Slouching Toward Impeachment
Plus: All the alarms are flashing red.
Happy Tuesday.
Before we get to our daily tocsin of doom, let’s take a moment to note that there has actually been some good news for the forces of democracy/sanity over the past week.
In today’s Bulwark, A.B. Stoddard notes that amid the grim polls and signs of the apocalypse, “we saw new developments last week that illustrated there are Americans all around this country who are not numb, and are scrambling—collectively and individually—to secure our vote and to protect democracy from the onslaught of attacks and lies coming from Trump, his lieutenants in elected office, his acolytes in ‘conservative’ media, and his minions online.”
Election deniers in a critical swing state were indicted.
The alleged architect of Trump’s phony electors scheme is finally talking.
A key Trump coup plotter was booted from a federal elections board.
A bogus Trump defense in the federal election case is demolished.
The same bogus defense was rejected in civil cases pending against Trump.
Liz Cheney is coming out swinging.
Mike Johnson has changed his mind about Ukraine.
The House GOP is shrinking.
Writes A.B.: “As we like to say here at The Bulwark, it will take all of us to fend off this attack against the Constitution. With some dumb luck, GOP self-destruction, and so many Americans hard at work right now making critical progress, we might succeed.”
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming…
Stumbling Toward a Biden Impeachment
On yesterday’s podcast, Will Saletan highlighted two Sunday morning interviews with GOP senators.
On ABC, George Stephanopoulos pressed Oklahoma’s James Lankford on whether he was prepared to support Trump next year.
“Your party’s leading candidate for president was on the stump yesterday repeating lies about the 2020 election,” Stephanopoulos said. “He’s called those convicted in the January 6th insurrection hostages. He faces 91 separate felony counts himself. He’s raised the prospect of executing the former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and terminating parts of the Constitution. In the face of all that and more, are you prepared to support Donald Trump if he’s your party’s nominee?”
Lankford waffled, dodged, and filibustered. But Stephanopoulos kept up the pressure and, in the end, Lankford finally caved, saying that a rematch between President Joe Biden and Trump is “not a hard choice.”
“Even if Donald Trump is convicted in one of these trials?” Stephanopoulos said. I’ll spare you the suspense over his answer, which was basically, yes.
Because the other guy is always worse.
Meanwhile, over on CNN, Trump’s most enthusiastic fluffer, Lindsey Graham, pushed back on Liz Cheney’s warning about the dangers of a second Trump term by declaring that the REAL DANGER was four more years of Joe Biden. A Biden win, Graham insisted, “would be a disaster for peace and prosperity at home and abroad.”
“I think Liz’s s hatred of Trump is real,” he said, but she needed to recognize that if Biden is re-elected, “then we won’t recognize America and the world will be truly on fire.”
So, we have to back the Orange Arsonist to keep the world from burning.
**
Which brings us to the looming House GOP impeachment of Joe Biden.
Over the weekend, the fifth-stringer speaker, Mike Johnson, flexed his three-vote majority, saying he had enough votes to authorize the inquiry. During an appearance on Fox News with super-MAGA Elise Stefanik, Johnson managed to keep a straight face as he explained that the two impeachments of Donald Trump were “brazen and political,” but the GOP’s Biden impeachment was “very different.”
“Remember,” he said with a straight face, “we are the rule-of-law team.”
He really said that.
**
But let’s clarify the three real reasons this is happening.
Fan service.
Mike Johnson CYA.
Trump.
Pardon the brevity of this exegesis, but it’s really not complicated:
(1) The GOP is impeaching Biden because the base wants it (really, really wants it), and this vote has all the dopamine hits. It also provides counterprogramming to a year of Trump felony trials.
(2) Johnson’s speakership survives only with the favor of the fire-breathing fanatics of his caucus, and the blessing of Mar-a-Lago. If he shows the slightest impulse to govern as a grownup (by funding Ukraine or keeping the government open), he’s out. Which is why he has to the feed the Kraken.
(3) It’s all about Trump. And this is the most important part.
As the legal system moves forward and the thorough awfulness of Trump is exposed, the stakes get higher and the pressure to demonize his opponents intensifies.
