As the swamp gets murkier and the atmosphere in our nation’s capital grows more sinister by the day, I was reminded this week of some stirring words written by Thomas Paine during another American crisis:
“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. “
Paine has been called “a corsetmaker by trade, a journalist by profession, and a propagandist by inclination.” British by birth, he is credited with inspiring rebels in both the American and the French Revolutions. His pamphlets Common Sense and The American Crisis were profoundly influential in uniting the American colonists to declare independence from Great Britain.
The above quotation, one of my long-time favorites, is excerpted from The American Crisis, written in 1776. Paine doesn’t diminish the magnitude of the enemy we fight, but he affirms the possibility of victory through the exercise of the best human qualities: dedication, perseverance, and love of freedom and justice.
Tyranny has returned to America, this time from the inside; freedom and justice are threatened on every hand. This is no time for “summer soldiers” and “sunshine patriots.” The conflict ahead will be hard, but the triumph will be glorious.
Week 16: every day a new bombshell. Let’s recap.
- The week began on a strongly positive note when Sally Yates, new American heroine, won a standing ovation from her fellow citizens for her masterful testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on crime and terrorism. She clearly and boldly spoke about what she knew, when she knew it, and when and how she informed the White House regarding Michael Flynn’s connections to Russia. Although many anticipated a no-surprises, anti-climactic testimony, in reality her testimony was anything but predictable and boring. It was, in fact, the first bombshell of the week. She told the committee of two in-person meetings which she initiated with White House Counsel Donald McGahn. She informed Mr. McGahn, in the presence of witnesses, that Flynn was lying to Mike Pence about his Russia contacts and that those lies placed him in a compromised position in which he could possibly be blackmailed by Russian authorities. Mr. McGahn’s response? Why is it any of the Department of Justice’s beeswax if one White House official lies to another? I see he has his boss’s capacity for intelligent thought.
- From heroism to treason, the rest of the Week 16 news cycle has been dominated by Trump’s Tuesday Massacre, his sudden firing of FBI Director James Comey, which Comey learned about the same way we did: by watching the news. Not only is 45 a soulless, unintelligent conman but he’s also a coward. Instead of doing the adult, presidential thing and facing Mr. Comey in person, Trump wrote a letter, which was hand delivered by his former personal bodyguard Keith Schiller to Comey’s office. Just one problem (one of many!): Comey wasn’t in his office. He was on the other side of the country, in Los Angeles, on FBI business. Among the many questions swirling about this bombshell is what the heck a former personal bodyguard is doing in the White House and why he is involved in official government business! CNN’s Michael D’Antonio reminds us: “Schiller’s last star turn involvedbullying newsman Jorge Ramos out of a Trump rally. Long a human security blanket for Trump, Schiller now hangs out at the White House. His appearance at FBI headquarters signaled that the buddies — Trump and Schiller — were in charge of this power play.” The strongman’s strongman. Scared yet?
- Next came the explanations. First, Trump’s staff cited a memo from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in which DT claimed Rosenstein recommended Comey’s firing and DT simply accepted the recommendation. The memo did mention Comey’s handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server during her term as Secretary of State but did not recommend firing Comey. Then reporters stated that this explanation was unraveling. Seriously? Was it ever raveled? Did anyone on the planet for a moment believe that Donald Trump—misanthropic, misogynistic, narcissistic, it’s-all-about-me Donald Trump—fired a high-level government official in defense of anyone else, let alone his political opponent? Especially when those actions are part of the reason DT is now in the White House? And especially when all of those things happened months ago? This pathetic excuse was nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to gain Democrats’ support for the firing, assuming their anger at Comey for his role in defeating Clinton would make them glad to see him get his comeuppance. Then the clueless orange one was shocked when Democrats were mad at him for firing Comey. As writer Michael D’Antonio puts it, “Like a boy who plays with matches and sets the back yard on fire, Trump has been surprised by the effects of his actions.” Well, at least he’s consistent on one thing: he’s always clueless.
- Wednesday’s revision stated that Trump had been considering firing Comey for months and that the DOJ recommendation was simply the incentive he needed to go ahead with it. His staff said he received the recommendation from Rosenstein because he had requested it, and Trump himself told reporters he fired Comey “because he wasn’t doing a good job.” Another day, another reason! Thursday’s version was given by Trump to NBC’s Lester Holt: “Oh, I was going to fire, regardless of recommendation. He [Rod Rosenstein] made a recommendation, he’s highly respected — very good guy, very smart guy. And the Democrats like him, Republicans like him. He made a recommendation, but regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey.” The rose garden should be especially beautiful this year with all of the fertilizer being produced in the White House!
- We should take note that between these last two revisions Rod Rosenstein reportedly pressed the White House Counsel to correct the misrepresentation of Rosenstein’s role in the firing; and according to some reports, he threatened to resign if a retraction was not made. It’s also worth noting that DT’s confession to Lester Holt was counterproductive to the efforts of DT’s staff to frame the most benign picture of the Comey firing. While they were each doing their best spins to make DT’s action look like something, anything, more than a childish fit of anger, Trump was as much as telling Holt that he did it in a childish fit of anger. As CNN’s Chris Cillizza puts it, “Trump imagines himself as the decider, the guy sitting in the boardroom and telling people ‘you’re fired!’ While the story of Rosenstein detailing the FBI’s issues with Comey in a memo to Trump and then Trump thoughtfully considering it before making a decision is clearly the best face to put on the situation, it doesn’t make the President central enough to the firing. Trump wants the credit. He wants everyone to know he had already made the decision to get rid of Comey before the Rosenstein memo. Because he’s the boss. He’s the guy who makes the calls. He doesn’t sit around and wait for memos from underlings.” Take that, Pence, Conway, Spicer, and Huckabee!
