Tag Archives: Impeachment

Republicans

McConnell’s management style: “He lets the cards play out until he plays his cards …”

Mitch McConnell hasn’t yet decided whether or not he will vote to convict Donald Trump at the Senate impeachment trial. He announced yesterday, “…while the press has been full of speculation, I have not made a final decision on how I will vote and I intend to listen to the legal arguments when they are presented to the Senate.”

This is in keeping with McConnell’s approach to sticky political issues, as described in The Cynic: The Political Education of Mitch McConnell, the Alec MacGillis book about the senator, which portrays McConnell as a highly skilled negotiator, who often swoops in after lying low as controversies rage and other political actors skirmish.

MacGillis — describing one of the shutdown episodes generated by “archconservatives” aka “self-aggrandizing extremists” in the Republican caucus — quotes former Senator Judd Greg (a McConnell ally) on the Kentucky senator’s approach in that crisis and in other controversies:

“It’s Mitch’s management style–he lets the cards play out until he plays his cards and then he wins.”

The Republican Party, after Trump’s failed insurrection and the two Georgia defeats, is at war with itself. Lots of stuff is going to happen between now and January 20 — and in the following weeks.

McConnell will decide on another day how to vote on impeachment. The stakes are high and McConnell doesn’t always win.

So, the wily senator is watching and waiting as the cards play out. He hopes to have a better read of the hand he holds in a few weeks than he does today.

Or — maybe not. Perhaps McConnell knows how he’ll vote, but he’s psyching out other players at the table. Or misdirecting the media as they offer a play by play. Or grasping for some advantage that may or may not become clear to us for a while.

This much is clear: It is not likely that “the legal arguments” will sway Mitch McConnell nearly as much as political calculations.

Bet on it.

(Poker face? Image from CNBC.)

Democracy, Tribalism

Senator Mitt Romney cast a politically courageous vote and stood forthrightly behind it

In an era of maximal partisanship, Mitt Romney was a lone vote against his party and against a vindictive president. The GOP base – activists and faithful primary voters – stands steadfastly behind that president, ready to mete out punishment to wayward elected officials. And the conservative media universe, over which Fox News Channel reigns, stands ready to rally that base – with invective and lies – to back up the president.

There is no discernable political advantage to prompt Romney’s decision. He can expect ridicule, condemnation, and vilification from Republicans, payback from the President, even threats to him and his family. And while Democrats may praise him, they won’t accept him as one of their own. As Romney has noted more than once, he has no followers in the GOP. He is standing alone and, apart from personal conviction that he is doing the right thing, there is little upside of any kind (other than serving as an example to his children and possibly gaining the distant recognition of history: neither significant motivators for U.S. senators).

Unlike most Republican senators, he may be able to weather opposition in Utah, which has had considerable affection for Romney and where Trump is less popular than in other deep red states. And he has the wisdom and perspective to understand that failing to win reelection, if he chooses to run again and loses, is hardly the end of the world. But it is undeniable that Senator Romney did not decide to condemn Trump’s shakedown of Ukraine because of any personal or political benefit that stance would offer.

At a time when the Christian right holds sway over a political party, while embracing a man whose life, character, speech, and actions are antithetical to the message of the Gospels, few Senators (in deciding to fall in line behind the President) invoked principles that in any respect conflicted with the political expediency of the moment.

Mitt Romney did so. And we have every reason – based on his life, character, speech, and actions – to take him at his word that he acted out of faith and conviction, that he made his decision because of a fundamental belief that it was the right thing to do for the constitution and the country.

The reason his statement reads in places like a condemnation of other prominent Republican senators is because he has articulated in a straightforward way the facts of the case and the principles behind his decision. This is another reason to praise him: he could have shrugged off making a candid statement and, like so many other Republicans, essentially invented a more convenient, palatable cover story – pulling his punches to de-emphasize Trump’s egregious misconduct. He didn’t. He spoke clearly and forthrightly.

In casting the biggest vote of his life, Mitt Romney’s decision was politically courageous. That’s as commendable as it is surprising and rare.  

Donald Trump, Republicans

Republican Senators expressing umbrage “are desperate to find an outrage off-ramp”

I think that Chairman Schiff’s presentation through this very long ordeal has been at the very highest level of legal advocacy. He has marshaled an immense amount of information extremely well and effectively. And I thought that last night’s closing was oratory for the ages. So, I give him nothing but props.

