James Hohmann of the Washington Post summarizes Trump’s calculated effort to destroy all oversight of his administration, including firing independent Inspectors General and refusing to send anyone to testify in hearings conducted by the House of Representatives. He believes he rules by divine right. He has all the makings of a fascist dictator. Do not be surprised if he cancels the November elections, because of this crisis. And do not be surprised if the Senate lets him. All they care about is power. The Constitution is just paper.
Hohmann writes:
The White House revealed on Monday that members of its coronavirus task force – and their deputies – are barred from testifying before Congress unless they get special permission from chief of staff Mark Meadows. The reason being given for blocking public health officials is that they’re busy trying to get control of a contagion that has now killed at least 68,172 and infected 1,175,000 Americans.
But this is just the latest in a growing list of power plays by President Trump to thwart congressional oversight and independent watchdogs from scrutinizing his administration’s response to the novel coronavirus and the way trillions of dollars are being distributed by the government.
A memo to congressional staff directors said this restriction on testimony also applies to the departments of Health and Human Services, Homeland Security and State. It decrees that committees are limited to no more than four virus-related hearings this month. “Given these competing demands in these unprecedented times, it is reasonable to expect that agencies will have to decline invitations to hearings to remain focused on implementing of COVID-19 response, including declining to participate in multiple hearings on the same or overlapping topics,” the memo states.
Last week, the White House blocked Tony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases official, from testifying before a House committee, which is controlled by Democrats. But Fauci received permission from Meadows to testify next week before the Senate’s health committee, which is controlled by Republicans…
Speaker Nancy Pelosi mocked the White House for saying that officials on the coronavirus task force are too busy to visit the Capitol when they’ve stood by Trump’s side for hours at a time as he’s held court on matters that had little to do with the contagion during news conferences. “The fact is that we need to allocate resources,” Pelosi (D-Calif.) said last night on CNN. “In order to do that, any appropriations bill must begin in the House and we have to have information to act upon. So the fact that they said, ‘We’re too busy being on TV to come to the Capitol’ is, well, business as usual for them. But it is not business that will be helpful to addressing this.”
Trump has also systematically sought to sideline inspectors general. Outside groups that advocate for transparency in government say Trump’s moves make a mockery of the watchdog system created after Richard Nixon’s resignation to prevent future presidents from Watergate-style abuses of power.
After 8 p.m. on Friday, Trump moved to replace the top watchdog at HHS. She released a report last month on shortages in testing and personal protective gear at hospitals that undercut his public insistence that there were no such shortages. Now he’s nominated a permanent inspector general to take the job away from Christi Grimm, the principal deputy inspector general who has run the office in an acting capacity since January. She’s worked there in a nonpolitical capacity as a career investigator and auditor since the 1990s, uncovering waste, fraud and abuse. A White House spokesman declined to comment about the move, citing personnel decisions. But Trump lashed out at Grimm on Twitter and during a news conference after she published her findings.
Late on another Friday night, April 3, Trump fired the intelligence community’s inspector general who complied with a legal obligation to notify Congress that an urgent and credible whistleblower complaint had been filed with his office. That complaint, which drew public attention to the president’s July 25 phone call with Ukraine’s president, led to Trump’s impeachment.
On April 7, Trump blocked the Defense Department’s then-acting inspector general from overseeing a panel of watchdogs created to oversee $2 trillion in spending related to the coronavirus response. He did this by replacing Glenn Fine, the acting Pentagon inspector general who had been selected by the other watchdogs to lead the group, with Sean O’Donnell, the inspector general at the Environmental Protection Agency. O’Donnell is now serving in both the EPA and Pentagon watchdog roles, which makes Fine ineligible to lead the pandemic response panel.
The president has also nominated one of his own lawyers at the White House, who was involved in defending Trump during the impeachment proceedings, to serve in the new role of Special Inspector General for Pandemic Recovery. That lawyer, Brian Miller, will appear before the Senate Banking Committee this afternoon for his confirmation hearing. In a draft of his opening statement, Miller promises to be fair and impartial. Democrats plan to press him on this. This will be the first in-person hearing related to the coronavirus response since the House and Senate mostly left town in March.