- By Friday morning, Trump was done trying to explain and tweeted his frustration in a pair of typical Trump doozies:
“As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy! . . .”
“. . . Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future ‘press briefings’ and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???”
Translation: “I’m such a busy guy, my staff and I can’t possibly keep our lies straight and consistent. So maybe if we just write it all out ahead of time, we can compare notes and do a more effective job of lying and misleading the American public and the world.”
Anyone still supporting this menace is complicit in our democracy’s decline.
- The words “most bizarre” have lost much of their meaning and impact in a time when every day’s headline happens to be the most bizarre thing anyone has ever heard, but this paragraph from Trump’s letter to Comey merits recognition as at least “one of the most bizarre” things we saw this week:
“While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau.”
This paragraph would be bizarre under any circumstances; but in light of Comey’s recent public revelation that Trump IS, in fact, under investigation, we’re left to draw one of several conclusions: Trump is lying in this statement (shock!), Comey lied to the public, or Comey lied to Trump. Whichever option you choose, the statement is the biggest clue to the real reason James Comey is no longer FBI Director: Trump is angry over Comey’s investigation into Trump’s Russia ties and possible collusion with Russia. When you’re the prez and someone is getting uncomfortably close to an inconvenient truth about you, you can just fire the guy. Bingo! I think we have our explanation. That was easy.
- Included in Trump’s Friday-morning tweet storm, along with the threat to cancel news briefings, is this little gem: “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!” Those conversations to which he alludes appear to have taken place during a dinner reported by the New York Times shortly after 45’s inauguration. According to the reports, during that dinner, “Mr. Trump asked Mr. Comey to pledge loyalty to him, which the F.B.I. Director refused to do.” According to other reports, Trump asked Comey whether Comey was investigating him (hence, the statement in the firing letter). Trump’s admission that he questioned the head of the FBI about an active investigation could score Trump an obstruction of justice charge, which would be good news, since that’s a sure ticket to impeachment. The fact is that for a supposedly innocent man, Trump is acting incredibly guilty. Just note the frequent use of descriptors like “agitated,” “angry,” “frustrated,” “furious,” and my personal favorite “spittle-flinging rage.” These hardly appear to be the actions of an innocent person. As my mom used to tell me, “Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”
- The day after he sacked our FBI Director, Trump held an Oval Office meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. The American press was barred from the meeting, allowing only the official White House photographer to record the event on the American side. The Russian press, on the other hand, was permitted to attend; and our first images came from TASS, the official Russian news agency. Now the White House is reportedly “furious” over the Russians’ release of the photos showing a smiling, jovial Trump looking very much at home with his Russian pals. “They tricked us. That’s the problem with Russians—they lie.” whined a White House spokesperson. Although the White House is saying the meeting had already been scheduled before Comey’s firing, it takes a special kind of brazenness or stupidity to go ahead with it one day after firing the top cop investigating Trump’s ties with Russia and to invite Sergey Kislyak, the guy who’s been at the center of multiple reports regarding Trump’s team and Russia. But when Vladimir Putin is the one “requesting” the meeting, those who are beholden to him dare not refuse, eh?
- I’ll close with this summary statement written by Michael Gerson, an opinion writer for the Washington Post:
“Trump seems to take pleasure in throwing acid into the face of convention. In his calls to lock up his electoral opponent; in his wink and a nod toward violence at his rallies; in his groundless accusations of being spied upon by his predecessor; in his Twitter taunting of congressional leaders; in his bold and obvious lies; in his dehumanization of migrants and refugees. Grace, dignity, empathy, integrity and kindness are stripped away, leaving the emperor naked but incapable of shame. Trump is the spendthrift of our public character, squandering an inheritance he does not understand or value.”
And these are the ways in which our “president” continues to humiliate us in the eyes of the world, earning himself the titles “Man-Baby” and “Boy President.” Tweet on, Donald! Keep using infantile names like “Pocahontas,” “Lyin’ Ted,” “Crooked Hillary,” “Crying Chuck Schumer,” and all the others. Enjoy your childish games now. The walls are closing in, and you know it better than anyone else does. I still recall watching Richard Nixon wave goodbye as he boarded the helicopter which took him away from our capital. I look forward to watching you do the same!
Here’s another favorite quotation by Thomas Paine, also from The American Crisis:
“What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.”
If freedom and justice were common and cheap, we wouldn’t value and cherish them nearly so much. They’re neither common nor cheap; they’re rare and have been purchased at an immense price. The congress which issued Thomas Jefferson’s brilliant Declaration of Independence pledged their support of that declaration in the closing line: “We mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” Let us not squander the celestial gift we’ve received from the thousands who have made good on that same pledge by placing their lives, their money, and their reputations in the common account to ensure the continuation of our democracy. There will be no rest until this battle is over.