I think that if you are a Republican and you’re looking at a really damning case that you have no counter to, and where you’re sitting on lockers full of evidence and not allowing it into the trial, you are desperate to find an outrage off-ramp.

And they will find something outrageous in parts per billion in order to seize the outrage off-ramp and get away from the damning case that has been made on the substance.

…

I think there have been a lot of uncomfortable moments for them through these days. And I thought that Adam’s presentation last night had a lot of them very thoughtful and pensive about the position that this president has put them in.

Uhm, we really have a battle here between truth and falsehood, and right and wrong. And this president is demanding that they follow the path of falsehood and wrong, or face peril. – Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, January 24, 2020

Senator Whitehouse was responding to the manufactured outrage (and dissembling) of Republican Senators to Adam Schiff’s reading a quotation from the mainstream media. “CBS News reported last night that a Trump confidant said that key senators were warned, ‘Vote against the president and your head will be on a pike.’”

There were reports of gasps from the Republican side of the aisle. Senator Susan Collins of Maine was seen shaking her head and could be heard from gallery repeating, “That’s not true,” several times. Later she said, “I know of no Republican Senator who has been threatened in any way by anyone in the Administration.”

“None of us have been told that. That’s insulting and demeaning to everyone to say that we somehow live in fear and that the president has threatened all of us.” – Senator James Lankford of Oaklahoma

The fear of Washington Republicans – in both the House and the Senate – at the possibility of Trump turning on them when they seek re-nomination in a Republican primary is one of the most unshakable facts of today’s GOP. Not giving Trump a reason to turn on them is a guiding principle.

Mark Sanford, Jeff Flake, and Bob Corker all felt Donald Trump’s ire. None remain in office. Trump owns the Republican Party. And – for every Republican who wishes to continue serving in the U.S. Senate after his or her next Republican primary election – Trump owns them regarding any issue he cares about.

The “head on a pike” quote, while pithy (and even demeaning), expresses a fundamental, inescapable truth – all disingenuous protests notwithstanding.

(Image: screengrab from Lincoln Project ad.)

Democracy, Donald Trump

“If right doesn’t matter, we’re lost. If the truth doesn’t matter, we’re lost.”

If right doesn’t matter, if right doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter how good the Constitution is. It doesn’t matter how brilliant the framers were. It doesn’t matter how good or bad our advocacy in this trial is. It doesn’t matter how well written the oath of impartiality is.

If right doesn’t matter, we’re lost. If the truth doesn’t matter, we’re lost.

The framers couldn’t protect us from ourselves, if right and truth don’t matter. And you know that what he did was not right. You know, that’s what they do in the old country — that Colonel Vindman’s father came from. Or the old country that my great-grandfather came from. Or the old countries that your ancestors came from, or maybe you came from.

But here right is supposed to matter. It’s what’s made us the greatest nation on earth. No constitution can protect us [if] right doesn’t matter anymore.

And you know you can’t trust this president to do what’s right for this country. You can trust he will do what’s right for Donald Trump. He’ll do it now. He’s done it before. He’ll do it for the next several months. He’ll do it in the election if he’s allowed to.

This is why, if you find him guilty, you must find that he should be removed. Because right matters. Because right matters. And the truth matters. Otherwise we are lost. – Adam Schiff, Thursday, January 23, 2020 

Democracy, Republicans, Tribalism

Never forget why Mitch McConnell decries partisanship, polarization and factionalism

The Senate Majority Leader, responding to impeachment this morning, decried partisanship, polarization, and (appropriating language from the Federalist Papers) factionalism:

If the Senate blesses this, if the nation accepts this, presidential impeachments may cease being a once in a generation event and become a constant part, a constant  part of the political background noise. This extraordinary tool of last resort may become just another part of the arms race of polarization.

Real statesmen would have recognized, no matter what their view of this president, that trying to remove him on this thin and partisan basis could unsettle the foundations of our republic. Real statesmen would have recognized, no matter how much partisan animosity might be coursing through their veins, that cheapening the impeachment process was not the answer.

