Televised political conventions are inherently propagandistic; however, the backdrop of the coronavirus, The Benighted One’s exploitation of the Executive Mansion as a prop, and the hyperbolic expressions of fealty to His Sublimity, along with shaky production values, placed the 2020 Republican National Convention in its own subgenre. The unpublished letter below was written in response to The Washington Post’s account of the event.
Toluse Olorunnipa, “In Prime Time An Alternate Reality That Bolsters a Flagging Campaign,” The Washington Post, 28 August 2020, A1, A17 (www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-convention-falsehoods/2020/08/27/41a07f5a-e888-11ea-970a-64c73a1c2392_story.html).
And so the Republican National Convention has mercifully concluded. Toluse Olorunnipa ably exposes the convention’s dishonesty and the political desperation driving it. Beyond this, perhaps the convention’s most disturbing quality is how unsurprising it was.
Is anyone shocked that the clownish enablers who have flocked to Mr. Trump’s campaign would subject the nation to a bloated, low-rent analogue to Leni Riefenstahl’s The Triumph of the Will? Ms. Riefenstahl, whatever her defects, was a talented filmmaker able to impart a cinematic sheen to appalling totalitarian dreck. Even this dubious achievement evaded the Republican National Committee. It should be remembered that Ms. Riefenstahl, despite her considerable moviemaking skill, could not disguise the profound smallness of her subject and she indeed, regardless of her intentions, made apparent the banality of evil. The ham-fisted, reality-television-addled doyens of Trumplandia could not help but do the same. It is to be hoped that voters will not be deceived by Mr. Trump’s deluded medicine show.
Former Attorney General William Barr had his defenders. Whether Thorazine should be prescribed to address their sapiential disarrangement and their tenuous contact with reality makes for good cocktail conversation. Maybe they’re just cynical and dishonest. Whatever the case, onetime acting Attorney General George T. Terwilliger III’s portrayal of William Barr as a paragon of rectitude and the lion of rule of law was perhaps the zenith of Barr apologetics. Then again, Mr. Terwilliger’s balletic skirting of inconvenient, displeasing facts is perhaps a primer on the genesis of the proclivities fueling Trumpism. The Former Fabricator in Chief is not the aberration that GOP worthies would have everyone believe he is. A letter was sent to The Washington Post.
George Terwilliger III, “Barr Acted by the Book,” The Washington Post, 19 April 2019, A15 (www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/william-barr-did-this-nation-a-great-service-he-shouldnt-be-attacked/2019/04/18/a2e83760-6221-11e9-9412-daf3d2e67c6d_story.html).
“Fallout from the Mueller Report,” The Washington Post, 24 April 2019, A22 (www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-mueller-report-is-out-now-what/2019/04/23/cbcaab9a-6537-11e9-a698-2a8f808c9cfb_story.html).
President Sword Dance is a transparently defective human being, but that’s not to suggest that he doesn’t possess a singular talent. His capacity to up the ante on public degeneracy is nonpareil. In autumn 2018, the Saudis, apparently by order of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, converted their consulate in Istanbul into an abattoir. American resident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi was slaughtered, perhaps vivisected, because he had offended the prince’s delicate sensibilities (i.e., spoken truth to power). President Glow-Orb’s whitewashing of the matter was an appalling example of the potential convergence of his fanboy-level adoration of autocrats, his personal financial interests, and his transactional understanding of all relationships, whether personal, business, or diplomatic. Josh Dawsey, Shane Harris, and Karen DeYoung – reporters for The Washington Post – covered Mr. Trump’s apologia for Mr. Bin Salman; the story was picked up by The Richmond Times-Dispatch and a letter was dispatched.
Josh Dawsey, Shane Harris, and Karen DeYoung, “Trump Says Case Closed in Death of Khashoggi,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 21 November 2018, B5; “Trump Calls Saudi Arabia a ‘Great Ally,’ Discounts Crown Prince’s Responsibility for Khashoggi’s Death,” The Washington Post, 20 November 2018 (www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-defends-saudia-arabias-denial-about-the-planning-of-khashoggis-death/2018/11/20/b64d2cc6-eceb-11e8-9236-bb94154151d2_story.html). If The Richmond Times-Dispatch posted an online version of this article, its search engine is unable to locate it. The link above is to the version that appeared the The Washington Post.
