What’s happening in the White House today would’ve caused political apocalypse if a Democrat was in power.
I was a Republican aide on Capitol Hill back when the Benghazi scandal consumed Washington. After four tragic deaths in Libya, my party turned the Obama administration’s diplomatic security missteps into years of hearings and a select committee that spent millions of dollars. Meanwhile, I watched members demand impeachment over an email server. It may have been overwrought, but it sure was relentless.
Now picture this.
Imagine that weeks before a midterm, Barack Obama had run taxpayer-funded television ads starring himself… cut a deal with Vladimir Putin months after American intelligence caught Russia handing Iran the coordinates of U.S. troops in order to kill them… sent federal agents into the home of a Republican congresswoman… banned news outlets from the White House that investigated his administration… told a crowd of supporters that maybe one of our adversaries should bomb Republican-led cities… said he’d withhold money from GOP states that don’t elect Obama-approved candidates… and met with outside advisers who’ve reportedly drafted plans for the president to declare martial law and seize Americans’ ballots in the midterms.
Any one of those outrages would’ve spawned congressional fury. Together, they would’ve led to a spike in chatter about civil war.
Yet Donald Trump did all of it (and then some) in just the past month. The taxpayer-funded ads ran until a federal judge halted them Sunday night… the Russian diesel deal came late last week, despite warnings that it was illegal and after U.S. intelligence concluded Russia was feeding Iran targeting data on American forces… federal agents raided the home of Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar… CNN, MSNOW, and Politico were barred from the White House and still facing intermittent punishment from the administration… in Nebraska last week, Trump offered that Iran could “take out” Los Angeles and San Diego if they wanted — and then repeated the line after his staff had tried to claim that’s not what he meant… in Ohio, he warned that if the Democrat won, he wouldn’t be sending federal aid to the state… and last week, he reportedly huddled with a convicted criminal and election conspiracist in the Oval Office, who’s part of a cabal of outsiders urging the president to upend the election by seizing voting machines and ballots.
Oh, and that’s just the short list.
It leaves out the $810 million in congressionally approved spending that Trump unilaterally cancelled… the disaster aid he told North Carolina it wouldn’t get if his candidate lost… and the 250-foot triumphal arch his administration is racing to build — in his honor — before the courts rule against him.
This would rip apart the nation if a Democrat did it.
But it’s worse than that. Rather than threatening armed conflict over Trump’s corruption, some MAGA Republicans are apparently welcoming it in order to prevent the president from losing power. One of Trump’s outside advisers, Peter Ticktin, hinted at the possibility of civil war if the president’s opponents riot in the wake of an overturned election. “Believe me, our armed forces are a lot bigger than they are,” he told The Atlantic. Ticktin even expanded on the comments in another interview: “[Trump’s] got nothing to lose, the nation has nothing to lose, it’s better if we’re going to have a civil war of any sort that it would be martial law with our side in control of the armaments.”
This isn’t some random MAGA guy on social media. He and his allies have been having Oval Office meetings with the president. When a talk show host put this outrageous idea to Trump directly — of him declaring some kind of national emergency around the election — the president said: “Let me just say, stranger things have happened, okay? I’ll leave it at that.”
Let’s not forget that the last time he lost an election, his supporters did ransack the seat of government, and militia members staged rifles in a hotel across the Potomac in anticipation of a wider armed conflict.
The contrast between the two parties couldn’t be more striking. Democrats police their own. They forced Al Franken out of the Senate amidst a scandal, ran Bob Menendez out of it, and ended Joe Biden’s candidacy when they decided he couldn’t win and looked too old on the debate stage. A Democratic president doing a tenth of this would be facing the wrath of his own party’s subpoenas by now, if only because members would be terrified of losing their seats.
Instead, elected Republicans have offered tepid statements. Senator Susan Collins criticized Trump’s spending cancellation. Senator Thom Tillis questioned the Russia deal. Neither has scheduled a congressional hearing. And of course House Speaker Mike Johnson has been silent or deferential on most of it.
Not long ago, I bought my two-year-old the classic If You Give a Mouse a Cookie book. She loves it. The moral is that the cookie is never the end. The mouse wants the milk and then the straw and then to run all over the house stirring up trouble. Republicans in Congress didn’t hand over a cookie to Donald Trump. They left the cabinet open, put the box on the floor, and moved out. So when the house burns, it will be on them.
So what does the other side do when a president is this corrupt?
Not what his friends would do. The pro-democracy movement wins by the rules; otherwise, it isn’t worth winning. This Saturday, No Kings events in thousands of communities will do something that sounds almost quaint in comparison to the president’s corruption blitz: they’ll check registrations, request absentee ballots, and walk neighbors to early voting sites before the deadlines close. While one side is stockpiling grievances and talking about the size of its armed forces, the other is making carpool plans to the polls.
That’s the whole difference, folks. And it’s the reason that — in the long run — we’re going to prevail.
Your friend, in defiance,
P.S. DEFIANCE.org is a nonprofit “club for the courageous.” We exist to fight corruption. That’s it. Every Wednesday at 5pm ET, we announce new efforts (like these, HERE) to hold Trump accountable. Your membership is what makes it possible. If you haven’t yet, become a member today.
DEFIANCE DAILY
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TRACK THE TRUMP-EPSTEIN READING ROOM & BOOKMOBILE
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