We begin today’s roundup with Matt Stieb and his analysis of William Barr’s loyalty to Donald Trump:
In light of the Attorney General’s past actions safeguarding the president from accountability for his campaign’s conduct, it’s no surprise that Barr continues to prioritize Trump over findings from a Department of Justice investigation. According to the Washington Post, Barr privately disagrees with the DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s determination that the FBI had enough information to open an inquiry into the Trump campaign in July 2016. The IG report on the origin of the investigation, which will be released next week, is expected to find that the FBI was justified in its investigation, which was opened after Trump aide George Papadopoulos spilled that Moscow had hacked Clinton emails prior to the announcement that DNC servers were compromised by Russian assets.
Meanwhile, former White House Counsel under Obama Bob Bauer pens this:
The founders feared the demagogue, who figures prominently in the Federalist Papers as the politician who, possessing “perverted ambition,” pursues relentless self-aggrandizement “by the confusions of their country.” The last of the papers, Federalist No. 85, linked demagogy to its threat to the constitutional order — to the “despotism” that may be expected from the “victorious demagogue.” This “despotism” is achieved through systematic lying to the public, vilification of the opposition and, as James Fenimore Cooper wrote in an essay on demagogues, a claimed right to disregard “the Constitution and the laws” in pursuing what the demagogue judges to be the “interests of the people.”
Should the demagogue succeed in winning the presidency, impeachment in theory provides the fail-safe protection.And yet the demagogue’s political tool kit, it turns out, may be his most effective defense. It is a constitutional paradox: The very behaviors that necessitate impeachment supply the means for the demagogue to escape it.
Michael Luo, wring in the The New Yorker, compares Republicans during Nixon and Republicans now:
In the Senate, it seems at least plausible that frequent Trump dissenters, such as Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, and Susan Collins, could form an initial bloc against the President. Could they then be joined by establishment figures, such as the Tennessee senator Lamar Alexander, who is retiring, or Rob Portman, of Ohio? What about the senators Cory Gardner and Martha McSally, who are facing tough reëlection fights, in Colorado and Arizona, respectively? These scenarios seem far-fetched, given their statements so far on impeachment, but at least it’s imaginable. What might happen then? Perhaps other Republicans sensitive to history’s long arc will find safety in numbers. Trump would, in all likelihood, still be safe, but he would be tarnished. In American history, the Trump Presidency will inevitably be studied for the ways that democratic norms and institutions have been subverted. Republicans must consider how they wish to be remembered in the narrative of these events. History will have its judgment, too. Legacies exist in the future, but they are forged in the here and now.
At The Daily Beast, Sam Brody dives into one Republican defense of Trump:
One defense that pops up repeatedly in the 123-page document: Rudy Giuliani went rogue. [...] The House GOP report, reflecting a key strategy of distancing Trump from some of the nitty-gritty of the Ukraine push, says Giuliani was not acting at the president’s behest and did not speak on his behalf. [...]
Whatever Giuliani’s role was, the GOP report stresses that it was fine, or at the very least, not illegal—even if “some pockets of the State Department and NSC grumbled” over it. Former National Security Adviser John Bolton famously said Giuliani was a “hand grenade” that would “blow up” everyone working on U.S.-Ukraine ties.
Jeet Heer looks at Trump’s pardoning of accused war criminals:
Trump doesn’t have the right to end American participation in the Geneva Conventions, but he’s found a work-around by using the presidential pardon power. Aside from Gallagher, he’s mitigated the punishment of two other soldiers accused of war crimes. By doing so, Trump is remaking the military. Going forward, soldiers know that if they commit war crimes while Trump is in office, they’ll have a commander in chief receptive to pardoning them.
Ryan Cooper at The Week calls on Democrats to abandon their strategy of trying to pass a trade deal:
So naturally, the House Democratic leadership is ... planning to give Trump a big bipartisan policy win: passing a free trade deal that might help unions, but also might not. Meanwhile, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is sitting on a major overhaul of labor law (one which already has majority support in the House) that unions have been asking for over 70 years.
God save us all.
On a final note, Andrew Gillum calls on Democrats to fight back against the false charge of socialism:
Democrats need to make a strong case, and soon, that we are fighting for economic freedom and opportunity — and it is Republican ideas that are diminishing freedom and opportunity for millions. [...]
I don’t think many of [Florida immigrants] expected the United States would ever elect its very own caudillo — or that one of our political parties would march in lockstep behind him. While Trump harangues audiences about socialism, his Republican allies are urgently gerrymandering, manipulating elections, suppressing votes, stacking the courts and attacking the free press.