Any uncertainty about President Trump’s affinity for authoritarians vanished with his bestowal of diplomatic absolution onto Mohammed bin Salman in the death of Jamal Khashoggi. His disjointed jeremiad – evocative of a college sophomore’s caffeine-fueled all-nighter with a superhero comic book’s sensibility – exposes his moral bankruptcy. His conduct appears even more tawdry if, as reported, the statement’s release proceeded despite a CIA report implicating bin Salman; furthermore, the president’s alleged willingness to surrender Fethullah Gulen to Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan to benefit bin Salman is superlatively cynical [1].
A thread runs through this: Trump’s incapacity to view any relationship through a non-transactional lens. Economic advantage must not be the sole driver of foreign policy. Soft power and moral suasion, the will and stature to condemn moral enormities credibly, are crucial and Trump squanders this. Why, moreover, does Trump deem bin Salman indispensable? There is no dearth of other Saudi princelings not ensnared in murder and mayhem. Does Trump’s official relationship with the Saudis meander into his personal affairs? Jared Kushner’s diplomatic canoodling with bin Salman, his pursuit of loans from Qatar, his support of the Qatar blockade, and bin Salman’s belief he has Kushner “in his pocket” [2] are not hallmarks of a diplomatic fair broker, nor is Trump’s assertion that “. . .I like the Saudis. I make money with them. They buy all sorts of my stuff. . . .They pay me millions and hundreds of millions.” [3] Trump’s recent denial of business dealings in the kingdom invites public scrutiny of his finances.
Trump bookends apologias for authoritarian rulers with bullying of allies and further attenuates the nation’s influence. Implicit in Guy Lawson’s analysis of Trump’s treatment of Canada is a truth Trump and his GOP enablers should ponder: Bullies rarely feel remorse while the bullied never forget indignities rained on them. [4]
[1] Tucker Higgins, “To Ease Turkish Anger over Journalist’s Killing, White House Considers Extraditing an Enemy of Erdogan: NBC,” CNBC, 16 October 2018 (www.cnbc.com/2018/11/15/trump-admin-considers-khashoggi-murder-trying-to-extradite-gulen.html [accessed 22 November 2018]).
[2] Julian Borger, “A Tale of Two Houses: How Jared Kushner Fuelled the Trump-Saudi Love-In,” The Guardian, 16 October 2018 (www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/16/jared-kushner-trump-saudi-khashoggi-mbs [accessed 23 November 2018]); Jessica Kwong, “Jared Kushner Backed Qatar Blockade a Month After Qataris Wouldn’t Finance His Property: Report,” Newsweek, 2 March 2018 (www.newsweek.com/jared-kushner-backed-Qatar-blockade-after-Qataris-wouldnt-finance-his-property-828847 [accessed 23 November 2018]); Alex Emmons, Ryan Grim, and Clayton Swisher, “Saudi Crown Prince Boasted That Jared Kushner Was ‘In His Pocket,’” The Intercept, 21 March 2018 [ https://theintercept.com/2018/03/21/jared-kushner-saudi-crown-prince-mohammed-bin-salman/, (accessed 23 November 2018)].
[3] John Kruzel, “Donald Trump’s Claim of ‘No Financial Interests’ in Saudi Arabia? That’s Half True at Best,” Politifact, 18 October 2018 (www.politifact.com/factchecks/2018/oct/18/donald-trump/donald-trumps-claim-no-financial-interests-saudi-a/ [accessed 20 November 2018]). [4] Guy Lawson, “First Canada Tried to Charm Trump. Now It’s Fighting Back,” The New York Times Magazine, 9 June 2018 (www.nytimes.com/2018/06/09/magazine/justin-trudeau-chrystia-freeland-trade-canada-us-.html [accessed 23-xi-18]).
After the 2018 midterm elections, President Good People on Both Sides took not days but just hours to send Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III back to Alabama. The dream was had ended for Mr. Sessions. It was a pleasure to see him depart; however, concern arose that his exile from the Trump archipelago represented the initiation of a purge that would endanger the Special Counsel’s investigation. The axing of the Gollum of the South and the elevation of the sycophantic Matt Whitaker to acting attorney general led Indivisible and other activists to stage protests across the country to demand that Robert Mueller be kept in place; I attended one in front of Richmond’s federal building. I sent a letter to The Washington Post in response to its reporting of Mr. Session’s banishment.