Historians will regard this as a great irony of our era: that so many who profess such concern for our norms and traditions themselves proved willing to trample our constitutional order to get their way.

. . .

It is clear what this moment requires. It requires the Senate to fulfill our founding purpose. The framers built the Senate to provide stability. To take the long view of our republic. To safeguard institutions from the momentary hysteria that sometimes consumes our politics. To keep partisan passions from literally boiling over. The Senate exists for moments like this.

That’s why this body has the ultimate say in impeachment. The framers knew the House would be too vulnerable to transient passions and violent factionalism. They needed a body that would consider legal questions about what has been proven and political questions about what the common good of our nation require.

Hamilton said explicitly in Federalist 55 that impeachment involves not just legal questions but inherently political judgments about what outcome best serves the nation. The House can’t do both. The courts can’t do both. This is as grave an assignment as the Constitution gives to any branch of government. And the framers knew only the Senate could handle it.

Well, the moment the framers feared, has arrived. A political faction in the lower chamber have succumbed to partisan rage. A political faction in the House of Representatives has succumbed to a partisan rage. They have fulfilled Hamilton’s philosophy that impeachment will, quote “connect itself with the pre-existing factions … enlist all their animosities … and … there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by a comparative strength of parties than by the real demonstration of innocence or guilt.” Alexander Hamilton.

The key element in McConnell’s communication strategy is to increase and intensify partisanship, polarization, and factionalism.

This is a principle, masterfully executed, from McConnell’s well-worn playbook. He understands that bipartisanship benefits Democrats and disadvantages Republicans. He knows that dysfunction and lack of trust in government benefits Republicans. He is well-versed at creating at once narratives for both Fox News (and company) and the mainstream press. FNC will trumpet his words as self-evident truths, while the mainstream story will be more squabbling between the parties.

This principle – which seeks to divide the country ever more firmly into warring camps – underscores everything McConnell does and says when he laments the state of our politics.

Democrats, Republicans, Short & Sweet ... Short & Sour

Is a Democratic Senator’s hand wringing an abdication of responsibility?

A Democratic Senator expresses concerns that Mitch McConnell and the Republicans he leads may not uphold their responsibilities to conduct a fair, objective impeachment trial. Josh Marshall, observing that Republicans have openly embraced a contrary course of action, takes the Senator to task for not stating this plainly (“Terrible, Terrible, Terrible,” Talking Points Memo):

It is grievously irresponsible to be expressing “concerns” that Republicans may not do their job and uphold their responsibility as Senators. . . .

Republicans have made their intentions crystal clear. It is an abdication of responsibility not to state this clearly. Republicans have already decided to protect a lawless President from constitutional accountability. They’ve betrayed the constitution and their oaths. This is a point to make consistently over and over and over again. Because it is true. . . .

There’s nothing to be “concerned” about. Senate Republicans have made very clear there is no level of lawless behavior from this President that they will not defend. The public needs to know that. It needs to be said over and over. To say anything else, to express hopes this or that doesn’t happen when it already has happened only signals a damaging, demoralizing and shameful weakness.

(Image: U.S. Senate chamber circa 1873 via wikipedia.)

Democracy, Donald Trump

Congressional leaders differ on Constitutional responsibility and the conduct of the President

“I think this President is a coward when it comes to helping kids who are afraid of gun violence. I think he is cruel when he doesn’t deal with helping our Dreamers, of which we are very proud. I think he is in denial about the climate crisis. However, that’s about the election. This is about the election. Take it up in the election.

This is about the Constitution of the United States and the facts that lead to the President’s violation of his oath of office. And as a Catholic, I resent your using the word ‘hate’ in a sentence that addresses me. I don’t hate anyone. I was raised in a way that is a heart full of love and always pray for the President. And I still pray for the President. I pray for the President all the time. So don’t mess with me when it comes to words like that.” – Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House

“We’ll listen to the opening arguments by the House prosecutors. We’ll listen to the President’s lawyers’ response. And then we’ll have to make a decision about the way forward. And everything I do during this I’m coordinating with White House counsel. There will be no difference between the President’s position and our position as to how to handle this – to the extent that we can. We don’t have the kind of ball control on this that a typical issue, for example, comes over from the House, if I don’t like it, we don’t take it up.

