The tale of the tape: Trump’s own words reveal his corruption — again
Opinion by
Columnist
Jan. 4, 2021 at 2:18 p.m. CST
Three recorded conversations will define President Trump’s reprehensible reign. Like the Nixon tapes before them, only more so, they confirm that Lord Acton was right to warn that “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
First, there was the “Access Hollywood” tape, which almost derailed Trump’s campaign when it was revealed by The Post on Oct. 8, 2016. On it, Trump could be heard bragging that his star power allowed him to sexually assault women with impunity: “When you’re a star they let you do it.”
Next came the transcript, revealed by a whistleblower and released by the White House on Sept. 25, 2019, that led to Trump’s impeachment. It records Trump badgering Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into fabricating damaging information about Trump’s likely opponent, Joe Biden, to receive U.S. military aid. “I would like you to do us a favor,” Trump said in that thuggish way of his, as if he were a mafia don demanding protection money from a terrified store owner.
And now, on Sunday, The Post unveiled the third of the Trump conversations — which is even worse than the first two. This time, Trump has been caught attempting to steal the presidential election by trying to persuade Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to deliver to him a state that he lost. “I just want to find 11,780 votes,” Trump implores, while spreading crackpot conspiracy theories about the election and making vague threats of legal action if Raffensperger does not do what he is told. Trump sounds both power-mad and simply mad.
It is hard to imagine a greater — or more predictable — threat to our constitutional order. From the start, Trump’s critics have been warning that he cannot be trusted with the awesome power of the presidency because he will abuse it for his own personal gain. When will the Always Trumpers admit the Never Trumpers were right? The only thing we didn’t anticipate — and still don’t fully understand — was the extent of his transgressions.
The Trump tapes revealed so far are likely just the tip of a very large iceberg. Trump insisted that his extortionate call with Zelensky was “perfect.” How many other “perfect” calls has Trump made over the past four years? In particular, how many other state officials has he dialed over the past two months, demanding that they commit fraud on his behalf?
The Biden administration will need to carry out an urgent act of political sanitation. The new president must appoint a special counsel or commission (possibly both) to unearth the myriad offenses the Trump administration has committed, recommend reforms and bring the perpetrators to justice — or at least subject them to the public ignominy that they deserve.
The process must start with ex-President Trump — but it should not end there. Trump’s transgressions have been enabled by his aides and supporters. Participants on the Raffensperger call included White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and outside attorney Cleta Mitchell, while the Zelensky call was heard by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice President Pence’s national security adviser, Keith Kellogg, among others. Vanishingly few had the courage to blow the whistle as did then-Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who worked on the National Security Council. There needs to be accountability for Trump’s henchmen — and commendations such as the Medal of Freedom for those few, such as Vindman and Raffensperger, who stood up to the most corrupt president in U.S. history.
Perhaps the most consequential — and therefore most culpable — enablers have been Republican members of Congress. Republicans refused to hold Trump to account for the obstruction of justice and cooperation with Russia documented by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III or the abuse of power evident in Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. Now Trump supporters will turn a blind eye to his election fraud scheme in Georgia. Republicans such as Sen. David Perdue of Georgia are more upset that the Raffensperger call was leaked than that it took place.
Actually it’s worse than that: Even as Trump is trying to steal the election in a call with Georgia’s secretary of state, his allies in the House and Senate are helping him by trying to toss out electoral votes of states that he lost. More than 100 members of the House and at least a dozen members of the Senate are willing to discard more than two centuries of democracy in America to maintain this would-be Mussolini in power.
Corruption, like the coronavirus, is a virus that can spread rapidly and ravage a country. (Look at Russia or Venezuela.) And it is even harder to root out. At least all of us want to end covid-19. But Republicans show no desire to curb abuse of power when their side benefits. More Americans, after all, voted for Trump after he was impeached (74.2 million) than before (62.9 million). They, too, are complicit in what he has done. That so many voters care so little about such blatant wrongdoing is a grim indictment of our democracy — and a terrible augury for the future, when we are likely to confront politicians just as corrupt as Trump but far more clever.
Trump’s Fredo Corleone act is embarrassing and dangerous. But the end is near.
Opinion by
Columnist
Jan. 4, 2021 at 2:24 p.m. CST
"So what are we going to do here folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break."
