I’m not a fan of Trump or any president, but even less am I a fan of a political lynching of Trump. Why? It’s an injustice. It’s not his due. He’s been under attack without respite for months. He’s now being attacked for his reactions to and handling of attacks on him and his associates that had no substance to begin with. The alleged substance of those activities that were being attacked unjustly is being demoted in favor of the idea of obstruction of justice. The anti-Trump coup is still in play.
Previous presidents have committed truly impeachable offenses and gotten away with it. Huge numbers of bodies have piled up as a result of their crimes. Trump’s crimes so far pale in comparison, but they are not what his critics are using against him anyway because they themselves favor bombings and missile attacks. They want a president whom they can push around and control, one who is reliably executing their agenda. They want a puppet.
Trump has done nothing but react against witch hunts against his associates. He has done this in his own context-dependent, inconstant and varying ways. Trump often reacts honestly and emotionally to things as he sees them. He has been criticized on all sorts of personal grounds, but being an imperfect man or president is not grounds for impeachment. Being blunt and outspoken is not an impeachable offense.
Trump fired Comey for several reasons, which we need not go into. He reflected in an NBC interview “And in fact when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said ‘you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won’.”
Trump spoke out loud about a factor that was present in his inner thinking. The enemies of Trump will use this inner reflection against him to the maximum extent they can.
Presidents have lied the country into major wars without being held to account. It’s a topsy-turvy world in which a president can reveal his inner thought about the emptiness of “this Russia thing” and be pilloried for it.
5:26 pm on May 17, 2017