Devlin Barrett, Matt Zapotosky, and Josh Dawsey, “Trump Forces Sessions Out as Attorney General,” The Washington Post, 8 November 2018, A1, A10 (www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/attorney-general-jeff-sessions-resigns-at-trumps-request/2018/11/07/d1b7a214-e144-11e8-ab2c-b31dcd53ca6b_story.html).
“Exit Mr. Sessions, Enter Chaos,” The Washington Post, 11 November 2018, A26 (www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/jeff-sessions-exits-chaos-enters/2018/11/09/27e2351e-e38e-11e8-ba30-a7ded04d8fac_story.html). (Scroll down).
My Better Half and I found ourselves, as per custom, in Portsmouth-Norfolk for the Fourth of July holiday. On the day, we bought a copy of The Washington Post. It contained an editorial by Meghan McArdle on how to modulate one’s nationalism properly. I doubt that I can add anything to what others have said about Ms. McArdle. I thought the op-ed was clueless and wrote a letter to that effect. The Washington Post exercised a peremptory strike against it.
Megan McArdle, “The Nationalism We Need,” The Washington Post, 4 July 2018, A17 (www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/america-needs-more-patriotism/2018/07/03/aa16f54e-7f00-11e8-b0ef-fffcabeff946_story.html).
Megan McArdle’s political myopia is rivaled only by her capacity to frame a specious equivalence. Her exhortation that all genuflect to national symbols to preserve American unity is absurd. She conveniently forgets that labeling political opponents as unpatriotic is a particular impulse of the right and long predates the current moment. Is it difficult to draw a line from George H. W. Bush’s vow to be the “pledge-of-allegiance president” to Sarah Palin’s courting of “real Americans,” then to the political zero-sumism of the Tea Party movement and House Freedom Caucus, and then finally to the current chief executive’s casual demonization of all dissenters without gainsay from a supine national GOP? When Mr. Trump applies the Stalinist pejorative “enemy of the state” to a free press, blithely obliterates democratic norms, and openly admires dictatorial rulers, open expression of dissent is not only patriotic but also a bulwark against creeping authoritarianism. Will Ms. McArdle next propose a national loyalty oath to sustain our tribal cohesion?
With the indictments in late October 2017 of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, as well as the guilty plea of “coffee boy” George Papadopoulos for false statements to the FBI, it became more difficult for GOP luminaries to call the Mueller investigation baseless. This did nothing to whet their appetite to hold forth publicly. The fear of offending The Grand Pooh Bah was well ingrained a year into the Trump era.
The Washington Post detailed the evasions concocted by the Republicans and their craven reluctance to face the press. The letter comments on these proclivities sarcastically.
Karoun Demirjian and Sean Sullivan, “GOP Leaders’ Strategy: Avoidance,” The Washington Post, 31 October 2017, A6 (www.washingtonpost.com/wp-stat/tablet/v1.1/20171031/A06_RE_EZ_DAILY_20171031.pdf).
“The GOP’s Disheartening Response,” The Washington Post, 3 November 2017, A20 (www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-gops-disheartening-lack-of-courage/2017/11/02/f362e084-bf4b-11e7-9294-705f80164f6e_story.html).
Editors have been gentle in tweaking my submissions; however, a phrase was dropped from this letter, probably because it’s pretentiously obnoxious. The obnoxiousness warrants its preservation. Here’s the unredacted sentence:
“GOP senators and congressmen, many of whom doubtless see Churchill or Thatcher in the mirror during their morning ablutions, offer a dispiriting spectacle. . .”
Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III was the gift that kept on giving, until he didn’t. His elevation to Generalissimo El Trumpo’s – apologies to Ted Rall – cabinet left his Senate seat open. The GOP primary to fill it was a freak show. Yet, it was more than a freak show. It was a syllabus of the Republican Party’s vices and the race grew more perverse as it proceeded. The revelation of “Judge” Roy Moore’s alleged high regard for young, delightfully young, women came later. On the plus side, the GOP tomfoolery opened the lane for Doug Jones to secure the seat, a good, albeit temporary, outcome. The Washington Post passed on this missive too. I can’t image why, he mutters to himself once again ironically.