The more dangerous, corrupt, and erratic Trump appears, the greater the GOP’s psychological and political need to make the case that no matter how vile and seditious Trump may be, Joe Biden and the Democrats are always worse.
Trump may be a convicted felon and a chronic liar, who muses about killing his critics, but Joe Biden something something something.
It’s not enough to say that Biden is old, sleepy, and senile — he will literally kill everything that is good and beautiful.
Trump may be the destroyer of constitutional norms, but Biden will set the world on fire.
(4) BONUS: Because everything about our politics is perverse, the impeachment vote will benefit Speaker Johnson (in the short run), but will also strengthen Joe Biden, especially when this show moves into the center ring.
**
The most charitable view is that the GOP’s evidence against Biden is… shaky. The more accurate view is that is a parade of dumpster fires in clown cars.
On Monday, with great fanfare, the House GOP announced that they had uncovered (!) direct payments to the president from his son’s business operation.
But the smoking gun evidence promptly fizzled. They were three (3) payments of $1,380 which appear to be payments from Hunter paying his father back for some truck payments — back in 2018, when Biden held no public office. The whole story had already been reported by the New York Post.
..
As the Wapo’s Philip Bump notes, the latest bust follows a consistent pattern: “House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) will make a claim alleging wrongdoing by President Biden and then, in short order, that allegation will be shown to be incorrect or baseless.”
So we should put a fine point on it: Comer’s track record makes it obvious that he does not deserve the benefit of the doubt. Allegations that he offers should not be granted the baseline assumption that they are true.
And the latest story?
What this new revelation from Comer suggests is not that Biden was integrated into his family’s business interests, earning gobs of money on the sly. It’s that Hunter Biden needed help buying a truck and turned to his dad.
Shocking stuff.
Will Saletan: The #MeToo Fail
On Monday’s podcast, we discuss the flamboyant fall of George Santos; the latest display of Trump’s “faith”; Lindsey’s latest capitulation; Nikki’s passive voice critique of the former president’s crimes; and the reluctance of some leading progressives to denounce Hamas’s use of rape as a weapon of terror.
You can listen to the whole thing here. Or watch us on YouTube:
All the Warnings
Over the last few weeks, we’ve been sounding the alarm here at The Bulwark: JVL here, A.B. Stoddard here, and me last Friday.
The reaction from a lot of you has been something like: WE KNOW! WE ARE ALREADY ALARMED ENOUGH!
Well, strap in, folks, because there’s more. A lot more. All the red lights are flashing.
**
Liz Cheney Says Donald Trump Would Not Leave Office If Reelected
The daughter of former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney believes Trump would install himself as a permanent president and refuse to leave office after the mandated two-term limit if he is reelected.
"There’s no question," she said. "Absolutely. He’s already done it once. ... He’s already attempted to seize power, and he was stopped, thankfully, and for the good of the nation and the republic. But he said he will do it again. He’s expressed no remorse for what he did."
**
Why a Second Trump Presidency May Be More Radical Than His First - The New York Times
Charlie Savage, Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman write:
Mr. Trump’s violent and authoritarian rhetoric on the 2024 campaign trail has attracted growing alarm and comparisons to historical fascist dictators and contemporary populist strongmen. In recent weeks, he has dehumanized his adversaries as “vermin” who must be “rooted out,” declared that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” encouraged the shooting of shoplifters and suggested that the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, deserved to be executed for treason.
As he runs for president again facing four criminal prosecutions, Mr. Trump may seem more angry, desperate and dangerous to American-style democracy than in his first term. But the throughline that emerges is far more long-running: He has glorified political violence and spoken admiringly of autocrats for decades….
What would be different in a second Trump administration is not so much his character as his surroundings. Forces that somewhat contained his autocratic tendencies in his first term — staff members who saw their job as sometimes restraining him, a few congressional Republicans episodically willing to criticize or oppose him, a partisan balance on the Supreme Court that occasionally ruled against him — would all be weaker.
As a result, Mr. Trump’s and his advisers’ more extreme policy plans and ideas for a second term would have a greater prospect of becoming reality.
**
And then there is the Atlantic’s January/February 2024 issue, in which 24 writers imagine what a second Trump term would look like.
