 |
MICHAEL TOMASKY, DAILY BEAST
---
Everyone knows what’s been happening in this White House. And yet to see it all laid out there in one cannon blast, much of it coming from the mouths of Trump’s own aides and sometimes from Trump himself, serves to remind us in a sobering way: There are dozens, hundreds, thousands of people letting this happen.
Rupert Murdoch thinks Trump is an idiot, but he’s letting it happen, because, well, look at those ratings. Conservative political professionals—the lobbyists, the issue people, the fixers—are letting it happen because hey, their clients are getting their favors now out of this EPA, this Labor Department, and who wants to stop that? Corporate America is letting it happen, because look at those tax cuts, and look ma, we can drill anywhere we want to now.
And most of all, elected Republicans are letting it happen, for all of the above reasons, and for the courts, and for power. Mind you those are decent reasons, looked at one way. But these people did something that Murdoch and the lobbyists and corporate America did not. They swore oaths to the Constitution. They work for us. They have agreed to uphold laws. And they’re standing there watching this clown posse micturate on the Constitution....
----
----
 |
| Billionaire Rebekah Mercer (Oliver Contreras/For The Washington Post) |
Thursday evening came the news that Rebekah Mercer, Bannon’s fairy godmother, is formally cutting ties with him. You must read this for the important development it is. Mercer was closer to Bannon than to Trump. She forced him (and Kellyanne Conway) onto the campaign. At one point, Wolff writes that “as the drumbeat for Bannon’s removal grew [from the White House], the Mercers stepped in to protect their investment in radical government overthrow and the future of Steve Bannon.”
That Mercer has now chosen Trump over Bannon suggests a sad outcome here. It suggests that in the end, all that’s going to come of the hubbub over this book and its revelations is that the right is going to cut Bannon’s nuts off, circle the wagons, and go on as before. Sean Hannity and company will keep telling the same lies. Sarah Huckabee Sanders will keep standing up and unanswering every question in a language that we recognize as English except that we’re accustomed to hearing these kinds of day-is-night axioms in the tongues of history’s various banana Republicans. Republicans will continue to limn the president’s “exquisite leadership.”