Robert Costa, “Trump’s Fraying Relationship with GOP Colors Ala. Special Election,” The Washington Post, 14 August 2017, A1, A4 (www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/trumps-feuding-base-faces-showdown-in-alabama-senate-race/2017/08/13/b37a6f24-7ed6-11e7-83c7-5bd5460f0d7e_story.html).
Perhaps the special election for the US Senate seat in Alabama would be a sadly amusing farce were it not an image in microcosm of the maladies besetting the GOP: a religious bigot and homophobe (former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore) vies with a Tea Party zealot (US Congressman Mo Brooks) to unseat a hard-right apparatchik (US Senator Luther Strange) installed by a rank family-values hypocrite (former Alabama Governor Robert Bentley) to serve in place of an unqualified and ethically compromised US Attorney General (Jefferson Beauregard Sessions) who may have perjured himself in his confirmation hearing, each candidate kowtowing to Mr. Trump for his endorsement, each candidate posturing as more Trumpian than Trump. This reality is made sadder by the probability that the Republican Party primary may as well be the election itself in deep red Alabama. With candidates and a political culture such as these, how can President Obama’s forlorn wish for the breaking of the GOP’s “fever” ever be realized?
Nothing appeals more than spewing invective into the vicinity of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III. In a rational world, Mr. Sessions would never have been confirmed as attorney general. He is the same man who couldn’t pass muster for a federal judgeship in 1986 because of his bigotry. Was it to be supposed that he grew more tolerant in the interim? Anyway, he had the brass ring in a death grip and it would have to be prized from his fingers. It may have been just as well that he remained in place for a while if it ensured that the country would endure less of William Barr or someone worse. Mr. Sessions is a mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging doofus. William Barr is competently malevolent. There remains little sport in lambasting Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III. It’s the rhetorical equivalent of shooting catfish in a barrel. The Washington Post passed on this response to its news reporting. I can’t imagine why, he says to himself ironically.
Robert Costa, Sari Horwitz, and Matt Zapotosky, “Jeff Sessions Says He Plans to Stay in Role, Despite Trump’s Comments about Him,” The Washington Post, 20 July 2017 (www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/attorney-general-jeff-sessions-says-he-plans-to-stay-in-role-despite-trumps-comments-about-him/2017/07/20/527e53d4-6d51-11e7-9c15-177740635e83_story.html).
Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III’s determination to remain U. S. Attorney General is unfortunate. Mr. Sessions’ antediluvian attitude toward voting rights, his antipathy toward immigrants, and his resolve to resuscitate a failed war on drugs should have disqualified him from the office. He has blemished the position by enabling Mr. Trump’s basest, most autocratic impulses. His lone unsordid act – recusal from the investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election – was not motivated by principle but by backlash against his dissembling under oath.
In the face of Mr. Trump’s recent and somewhat bizarre criticism of him, integrity demands that Mr. Sessions resign. Nothing indeed would so become Mr. Sessions in his time as Attorney General as his leaving of it, if he can muster sufficient principle to use his departure to make a statement: the Attorney General serves at the President’s will but is not and cannot be the chief executive’s lackey.
An open question during the first days of the Trump administration began to be answered early on. The fallout from the exile of FBI Director James Comey was clarifying. Hard on the heels of Mr. Comey’s dismissal it emerged that The Dear Leader possibly divulged classified material from Israeli sources to Russia’s US Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavarov. The public then learned of His Eminence’s alleged buttonholing of Mr. Comey to press for quashing the FBI probe of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s contacts with the Russians. Would the national Republican Party, those rock-ribbed paragons of civic rectitude, check President Golf Cart’s authoritarian and self-dealing inclinations or would they submit to and become tacitly complicit in his antics? Would a rump of old school GOPers survive or would the Party of Trump devour the GOP tout entier?
