Manchester, New Hampshire, January 2016, the primaries, and I was walking past the Radisson to the hole-in-the-wall coffee joint with only one person in the queue (it was Bill Kristol; for years I’d dreamt of taunting him about imposing Sarah Palin on the Republicans. What I did was pass him the Splenda, and say “here for the Bernie rally, Bill?” and we laughed like old mates).
Passed a tall, big-jawed mookish guy, stars ‘n’ stripes tie, Trump button, on a phone in a doorway, smoking a cigar at 8.30 in the morning. Two greasers drove by slow.
“Hey, Hillary! F-k that c-t! Who’d vote for that c-t!”
This guy was clearly a Trump op. He’d hose that down.
“RIGHT ONNN! GUYS,” the man yelled, never losing control of the ‘gar.
January, as I say, and we hadn’t got the settings right, yet. Was that my first (and only), encounter with Paul Manafort, the shadow operative and former Trump campaign manager, who has now inched The Donald’s administration closer to its fall? Or am I projecting him back into the snows of January?
Whatever the case, Manafort may have really taken the Trump administration’s perpetual crisis to a new pitch these past days. Innocent until proven otherwise, but the professional political operative — his best-paying clients are pro-Russian forces in Ukraine — has been accused of witness tampering in the ongoing Mueller investigation into Russian influence on the Trump campaign.
Manafort is currently under supervised release, Alabama Rolex (ankle alarm) and all, having been indicted for a slew of charges, from failing to register as a foreign agent, to money laundering and tax evasion. Now he is accused of having contacted witnesses via an “encraption” (off-the-shelf encryption) program, the messages intercepted by an FBI agent named — what else? — Brock Domin, the intended recipients former colleagues called — what else? — “The Hapsburg Group”.
The message concerned The Hapsburg Group’s work in Ukraine, with the strong suggestion — if they prove to be genuine — that Manafort was starting to lean on former associates about their past activities. If so, it’s a sign that the next stage of this process is well underway, and that, unsurprisingly, people are starting to look for deals. The moment when the genuine, actual, honest-to-God smoking gun appears — an email offering influence for financial favours, a lessening of the Trump organisation’s enormous debts — is getting closer.
Though centrist Democrats are focusing on the relatively minor Kremlin finagling on Facebook and elsewhere, overwhelmingly to discredit the Democrat and extra-Democrat left in the wake of the Bernie Sanders wave, the real scandal is elsewhere. For years, Trump, locked out of US and European financing, has been going to lenders of last resort: Russian banks, then Georgian banks, then Azerbaijaini banks, and so on. What’s required is clear evidence that his tilt for the presidency was at least partly a way of getting out of a tightening man-trap (and Caucasus banks? These guys do not muck around. Man-traps are a literal thing for them).
Hence the spectacle of the President of the United States openly musing as to whether he could pardon himself, and finding the answer was yes (“the finest minds, the most beautiful legal minds …”). It’s worth a recap: the President says he can pardon himself, his lawyer-consigliere has had his office raided over secret payoffs to a porn star, his former campaign manager has been indicted, and may well be afresh for perversion of justice, and the inquiry is spreading in all directions.
Around this time in the Obama era, the man was slated as un-presidential for wearing a tan suit to a press conference.
What we’ll end up with is a picture of the Trump presidency as the most extraordinary hail-Mary pass of a beleaguered businessman, one that came good: solve the problems of law by becoming it. It will be gobsmacking, when it is all put together, a proof that conspiracy and secrecy always lay at the heart of the federal system that the founders put together in the late 1780s.
In January 2024, in the snows of New Hampshire, as the second Trump presidency draws to its close.
I’m with you up to the last sentence of the penultimate paragraph, Guy. Proof of an Arturo-Ui-style fascist-gangster putsch, absolutely; of the ‘conspiracy and secrecy that lies at the heart of the federal system that the founders put together in the late 1780s’ seems like a bit of a stretch.
I assume Guy is referring to the Electoral College that enabled Trump to be elected.
And if so Guy us absolutely spot on.
Donald Trump was not elected on November 8 . Under the Constitution, the real election occured on December 19.
That’s when the electors in each state cast their votes; and electors are not the high minded persons that the Framers envisaged, far from it, they’re party activists and hacks chosen for their loyalty.
Trump – the product of an archaic, aristocratic, white, male, determinedly non democratic Electoral College scheme designed to deny women, slaves and other ‘minorities’ the vote.
The United States is the only country that elects a politically powerful president via an electoral college and the only one in which a candidate can become president without having obtained the highest number of votes in the sole or final round of popular voting.
— George C. Edwards, 2011
The Electoral College was created by the Framers of the Constitution as a method of preventing average voters, who were not fully trusted, from directly electing the president.
Legal scholars Akhil Amar and Vikram Amar have argued the original Electoral College compromise was enacted partially because it enabled the southern states to disenfranchise its slave populations.
It permitted southern states to disfranchise large numbers of slaves while allowing these states to maintain political clout within the federation by using the three-fifths compromise.
They noted that constitutional Framer James Madison believed the question of counting slaves had presented a serious challenge but that “the substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to the fewest objections.”
Akhil and Vikram Amar added that:
The founders’ system also encouraged the continued disfranchisement of women. In a direct national election system, any state that gave women the vote would automatically have doubled its national clout. Under the Electoral College, however, a state had no such incentive to increase the franchise; as with slaves, what mattered was how many women lived in a state, not how many were empowered … a state with low voter turnout gets precisely the same number of electoral votes as if it had a high turnout. By contrast, a well-designed direct election system could spur states to get out the vote.
