Unfortunately, it’s rare for one’s bullies to get their comeuppance when one can most enjoy their defenestration. That dude who dumped your books in high school didn’t suffer the consequences the day he did it … or the next day … or the next. You pretty much had to wait until you saw him at your 20-year high school reunion displaying the thousand-mile stare of a jowly, broken, empty husk of a man who knows he’s recklessly thrown away his last, best chance to ever step foot in a Buffalo Wild Wings again.
So it is with Donald Trump. The guy never dumped my books in the hallway, but he did, you know, literally try to end America.
The most stark evidence of the ocher abomination’s disdain for democracy came in a recent report about Trump’s anti-democratic actions in late-December, when he was furiously trying to overturn the election he’d decisively lost. According to one observer’s contemporaneous notes, Trump told Department of Justice officials to “just say the election was corrupt [and] leave the rest to me.”
In any other year, with any other president, that would have been a nuclear bombshell of a report, but since this is Trump, lots of people just shrugged. Is it a surprise when flesh-eating bacteria eats your flesh? Of course not. And that’s precisely why you don’t elect a flesh-eating bacteria president. Are you MAGAs getting it yet? No? Didn’t think so.
Anyway, Trump’s coup attempt was beyond frightening, and almost certainly illegal. So what do we do in this country when people do illegal things? Well, usually we prosecute them, and that’s exactly what perpetual Trump gadfly George Conway suggests we do with this empty husk of a man-baby.
Conway appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Aug. 13, and host Joe Scarborough asked him just how frightened we should be about Trump’s brazen coup attempt. Needless to say, Conway had some opinions.
Watch:
SCARBOROUGH: “When this story first broke several weeks ago, it seemed that some people’s eyes kind of glazed over and kept moving on. Could you provide focus for us on just how dangerous this moment was in American history?”
CONWAY: "Well, this was absolutely one of the most dangerous moments in American history, the most dangerous moment ever caused by a president of the United States. And I think one of the reasons why some people’s eyes glazed over is … we've seen the movie before in some way, that President Trump would try to coerce federal agencies into doing things that are questionable, that benefit him personally. He even tried to coerce a foreign country into doing something to benefit him personally. But this was the absolutely most extreme possibility, that he would actually try to use the mechanisms of government, in particular the Department of Justice, to perpetuate himself in office unlawfully, and to basically launch a self-coup, or an ‘autogolpe,’ as it’s called. And this was, this was the height of … this was a potential, probable criminal conspiracy.
“There are a number of provisions that could apply to this conduct. There’s conspiracy to defraud the United States … which is what Special Counsel Mueller used to charge the Russian Internet Research Agency. There’s also 18 U.S. C § 610, which is kind of my personal favorite in this situation, because it just seems so easy to apply, which is the criminal provision of the Hatch Act. And what that statute provides is that it shall be unlawful for anybody, and that would include the president of the United States, to coerce or attempt to coerce a federal employee into engaging in political activity. And what that would mean is that if Donald Trump had directed or tried to coerce Acting Attorney General [Jeffrey] Rosen to walking down Pennsylvania Avenue with a 'Trump 2020' flag, that would have been criminal. Here, this was much worse. He was attempting to coerce the Department of Justice, coerce Rosen, into engaging in what was a purely political act, precisely because they had told the president that there was no interest of the United States in this, that there was no illegality, there was no law enforcement function performed by the Justice Department, and then he, then Donald Trump went on to basically say, ‘Just say it, just say it—make this statement.’
"That was all, as you point out, just for political purposes ... to influence the political branches, the Congress to overturn the election, and to try to influence what the states were doing. That, again, a purely political act, coerced by the president of the United States, who, by the way, as these reports made clear, was basically threatening Rosen with removal and substitution by Jeffrey Clark, the guy who was actually trying to—who was basically conspiring with the president to overturn the election. And that's coercion, and it fits this statute like a glove. And the Justice Department, if it hasn’t already—I know there's an Inspector General investigation—should begin a criminal investigation because there's sufficient predication for such an investigation."
Of course, Trump has been a scoundrel and (alleged) criminal his entire life and has yet to face serious consequences, but I’ll cling to any little strand of hope I can. While I’m fantasizing, I should mention that I hope he never spends a day in prison. I’d like him transferred to the Bronx Zoo elephant paddock so we can all watch him get hosed down every morning and used as a pachydermal ass pillow each and every night.
It only seems fair. And, hey, one can dream, right?
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