More Republican Authoritarian Creep

Authoritarian Cabal? Russian President Vladimir Putin,
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange & Donald Trump 

It certainly wasn't necessary to go see Star Wars: The Last Jedi over the weekend in order to be frightened by the Dark Side of the Force.

Recent efforts by some Republican members of Congress to try and discredit special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 elections represent a step towards a 21st century authoritarianism in America that is genuinely frightening to behold.

Especially considering some of the conservative characters leading the calls to fire Mueller.

As Ken Dilanian reported for NBC News last Wednesday, the inspector general of the Justice Department provided transcripts of private text messages shared between FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page in which the romantically-involved couple referred to Donald Trump as both an "idiot" and a "enormous douche" - Strzok and Page also expressed dislike for Bernie Sanders and former Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder but don't hold your breath waiting for Republicans to express outrage at that.

Republicans quickly seized on the selected text messages that disparaged Trump as "evidence" that the entire special counsel investigation is tainted by some kind of anti-Trump bias - but how did they get a hold of them?

Earlier today Business Insider reporter Natasha Bertrand told MSNBC's Joy Reid that it's still not clear how the text messages got in the hands of Republican Congressman David Nunes as the DOJ's Office of the Inspector General said it did not authorize the release of the text messages.

Frankly if there's anyone responsible for anti-Trump bias, it's Trump's own big mouth, his chaotic White House, political inexperience and the seemingly endless stream of meaningless pycho-babble that he issues from his own Twitter account at all hours of the day and night.

According to an AP-NORC poll released on Saturday, 45's approval rate stands at around 32% - even though his approval numbers have ticked up a few points because of the healthy state of the economy, his approval numbers are still the lowest ever for a first-year president. Ever.

So it's pretty fair to say that a majority of the American people, Democrats, Republicans and independents alike, DO think that Trump is an idiot and a douche.

And it's not a violation of Department of Justice policy for members of the FBI to be romantically involved, or to express personal political opinions if they want to - they're not monks.

Republican Virginia Congressman Bob Goodlatte

Regardless, Republican House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte led the partisan saber-rattling on Capitol Hill last Wednesday during an oversight hearing of the committee.

He and other Republicans, including Jim Jordan of Ohio, leveled baseless accusations that the Mueller investigation, as well as senior FBI officials were politically motivated.

Goodlatte's name should be familiar.

His righteous indignation is actually kind of funny considering that the feisty representative of Virginia's 6th Congressional District is the same guy who made headlines back in January when he kicked off the 115th Congress by proposing to put the independent Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) under the oversight of the Republican-majority House Ethics Committee.

A jaw-dropping proposal so absurd that it quickly drew widespread criticism from members of both sides of the House, long-time political observers, members of the public and even Trump himself.

Embarrassed Republicans held an emergency meeting in which they agreed to ditch Goodlatte's proposal, after which Congressman Mike Simpson, a Republican from Idaho, sheepishly admitted to reporters, "We shot ourselves in the foot."

That's also a pretty good way to characterize Republican efforts to try and discredit special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russia intentionally interfering with an American election.

Especially considering that Mueller is a decorated Vietnam veteran, a Republican who served during the Reagan administration, and a highly-respected former head of the FBI with an impeccable professional reputation - he was chosen as special counsel by current deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein.

And Rosenstein was nominated by Donald Trump to serve as deputy AG on January 31, 2017 - when he was then the longest-serving U.S. Attorney in the Justice Department.

Intelligence & terrorism expert Malcom Nance

So Republican efforts to paint the special counsel investigation as some kind of biased political witch hunt are totally ludicrous.

And worse, they swerve dangerously close to the kind of repressive authoritarian creep that define the governments of Russia, China and North Korea.

This Republican authoritarian creep was on display over the weekend too.

As David Edwards reported in an article for Raw Story on Sunday, former Naval intelligence veteran, career intelligence officer, terrorism expert and author Malcom Nance made appearances on MSNBC on both Saturday and Sunday to offer troubling insight into the specific ways in which the Trump administration is taking actions that are straight out of the authoritarian playbook.

Nance wrote the 2016 book "The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and Wikileaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election" 

On Saturday MSNBC's Chris Hayes interviewed Nance about a Washington Post report that U.S. intelligence agencies posses proof that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally ordered and oversaw the massive operation to slander Hillary Clinton using illegally hacked emails, documents and voice-mails in order to assist Donald Trump's campaign.

Because Putin realized that he can more easily manipulate Trump and use him to advance Russian foreign interests; including undermining the NATO alliance, dissolving the European Union, strengthening Russia's control over eastern Europe - and undermining American's faith in the democratic process in order to enhance Russia's global standing and influence.