— Akhil and Vikram Amar
The fact that each state received the number of electors equal to their total number of representatives in Congress was also a way to ensure that slave states had sufficient influence in choosing presidents.
The Constitution also mandated that slaves would be counted as 3/5 of a free person for population purposes, and in combination with equal representation in the Senate, the South was poised to have significant influence in the national government.
The creation of direct democratic processes in 20th century state and local politics — including the initiative, referendum, and recall — would have been unthinkable in the early republic. Considering how we have fundamentally redefined democracy since the founding period, it is remarkable that we still even have the Electoral College.
Those who support the Electoral College on constitutional grounds, specifically the intentions of the Framers, are in the untenable position of defending every other law and practice of the founding period that limited suffrage and participation. Besides, no one would even seriously think of arguing that we ought to have the Electoral College function the way the framers actually intended, as a group of free agents filtering public sentiment and coming to their own conclusion about who is most qualified to be president.
Although the preamble begins with “We, the people,” and guarantees a “republican form of government” to all of the states, the word “democracy” is not mentioned in the text of the Constitution.
When the Framers used the word themselves it was often a pejorative term.
On the convention’s first day… delegate Edmund Randolph of Virginia warned that
“none of the [state] constitutions have provided sufficient checks against democracy.”
A week later, Massachusetts delegate Elbridge Gerry said
“the evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy.”
Father of the Constitution James Madison referred to
and Alexander Hamilton to the
“imprudence” of it.
I assume Guy is referring to the Electoral College that enabled Trump to be elected.
And if so Guy us absolutely spot on. Trump was elected on a system devised to retain the power of the white male propertied person.
Donald Trump was not elected on November 8 . Under the Constitution, the real election occured on December 19.
That’s when the electors in each state cast their votes; and electors are not the high minded persons that the Framers envisaged, far from it, they’re party activists and hacks chosen for their loyalty.
Trump – the product of an archaic, aristocratic, white, male, determinedly non democratic Electoral College scheme designed to deny women, slaves and other ‘minorities’ the vote.
The United States is the only country that elects a politically powerful president via an electoral college and the only one in which a candidate can become president without having obtained the highest number of votes in the sole or final round of popular voting.
— George C. Edwards, 2011
The Electoral College was created by the Framers of the Constitution as a method of preventing average voters, who were not fully trusted, from directly electing the president.
Legal scholars Akhil Amar and Vikram Amar have argued the original Electoral College compromise was enacted partially because it enabled the southern states to disenfranchise its slave populations.
It permitted southern states to disfranchise large numbers of slaves while allowing these states to maintain political clout within the federation by using the three-fifths compromise.
They noted that constitutional Framer James Madison believed the question of counting slaves had presented a serious challenge but that “the substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to the fewest objections.”
Akhil and Vikram Amar added that:
The founders’ system also encouraged the continued disfranchisement of women. In a direct national election system, any state that gave women the vote would automatically have doubled its national clout. Under the Electoral College, however, a state had no such incentive to increase the franchise; as with slaves, what mattered was how many women lived in a state, not how many were empowered … a state with low voter turnout gets precisely the same number of electoral votes as if it had a high turnout. By contrast, a well-designed direct election system could spur states to get out the vote.
— Akhil and Vikram Amar
The fact that each state received the number of electors equal to their total number of representatives in Congress was also a way to ensure that slave states had sufficient influence in choosing presidents.
The Constitution also mandated that slaves would be counted as 3/5 of a free person for population purposes, and in combination with equal representation in the Senate, the South was poised to have significant influence in the national government.
The creation of direct democratic processes in 20th century state and local politics — including the initiative, referendum, and recall — would have been unthinkable in the early republic. Considering how we have fundamentally redefined democracy since the founding period, it is remarkable that we still even have the Electoral College.
Those who support the Electoral College on constitutional grounds, specifically the intentions of the Framers, are in the untenable position of defending every other law and practice of the founding period that limited suffrage and participation.
Besides, no one would even seriously think of arguing that we ought to have the Electoral College function the way the framers actually intended, as a group of free agents filtering public sentiment and coming to their own conclusion about who is most qualified to be president.
Although the preamble begins with “We, the people,” and guarantees a “republican form of government” to all of the states, the word democracy” is not mentioned in the text of the Constitution.
When the Framers used the word themselves it was often a pejorative term.
On the convention’s first day… delegate Edmund Randolph of Virginia warned that “none of the [state] constitutions have provided sufficient checks against democracy.”
A week later, Massachusetts delegate Elbridge Gerry said
“the evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy.”
Father of the Constitution James Madison referred to
“the inconvenience of democracy,”
and Alexander Hamilton to the
“imprudence” of it.
Compare the above to the worst thing Trump could dredge up against Obama ie: accusations of a phoney birth certificate & that the newly-born infant, Obama, scandalously faked his own birth announcement in a Hawaiian newspaper.
The world’s finest fiction writers couldn’t match this material.
Nor could the worst.
Whatever Trump’s point of ignition Guy; America needs focus upon home affairs (no pun intended) guns/borders/race, and allow space for more stable heads capable of reasoned engagement with diverse world leaders? Trump possessed; conflicted by choice . . . implosion v explosion.
If the law of the land doesn’t apply to the President down – then who does it apply too?
It’s so easy to be smug about Trump, his administration, and his supporters – both political and electoral. But the lies, obfuscations, and misdirection coming from his twitter feed, the constant Fox News propaganda, his congressional allies, and the outright lies disseminated and televised by his surrogates are slowly turning the American public against the Mueller investigation.
Trump and Co have a very clear plan and, at the moment, Trump is winning.