Trump demands the arrest of his political enemies—and it hardly makes a ripple – By Hunter (Daily Kos) / Oct 12 2020
While the Republican Party, now stripped of everything but con men and fascist sycophants, drones on about What The Constitution Means To Them in virus-infected Senate hearings, they have closed their ears and pretended, to a person, not to notice Donald Trump going full authoritarian by flat-out demanding the arrest of his political enemies. You know, on Twitter. As one does.
The New York Times has taken notice, at least, providing an assortment of historians and past officials to warn in very polite terms that this is absolutely batshit crazy, that Trump is absolutely performing as an authoritarian, and that we absolutely are going down a dangerous road. No, it is not normal that Trump is getting visibly impatient with his allied attorney general, William Barr, for not producing the evidence necessary to prosecute his Democratic enemy. No, it is not normal for ex-House Republican and lifelong cretin Mike Pompeo to use his State Department perch (granted, it’s not like he’s using it for anything else) to push out “more” Hillary Clinton emails in the three weeks before the election.
(That Trump still considers “Hillary Clinton emails” to be an election-bending move, as an aside, is beside the point. Yes, he’s an idiot. Yes, he’s hopelessly obsessed with his own pet grievances, and is reliant on the whole rest of his party to be obsessed with those same grievances, and on conservative media to make them obsessed again whenever it’s becoming clear that the base is getting bored.)
What is not present, in the Times’ report or many others, is any sense of true desperation that (1) the nation’s sitting president is calling for the arrest of his enemies, (2) the Republican Party is, collectively, either ignoring or embracing those calls, and (3) we are exactly that one inch from becoming an authoritarian regime. The Times frames it as an act of corruption not even Richard Nixon followed through on, because it was so obviously crooked. Now that the new crook has crossed the line, we will make a note of it like we have all the others, but there’s no evidence of brakes being applied. There are no Republican lawmakers piping up with a now that would be too much.
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