Trump and Republicans are on the hunt for Real Crimes
Trump and Republicans are on the hunt for Real Crimes
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-law-and-order-party-has-some-peculiar-ideas-about-crime/2019/11/18/83c1687a-0a4b-11ea-bd9d-c628fd48b3a0_story.html?wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1
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According to Republicans’ airtight legal reasoning, nothing Trump does can be considered criminal because somebody else somewhere might be doing something worse. And just as O.J. Simpson pledged to search for the real killer, Trump and his fellow Republicans are on the hunt for the Real Crimes.
For instance: The Real Crime isn’t that Trump secretly withheld military aid to extort a desperate ally into announcing a sham investigation into a political rival. Heavens no. The Real Crime is that the public knows that this happened.
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Then finally there’s the Realest Crime of all: that Democrats might deign to hold Trump accountable through impeachment when an election is just a year away, as Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Tex.) and other Republicans have complained. Trump has claimed it’s a “coup” or an attempt to “steal” an election. Sometimes he seems to mean the 2016 election, sometimes 2020.
If Democrats truly believe Trump did something wrong, Republicans argue, the right way to test that thesis is at the ballot box.
There’s a bit of a Merrick-Garlandian-angle to this argument – i.e., that Congress’s constitutional duties disappear with some arbitrary degree of proximity to a presidential election. And, of course, waiting for the 2020 election to settle the matter seems particularly dodgy when the 2020 election is the very thing Trump has been trying to compromise through assistance from Ukraine, China and who knows what other countries.
No matter: that election clock is ticking. Therefore, any exercise of congressional oversight must mean a criminal coup is afoot.
Crime doesn’t pay, so they say. But whataboutism? As Trump keeps proving, that can be quite profitable.
