But his emails
We can’t have someone in the Oval Office who doesn’t understand the meaning of the word “confidential” or “classified.” Now, I’m sure I could find plenty of MAGA Republicans who would dispute that statement today, who would say that such trivialities are beneath a great president’s notice. Such trifles, they would insist, should be left to underlings and functionaries. There’s just one problem with that position. The first sentence in this paragraph isn’t mine, it’s a direct quote. It’s a quote from Donald Trump — who uttered those very words in September 2016. He was referring to Hillary Clinton.
You remember, Hillary Clinton, the woman against whom Republicans worked themselves into foam-flecked fury about her flagrant disregard for national security? The woman about whom Republicans chanted “lock her up!” every chance they got and as recently as a couple of Nuremberg-style MAGA rallies ago? The woman who took her classified work home with her, who drew hate and rage controversy merely for using a private email server for official public communications rather than using official State Department email accounts maintained on federal servers?
While her actions were at worst mildly ill-advised, it later emerged that Hillary’s emails discussed innocuous matters already available in the public domain and represented no breach of national security. The potential damage done by Trump, on the other hand, could have been enormous. The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines informed Congress Friday that her office will lead an “assessment of the potential risk to national security that would result from the disclosure of the relevant documents” that were housed at Donald Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago. Republicans are poised to give Trump a clean bill of health in advance, of course.
I think we should use at minimum the same standards of conduct for Donald Trump that Republicans imposed on Hillary Clinton. If it turns out that the documents were serious enough to put lives in danger and American national security at risk, then we should lock him up. After all, that’s the punishment Republicans prescribed for Hillary for years, right? We wouldn’t want Republicans to wind up looking like hypocrites and partisan hacks by using a different standard of conduct for Donald Trump, would we? After all, what’s good for the goose …
And while we’re on the topic, I think we should use the same standard of conduct for Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump that Republicans insist should be imposed on Hunter Biden. After all, Hunter Biden used his privileged position to gain employment that earned him a couple of measly millions working legally in Ukraine a few years ago. But Jared and Ivanka earned billions from the Saudis in a clandestine deal dripping with the innuendo of favouritism, self-dealing and the possible cover up of a Saudi murder of a Washington Post journalist, all while Jared’s father-in-law and Ivanka’s father was president. I wonder what’s on their laptop?
No one but the low-information MAGA-headed cretins you see at Trump rallies with their gaudy little red MAGA hats on their pointy little MAGA heads is fooled. Republicans want to give Donald Trump a pass for far worse conduct than Hillary or Hunter, and they are threatening violence if we don’t.
For them it’s not about the rule of law or the Constitution, it’s about greed, power, “owning the libs” and protecting the porcelain ego of their shit-weasel demigod. I think the majority of the American people, the non-knuckle dragging ones, are heartily sick of this. I think they’re going to prove it in November. Let’s prove it with them. Let’s bring our friends and make the dream come true. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.