U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney does not lack political moxie. Nor does she lack the courage to fight back against the loons within her Republican Party who continue to foment The Big Lie that poured first out of Donald Trump’s mouth.
Cheney faces the prospect of losing her leadership post within the GOP caucus in the House of Representatives. Why? Because she isn’t backing down in her criticism of Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 presidential election being “stolen” from him.
She said this on Twitter: The 2020 presidential election was not stolen. Anyone who claims it was is spreading THE BIG LIE, turning their back on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system.
The “anyone” to whom she refers would be the ex-POTUS himself.
I am going to stand with Rep. Cheney on this one, even though she represents — in most instances — the far right wing of a party in the midst of a civil war.
Cheney is on the right side of history. The Trumpkins who want her removed from her leadership post are flirting with disaster.
Donald Trump’s vise grip on the Republican Party remains a gigantic mystery to me.
He is, in no particular order:
An inarticulate business mogul.
A liar.
A philanderer.
Someone who entered politics at its highest level with zero public service experience.
A guy who bragged about sexually assaulting women.
A conspiracy monger.
And, yes, a racist.
And yet this guy continues to retain this grip on a political party he hijacked in 2016. He demands complete loyalty and those who are loyal to only to him give it willingly.
Thus, we are entering the netherworld between presidential election campaigns. Those who want to run for president must pledge their loyalty to Donald Trump or else be thrown to the wild dogs. How in the world do potential political opponents of Trump campaign against this guy … were he to declare his candidacy for the presidency again?
He bullies his GOP rivals by threatening to “primary” them in 2022. Trump already has drawn a bead on the likes of Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who voted to convict Trump of inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection. Trump just cannot stand the thought of politicians adhering to the Constitution, of being more loyal to that document than to him.
How does he maintain that grip on the once-great party? How does he demand — and get — complete fealty from other egotists who also happen to serve in Congress?
It’s a mystery to me, man. So help me I cannot wrap my noggin around how this guy — of all guys — manages to perform this act of political bondage.
Try as I have done since Jan. 20 — when Joe Biden took the presidential oath — to rid this blog of anything relating to Donald J. Trump … I just cannot cross that threshold.
I mean, good grief, the ex-president keeps inserting himself into the news. He continues to endorse political candidates; he keeps fomenting the Big Lie about the 2020 presidential election; he continues to rile up his base with statements that hint at a possible presidential run in 2024.
Meanwhile, the guy who beat him like a drum in 2020 — President Biden — continues to make policy pronouncements, keeps seeking to work with congressional Republicans despite their claims to the contrary and keeps acting the way presidents are supposed to act.
I am happy to report that these blog posts have dealt with far more than Donald Trump. I just am hoping to eliminate the need to comment on him altogether. When might that occur?
Hmm. Let’s see. Maybe if he gets sentenced to prison for, oh, campaign finance violations or for coercing/bullying state officials to overturn election results. He might disappear if he goes to prison for income tax violations. Or he could vanish if we learn that he isn’t nearly as rich as he kept saying he was when he ran for president in 2016.
I will take a tiny measure of comfort in realizing that the media keep commenting on him, too. He does make “news,” even if the news he makes lacks the impact it had during the four years he defiled the White House as POTUS. The comfort I take in that realization really doesn’t make me feel any better, other than I realize I have company among those of us who comprise what they call the “pundit class.”
One more point: We have Rudy Giuliani — the ex-POTUS’s personal lawyer — who also might face a world of legal hurt. What might happen if prosecutors indict the former NYC mayor and one-time 9/11 hero? He could turn on his client in order to save his own hide.
Yep, that’ll keep Donald Trump in the news, too. It likely will provide this blog with more ammo.
Tom Cruise yelled famously in the film “Jerry Maguire” to “Show me the money!”
In that spirit, I am inclined to yell out to Republican politicians intent on perpetuating the Big Lie about the 2020 election: Show me the vote fraud!
GOP pols in states all across the nation keep pitching for “voter reforms” they contend will protect the electoral process from fraud that they imply is rampant. The keep feeding that fantasy that the 2020 presidential election was somehow, some way rife with corruption.
Holy cow, man! It was clean, free and fair. It also was the most secure election in U.S. history, according to a Trump administration official, Christopher Krebs, who was hired to ensure the election’s security.
I watched Texas state Rep. Briscoe Cain today rail on and on about protecting the state’s electoral system against fraud. He didn’t cite a single shred of evidence that fraud even exists. Yet this GOP lawmaker is being charged with crafting vote-restriction legislation aimed at making it more difficult for Texans to vote.
He is far from alone. Republican members of the U.S. Senate and U.S. House bellow and bluster continually about alleged voter fraud. It doesn’t exist in anywhere even close to the level that these pols keep implying.
It is maddening and infuriating in the extreme to hear allegedly responsible public figures make assertions that are patently untrue and then to foist legislation on us that they base solely on the lie they keep fomenting.
Our elections are the product of hard work at the local, county and state level. States such as Texas have worked diligently to protect our electoral system. Have they enacted a totally fool-proof process? No. Instances of fraud, though, are rare. They amount to an infinitesimal fraction of the millions of ballots that we cast.
When I hear politicians cite threats and fears of “widespread vote corruption,” I am left only to exclaim in the loudest voice I can summon to “Show me the vote fraud!”
Donald John Trump lost the 2020 presidential election.
It has been proven, certified, codified, cast in proverbial cement. Game over. Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. is the president of the United States of America after being selected in a free and fair election by a solid majority of American voters.
But … the Big Lie still has plenty of life.
The Big Lie is the one promulgated by Trump, which he did once again this week in a Fox News interview. He keeps saying he won the election. He didn’t! He lost it! Bigly!
What continues to astonish me is that he has actual practicing lawyers who insist he won. One of them, Sidney Powell, is saying openly that voting machines were tampered with and made to calculate ballots in a way that would push President Biden into the White House.
Powell and other liars now face a lawsuit in the billions of bucks by the manufacturer of the voting machines. She also needs to be disbarred and prohibited from ever practicing law.
However, the Big Lie lives on. It won’t die. It must die. Maybe it will when its sources no longer are around to spread the lie.
The absolute worst element of the Big Lie is that so damn many Americans are willing to believe it. These Americans — the big liars — have disgraced the country they profess to love.
President Biden’s quest for national unity keeps finding speed bumps.
He’s hitting many of the right notes, but a month into the presidency he continues to encounter Republican resistance. GOP senators aren’t exactly embracing many of his selections for the Cabinet. One of them, budget director nominee Neera Tanden, is likely to be derailed.
National unity, though, isn’t entirely based on whether a president enjoys a full-blown honeymoon with Congress. It also reveals whether the POTUS enjoys widespread support among the population. That, too, seems to be a bit of a stretch, given polling that suggests some still dark impulses among GOP voters.
Most of the GOP voting public still seems to believe that President Biden “stole” the election from Donald Trump. That really troubles the daylights out of me. Trump continues to divide the nation by perpetuating The Big Lie about the integrity of the 2020 election and it undermines any serious effort to bridge the divide between the major political parties.
So, the search for unity goes on and on.
I am pulling for the president to find the common ground he seeks with Congress. Attaining that commonality will go a long way toward uniting the nation that all of them — President Biden and the 535 members of Congress — govern together.
Donald Trump once infamously proclaimed that “I, alone” can fix the nation’s problems. I don’t believe we will hear that kind of boastfulness from Joe Biden. He knows that teamwork requires giving and taking.
As for the nagging doubt that lingers in the minds of those who voted for Trump about the integrity of the election that Biden won — fairly and squarely — the president might just have to rely on the passage of time to let their fervor subside.
