On “Meet the Press” this Sunday, NBC host Kristen Welker characterized Trump’s attacks on America’s 237-year-old judicial system, a bulwark of America’s equally venerable democracy, as just the way politics is today.
Here is what she said (video available at the bottom of this piece):
“Meanwhile, this week the former president stepped up his attacks on the judge and his family in the New York hush-money case after that judge imposed a partial gag order on Mr. Trump less than three weeks from the April 15 start date in that trial.
And now Trump is asserting that none of the trials should ‘take place during my campaign’ — falsely calling the criminal proceedings ‘election interference.’ It is yet another reminder that we are covering this election against the backdrop of a deeply divided nation.”
(Bolding mine)
Welker was doing fine. She started with facts. She accurately called bullshit on Trump’s election interference claims. Then she lost her way. Trump’s rhetorical temple-razing is not evidence of a “deeply divided nation” — it is yet another reminder that a wannabe dictator, elevated by his red-hatted brownshirts, wants to convert words to action. And plunge America into unaccountable, unchecked, one-person rule.
This saga is not an election story. Welker herself said as much. This travesty is a flashing red-light warning that the 2020 loser wants to culminate a four-year campaign of lies, insurrection, and violence-inspiring oratory with the recapture of the White House — America’s democratic institutions be damned. And anyone who thinks he would leave peacefully in January 2029 needs to take the needle out of their arm.
Picture a deep divide. In the imagination, that conjures up two sides, equally elevated, staring at each other across an abyss. But Trump has no high ground. The backdrop of this election is one side trying to do the right thing while the other is trying to blow up the mountain.
This Easter Sunday, President Joe Biden went to church. Trump spent the holiest day in the Christian calendar spewing 43 social media lies on his Truth Social site. Disagree with Biden’s policies, call him too old and say he walks stiffly, complain he likes to put his hands on people’s shoulders — fine. But to equate him with Trump and his 88 criminal indictments + civil fraud + defaming, pussy-grabbing self is something only a journalist who has lost her way can manage.
The Democrats impeached Trump twice because they had evidence — provided by conservatives — that he was a crook. The Republicans have not been able to impeach Biden because they cannot even get conservatives to fabricate believable evidence.
Reagan was a cynic who faked bonhomie as he stepped on the middle class to give more money to the rich. Bush Jr, was a warmongering moron who gave more money to the rich. But neither attacked the foundation of America’s democracy (although I can listen to the argument Reagan started the ball rolling)
Trump is a full-blown, fuck you, autocrat with a Mussolini complex. He is not one side of a divide — unless that divide is between small-d democrats and a MAGA horde too dumb to realize they are equally likely to get a bullet in the head (not always metaphorically) when their usefulness as voters has expired.
In Germany March 1933, after a terror campaign, the Nazis won 44% of the vote in the national elections. It was enough. The next free German election was 16 years later (1949), in the smoking ruins of a divided country trying to recover from its total defeat in WWII.
I imagine German newscasters in 1933 were talking about “the backdrop of a deeply divided country.” Welker should crack a history book.
I apologize to the reader that this diary is more staccato than I usually like — but I am so fucking angry, I do not have the energy for editorial massage.