Corruption will continue with Trumpism

 by TOM MAERTENS, Jan 27, 2021

Trump is gone but the wreckage of Trumpism will be with us for years.

The “only-I-can-fix-it” president presided over the largest budget deficit, the largest trade deficit, and the largest national debt in our history, and 400,000 COVID-19 deaths.

Worst of all were his criminal efforts to steal the election, including the coup attempt of Jan. 6 and his seditious efforts to pressure Department of Justice and state election officials

Even Mitch McConnell accused Trump of having “provoked” the violent mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6; it consisted of fascist Proud Boys, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, conspiracy theorists, and anti-Semites, some wearing shirts with “6MWE”— Six Million (Jews) Wasn’t Enough — on them, and QAnon crackpots who claimed that Trump would declare martial law, arrest Democratic leaders and execute them.

Recent reports, including a report by the German foreign ministry, tie American extremists to European neo-Nazis; it describes “a new leaderless transnational apocalyptically minded, violent far-right extremist movement” that has emerged over the past decade, motivated by conspiracy theories and paranoid stories about “white genocide.”

The groups travel back and forth and jointly participate in far-right music festivals, mixed martial arts events and rallies, according to The New York Times.

Even after insurrectionists tried to capture and assassinate House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other congressional leaders, and “hang Mike Pence,” 147 Republican legislators, the Treason-and-Sedition Caucus, voted to overturn the election.

It’s no mystery why three-quarters of Republicans believe that Biden did not win legitimately; Fox News, OANN, Newsmax, and some Republicans are still promoting the big lie about the election.

Margaret Sullivan, Washington Post media columnist, labeled “fair and balanced” — the original Fox News lie — “one of the rotten planks that built the foundation for the assault on the Congress. The mob that stormed and desecrated the Capitol … could not have existed in a country that hadn’t been radicalized by the likes of Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham….”

James Murdoch, the Murdoch family “black sheep,” agreed: “Those outlets that propagate lies to their audience have unleashed insidious and uncontrollable forces that will be with us for years.”

Trump’s four years were disastrous for the GOP. He is the first president since Herbert Hoover to lead his party to losing the presidency, the House, and the Senate all in a single term. He’s also the first president to be impeached twice.

Among other things, he will be infamous for being elected with Russian support, a fact confirmed by a 2017 report by the intelligence community, the 2019 report of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, a 2018 House Intelligence Committee report, and the 2020 Senate Intelligence Committee report.

The evidence is overwhelming that the Trump campaign encouraged Russian support, including the attempted collusion during the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower. In addition, Trump repeatedly attempted to obstruct investigations into his actions, as Robert Mueller documented.

Trump showed himself to be Putin’s lapdog, refusing to take action when Russia conducted the worst cyber hack of American government systems in history, or when they paid bounties to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

According to Michael Gerson, former GOP presidential speechwriter and self-identified evangelical, “The overwhelming support of evangelicals is the single largest reason that Trump possessed power in the first place. It was their malignant approach to politics that forced our country into its current nightmare. As white nationalists, conspiracy theorists, misogynists, anarchists, criminals and terrorists took hold of the Republican Party, many evangelicals blessed it under the banner ‘Jesus Saves.’ “

Trump’s hostility toward law enforcement led him to pardon many felons he claimed were unfairly targeted by the government, particularly campaign contributors or supporters.

As the The New York Times wrote, “The list of pardons and commutations issued by Mr. Trump over the years covered an encyclopedia of corruption schemes that often involved the theft of government money or other benefits.”

Corruption is something Trump knows about; he visited a Trump property an average of two days of every week of his presidency. Based on the GAO’s estimates of the trips’ cost, Trump spent more than $64 million in taxpayers’ money on his 31 trips to his Florida resort, more than $23 million for his 27 trips to Bedminster, and more than $144 million for the 298 golf outings we know about.

USA Today declared that Trump is “the worst jobs president in history,” with job losses totaling 4 million, causing “the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.” No other modern presidents have left the U.S. with a smaller workforce than it had when they took office.

Tom Maertens served as a White House National Security Council director during the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.