For those of us who have been paying careful attention to the crimes and treason of Donald Trump and connecting the dots as best we can, this morning was a milestone. When Gordon Sondland, in his opening statement to the House Intelligence Committee, threw everyone under the bus — Trump, Pence, Pompeo and all — we moved from the dot-connecting stage to at last seeing the tip of the iceberg.
If the American democracy remains strong enough to do its job, then just the tip of that iceberg is sufficient to remove Trump from office, along with his vice president (Mike Pence), secretary of energy (Mike Pompeo), chief of staff (Mick Mulvaney), secretary of state (Rick Perry), and personal lawyer (Rudy Giuliani), all of whom Sondland forcefully threw under the bus this morning.
But as disgusting as the tip-of-the-iceberg crimes are that Sondland described, it’s the still-hidden crimes down in the iceberg itself that really matter and that are truly dangerous. Those crimes revolve around the fact that this whole Ukraine affair is not really Donald Trump’s foreign policy. It’s Russia’s foreign policy. It’s not as though Trump and friends have been conspiring to bully some small country far outside Russia’s orbit. They’ve been conspiring to bully Ukraine, which is of critical strategic importance as a firewall between Russia and the western alliance. Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani are petty and provincial American crime figures with no particular knowledge of or interest in foreign affairs other than where there is money to be skimmed and payola to be grifted. Trump and Giuliani have no motives for being concerned about Ukraine, other than whatever money they or their cronies might be skimming. But who is concerned about Ukraine? Vladimir Putin, of course. Who other than Putin could have designed this little plot? Who benefits? As Nancy Pelosi said, all roads lead to Putin.
It follows that the urgent questions now are: How did Putin communicate this plan to Trump? Why was Trump obligated to attempt to execute Putin’s plan?
Another angle that is (for now, anyway) being ignored by the media is: Trump and friends, by crushing the Mueller investigation, thought that they had gotten away with stealing the 2016 election, with help from Russia. The plan for stealing the 2020 election involved exactly the same modus operandi — lies and conspiracy theories about the Democratic opponent. Rudimentary dot-connecting shows that catching them in the act of treason involving the 2020 election pretty much convicts them of their treason in the 2016 election.
Even when Trump and friends go down for the Ukraine affair, we’ll be nowhere near getting to the bottom of their crimes and treason. It’s not just that the executive branch of the American government has fallen into the hands of a crime syndicate. It’s that it’s an international crime syndicate in which Vladimir Putin is the big boss and Donald J. Trump is just another goon.
3 Comments
David do you have any thoughts on how this all might end in any sense ? As with Brexit, I’m struggling to see how there can ever be a return to any sense of normality unless some catastrophic event resets the game, as it were.
Hi Chenda. I continue to think (and hope) that as Trump becomes increasingly radioactive and erratic, and as Republicans realize that he is not fit to run in 2020, that he would lose badly if he did run, and that Trump would make it more likely that Republicans will lose the Senate, that a delegation of senators will make a quiet visit to the White House and make a deal for Trump’s resignation, as happened with Nixon. Republicans need as much time as they can get to field a new candidate.
There are leaked reports from the White House saying that Trump is increasingly unhinged. This video from yesterday is shocking. He’s a lunatic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTHBa5Tic1E
Even with Trump gone, the U.S. will still be in serious trouble, because Trump has turned about 22 percent of the population into brownshirts, and Fox News keeps 40 percent of the population completely disinformed and enraged. Somebody will come along, I’m afraid, who will try to use Trump’s vicious style of politics to capture the loyalty of Trump’s brownshirts as Trump goes down.
Thanks for your thoughts David. I agree, there is so much global toxicity which isn’t going to suddenly disappear. A rural refuge sounds ever more appealing…
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