This week in implausible deniability

The power of denial and we continue to reap the whirlwind of GOP capitulation to Trump

“Doesn’t look like anything to me”

I sat down to write about the Richard Hanania fiasco—for those outside of the political commentariat bubble, yet another right-of-center intellectual has been outed as an inveterate racist, caught writing under a pseudonym—but as I tried to formulate my reaction, I realized it touched on too many of the longstanding problems I have with libertarians and race. Addressing those requires more time and space than Hanania himself is worth.

Suffice it to say, though, no one who was paying attention is shocked that this guy—author of the forthcoming The Origins of Woke—was racist:

These people=Black people.

My quick take is this: unless and until libertarians—as individuals and as institutions—prioritize separating themselves from racists, they will continue to find themselves in bed with and greatly diminished by them. 

Sadly, there is little reason to think libertarians will take even modest steps to do so. 

To further elaborate on this toxic relationship, I highly recommend this piece by Anthony Fisher at The Daily Beast that captures what it looked like from the inside:

There was a subset of us on what was heretofore known as the center-right who, pre-November 2016, warned our erstwhile allies and colleagues of what was likely to come.

We argued that the calls for violence, the unabashed racism, and the “oh-they-don’t-really-mean-it” footsie-games with dishonest, edgelord provocateurs would swallow anything positive and righteous. And besides, these things were simply wrong, against our stated principles, and it’s the height of cowardice to whitewash horrible ideas just because they’re coming from people that are popular with the same uber-wealthy donors who keep the lights on at almost every right-of-center journalistic outfit, think tank, and university center.

For the most part, we dissenters were waved off as overwrought tools of “the Cathedral” or squishes desperately seeking the approval of the “woke.” But we learned that pissing off the right’s big-money donors for writing too stridently about Trump’s racism could cost you your job. While reporting from the 2016 Republican National Convention, I was expressly forbidden from writing for a libertarian outlet about a notoriously racist and Islamophobic pro-Trump event—where “friendly” donors and fellow travelers just happened to be lounging in the VIP area.

Read the whole thing here.

There is no good argument for not prosecuting Trump

In Tuesday’s New York Times, Jack Goldsmith warns that a Democratic administration prosecuting Trump while he is the front-runner for the Republican nomination could lead to terrible consequences for the Department of Justice as an institution and the government as a whole. He writes: 

[T]he Justice Department, however pure its motivations, will probably emerge from this prosecution viewed as an irretrievably politicized institution by a large chunk of the country. The department has been on a downward spiral because of its serial mistakes in high-profile contexts, accompanied by sharp political attacks from Mr. Trump and others on the right. Its predicament will now very likely grow much worse because the consequences of its election-fraud prosecution are so large, the taint of its past actions is so great and the potential outcome for Mr. Biden is too favorable.

The prosecution may well have terrible consequences beyond the department for our politics and the rule of law. It will probably inspire ever more aggressive tit-for-tat investigations of presidential actions in office by future Congresses and by administrations of the opposing party, to the detriment of sound government.It may also exacerbate the criminalization of politics. 

Goldsmith is absolutely correct that our institutions are under direct threat and that, just a few years from now, a Republican DOJ could do the same to a Democratic—or other Republican—challenger on far more dubious charges. 

But the danger and constitutional crisis were not created by this last-resort accountability mechanism of criminal prosecution; they come from the repeated and inexcusable failures of the Republican establishment to control or punish Trump for his myriad transgressions. If there was a singular moment that the political mechanisms failed in their duties to hold Trump accountable, it was after the chaos of January 6 when almost 150 Republican members of Congress refused to wholly accept the outcome of a fair and legal election after a direct and violent threat to our government. Besides that, Mrs. Lincoln, you could also look to the second impeachment trial in which most Republicans held the party line rather than do the right thing.

These actions have prolonged the ongoing and perhaps irreparable damage to the country that forced the special counsel’s hand.

In a world in which Republican office holders and its flattering media organs had acted responsibly, Trump would be a humiliated laughing stock unable to hold office in the United States government. Instead, they protected him, carried water for him, and amplified his ridiculous and fundamentally dangerous claims over and over again. Again, none of their “mainstream” candidates holds a candle to him among primary voters. None of this is to absolve Democrats for their many failures to defeat or otherwise check Trump, but when a sitting president tries to illegally retain power as described in the recent indictment, the Justice Department’s answer cannot be “Let’s see how next year’s election turns out.” So the DOJ rightfully indicted him.

Contra Goldsmith, Ryan Goodman and Andrew Weissman put it well a few days ago: 

To not charge Mr. Trump for trying to criminally interfere with the transfer of power to a duly elected president would be to politicize the matter. It would mean external political considerations had infected the Justice Department’s decision-making and steered the institution away from its commitment to holding everyone equally accountable under the law.

Our country and our government are in this piteous position because the Republican Party and its cheerleaders cravenly put us here, and they bear the blame for what happens. It’s far too late to keep this debacle out of a criminal courtroom.

“They are all Bannonists now.”

Charlie Sykes noted in his Morning Shots newsletter that the Republican field is following Trump’s lead in dismantling and undermining American institutions: 

[The] NYT reports that as Trump amps up his attacks “on the justice system and other core institutions, his competitors for the Republican nomination have followed his lead.”

“Several have adopted much of Mr. Trump’s rhetoric sowing broad suspicion about the courts, the F.B.I., the military and schools. As they vie for support in a primary dominated by Mr. Trump, they routinely blast these targets in ways that might have been considered extraordinary, not to mention unthinkably bad politics, just a few years ago.”

Does this sound familiar to any of you?

Eight years ago, Steve Bannon, the many-shirted, hygienically challenged prince of grift declared: “I'm a Leninist. Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that's my goal, too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today's establishment.”

Well, they are all Bannonists now. It has become the GOP agenda.

To the end of my days, I will be triggered by any Trump supporter who dares utter the words “rule of law.”

I have more to say on a tangentially related topic, but I think it can be a stand-alone piece in a day or two. 

Until next time, wishing you peace, love, and soul…

JPB