No, that wasn't Fredo Corleone begging for a favor. It was President Trump, whining at Georgia officials, including Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger , on Saturday in a vain, clumsy, ridiculous — and maybe even illegal — attempt to make the vote tallies change the state's election result to favor him instead of President-elect Joe Biden.
Trump's flailing endgame is pathetic and maybe even dangerous. And while the rest of us must remain alert, we should calm ourselves with the knowledge that, no matter how much Trump pleads otherwise, the national disaster that is his presidency has an end date.
You probably know all the details by now: Raffensperger, a Republican, recorded the call after having reportedly dodged 18 previous attempts by Trump to reach him. Post reporter Amy Gardner obtained the recording. Legendary news anchor Dan Rather, who covered Watergate, summed up the contents perfectly on Twitter: "The audio of Trump with the Georgia secretary of state. Wow. It's like telling the Nixon tapes to 'hold my beer.' "
Rather isn't exaggerating. Georgia's votes have been counted not once, not twice, but three times; Biden won the state, Trump lost it. But the president of the United States, which likes to think of itself as the world's greatest democracy, wants state officials to break the law and overturn the voters' decision.
"So look," Trump says at another point during the hour-long phone call. "All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes." As Trump notes repeatedly, he lost the state by 11,779 votes. What he wants Raffensperger to do is announce "that you've recalculated" and somehow uncovered just enough fictitious Trump votes to reverse the outcome.
I urge everyone to listen to as much of the conversation as they can stand, to better understand the nadir to which Trump has brought us. Trump wheedles and cajoles. He bullies, at one point threatening Raffensperger and his aides that they are committing "a criminal offense" by accurately counting the votes. He delivers long, rambling soliloquies full of disproved conspiracy theories about thousands of "dead people" voting (didn't happen), supposed late-night shenanigans with the vote count (investigated and dismissed), and shadowy executives who somehow "moved the inner parts of the [voting] machines and replaced them with other parts" (utterly delusional).
Which would be more alarming? That Trump knows this is all nonsense and is just throwing random stuff against the wall, hoping that enough of it sticks to allow him to steal those 11,780 votes? Or that the most powerful man in the world, the keeper of the nuclear codes, is so divorced from reality that he actually believes this insanity?
I have to conclude that both propositions are true. Trump's sales technique is not to convince but to overwhelm. And while he has practical, self-interested reasons for trying to cling to power — notably, four more years of effective immunity from any threat of criminal prosecution — on some level, he seems unable to deal with the reality of being an impeached, one-term president who was defeated despite the fact that other Republicans, overall, did quite well. In other words: a loser.
What is Trump's plan for the finale of his presidency? At this point, we should know him well enough to assume that there isn't one. Trump's method has always been to try to "win" the day, the news cycle, the half-hour.
If Republicans keep the crucial Senate seats in Georgia, Trump will claim to have carried them across the finish line; if they lose, he will claim Gov. Brian Kemp (R), Raffensperger and other Republicans were insufficiently loyal to Dear Leader Trump. On Wednesday, when true believers descend on Washington to proclaim his "victory" and ambitious GOP members of Congress mount a futile challenge to the electoral college tally, Trump will bask in the adulation — and Biden will receive 306 electoral votes to Trump's 232.
Then what? Lots of Gotterdammerung-style screaming and sulking, no doubt, as the mantle of power slips from his shoulders to Biden's. But we cannot discount the possibility that he will lash out in more concrete ways. It is good that all 10 living former defense secretaries signed a Post op-ed warning against involving the military in any election dispute — but scary that such a piece had to be written.
It's awful to feel captive to this spectacle and to know that the best thing we can do in response feels a lot like nothing. Stay home and stay safe, stay vigilant and strong for a couple more weeks, everyone. Then exhale.
Take a lesson from Tom Cotton, Republicans
Opinion by
Columnist
Jan. 4, 2021 at 4:06 p.m. CST
Many conservatives are genuinely torn over proposals to challenge the electoral college vote on Wednesday. Sen. Tom Cotton’s (R-Ark.) statement Sunday night explaining why he will oppose such challenges is an excellent explanation of why they are a bad idea.
Cotton recognizes that there are concerns with how the election was conducted in some states. Rather than support using those issues to overturn the election results, however, Cotton proposes a commission that would study the election and propose voting reforms. That’s akin to the course Congress took after the disputed 2000 presidential election, when concerns over how archaic voting technology arguably cost Al Gore the presidency led to the passage of the bipartisan Help America Vote Act. Pursuing something like this now would be an entirely proper way to resolve legitimate concerns about ballot access and security.
