Wednesday Update

                                     The President’s “Lynching” (?),
                                           The Republican Stunt,
                                                                 &
                              Lindsay Graham has Lost his Mind!
 
            What a week!  Where to begin? The Tweeter-in-Chief, in another attempt at distracting people from watching his impeachment probe continue, has claimed the process is a “lynching.”  Republican members of the House of Representatives stormed a Committee Room today in their attempt to attack the “process” (of impeachment), since they can’t attack the substance of it.  And, of course, there’s Lindsay Graham, who, during the 2016 Republican primaries called Trump “crazy,” and a “kook” and “not fit to be President.”  When Trump, appallingly, claimed he was being “lynched,” Graham immediately found some microphones to spout off in.  Graham claimed “I think it’s pretty well accurate --- this is a shame, this is a joke.  This is a lynching in every sense.  This is un-American.  I’ve never seen a situation in my lifetime as a lawyer where somebody’s accused of a major misconduct who cannot confront the accusers, call witnesses on their behalf, and have the discussion in the light of day so the public can judge.”

            Let’s take the measure of Graham’s statement before considering the action of the Republican House members or Trump’s outlandish and offensive (on so many levels) “lynching” claim.  If Graham were, in fact, a competent lawyer or legislator, he would (and probably does) know that what’s going on in the Democratic controlled House of Representatives Committee meetings right now is the equivalent of Grand Jury hearings in criminal court.  Because Trump’s Attorney General Bill Barr has blatantly ignored his responsibility/obligation to investigate the Ukraine quid pro quo scandal, the House of Representatives is conducting the investigation.  The meetings are closed and (somewhat) secretive because you do not want witnesses knowing what other witnesses said --- they shouldn’t be able to coordinate testimony.  This “right” to “know his accusers” is pure and utter bullshit.  Impeachment is a political process and the  codified “rule of law” (which Trump disregards on a daily basis, btw!) does not apply the way it would in a legal proceeding.  Graham knows this but, as a Trump butt-boy, he is obligated to obscure the truth as much as possible and do the bidding of the petty Boss in the White House.

            The stunt the Republicans pulled Wednesday, disrupting a secure hearing, reinforces that they have nothing of substance  to offer in defense of their “Leader,” and can only make impotent gestures, creating a momentary pause in the inexorable progression toward impeachment.  As reported by Mark Sumner in The Daily Kos:

Over two dozen Republicans flooded into the closed meeting room where testimony was to be heard. They will certainly be thrown out—but not before they’ve disrupted the hearing, shaken their fists at House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, and gotten their five minutes of hate bottled up for display on Fox News. In the process, they also disrupted the morning’s hearings, delaying the testimony of defense official Laura Cooper.
What the Republicans did is absolutely as bad as if outsiders had charged into a conference in a judge’s chambers, it was a violation not just of House rules, but of the foundations of how Congress deals with secure information. Deliberately disrupting a hearing and violating security by bringing cell phones into a posted secure area are egregious violations of House rules. (bold, mine)

 
            Violating House rules means nothing to the “law and order” Republicans who, like  Lindsay Graham, are blind to reality and only follow marching orders from the White House.  The House Republican stunt was led by the dim-witted Matt Gaetz (just listen to him for a few minutes and it’s clear the man is probably challenged getting dressed each day) and provided a brief distraction.  The House Committees will proceed and Trump will be impeached.

            As far as Trump goes, his likening his treatment by the House to a “lynching” is beyond offensive and harkens back to Clarence Thomas’s last gasp to save his Supreme Court seat (thanks, Joe Biden, btw!).  We know that the President doesn’t read, that he believes Frederick Douglass is doing some “great work” in 2019, and that he genuinely believes each day in Office is a day on the set of The Appresident  reality show.  That he could so lightly throw out a term that evokes such horror and brutality reflects what we already know about the man’s callous insensitivity. 

           His blatant appeal to the basest instincts of his voters --- who believe, as a recent Pew Research study indicates, that white people are being discriminated against in our current society  ---  is par for the course.  The Pew Study shows that  56% of Americans believe Trump has “made race relations worse” since taking office and 65% believe “expressing racist or racially insensitive views” has become more common since Trump was sworn in.  Certainly, we can see that --- and should also note that Fox News, in particular, has been complicit in beating the drum for white supremacy (“We want to go back to the way it was, when America was ‘great’!”)  Trump’s ignorance, combined with his Fox News bullhorn,  his Administration’s lackeys, and all the Republican Senators and Representatives who have become Trump butt-boys/girls, will continue to try to salvage this utterly failed Presidency, at the expense of the American people, the Ukrainians, and the Kurd, to name a few.  All roads lead to Moscow, of course, with Putin being the one who profits most from the ineptitude we have to watch each day.