The NYT is reporting here that Trumpworld is looking to Steve Feinberg, head of Cerberus Capital, to “review” the U.S. intelligence agencies.
Would that be the 17 intelligence agencies that have definitively concluded the Russians hacked the 2016 election to help Trump? The agencies that are leaking damaging reports to the press about the unimaginable incompetence, stupidity, and arrogance of the Trump coterie?
Like all wannabe autocrats, Trump “knows” (insofar as someone who is all instinct and no intellect can “know” anything) that competing power centers have to be co-opted, corralled, or crushed. Now we know the Feinberg will be the point man in the attempt to bring all the U.S. intelligence agencies to heel.
(As classics students will recognize, the irony here is thick. Feinberg's company, Cerberus Capital, is named after the enormous multi-headed dog that guards the gate to Hades. Feinberg knows the ways of the hound of hell. If anyone can take us there, it is him.)
If the intelligence agencies are smart, and we know they are, they will step up their activity. They know that Congress cannot be trusted because it is in the hands of the venal and utterly self-serving Republican party. So they must use the press to break through the cone of silence that Trumpworld and the Republicans are trying to clamp down on the government.
The great political innovation of the Framers, as everyone knows, was to limit the power of any one government official, including the President, by checks and balances. The Trumpworld monomaniacs, aided and abetted by “conservatives” who worship power above all things, will have to trample on every person and agency that might check them. If the performance of Stephen Miller (Senior Policy Advisor and adolescent Ayn Rand acolyte) on the Sunday shows this past weekend is any indication (and it certainly is), Trumpworlders have no fear of looking like the assholes they are. Why would they? They were elected by Asshole-Americans who were attracted to their blatant assholery.
So they don’t care if they are seen to be trampling on the checks and balances. Asshole-Americans admire assholes who break all the rules and flash the finger at any and all attempts to rein in their outrageous selfishness. They'd all do it if they thought they could get away with it.
Right now, it’s up to the intelligence agencies and the press to try to stop Trumpworld and their Asshole-American constituency from subverting the Constitution. The courts are playing a role, but that branch takes too long: by the time they rulings come down, the game may be over. Congress may begin to play its role if enough Republican Asshole-Americans come to the conclusion that blatantly acting like an Asshole-American is not a good reelection strategy. But right now, that seems a vain hope.
So rush, intelligence community. Get as much damaging evidence to the press as fast as you can. You may not have much more time to act before you are cut off at the knees by the rise of the Asshole-Americans.
(This is cross-posted from my regular blog at The Scott Blog.)