Echoing Lizza's remark about you typically being non-hyperbolic...that's what has made the last couple months more terrifying for me. When the "Holy shit guys this is VERY. BAD." Damon shows up, it's time to really worry.
Very much enjoyed this conversation and it was helpful to hear you expand on some of your points in the Times column. Excited to read your upcoming book.
At the end Lizza and Linker state plainly the nightmare scenario that Trump has presented from the very beginning of his first campaign in 2016. What other candidate in US Presidential politics ever asked any enemy of the United States to investigate their political rival? There are not too many things I'm absolutely sure of but as far as I'm concerned it was all utterly predictable once one dispensed with any hopeful illusions or naive optimism. Which is why I found the legal vs political debate Damon foundered on so exasperating;
“When negotiation and compromise fail and your only course is to destroy your enemy then, before they wake in the morning, have the axe in your hand.”
Wolf Hall
The certainty was that Trump would attempt to stack the administration with factotums personally loyal to him and not the Constitution or the law and purge those Deep State institutionalists and Constitutionalists left. He was prevented from doing this in his first term by his own inexperience, incompetence and those adults in the room with some dedication to democratic tradition and the Constitution. Those folks are gone. In this second term he has his hangers-on and acolytes pushing an extreme version of unitary executive theory; a SCOTUS apparently willing to play along and a cadre of politicians and billionaires prepared to execute Trump’s whims under that theory; although in truth, they really don't even require the theory. The theory is just window dressing and policy is just the shape-shifting bait that gets the masses there. What they seek is power and dominance.
Trump’s quislings will continue to purge the legal, judicial, national security and military ranks of anyone who might oppose the regime's plans. Donald Trump wants to be Putin or XI and will glom on to any old theory and question any verity that gets him to that place; his followers just want to burn and pillage. There is no place else this goes.
KRISTEN WELKER: …. don’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?
PRES. DONALD TRUMP: I don’t know.
The only question remains is whether his ability to crush, silence or intimidate any opposition will outstrip the speed of his regime's inevitable failure.
Echoing Lizza's remark about you typically being non-hyperbolic...that's what has made the last couple months more terrifying for me. When the "Holy shit guys this is VERY. BAD." Damon shows up, it's time to really worry.
Very much enjoyed this conversation and it was helpful to hear you expand on some of your points in the Times column. Excited to read your upcoming book.
At the end Lizza and Linker state plainly the nightmare scenario that Trump has presented from the very beginning of his first campaign in 2016. What other candidate in US Presidential politics ever asked any enemy of the United States to investigate their political rival? There are not too many things I'm absolutely sure of but as far as I'm concerned it was all utterly predictable once one dispensed with any hopeful illusions or naive optimism. Which is why I found the legal vs political debate Damon foundered on so exasperating;
“When negotiation and compromise fail and your only course is to destroy your enemy then, before they wake in the morning, have the axe in your hand.”
Wolf Hall
The certainty was that Trump would attempt to stack the administration with factotums personally loyal to him and not the Constitution or the law and purge those Deep State institutionalists and Constitutionalists left. He was prevented from doing this in his first term by his own inexperience, incompetence and those adults in the room with some dedication to democratic tradition and the Constitution. Those folks are gone. In this second term he has his hangers-on and acolytes pushing an extreme version of unitary executive theory; a SCOTUS apparently willing to play along and a cadre of politicians and billionaires prepared to execute Trump’s whims under that theory; although in truth, they really don't even require the theory. The theory is just window dressing and policy is just the shape-shifting bait that gets the masses there. What they seek is power and dominance.
Trump’s quislings will continue to purge the legal, judicial, national security and military ranks of anyone who might oppose the regime's plans. Donald Trump wants to be Putin or XI and will glom on to any old theory and question any verity that gets him to that place; his followers just want to burn and pillage. There is no place else this goes.
KRISTEN WELKER: …. don’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?
PRES. DONALD TRUMP: I don’t know.
The only question remains is whether his ability to crush, silence or intimidate any opposition will outstrip the speed of his regime's inevitable failure.