Florida Sen. Rick Scott has bitter complaints about the alleged persecution of Donald Trump, and he’s using his own trials and tribulations to illustrate his point. Trump himself loves to claim he’s been treated more unfairly than any politician ever, including Abraham Lincoln, whose reward for freeing millions of brutally enslaved men, women, and children was being shot in the back of the head by a Confederate jabroni.
You may recall that conservatives claim Trump is being unfairly crucified for allegedly trying to quash a story about an affair he allegedly had as his wife allegedly cooled her haute heels at home with their infant son. Just like Jesus—if Jesus had worn Hugh Hefner pajamas during the Last Supper and conspired with Yahweh to keep Black people from moving into Galilee.
But instead of proving that Trump is being unfairly targeted, what Scott really demonstrated is how unnervingly easy it still is for rich white men to get away with egregious shit in America.
In fact, it’s so easy that on Thursday, Scott felt emboldened enough to dredge up an old scandal no politician in their right mind would want to relitigate. Then again, he probably feels bulletproof. Because despite having presided over one of the worst Medicare frauds in American history, in subsequent years, Scott was able to get himself elected first as Florida’s governor and then its junior senator.
In other words, criming is okay if you’re a Republican—especially if you’re a rich, white, male one.
In a transparent attempt to curry favor with Trump and act as a surrogate for the gag-inducing gagged one, Scott oozed in front of the TV cameras to slam the legal system that’s currently holding the ocher abomination to account.
When asked if he was joining Trump in the World’s Coldest Courtroom™ because of the World’s Meanest Gag Order™, Scott shook that idea off. “No, I’m fed up,” he said. “I watched what happened to me and my company. I’ve watched what’s happened, I’ve talked to businesspeople over the years of what’s happened to them, when you have political persecution, and now what I’ve watched with President Trump with all these cases. This is just simply—they don’t want this guy on the ballot.”
After noting that he considered Trump “a friend, Scott called the prosecutors “political thugs” before noting that “I’ve had experience with this. Back in the ’90s, I was the lead opponent to … Hillary Clinton’s health care [plan]. After it was defeated, she used the Justice Department to go after me and my company. This can’t continue. What’s happening to this president is wrong.”
Really, though? Is that really what happened with his company? Because the federal government thought differently, and the fact that Scott is now a very powerful U.S. senator demonstrates just how bad the deep state is at persecution. You may have figured this out on your own, given that Trump (allegedly!) attempted to overthrow the U.S. government, (allegedly!) stole top secret government documents, and will likely face no legal consequences for either of those things before voters decide whether to return him to the White House in November.
But back to Scott. He’d like you to think he’s just another victim of an evil deep-state mandarin who languidly sips iced baby’s blood lattes all the damn day when she’s not playing Skee-Ball with George Soros—but the facts tell a radically different story.
While Scott has previously said he took responsibility and learned from the “mistakes” his company made (while he was leading it), he’s now going in a more Trumpian direction with the story, claiming his legal jeopardy was unfairly boosted by his political opponents.
But as the Miami Herald noted on Thursday, he’s shamelessly attempting to rewrite history:
In 2014, the whistleblower who helped the federal government investigate Columbia/HCA described a company with two sets of books and said he had “no doubt in my mind that Rick Scott was the leader of a criminal enterprise.”
“The fraud at Rick Scott’s company hurt seniors, it hurt taxpayers, it hurt everyone,’‘ John Schilling, a former HCA accountant who worked with the FBI in 1996 through 2003, said at a 2014 press conference. “Fraud was in the DNA of Rick Scott’s company from the very beginning and he was the father.”
Meanwhile, Scott’s actions—and those of his company—make his political-persecution dodge particularly hard to swallow.
Steve Benen for MSNBC:
As the FBI's investigation advanced, Scott resigned as CEO, though he nevertheless faced considerable scrutiny—including an infamous civil deposition in which the Republican asserted his Fifth Amendment rights 75 times.
Scott’s former company ultimately pleaded guilty to 14 felonies and was fined $1.7 billion. It was, at the time, the biggest Medicare fraud case in American history.
Benen also cites a 2010 Miami Herald article that reported federal investigators “found that Scott took part in business practices at Columbia/HCA that were later found to be illegal—specifically, that Scott and other executives offered financial incentives to doctors in exchange for patient referrals, in violation of federal law, according to lawsuits the Justice Department filed against the company in 2001.”
Won’t somebody please think of the children!? You know, like Toddler Don and Diaper Rash Rick. Stealing from the cookie jar should be a hell of a lot easier than this for a white man in America. Unfortunately, Scott’s meteoric ascent to the governor’s mansion and U.S. Senate was unfairly imperiled by all the illegal shit he was apparently involved in. And no rich dude should be forced to take the Fifth 75 times. That must have been brutal, man.
To be fair, Scott did have a moral lesson for the public related to accountability and the rule of law—as inadvertent as it may have been. He’s a walking, talking, whining example of how easy it is for certain people to get away with things no one should be allowed to get away with—much less hand-wave away on their inexorable trek to high office.
Now, Trump is hoping to follow in Scott’s footsteps. And because the legal system is still so biased in favor of the rich and melanin-deficient, it’s fallen on us—and not the law—to stop him.
There’s no question we can do it. But it’s still fair to ask, why the fuck should we have to?
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