The Fix and the unFix
(This was written on August 18th. Today I see that Manafort was convicted of 8 charges so I think I should post it before it actually happens!)
As I read about the Manafort trial and see the photos of him looking nicely dressed and unworried, I have a nagging concern. Today that concern increased when Mueller asked for six months jail time for Papadopoulos, who doesn't look worried either. Could it be that The Fix is in? Has Trump promised them all that he will pardon their crimes against America? He has even talked about pardoning himself. Certainly he will pardon Donald Jr. rather than letting him go to jail. And if this happens, how will the Republicans respond? Trump has already played with the pardon, one of his favorite presidential toys, just to see if and how it works. I think he is getting ready to use it in a more sinister way. The last test, his pardoning of Sheriff Arpaio was a politically controversial, and a build up to the next and most dangerous travesty. The travesty is not the pardon, it is overriding the rule of law.
If this happens, the rule of law in this country will become a joke. We have spend hundreds of years putting laws in place to keep this country from becoming a third-world dictatorship. Good governments don't just spring from the earth full-blown and correctly organized, they take decades and centuries of work and sacrifice to establish functional systems of governing. America has done that. We have worked to create a fair, secure, tolerant, and free society. It was done by having a legal system that treated everyone fairly, and when it didn't, like the recent Black Lives Matter movement, people speak up and they speak up loudly to be sure the unfairness is corrected.
Will the Republican Party act if Trump pardons Manafort, Papadopoulos, Donald Jr., Gates, Flynn, and maybe even himself? If they don't they will have betrayed the entire history of America. They will be acting to replace our democracy with a dictatorship. If this happens and we, as voters, do not replace all those who perpetrated this crime, it will be time for us to go back to the sixties and consider another American revolution. This will be the first revolution not to overthrow a government but to reinstate it.
As I read about the Manafort trial and see the photos of him looking nicely dressed and unworried, I have a nagging concern. Today that concern increased when Mueller asked for six months jail time for Papadopoulos, who doesn't look worried either. Could it be that The Fix is in? Has Trump promised them all that he will pardon their crimes against America? He has even talked about pardoning himself. Certainly he will pardon Donald Jr. rather than letting him go to jail. And if this happens, how will the Republicans respond? Trump has already played with the pardon, one of his favorite presidential toys, just to see if and how it works. I think he is getting ready to use it in a more sinister way. The last test, his pardoning of Sheriff Arpaio was a politically controversial, and a build up to the next and most dangerous travesty. The travesty is not the pardon, it is overriding the rule of law.
If this happens, the rule of law in this country will become a joke. We have spend hundreds of years putting laws in place to keep this country from becoming a third-world dictatorship. Good governments don't just spring from the earth full-blown and correctly organized, they take decades and centuries of work and sacrifice to establish functional systems of governing. America has done that. We have worked to create a fair, secure, tolerant, and free society. It was done by having a legal system that treated everyone fairly, and when it didn't, like the recent Black Lives Matter movement, people speak up and they speak up loudly to be sure the unfairness is corrected.
Will the Republican Party act if Trump pardons Manafort, Papadopoulos, Donald Jr., Gates, Flynn, and maybe even himself? If they don't they will have betrayed the entire history of America. They will be acting to replace our democracy with a dictatorship. If this happens and we, as voters, do not replace all those who perpetrated this crime, it will be time for us to go back to the sixties and consider another American revolution. This will be the first revolution not to overthrow a government but to reinstate it.
Manafort could be pardoned by trump but he might have other worries, like Putin sending his henchmen after him as imagined by Al Franken. MS
ReplyDeleteFrom: Former Senator Al Franken, Aug 21,2018
Sean Spicer, who served President Trump for a very limited amount of time, described Paul Manafort as someone “who played a very limited role for a very limited amount of time” in the Trump campaign.
That “very limited role,” of course, was “campaign chairman.” And during Manafort’s “very limited time” with the campaign (actually, he spent more time with the campaign than either Steve Bannon or Kellyanne Conway), he helped Trump secure and then accept the Republican nomination, and made sure that the convention platform dropped a plank that called for providing arms to Ukraine in its fight against Russia. And Manafort was there for Get-Dirt-on-Hillary meeting with the Russians at Trump Tower.
Of course, Manafort’s time with the campaign wouldn’t have been so limited had the media not zeroed in on his wildly lucrative consulting deal with brutal, Russian-backed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych and on Manafort’s shady financial ties to Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs close to Vladimir Putin.
Now that he has been convicted on multiple counts of financial misconduct, Manafort stands to spend the rest of his life in prison. As he girds himself for his next trial, most people believe that Manafort is expecting a pardon down the line from President Trump. My wife doesn’t think so.
Franni has been saying for months that Trump won’t pardon Manafort—because he doesn’t have to. Her theory is simple and chilling. Manafort knows that if he talks, the Russians will seek retribution. Trump knows this too, Franni believes. Perhaps, even, he and Putin discussed this in Helsinki.
PUTIN: Have no worry about Manafort talking. He knows is dead man if takes plea.
TRUMP: Wow! Good to know.
PUTIN: Same goes for interpreters. You hear me, you two?! Yuri, tell American interpreter I am serious.
RUSSIAN INTERPRETER: He means it. He’ll have us both killed.
PUTIN: Very painful death.
RUSSIAN INTERPRETER: Very painful. Most likely a nerve agent.
Okay, I don’t know if that actually happened. Maybe they just talked about adoptions. The point is, under Franni’s theory, Trump doesn’t have to pardon Manafort to keep him quiet. So, he won’t.
Which would be pretty telling. Look, I don’t like Donald Trump. Like many of us, I am sickened by his words and actions on an almost daily basis. And, in the grand scheme of things, his behavior towards the other sickening people he has surrounded himself with since getting into politics isn’t the biggest deal. I mean, separating children from their parents at the border is infinitely worse than letting your former campaign chairman spend the rest of his life in prison. For one thing, Manafort kind of deserves it.
But, if, down the road, Trump starts pardoning every other player in this collusion scandal who didn’t cop a plea, but not Paul Manafort, it will say something so deeply disturbing about Donald Trump.
I wrote in my most recent book that Trump’s behavior leading up to his inauguration (refusing to divest his business interests, installing a white supremacist as his chief strategist, making up a ridiculous lie about illegal voting in order to avoid admitting that he lost the popular vote, etc.) suggested “the kind of mental health problem that you would be disturbed to discover in your kid’s piano teacher, let alone the president of the United States of America.”
Months later, that still checks out. As Michelle Obama said, “Being president doesn’t change who you are. It reveals who you are.” Everything Donald Trump has done since becoming president tells us that he is selfish, callous, and cruel. And if Franni is right, we may be about to see just how deep the rot inside this man goes.