In the classic mafia movie Goodfellas, Ray Liotta’s character muses about how he always wanted to grow up to be in the mob. “To me, being a gangster was better than being president of the United States.” What a failure of imagination. He didn’t even consider you could be both!
Like any crook returning to the scene of the crime, President Trump got nabbed asking for foreign help to attack an election rival, and this time he was caught orange-handed. The first time he did it, pleading for Russia to
find Hillary Clinton’s emails in July 2016, Trump was only a candidate. This time, when he pressured Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to dig up dirt on Joe Biden’s son in exchange for U.S. aid money, it was as the president of the United States.
Trump and his proxies have barely attempted to deny the obvious this time, moving directly to the “so what?” phase. Instead of “no collusion!” it’s now “no quid pro quo!” But as anyone who actually read the Mueller report knows, there was collusion. And no one who read the released log of Trump’s call with Zelensky could miss the quid or the quo. Trump believes that if he doesn’t think something is wrong, then it’s not wrong, the law be damned.
Trying to barter American taxpayer money and U.S. national security interests for campaign dirt — which seems to be fictitious — was an abuse of power so blatant and so grave that Nancy Pelosi was finally moved to announce a formal impeachment inquiry.
Until now, the over-cautious speaker of the House had placed her 2020 political calculations over her constitutional duty to apply the rule of law to Trump’s growing list of crimes and misdemeanors.
As it always does, such an approach only encouraged further abuses. As I once wrote about Vladimir Putin, one of the many despots Trump so admires, such people transgress norms and laws easily, looking around each time to see what the reaction will be. If the response is weak, they take another step. Eventually, their sense of impunity overwhelms their sense of danger and they take a step too far.
When that happens, if they haven’t yet managed to destroy or neutralize the institutions designed to hold them accountable, you get the sort of crisis that is now unfolding.
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Waiting for the 2020 presidential election to solve this crisis presupposes that the election will be an honest one, something that was hard to imagine even before Trump was again caught seeking foreign interference on his behalf.
It’s pointless trying to imagine the depths Trump will go to in order to win reelection because such people have a limitless ability to shock. Trump has no sense of social norms or public service or duty to anything or anyone but himself. He is terrified of losing power and his bluster about welcoming an impeachment fight is the rage of a bully whose victim finally punched him in the nose.
This is one of the most serious threats American democracy has ever faced because it strikes at its core: that no one is above the law. I strongly disagree with pundits claiming that impeaching Trump is a distraction, or that it will backfire. You either fight like hell for the rule of law or you abandon it to its enemies. If the country is so far adrift from its democratic moorings that it’s no longer possible to condemn flagrant corruption during an election campaign, just award Trump his second term now and pray that it’s his last.
I’m not politically naïve. I’ve seen with my own eyes what happens when you start making concessions on principle with a president who has no principles. Every single member of Congress should be on the record for all to see. It’s time to pick a side, and those who choose Donald Trump over the law of the land will not be forgotten, or remembered kindly.