A Warning About a Second Trump Term, by Jeffrey Goldberg, who writes that “America survived the first Trump term, though not without sustaining serious damage. A second term, if there is one, will be much worse.”
The Danger Ahead, by David Frum, who warns that “If Donald Trump returns to the White House, he’d bring a better understanding of the system’s vulnerabilities, more willing enablers, and a more focused agenda of retaliation against his adversaries.”
Trump Will Abandon NATO, by Anne Applebaum: “If reelected, he would end our commitment to the European alliance, reshaping the international order and hobbling American influence in the world.”
How Trump Gets Away With It, by Bart Gellman, who writes, “If reelected, he could use the powers of the presidency to evade justice and punish his enemies.”
The Specter of Trump’s Family-Separation Policy, by Caitlin Dickerson, who notes that “Donald Trump and his allies have promised to restore their draconian zero-tolerance immigration policy.”
Trump’s Loyalists, Lapdogs, and Cronies, by McKay Coppins, who reminds us that “In a second Trump term, there would be no adults in the room.”
Is the Press Ready for a Second Trump Term? by George Packer, who writes that “The press has repeatedly fallen into Donald Trump’s traps. A second term could render it irrelevant.”
Quick Hits
1. The War on Christmas Comes to Wow Wow Toaster, Wisconsin
My fellow Cheesehead Bill Lueders in today’s Bulwark:
IN HIS FOX NEWS PROGRAM ON NOVEMBER 13, Jesse Watters mused about what he called a “holiday tradition”: The war on Christmas. He observed, with palpable glee, that “Now it feels like the war on Christmas is coming earlier and earlier every year. Probably climate change.” Ha, ha.
Watters proceeded to give all of two examples of what he called “opening shots” and “complete sneak attacks” in this year’s war. One was that “a guy [who] runs a healthcare company” in Georgia was “canceling Christmas Eve,” by no longer treating it as a company holiday.
The other example of this dastardly trend was in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee whose name he badly mispronounced. (It’s “Wah-wuh-TOE-suh,” not “Wah-wah-TWO-suh,” although, to be fair, Watters came closer than did Bob Dylan in an early, unfinished song about Wisconsin: “Wow Wow Toaster.”) There, Deputy City Administrator Melissa Cantarero Weiss, Watters said, “told city workers to not put up any Christmas-related decor on public property.”
2. Haley’s Weird Ignorance About Vaccines
Will Saletan in this morning’s Bulwark:
She complained that mass production had led to subsequent vaccine mandates. “You took people’s rights away in the process,” she protested, as though addressing some imaginary bureaucrat. “You said, ‘Oh, we have all these vaccines. Make people get it.’ Everything about that was wrong.” Haley accused the government of having partnered with the drug companies to “make them rich and then mandate people to have something happen.”
That’s crazy talk. It’s one thing to object on libertarian grounds to the federal mandates—which, let’s remember, applied only to military service members, federal workers, and contractors and ended in less than two years. But when Haley insinuates that the government issued those mandates because we had “all these vaccines” and were looking to use them, she’s spouting a baseless and pernicious conspiracy theory.
3. Kissinger’s Fundamental Mistake
For Kissinger, the world was in perpetual need of another Congress of Vienna—a multipolar order where great powers could make a fine-tuned balance.
The irony of his life wasn’t just that he was wrong, but that he misunderstood the country he served: As a political project dedicated to universal principles, America is much more like revolutionary France than Habsburg Austria.
Cheap Shots
Just for the record, it's not that the evidence against Biden is weak, it's nonexistent.
The good thing is that the alarm bells are ringing in many places now. Yes, they should have gone off three years ago. Trump should have been arrested on February 1, 2021. But we are here now. Along with the Bulwark finally not talking about Biden’s age, the Atlantic, the NYT, and even CNN is calling attention to Trump’s rabid rages. Trump is bringing this on himself and the reporting is finally not just repeating what he is saying but alerting people to the consequences. This has to be put before the public every day in every way. The Dems have to penetrate social media from Fox News to TikTok. The Kochs have pulled away. There should be pressure on every corporation to protect democracy. Trump is obsessed with revenge and staying out of jail. He is backed by a bunch of billionaires who want to live like Russian oligarchs. Make sure that working people realize this.