Earlier today on CNN former director of national intelligence James Clapper said he felt Putin was using Trump like an intelligence "asset".

Sadly, the assorted conservative talking heads who now essentially shape the political message of the White House are parroting this shift towards authoritarianism by echoing the baseless criticism of the special counsel investigation and the Justice Department by Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Mueller-hating Fox host & Trump shill Jeanine Pirro

As was widely reported two weeks ago, unnamed sources within the White House who are close to Trump told New York Times reporters that Trump allegedly watches 6 to 8 hours of TV a day, mostly Fox News - not surprising given that most of his domestic and foreign policy talking points seem to come word-for-word from what he sees on Fox.

Want an example of just how absurd conservative media's criticism of Mueller has gotten?

Check out Allegra Kirkland's Talking Points Memo article from last Friday about Trump supporter and Fox host Jeanine Pirro.

As Kirkland reports, Pirro, a former judge who became Westchester County, NY's first female district attorney, opened her Fox show last weekend by giving her viewers a list of officials at the Department of Justice, including Robert Mueller, that she thinks "should not just be fired but who need to be taken out in handcuffs."

Yes, she's talking about career Justice Department officials trying to determine the degree to which a foreign adversary interfered in the American electoral process.

Kirkland notes that Pirro earned a reputation for being a rigorous public prosecutor for Westchester County, one who gained a reputation for her knowledge of the law and being an advocate of victim's rights.

So her willingness to bury her head in the sand and pretend that the overwhelming evidence gathered by the CIA, NSA, FBI and other U.S. intelligence entities showing that Russia did indeed conspire to interfere with U.S. elections in 2016 demonstrates the scope of the ideological bubble into which the current Republican Party has immersed itself.

A bubble in which authoritarianism replaces the democratic values on which the country was founded, and vilifying dedicated public servants who seek the truth on behalf of the American people is a substitute for leadership and accountability.

The Dark Side isn't just found in a fictional world that existed "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away."

It's here, creeping up on the political institutions the Constitution considers sacred - like an unwanted vine that thrives on greed, fear and ignorance.

GOP Ethics & The Enigma of the Manigault Syndrome

Swamp Thing? Republican Congressman and
House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte 

It's overcast, rainy and chilly on this first Tuesday of 2017 here in New Jersey.

In some ways, the weather reflects the gloomy mood of many Americans who are coping with an uneasy sense of impending dread as the inauguration of the most unpopular presidential candidate in U.S. history edges closer.

If nothing else, the importance of voting has been made painfully clear to Democrats and progressives who decided to stay home on Nov. 8th.



Well we certainly got a taste of what the new Republican super-majority has in mind for the American people yesterday when Republicans, secretly meeting Monday evening on a federal holiday, backed a proposal drafted by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) that would have placed oversight of the non-partisan independent Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) under the oversight of the Republican-majority House Ethics Committee.

As TheHill.com reported, the jaw-dropping Republican proposal actually called for blocking the OCE from considering anonymous tips about corrupt congressmen, or from hiring a communications director, in a remarkably sleazy effort to make it harder for the media to learn about ethics violations and charges.

Swift backlash from members of both parties (including the president-elect), the media and outraged citizens prompted Republicans to pull the proposal from the rules package for the 115th Congress today, but don't be surprised to see them take another crack at it within weeks.

But the fact that Republicans tried to do that on the very first day of the new Congressional session should raise serious concerns; so much for "draining the swamp".

One can only hope the thousands of Democrats, progressives and independents who decided not to vote on November 8th, or cast their presidential ballot for Green Party candidate Jill Stein or a write-in candidate as a symbolic but essentially meaningless "protest vote" are happy - and I like Stein but let's be frank, a vote for her was in essence a vote for the con man being sworn in two weeks from now.

But I don't think it's fair to "blame" any one demographic segment for the results of this election.

Donald Trump and Omaraosa Manigault

Meddling on the part of foreign nations, Republican efforts to suppress non-white voter turnout across the nation, conservative media's incessant misogynist slandering of Hillary Clinton's record and apathetic (dare I say pathetic) Democratic voter turnout all played a factor in the 2016 presidential election results.

Don't get me wrong, each of us has the right to choose whom we want in an election, but the highly public and remarkably enthusiastic support of Trump by some women of color in this nation still leaves me scratching my head.


"I am black, female, and Donald Trump is my friend." 

No folks, that's not a line from a Saturday Night Live skit, or the punchline of a joke.

Those were the opening words of a short op-ed piece by Omarosa Manigault that was published in a December issue of The Hollywood Reporter - actually her words as told to writer Seth Abramovitch.