We have no choice but to take it up, but we’ll be working through this process, hopefully in a fairly short period of time, in total coordination with the White House counsel’s office and the people who are representing the president in the well of the Senate.” – Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader

2020 General Election, Democracy, Donald Trump

Five Takeaways following the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment hearings

I. Putin’s authorship of the “Russia hoax.” II. Distinguishing a national security foreign policy channel and a channel dedicated to a domestic political errand. III. Closing statements from Ranking Member Nunes and Chairman Schiff. IV. What pushed Schiff to impeachment. V. Will Hurd can’t justify impeachment, as Justin Amash tries to nudge him in that direction.

I. In her opening statement before the committee, Fiona Hill, former Deputy Assistant to the President Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs, noted with dismay that Republicans on the committee, in denying Russian interference in the 2016 election, were fulfilling Vladimir Putin’s stratagem to weaken our country:

“Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country—and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.

The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies, confirmed in bipartisan Congressional reports. It is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified.

The impact of the successful 2016 Russian campaign remains evident today. Our nation is being torn apart. Truth is questioned. Our highly professional and expert career foreign service is being undermined.

U.S. support for Ukraine—which continues to face armed Russian aggression—has been politicized.

The Russian government’s goal is to weaken our country—to diminish America’s global role and to neutralize a perceived U.S. threat to Russian interests. President Putin and the Russian security services aim to counter U.S. foreign policy objectives in Europe, including in Ukraine, where Moscow wishes to reassert political and economic dominance.

I say this not as an alarmist, but as a realist. I do not think long-term conflict with Russia is either desirable or inevitable. I continue to believe that we need to seek ways of stabilizing our relationship with Moscow even as we counter their efforts to harm us. Right now, Russia’s security services and their proxies have geared up to repeat their interference in the 2020 election. We are running out of time to stop them. In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests.

As Republicans and Democrats have agreed for decades, Ukraine is a valued partner of the United States, and it plays an important role in our national security. And as I told this Committee last month, I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a U.S. adversary, and that Ukraine—not Russia—attacked us in 2016.

These fictions are harmful even if they are deployed for purely domestic political purposes. President Putin and the Russian security services operate like a Super PAC. They deploy millions of dollars to weaponize our own political opposition research and false narratives. When we are consumed by partisan rancor, we cannot combat these external forces as they seek to divide us against each another, degrade our institutions, and destroy the faith of the American people in our democracy.

I respect the work that this Congress does in carrying out its constitutional responsibilities, including in this inquiry, and I am here to help you to the best of my ability. If the President, or anyone else, impedes or subverts the national security of the United States in order to further domestic political or personal interests, that is more than worthy of your attention. But we must not let domestic politics stop us from defending ourselves against the foreign powers who truly wish us harm.”

II. In response to a question from minority counsel Steve Castor, Dr. Hill responded with a succinct delineation of the two policy channels the Trump administration was pursuing. After acknowledging her anger at Ambassador Sondland, she continued:

“And what I was angry about was that he wasn’t coordinating with us. I now actually realize, having listened to his deposition, that he was absolutely right. That he wasn’t coordinating with us because we weren’t doing the same thing that he was doing.

So I was upset with him that he wasn’t fully telling us about all of the meetings that he was having. And he said to me: “But I’m briefing the president. I’m briefing Chief of staff Mulvaney. I’m briefing Secretary Pompeo. And I’ve talked to Ambassador Bolton. Who else do I have to deal with?”

And the point is, we have a robust interagency process that deals with Ukraine. It includes Mr. Holmes. It includes Ambassador Taylor as the chargé in Ukraine. It includes a whole load of other people. But it struck me when—yesterday—when you put up on the screen Ambassador Sondland’s emails, and who was on these emails and he said, “These the people need to know,” that he was absolutely right. Because he was being involved in a domestic political errand. And we were being involved in national security foreign policy. And those two things had just diverged. 

So he was correct.

And I had not put my finger on that at the moment, but I was irritated with him and angry with him that he wasn’t fully coordinating. And I did say to him, Ambassador Sondland—Gordon, I think this is all going to blow up. And here we are.

And after I left to my next meeting, our director for the European Union talked to him much further for a full half-hour or more later, trying to ask him about how we could coordinate better or how others could coordinate better after I had left the office. And his feeling was that the National Security Council was always trying to block him.

