If that whiny sound emanating from so many elected Republican officials sounds familiar, it should. It’s the same high-pitched squeal a balloon emits when you carefully let its air out between compressed fingers. Republicans have been living in that balloon for so long, they’ve pretty much forgotten that the balloon existed in the first place.
Balloons are different than bubbles. You can live in a bubble and not really know you’re in it. When you’re in a balloon, though, you know damn well where you are. You just get used to breathing the same air over and over again until it seems normal.
So here’s a little wake-up call for those former balloon dwellers. Donald Trump is, was, and for the better part of his life always has been, a criminal. The fact that Republicans willingly put him into high office doesn’t make him any less of a criminal. The funny thing is — they knew he was a criminal from the start. They just didn’t care.
For crying out loud, Donald Trump is the guy who bilked students out of their hard-earned savings with his fake namesake “university.” He’s the same guy who bankrupted his casinos like clockwork and stiffed contractors and other folks he hired as a point of pride, who grossly inflated his real estate holdings, and refused to turn over his taxes. He routinely sexually assaulted and harassed women—and that was all before Republicans thought it was a great idea to make him president, whereupon he proceeded to turn the Emoluments Clause into a sick joke.
We all know what Trump did afterwards. He, his cronies, and his repulsive family bent over backwards to engage the assistance of the bloodthirsty dictator now waging an unprovoked war against Ukraine. Then Trump tried to extort Ukraine itself, by trying to hold up weapons shipments unless and until Ukraine’s president spread a phony story smearing Joe Biden’s son. When Biden then crushed him in the general election, Trump summoned America’s very worst to start a riot in an effort to overturn that election’s result. His excuse (for all the others in his balloon) was a phony assertion of “fraud”—a neat trick since the so-called “fraud” applied only to him, but not every victorious Republican who shared a space on the same optically-scanned ballots.
In short, this guy is a seasoned criminal with a mindset to match, through and through. His relatives know it, his former flunkies and button men know it. And the truth is, Republicans know it too. They knew it from the very moment they inflicted him on the rest of us.
I don’t know what’s in Attorney General Merrick Garland’s files about the former guy’s dealings, but I have a strong hunch Garland wouldn’t take the unprecedented step of raiding the Florida house of a former president unless something considerably more serious than a breach in archival practices was going on. Based on Trump’s track record of fomenting sedition and fellating foreign dictators, I’d be surprised if it wasn’t outright treachery. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
But in the meantime, could Republicans spare us the phony outrage and the “government overreach” bullshit? Enough with the “third-world country” garbage. Is this how they raise their children, to turn a blind eye to the legal process? To scam others for pleasure, to lie, cheat, and steal? To sell out their country? Is that what Republicans are really all about? At long last, I guess we can confirm they never really had any sense of decency.
Republicans have had it really good in that balloon. They could keep getting themselves elected by just by pretending this orange-painted guy wasn’t a walking nightmare of racism, cruelty, immorality, and greed. In fact, they got so used to breathing his air in that balloon, almost all of them became just like him. Parroting the Big Lie, all while nuzzling up to the trough. Winking at obvious treachery. Imagine—even for a second—what the right’s reaction would have been had Barack Obama demonstrated even the tiniest fraction of Donald Trump’s venality. They would have been calling for his head on a platter, and probably trying to plate up every other Democrat’s skull as well.
No, the reason Republicans can’t imagine that is because it would never happen. Because while they’ve been in that balloon, breathing in each others’ air, day after day, year after year, the rest of us have been outside, just shaking our heads in disbelief at the fact that this country’s conservative party treated a thoroughly rotten human being like some sort of deity, just because he hated on the same people they hate.
That’s really kind of sick, but, hey, it’s their balloon.
Please, though, Republicans: Don’t give us the theatrical “surprised” or “shocked” routine. You’re not surprised or shocked. You knew what this guy was about when you signed on. Spare us the haughty, holier-than-thou crap about how it’s a “dark day for the rule of law.” You’ve shown us all, through your behavior and slavish sycophancy, that you really don’t give a damn about “law.” That ship sailed a long, long time ago.
Yes, Republicans are making an awful noise right now. But when you get right down to it, it’s all just the same hot air they’ve been breathing for the last seven years.