The latter seemed more likely with each passing day. Some critical statements came from the usual Republican suspects – Senators Bob Corker, John McCain, Lindsey Graham (as a ventriloquist’s doll), and Ben Sasse and Representative Jason Chaffetz. From these, Mr. McCain belongs to the ages, Mr. Corker is retired, and Mr. Chaffetz fled Congress to become a Trumpy talking head on Fox News. And there is Mr. Graham, whose spine has proven detachable. The GOP leadership otherwise seemed determined to ignore The Fabulist in Chief’s behavior. A Patches O’Houlihan strategy was adopted to cope with a pesky press corps: “Dodge, duck, dip, dive, dodge.” The letter addresses the Party of Benghazi’s hesitancy to look at these matters.
Elise Viebeck, Sean Sullivan, and Mike DeBonis, “Controversies Rattle Hill Republicans,” The Washington Post, 17 May 2017, A7 (www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/lawmakers-to-trump-turn-over-transcript-of-meeting-with-russians/2017/05/16/e9b6deb6-3a3d-11e7-9e48-c4f199710b69_story.html).
It is understandable that the GOP’s congressional wing is “rattled” by President Trump’s grave missteps; however, mumbling, noncommittal responses, temporizing, and inaction are no longer acceptable.
Strong statements made by some GOP senators – Messrs. Corker, McCain, Graham, Sasse, et al. – have been welcome but these sentiments must now be translated into concrete action. It is noteworthy that the lone GOP committee chair thus far to demand Mr. Comey’s memoranda, Mr. Chaffetz, is not seeking reelection. Is resignation the GOP’s precondition for political courage?
The near silence of the GOP’s congressional leadership speaks loudly. Majority Leader McConnell should for a moment cease to be the “Bluegrass Machiavelli” and Speaker Ryan should endeavor not to live down to Charlie Pierce’s recent characterization of him as an “intellectual invertebrate” (Chris Hayes, “All In,” MSNBC, May 16, 2017). They should jointly support the call for an independent investigation of the Russian affair and for open public testimony by Mr. Comey before the appropriate committees. The calculus of political advantage must yield to the national interest and the people’s right to know.
This is another failed response to a news story, in this instance what historians will likely view as a milestone of the Trump regime, the sacking of FBI Director James Comey. The axing of Mr. Comey, for whom I have no great regard, is wedded in memory with a personal event. The news broke while I was killing time in a waiting room as My Beloved was undergoing laparoscopy on a knee. During her convalescence, the wall-to-wall cable news coverage of the Comey dismissal was our principal diversion.
The event afforded me another opportunity to take a swipe at the appalling Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III. By acceding to the Mr. Comey’s banishment, the attorney general undid his lone virtuous act, his honoring of the Office of Legal Counsel’s advice to recuse himself from oversight of the Department of Justice’s probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 election. It seemed clear that canning the FBI director was intended to hobble the investigation by other means. It was becoming evident by this juncture that neither competence nor honesty nor respect for rule of law would be the métier of Trumpian governance.
The unpublished letter is a standard response to the situation. It does contain a misstep in form, an allusion to another letter that had been published. No one cares about that; however, it indicates how exercised I was by Mr. Sessions’ tenure as attorney general.
Ellen Nakashima and Matt Zapotosky, “Trump Fires FBI Director,” The Washington Post, 10 May 2017, A1, A4 (www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/comeys-removal-sparks-fears-about-future-of-russia-probe/2017/05/09/013d9ade-3507-11e7-b412-62beef8121f7_story.html).
My recent letter (“Mr. McCain’s Words and Actions,” Washington Post, February 2, 2017) implored Senator John McCain to match his fair criticism of President Trump with action by voting against the most troubling of the president’s cabinet nominees, among them former Senator Jeff Sessions.
Attorney General Sessions’ involvement in the dismissal of FBI Director James Comey – notwithstanding Mr. Session’s recusal of himself from the FBI’s examination of Russian meddling in the 2016 election – exposes the danger inherent in acceding to an unqualified, temperamentally unsuitable, and potentially compromised nominee.
It is imperative that Republicans resist Mr. Trump’s baldly transparent effort to hamstring the FBI probe and stand with Democrats in calling for a special prosecutor to investigate potential links between the Trump campaign and Russia. Statesmanship and defense of the constitutional system must outweigh partisanship and the Senate must defend the government’s balance of power against a disingenuous and unscrupulous chief executive. Senator McCain and his Republican senatorial colleagues can perform signal service to the nation by joining with their Democratic counterparts.