for you but state persecution of
your family. Lenin introduced that category of criminal into Soviet law, in the
very early going, but Stalin elevated it to a sort of foundational principle of
his rule.
Lenin had “bourgeois”
die-hards in mind. Stalin and his henchmen targeted spies, wreckers and
counter-revolutionaries in every corner of Soviet society, but especially among
his rivals, real or imagined, within the Communist Party.
Millions were shot and millions more perished in the camps of the gulag. It got so bad that when Nikita Khrushchev succeeded Stalin in the 1950s, he banned that phrase.
Now maybe what lies ahead is the opposite of that wild Kimberly Guilfoyle yelling at the RNC Convention: “The worst it yet to come…”
Thanks for stopping by.
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