And now he has Barr in charge of law enforcement–Barr, who has long been a champion of a completely unfettered, imperial presidency.
This is all to be expected. Trump is a mobster, always has been. Mobsters don’t have watchdogs. They have capos who take orders.
Trump was so ignorant going into his presidency that he has been continually amazed at and frustrated by the checks on his power–by, you know, democracy.
With McConnell’s help, Trump is doing his best to eliminate all checks on his power. He thinks the Constitution made him
The emperor.
Exactly. It would be amusing (and tragic) watching Trump try to read the Constitution, wouldn’t it?
Re: reading Constitution: He’d get stuck on “We.” It’s not a word he understands. Just like “the” and “People.” But he’d never make it that far.
On the flip side, his loyal staff members are certainly making the circuit to control the message. I’ve heard two of them in the last few days on the Doctor Radio Coronavirus channel programming, and they both have been touting what a wonderful job Trump has done. They have even named him over and over in their interviews strangely…as if they’d been coached to do so. Doctor Radio is not a political organization and generally, the hosts will thwart any kind of political speak, but these people are not stopped from singing praises. I cannot tell you how disgusted I am with Marc Siegel who is running this programming for allowing it with the WH staff, but the minute another doctor says something that might be a criticism of how the WH is handling this, he reminds them not to get political. I can’t help but feel like he is letting Trump off easily for this mess. Perhaps there is some money or an endowment of sorts to NYU-Langone. Haven’t looked into it, yet.
That radio channel sounds one sided. Real doctors like Fauci are warning that things will get worse esp now with end to restrictions in most states, as infections and deaths continue to rise
There is, for example, the suppressed CDC report that predicts that we will have 200,000 new cases and 3,000 deaths PER DAY by June 1.
They have had Fauci and Redfield on and normally speak highly of them, but Siegel actually criticized Fauci as not being perfect on one of the programs I heard yesterday. We know that no science expert is perfect, but why mention him especially? They run the programming over and over all week, so I don’t know exactly which show it was since Monday’s programs are missing from the website today. I am actually gravely concerned when an outlet like Doctor Radio is allowing the sycophants to come on and say what they say. With so many followers like they have, they need to be more responsible. There’s a lot of “sucking up” to WH officials on these shows. I expected more from NYU-Langone, but everybody’s bread needs to be buttered in the end.
You can check it out online.
Many of the “talking heads” predicted this, as well as the Democrats during Trump’s impeachment trial . . . that if the Senate let Trump go, he would take it as his fascist mandate. Though Trump probably knows nothing about the history of fascism, he remains the embodiment of it.
Fascism is less a political theory than a set of personality disorders raised to the level of national power. The result, as Diane says, “The Constitution is just paper.” CBK
The scientists know that we aren’t anywhere near the peak, but Trump needs to have the economy humming along so he can run on that. So, he’s suppressing the truth about the pandemic. And Trump’s Mini Me in Flor-uh-duh, DeSantos, has ordered the state medical examiners to stop reporting coronavirus death counts “for privacy reasons.” Gotta get those cruise lines and Trump hotels back in operation!
Bob It’s the Dance of the Sociopaths we are watching–unless of course, it’s THEIR children they are referring to. On the other hand, with Trump, there’s always a bus nearby under which, I do believe, he’d throw anyone under. CBK
Mobsters are way into loyalty. To them.
Fascism.
Anyone who isn’t voting for whoever the Democratic nominee turns out to be is supporting fascism. And yes, those who were Aryan in Germany and claimed that they just couldn’t vote to remove Hitler if his replacement was not a perfect person were just as guilty as the Nazis who were so delighted to have those people who claimed not to be Hitler-lovers (but who clearly didn’t mind anything Hitler said enough to want him defeated) supporting their cause to make Hitler all powerful.
