This @njagoda report, via @kylegriffin1, on the latest move in the legal battle over whether Trump can keep his tax records secret is as good a hook as any for a couple of basic observations about the context of this week's impeachment proceedings. Danger! Danger! Long thread!
There may not be any belief more important to the modern Republican Party than the belief that rich people should always have license to do what the rest of us may not. It's a belief not restricted to the GOP, but it has at least some competition within the Democratic Party.
It's never acceptable for most of us to cheat on our taxes, or attempt to hide evidence that we have. Republicans in Congress do not want to know if Trump has cheated on his taxes (or whether his taxes provide evidence of illegal conduct of some other kind), not just because...
....Trump is President, but because he is rich. Weakening the one federal agency empowered to enforce the tax laws, the Internal Revenue Service, has been a Republican priority for decades. Obviously, large GOP campaign donors are exclusively wealthy.
Republican politicians want to please people who give them large amounts of money. Human nature being what it is, the more such people are given, the more they want. And so the cycle of corruption, like the wind cycle of a strengthening hurricane, grows.
I think it's gone beyond just an issue of politicians servicing their benefactors by this time, however. Most wealthy Americans, after all, are not political donors; many of those who are don't give enough money to influence politicians directly.
We're looking, in addition to corruption, at class entitlement. This is as much a matter to deference TO the wealthy (specifically, by legislators and government officials) as it is a feeling OF the wealthy. Republican legislators think taxes on the wealthy should be cut...
....not only because they want to please their large campaign donors but because they feel wealthy Americans deserve it; their wealth signifies that they are better than the rest of us. This is a large component of Trump's appeal, and a reason for his iron grip on the GOP.
This means that Republicans in Congress naturally have no interest in forcing Trump to release his tax records. It's not something they would naturally ask of any wealthy American (or wealthy American corporation), other things being equal. It would not be their place to ask.
Class entitlement goes far beyond enforcement of the tax code. In a country nominally dedicated to the principle of equality before the law, the wealthy can use the American legal system to buy time: if a wealthy American happens to defraud a contractor, cheat a customer,....
....force himself on a woman, the legal system is his ally; it can allow him to extend the process of seeking redress far beyond the ability of plaintiffs to sustain their side of the argument. Trump is alleged to have done all these things before becoming President.
It is the legal system that inspires the convention to always use the word "alleged" when referring to conduct that is common knowledge, but has not been definitively resolved by a court (or, very often, multiple courts).
Without a court judgement, it's possible to pretend offenses against the law and common decency did not happen. Most of us don't have people pretending such a thing on our behalf, nor should we. Wealthy people in America nearly always do.
Trump certainly has, throughout his dodgy business career. There is a sour appropriateness -- well beyond sour, really -- in the fact that two of Trump's principal advocates on the Senate floor this week, Kenneth Starr and Alan Dershowitz, were both legal associates...
....of the notorious sex pervert and predator Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein himself, who was also a social companion of Trump's, was a particularly egregious beneficiary of the entitlement of wealth. The deference it bought enabled him to victimize more young women.
Without reckoning on the entitlement of wealth, it would shock us that people with such an association in their background should be involved with the President of the United States, let alone be his advocates in a trial of impeachment on the Senate floor.
But observe the reaction of Republican Senators to Starr and Dershowitz -- "oh, how distinguished! How impressive!" -- after tendentious and poorly researched presentations that argued for Trump, as President, being able to do whatever he wanted.
The obsequious groveling of Republican Senators makes a little more sense if one remembers their conditioning and current orientation. They think wealthy people should stretch every law as far as the legal system will allow it to go. It's natural law, from their point of view.
Of course, in the case of Trump as President, the matter is more complicated than this. A President has exponentially greater resources to obstruct justice at his disposal than even the wealthiest American outside the government, should he wish to use them. Trump is using them.
This, in an important sense, is what the impeachment trial is about: what should this President be able to do, that other Americans cannot? Abuse the power of a public office? Cheat to win an election? Solicit foreign help to cheat in an election?
Should a President be able to block witnesses from testifying, or keep documents from being examined -- by the House, by the Senate, by anyone? As he seeks to extend other legal proceedings against him in the courts far into the future,....
....should a President be able to shut down a trial of impeachment in the Senate? Republican Senators at this moment are virtually unanimous that the answer to all these questions should be "yes!". They would give the same answer if asked to opine on legal proceedings....
....against any of their wealthy donors, or against a corporation in their respective states. Republican Senators see such interests not merely as their financial benefactors, but as their social betters. It would take powerful evidence indeed to make them think otherwise.
One of the reasons I, along with @brianbeutler and many others, had hoped the House would impeach Trump for a broad range of impeachable conduct was that I knew Republican Senators would defend him against any charge no matter what the evidence.
Use of the Presidency for self-enrichment; the obstruction of justice extensively documented in the Mueller Report; abuse of authority to declare national emergencies to seize funds appropriated for defense to pay for Trump's stupid wall; his incessant lying to the public.
Had any or all of these been the basis of additional articles of impeachment, Republican Senators would have reacted precisely as they are reacting now -- not just wishing to acquit Trump as quickly as possible, but outraged that he should be accused.
I don't mean to suggest that the entitlement of wealth is the only pillar supporting Republican Senators' zeal to help Trump beat the rap. There are others, some of them even less worthy. I just don't think you can understand Republican Senators without understanding that.
The obsequious, fawning deference Republican Senators are showing Trump is an amplified version of how they would behave toward anyone with a lot of money and something they wanted from the government. It's an attitude that will still be around after Trump is gone. [end]
