Comments by "" (@DavidJ222) on "Rep. Scalise promoted doctored video of Joe Biden on Twitter" video.

  1. On Aug. 7, 1974, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office in connection with the Watergate scandal... Nixon announced his resignation the next day, effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974. In his 2006 book "Conservatives Without Conscience," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio "traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign." In his 1988 autobiography, Goldwater wrote that after hearing their grim assessment, Nixon "knew beyond any doubt that one way or another his presidency was finished." This was back when the Republican party still had at least a modicum of dignity, decency, integrity, and a sense of right and wrong. Today, thanks to Trump, Moscow Mitch, Graham, Nunes, Jordan, Barr, Meadows, and others, the wholesale corruption of the GOP is now complete. The Republican Party is now led by a kleptocratic crime boss who rules over the most scandal-ridden administration in history. Many of his closest advisers and associates have either been imprisoned or are facing prison time. Trump himself is trying to cheat in this election in order to stay in office and avoid prosecution. Nixon’s administration may have been  riddled with criminality—but in 1973, the Republican Party was still a somewhat normal party,  that still played by the rules, so Nixon was forced to resign. But not anymore. Those days are long gone. The corruption we see in the Republican party today can be defined as institutional depravity. It isn’t an occasional failure to uphold norms, but a consistent repudiation of them. It isn’t about dirty money so much as the pursuit and abuse of power—power as an end in itself, justifying almost any means. Today’s Republican Party has cornered itself in with a base of ever older, more male, more rural, more radical conservative voters. They could have tried to expand; instead, they’ve hardened and walled themselves off. This is why the Republican Party lies about the risks of voter fraud, so that it can pass laws to suppress voter turnout. Taking away democratic rights—extreme gerrymandering; blocking an elected president from nominating a Supreme Court justice; selectively paring voting rolls and polling places; creating spurious anti-fraud commissions; misusing the census to undercount the opposition; calling lame-duck legislative sessions to pass laws against the will of the voters—is the Republican Party’s main political strategy. Republicans have chosen suppression and authoritarianism, because unlike the Dems, their party isn’t a coalition of interests in search of a majority. The Republican party isn't interested in what the majority of Americans want. Trump is now the grotesque face of the rot within the party itself. And it reeks of corruption, paranoia, fascism, wild conspiracy theories, racism and other types of hostility toward entire groups. Trump is no different than his authoritarian counterparts abroad: immoral, demagogic, hostile to institutional checks, demanding and receiving demagogic obedience and protection from the party, and knee-deep in the financial corruption that is integral to the political corruption of authoritarian regimes..
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  2. Nearly all presidents have occasionally engaged in hyperbole, lying, corner-cutting, or press-bashing, though none have done so daily, if not hourly. One lie does not undermine democracy, but 20,000+ lies surely can. One governmental reversal in court is not tyranny, but scores of such defeats reveal an administration at odds with the constitutional injunction to “faithfully executive the laws.” If we added up the anti-democracy maneuvers of the prior 10 presidents over the past 60 years, they wouldn’t equal Trump alone in under four years—indeed, if you compare the eight close associates of Trump convicted or indicted in his almost-one term of office, that would again exceed those of all presidents combined (excepting Watergate felons) from Kennedy to Obama. • Replacing the rule of law with the law of rule—courtesy of Bill Barr—as accused allies receive pardons and praise while enemies are threatened with arbitrary prosecution. • Engaging in multiple obstructions of justice, such as firing FBI director James Comey and urging White House counsel Don McGahn to lie to Mueller. • Basing an entire convention on himself—no platform, Trumps proliferating like Borgias—and on the daily violation of the anti-monarchical Hatch Act because “no one cares,” according to apologist Mark Meadows. • Worsening economic inequality by shifting trillions through tax breaks to “American Oligarchs,” in Andrea Bernstein’s useful phrase, who then gratefully support his assaults on environmental and consumer laws to make even more money. • Inciting violence by hyperbolic attacks on opponents, embracing neo-Nazis while ignoring warnings from the FBI about the number-one domestic threat, right-wing violence. • Enthusiastically embracing many of the world’s leading dictators—Putin, Xi, Bolsonaro, Kim Jung Un, Sisi, Duterte, Erdogan. • Repeating Covid-19 falsehoods in order to pressure Republican governors to prematurely reopen the economy and schools, causing the avoidable deaths of over 100,000 Americans so far. • Attempting to stymie postal delivery to, in effect, steal millions of mail-in ballots… and the election. • Erupting with a lava of lies—now up to an average of 22 a day, according to Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler—to bury rivals and reality (Goebbels in 1941 said, “There are so many lies that truth and swindle can scarcely be distinguished." • Attempting to delegitimize the Fourth Estate as “enemies of the people,” using Stalin’s odious phrase. • Bullying neutral sources of information—the CDC, DNI, FDA, regulatory agencies—to bend their expected integrity to his political needs. • Milking public office for private gain by treating “his” federal government like he treated the Trump Organization. • Attempting to criminally extort the president of Ukraine in order to smear Joe Biden. • Fiiring career professionals and “independent” inspectors general for doing their job, increasingly having a government of cronies, cranks, multimillionaires, relatives, and unconfirmable third-raters. • Ignoring all congressional subpoenas (when Nixon ignored eight of them, it became the third article in his impeachment, “Contempt of Congress”). • Saying things such as “I alone can fix it” and “with Article II, I can do whatever I want,” as well as praising Xi Jinping and his Chinese Communist party, when it changed the country’s constitution, making Xi Jinping ruler for life. If you add it all up, What do you see?  It all has one purpose,” said Sally Yates, former acting attorney general, “to remove any check on his abuse of power.”  It is deviant fascism.
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