What we were trying to do was block us from straying into domestic or personal politics. And that was precisely what I was trying to do.

But Ambassador Sondland is not wrong that he had been given a different remit than we had been.

And it was at that moment that I started to realize how those things have diverged. And I realized, in fact, that I wasn’t really being fair to Ambassador Sondland because he was carrying out what he thought he had been instructed to carry out. And we were doing something that we thought was just as or perhaps even more important, but it wasn’t in the same channel.”

III. Mr. Nunes, in his closing statement, offered a timeline that made no reference to any testimony from the public hearings over the past two weeks. Replete with references to the Steele dossier, a coup, “the Russia hoax,” “the so-called whistleblower,” “secret depositions and mid-hearing press conferences,” and “a show trial,” the gentleman from California condemned Democrats, the media, executive branch officials, James Comey, and the FBI, and complained that tyranny of the majority had led to “a process that was grossly unfair.”

Throughout the hearings, as Adam Schiff noted, Republicans attempted to smear and demean witnesses, while failing to raise substantive questions about their testimony. Witness after witness offered accounts without any refutation. In the words of the chairman, “So much of this is really undisputed.”

Mr. Schiff then reviewed and knocked down the various ‘defenses’ Republicans have offered for Trump, and finally lands on the I’m-not-a-crook defense (which comes to the fore because Donald Trump spoke the words, “No quid pro quo”):

“You said it and, I guess, that’s the end of it.

Well, the only thing we can say is that it’s not so much that this situation is different in terms of Nixon’s conduct and Trump’s conduct. What we have seen here is far more serious than a third-rate burglary of the Democratic headquarters. What we’re talking about here is the withholding of recognition in that White House meeting. The withholding of military aid to an ally at war. That is beyond anything that Nixon did.

The difference between then and now is not the difference between Nixon and Trump. It’s the difference between that Congress and this one.

And so, we are asking, where is Howard Baker? Where is Howard Baker? Where are the people who willing to go beyond their party? To look to their duty? I was struck by Colonel Vindman’s testimony because he said that he acted out of duty. What is our duty here? That’s what we need to be asking.”

IV. Mr. Schiff concluded his statement with words about why he could “resist no more” the calls for an impeachment inquiry:

“It came down to the fact that the day after Bob Mueller testified. The day after Bob Mueller testified that Donald Trump invited Russian interference: Hey, Russia, if you’re listening, come get Hillary’s emails. And later that day, they tried to hack her server.

The day after he testified that not only did Trump invite that interference, but that he welcomed the help in the campaign. They made full use of it. They lied about it. They obstructed the investigation into it. And all this is in his testimony and his report.

The day after that Donald Trump is back on the phone asking another nation to involve itself in another U.S. election.

That says to me, this President believes he is above the law. Beyond accountability. And in my view there is nothing more dangerous than an unethical president who believes they are above the law. And I would just say to people watching here at home and around the world, in the words of my great colleague, ‘We are better than that.’ “

By the time he reaches the last four sentences of his remarks (finally concluding by quoting the late Elijah Cummings), and gavels the hearing to a close, Mr. Schiff is visibly angry.

V. Will Hurd, who is leaving the House without seeking reelection and is the lone Republican on the panel who was regarded as a possible vote to send Articles of Impeachment to the Senate, rejected that course of action on Friday:

“An impeachable offense should be compelling, overwhelmingly clear, and unambiguous. And it’s not something to be rushed or taken lightly. I’ve not heard evidence proving the President committed bribery or extortion.”

His colleague Justin Amash, who has left the Republican Party, offered a reply that is highly unlikely to resonate with any current Republican Members of Congress:

“With respect, my friend @HurdOnTheHill applies the wrong standard. House impeachment is an indictment, not a conviction. The question in the House is whether there is probable cause to charge President Trump with an impeachable offense. The answer to that question is clearly yes. “

Democracy, Off the Rails, Tribalism

Worlds collide, truth fractures — the Lesson on Day One of the public impeachment hearings

The nation is divided. The opposing sides cannot even agree on plain as day, garden variety, eyes wide open facts. Yesterday, from my vantage point, the evidence presented by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent and Ambassador William Taylor was devastating for President Donald Trump.

