The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan came up with the phrase “defining deviancy down”. It was a critique of society allowing departures from acceptable behavior to become normalized to the point that they no longer registered. The Trump effect applies that to the highest levels of government, ramping it up by several orders of magnitude — and the mechanism is simple.
Trump is so over-the-top bad, so incredibly egregious, that it blinds us to the rot he has surrounded himself with, the rot that the Republican Party now displays openly. When Ambassador Sondland said “Everyone was in the loop”, that was a statement that could be applied far beyond matters regarding Ukraine.
Rachel Maddow took a look at how bad things are — in plain sight — with a show that aired back in June 11, 2019 according to the info on the video. (The video is at the bottom of this post.) She was gobsmacked by how blatant it all is. She began by looking at the broad picture — the constant turnover at top levels. I’ve grabbed some screen images of some of the graphics in the video. Here’s a look at various individuals in high positions that have come and gone:
An administration that had had this much turnover in 3 years would raise troubling questions all by itself — under normal circumstances. Remember the deck of cards featuring the members of Saddam Hussein’s regime? There’s a fund-raiser/trivia game lurking here.
Maddow turned to looking at all of the people holding critical jobs who are ‘Acting’ — meaning Trump can swap them out at any time, and they don’t have to face confirmation hearings. She jokingly asked if they even bother to get their addresses updated to reflect their positions.
Maddow went on to look at Trump’s cabinet — the departures that have been the result of scandals — and the ones sitting there with the scandals continuing openly. She marveled at how it just doesn’t seem to matter. This level of graft and corruption would have brought down any other administration, and she couldn’t understand why the Democratic presidential candidates have not made this into a major issue. (This was back in June 2019 remember — but it still seems to be the case AFAIK.)
The main subject of Maddow’s show is one cabinet member in particular, the one with multiple scandals that emerged in June, any one of which should have caused a sudden departure and possible charges in another time. But not only that — that person hasn’t just used their position to enrich themself and their family with open conflicts of interest — that person has also abused their office to boost the political fortunes of their spouse. There have been zero consequences to date. The press seems to have largely lost interest since June.
Can you guess who?
Yes — Elaine Chao. For those keeping score at home, this includes A) refusing to divest stock as promised in a company heavily involved in transportation for months until press reports caught up with her. B) Leveraging her position to try to advantage her family’s shipping business and build on ties to the Chinese government. C) Steering DOT funds to Kentucky to help her husband Mitch McConnell’s re-election prospects, including having an aide designated to coordinate with McConnell. (To be ‘fair’, McConnell has grabbed everything he could get on his own.)
If you wonder why McConnell and Chao seem so tolerant of all the corruption, self-dealing and nepotism around Trump, perhaps it’s because they share the same business model and have a similar understanding of ethical behavior — meaning “anything they can get away with.” It looks like the Trump crime family isn’t the only one in town.
Here’s the whole video from Maddow, including an appearance by Chris Lu for analysis. Remember, this dates back to June of 2019, and Chao is still Secretary of Transportation. Maddow compares this all to a B Movie.
Impeachment has now focused attention to a relatively narrow scope, like a spotlight in the darkness. There’s so much going on in the shadows that has gotten lost in that glare. The entire upper echelon of the Trump administration is a target-rich environment for some kind of sanctions and prosecutions — unlikely to happen under the oversight of the Trump DOJ and the attacks on whistleblowers.
This demonstrates how badly the institutions we depend on to defend our democracy have corroded under the combined assault of big money, utter shamelessness on the part of the conservatives, and the failure of the media to hold them to account. Not least is control of the Senate by an individual so morally compromised as McConnell.
If Trump is convicted by the Senate (still seems unlikely, but the ground is shifting), or at best fails at re-election, or even more unlikely does not get the GOP nomination for 2020, there’s still a great danger. We may have become so exhausted by that point that we allow this vast cast of miscreants, grifters and incompetents to walk away, only to return the scene of their crimes at some later date — like William Barr. (Chao’s own record under George W. Bush should have been warning enough.)
Anyone who has been appointed by Trump or willingly sought service under him should have a lifetime ban from government service at this point. They are all complicit. The ones who have quit on matters of principle (and there may be one or two) but who have remained silent are especially damned.
And this Washington Power Couple needs to be taken down big time. Trump is an amateur at grift compared to these two; he exceeds them only in the scale and brazenness of it. It’s a small consolation that Mr. & Mrs. McConnell do not have children. The idea of them founding a dynasty like the Romneys or the Bush family is truly disturbing. If Nancy Pelosi can keep the impeachment spotlight focused on McConnell’s obstruction of justice long enough, maybe the press will start looking at all the other things these two are up to.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand joked that if she became president, her first act would be to Chlorox the Oval Office. We’re going to need bleach by the carload.
Buckle in — 2020 is going to be a rough ride.