This year will be a transformative election. If your focus is on defeating the Democrat and not defeating Trump and his enabling neo-fascist Republican party, then you should own your own privilege. And your own enabling of fascism. Making that mistake one time is excusable. But when you double down on the mistake that has ALREADY led to the US judiciary being a right wing blocker of progressive legislation for likely decades, then you have lost any claim to caring about progressive issues. You have a different agenda.
There is only one way to stop this madness and it is voting for the Democrats.
Bernie Sanders has made this clear to his supporters, and those who disagree were never really his supporters and were clearly planning to trash Bernie as a sell-out and repeat all the ugly Republican attacks that were planned if he won the Democratic nomination. They have shown their true colors by their now saying that Bernie is not to be trusted at all and he is a lying sellout who supports evil Democrats because he is just as bad.
The vast majority of Bernie supporters trusted Bernie enough to vote for him for President, and absolutely trust Bernie enough to vote for the Democratic party to defeat all Republicans. The fair-weather Bernie supporters don’t trust Bernie enough to believe he is telling the truth about the dangers of Trump and those people were unlikely to vote for Bernie in the general election since those Bernie supporters have made it very clear that they doubt Bernie’s wisdom, they doubt Bernie’s integrity, and they doubt Bernie’s judgement. Sure, believe them when they tell you that the guy whose judgement and integrity they don’t trust is the guy they’d vote for if he was the nominee. They sound as truthful as Trump.
While you’re not the first to raise this specter up, Diane, the chances that the November election will be canceled or postponed by Trump are basically nil. He simply does not have the authority under either the law or the Constitution to take such an action and even if he tried, it wouldn’t work. The states run the national elections, so he’d have to get enough states to agree to get a majority of the electoral college vote eliminated for that to be effective, which won’t happen. He couldn’t otherwise cancel the election without the agreement of both houses of Congress, which he will never get. Congress alone under the Constitution determines the meeting of the electors and that has already been set by law (and will not be changed without the House agreeing) so no executive action can have any effect on it. Finally, the President’s term in office is set by the very first clause of Article II with no provision to allow it to be extended by any power of any branch of government. The constitutional roadblocks to Trump attempting this are just too great. Far too many people (including much of the military) would object and that would be the end of it.
I know we all want to think the worst of Trump, but this is beyond even his ability to disregard the law and the Constitution. What we need to be ready for is not a blatant attempt to stop the election, but a widespread attempt to subvert it by fraud, suppression, propaganda, and intimidation. That’s more Trump’s style anyway.
I hope you are correct, but I don’t think it’s as clear cut as you argue. The fact that the Idiot “does not have the authority under either the law or the Constitution to take such an action” hasn’t stopped him yet. The Senate enables, the House Republicans lay the groundwork. And I seriously question that the military would defy an order of martial law. But, as I wrote above, hoping you’re right and I’m wrong.
See “checks and balances” for further corroboration. Not working out so well.
So excellent!
It has been obvious since before Trump lied when he hovered his tiny hand over a Bible and took the Constitutional Oath of Office to become president back in January 2017, that his end-goal was to become the Putin of the United States and he has been working toward that goal without pause since then.
Of course, Trump is going to continue on this course and attempt to stop the election.
Trump already controls the federal justice system through his Attorney General William Barr, and Trump has repeatedly attacked any governors and state justice systems that stand in his way.
Trump seems to have some control over the five conservative justices in the U.S. Supreme Court. The odds are that even if the Supreme Court will not support Trump, Roberts and the other four conservative justices will do nothing to stop him.
With support from the small GOP majority in the Senate that Moscow Mitch leads, Trump has all but paralyzed the Congress.
If nothing stops Trump, the only options left will be:
the Military declares Martial Law and removes the Trump admiration from power in an attempt to eventually restore our Constitutional Republic.
or
If the Military does nothing, the country will probably explode in a bloody Civil War to get rid of Trump and his vile administration. The most violent fighting will take place in red states and spread from there as Trump supporters hit the streets hunting for Democrats and indie voters that do not support Trump. Many of those Democrats and indie voters will shoot back, because a significant number do own firearms, especially in rural areas.
Trump Think:
The more people die, the more it proves that China is behind Covid-19.
Is this not an example of tragical thinking?!