Manigault is the reality show contestant who gained notoriety after appearing on various incarnations of Trump's reality television series The Apprentice, and later went on to appear in a variety of other reality shows including Fear Factor and The Surreal Life.

While her Wikipedia page notes that she held a position in the office of former Vice-President Al Gore and teaches at Howard University, she's basically "famous" for being liked by Trump before becoming his political surrogate.

In the THR article she basically tried to use her own experiences being on a reality TV show to make the case that Trump is not the bigot and misogynist that his own actions and words make him out to be.

From her appearances on topical news discussions about Trump's candidacy that I saw, Manigault, who served as Trump's "director of African-American outreach", always seemed to strike me as someone whose over-the-top enthusiasm was not rooted in any kind of specific policy analysis.

Her reasoning for supporting his candidacy seemed based more on a cult-like adoration and her comments reflective of Trump's intentionally vague style of political "non-speak" - like the debates where he talked as if trying to toss out disconnected sound-bites to earn applause or laughter without really saying anything of substance, relevance or meaning.

To me her support for Trump kinda borders on creepy.

For example, remember back in November the day after the election when Manigault hinted in an interview that Trump was calculating revenge against people who hadn't supported him?

"Mr. Trump has a long memory and we're keeping a list." 

That's what she told a journalist from the Independent Journal Review, partially in reference to Republican South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham's statement that he'd supported Evan McMullin rather than Trump.

Note her use of the term "we're" too.

In the same interview she went on to say: 

"It's so great that our enemies are making themselves clear so that when we get in to the White House we know where we stand."

"Our enemies" sounds like decidedly Nixonian group-think - I mean what's next?

Bugging the private communications and correspondence of members of the Democratic Party?

Oh, wait, sorry they actually already did that.

Again, Manigault, or any other woman of color can vote for whomever they please, but the handful of black women I saw interviewed on local or national television who voted for Trump never seemed to articulate what I (as an African-American) considered to be an informed reasoning that outweighed the flagrant racism that the Republican Party actively cultivated during the 2015 - 2016 presidential campaign season.

Let alone the reprehensible ways in which Trump spoke about women and ethnic and religious minorities.

In the Hollywood Reporter article, Maingault said that Trump "does not judge people on their gender or race. He judges them on their ability to do the job."

Trump's Sec. of Education pick Betsy DeVos

Yet back in August, as his campaign made efforts to try and draw support from black voters, Trump stood in front of an audience in the overwhelmingly white Lansing, Michigan suburb of Dimondale and reduced black Americans to a narrow stereotype, famously telling the crowd:

"You're living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58% of your youth is unemployed - what the hell do you have to loose?"

While high unemployment amongst young African-Americans is at critical levels, and that needs to be addressed on the federal, state and local level, not all African-Americans attend schools that are "no good" - does Manigault think that Trump tapping right-wing billionaire Betsy DeVos, a person with no experience as a school administrator, as Secretary of Education is a good thing for those students (of all races and ethnicities) who live in poverty?

DeVos is part of a group of billionaires and wealthy financiers around the nation who actively lobby for shifting billions in tax dollars from public schools to charter schools and private schools - maybe Manigault (who attended Howard University) thinks that will be a good thing for those public schools serving at-risk communities that struggle to attract quality teachers and administrators.

And while her orange-haired benefactor is correct that poverty levels in the U.S. are highest for blacks, according to statistics, 72.6% of black Americans do not live in poverty.

Donald Trump and his father Fred were sued by the
federal govt. in 1973 for housing discrimination 

So contrary to Manigault's statements, Trump's sweeping generalizations demonstrate a man who sees black Americans almost exclusively from the perspective of the narrow generalizations based on race that he grew up with.

And reinforced when he helped his father exclude blacks from renting at apartment complexes owned by the Trump family in New York and Virginia.


Maingault's access to affordable health care or the kinds of preventative cancer screenings provided by Planned Parenthood is never going to be jeopardized by Trump's promise to work with House Republicans to dismantle the Affordable Care Act.

Thanks to her BA from Central State in Ohio and grad degrees from Howard University she doesn't have to work in the fast food industry, or a large retailer to make ends meet - so her income isn't going to be affected by Trump's pledge to oppose minimum wage increases.

So Omarosa Manigault can afford to support Trump, in fact as a reality television personality now serving on Trump's White House transition team who's angling for a job at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, she has a vested interest in continuing to do so.

As far as her assertion in the Hollywood Reporter article that "It's very difficult to make the argument that Donald Trump doesn't like black people and black women.", I must respectfully disagree.

His actions, personal history and words suggest quite the opposite.