Rank and file Republicans, who buy into the world according to Fox News Channel, didn’t see the same thing. Meanwhile even Republican Congressmen who don’t push unhinged conspiracy theories, fail to push back against them. And this (as Ronald Brownstein points out) suggests that the rule of law across party lines is endangered.

Screenshots by Danielle Misiak via Mother Jones.

“The larger question the hearings may raise, then, is whether the partisan divide has widened to the point where Republican voters and elected officials alike will not consider valid any process controlled by Democrats, no matter how powerful the evidence it produces. If that’s the case, it points toward a future in which partisan loyalties eclipse, to a growing extent, any shared national commitment to applying the rule of law across party lines. Even given the decades-long rise in political polarization, such a rejection of common standards would constitute an ominous threshold for the nation to cross. . . .

The willingness of rank-and-file Republican voters to dismiss the concerns of such nonpartisan voices underscores the extent to which the party has grown resistant to outside information that challenges its ideological preferences…. [argument attributed to Alan Abramowitz, political scientist at Emory University] . . .

A recent survey by the Public Religion Research Institute found that the roughly 45 percent of Republicans who identified Fox as their primary news source expressed nearly unbroken opposition to impeachment. Just 2 percent of Fox-dependent Republicans said they back Trump’s removal, compared with 10 percent of those who don’t rely on the network, the poll found. The indifferent response to the evidence against Trump on Ukraine “is maybe the best example so far of how the Fox News bubble just totally consumes a different reality—which, of course, is not actually reality….” [quotation from Andrew Baumann, Democratic pollster] . . .

In that environment, it’s easy for Trump to convince much of his base that any charge against him—even allegations from nonpartisan diplomats and national-security professionals—is inherently a liberal plot to silence him and his supporters. Very few Republican elected officials have challenged that conspiratorial argument.” — Ronald Brownstein, “Just How Far Will Republicans Go for Trump?“

Conservatives with convictions that don’t budge because the political winds change direction, who have been loyal Republicans but can’t deny Donald Trump’s unfitness as a leader, are horrified by their party’s opportunistic embrace of the man. Peter Wehner served in the Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush administrations. He couldn’t bear the thought of voting for Hillary Clinton; he laments the “increasingly radicalized” Democratic Party. But he sees with clear eyes the GOP circa 2019:

“What makes the Trump era so unusual isn’t partisanship and political tribalism, which have been around for much of human existence. It is the degree to which the transgressive nature of Trump—his willingness to go places no other president has gone, to say and do things that no president before him has done—has exposed the Republican Party. There is hardly a pretense any more regarding what the party, and the right-wing media complex, are doing. They are driven by a single, all-consuming commitment: Defend Donald Trump at all costs. That is the end they seek, and they will pursue virtually any means necessary to achieve it. This from the party that once said it stood for objective truth, for honor and integrity, and against moral relativism.

We are facing a profound political crisis. What the Republican Party is saying and signaling isn’t simply that rationality and truth are subordinate to partisanship; it is that they have to be obliterated for the sake of partisanship and the survival of the Trump presidency. As best I can tell, based on some fairly intense interactions with Trump supporters, there is no limiting principle—almost nothing he can do—that will forfeit their support. Members of Congress clearly believe Trump is all that stands between them and the loss of power, while many Trump voters believe the president is all that stands between them and national ruin. In either case, it has led them into the shadowlands.” . . .

“The Republican Party under Donald Trump is a party built largely on lies, and it is now maintained by politicians and supporters who are willing to “live within the lie,” to quote the great Czech dissident (and later president) Vaclav Havel. Many congressional Republicans privately admit this but, with very rare exceptions—Utah Senator Mitt Romney is the most conspicuous example—refuse to publicly acknowledge it.

“For what purpose?” they respond point-blank when asked why they don’t speak out with moral urgency against the president’s moral transgressions, his cruelty, his daily assault on reality, and his ongoing destruction of our civic and political culture. Trump is more powerful and more popular than they are, they will say, and they will be targeted by him and his supporters and perhaps even voted out of office.” — Peter Wehner, “The Exposure of the Republican Party“

(Image above headline: CNN on YouTube.)