Cotton’s rationale for opposing the challenges is telling and persuasive. He correctly notes that “under the Constitution and federal law, Congress’s power is limited to counting electoral votes submitted by the states.” Federal law since 1887 has set out a clear method for providing clarity with regard to when the winner of a state’s electoral votes is presumed legitimately decided, and that method does not involve Congress other than its role in deciding a clear dispute that arises within a state. That has not happened here: There are not competing slates of electors in any state that have been appointed or certified by any agency of any state. Without such a state-originated challenge, there is no dispute over which Congress has legitimate jurisdiction.
More importantly, Cotton points out the damaging precedent a successful challenge would set. Allowing Congress to overturn election results where there is no legally cognizable challenge would “take away the power to choose the president from the people, which would essentially end presidential elections and place that power in the hands of whichever party controls Congress.” Imagine if this precedent had been in place in 2000, when Democrats believed a partisan Supreme Court, a Republican secretary of state, and faulty voting technology and ballot design had cost Gore Florida’s electoral votes by less than a thousand votes. The Senate was split 50-50 after the 2000 election, with Gore eligible to cast the tie-breaking vote. Democrats would have been justified in seizing the power available to them to throw the election into turmoil. One should never set a precedent that one is unwilling to have applied against oneself.
This is especially true in the facts of the present case. There is no substantial argument that Trump lost the election because of fraud. Neither Trump nor his lawyers have ever laid out a clear and persuasive explanation of how specific errors could have resulted in his losing Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Anecdotes and affidavits are not evidence, and the results in those states and nationwide are perfectly consistent with prior election results and what we know about voter behavior. One would have to believe in a national conspiracy that includes hundreds of thousands of people and that has transpired unreported for many years to seriously argue fraud determined this year’s outcome.
Cotton also notes that a successful challenge would mean the effective end of the electoral college, an institution most conservatives support. The college maintains its legitimacy only because of the idea that states are in charge of their election law and are constitutionally charged with choosing electors. Congressional override of a state’s lawful choice ends that legitimacy.
Trump’s defeat is painful to most conservatives. Our duty as citizens, however, is prior to our ideological or partisan identity. Cotton understands that. Hopefully, other conservatives will come to understand that as well.
Hawley, Cruz and their Senate cohort are the Constitution’s most dangerous domestic enemies
Opinion by
Columnist
Jan. 4, 2021 at 3:39 p.m. CST
On a conference call last Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told his caucus that, in his 36 Senate years, he has twice cast votes to take the nation to war and once to remove a president, but that the vote he will cast this Wednesday to certify Joe Biden’s electoral college victory will be the most important of his career. McConnell (R-Ky.) understands the recklessness of congressional Republicans who are fueling the doubts of a large majority of Republicans about the legitimacy of the 2020 election.
The day before McConnell’s somber statement, Missouri’s freshman Republican senator, Josh Hawley, announced that on Wednesday, 14 days before Biden will be inaugurated, he will challenge the validity of Biden’s election. Hawley’s conscience regarding electoral proprieties compels him to stroke this erogenous zone of the GOP’s 2024 presidential nominating electorate.
Hawley’s stance quickly elicited panicky emulation from Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, another 2024 aspirant. Cruz led 10 other senators and senators-elect in a statement that presents their pandering to what terrifies them (their Trumpkin voters) as a judicious determination to assess the “unprecedented allegations” of voting improprieties, “allegations” exceeding “any in our lifetimes.”
So, allegations in sufficient quantity, although of uniformly risible quality, validate senatorial grandstanding that is designed to deepen today’s widespread delusions and resentments. While Hawley et al. were presenting their last-ditch devotion to President Trump as devotion to electoral integrity, Trump was heard on tape browbeating noncompliant Georgia election officials to “find” thousands of votes for him. Awkward.
Never mind. Hawley — has there ever been such a high ratio of ambition to accomplishment? — and Cruz have already nimbly begun to monetize their high-mindedness through fundraising appeals.
For many years, some people insisted that a vast conspiracy, not a lone gunman, masterminded the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy near the grassy knoll in Dallas’s Dealey Plaza. To these people, the complete absence of evidence proved the conspiracy’s sophistication. They were demented. Today’s senatorial Grassy Knollers — Hawley, with Cruz and others panting to catch up — are worse. They are cynical.
They know that every one of the almost 60 Trump challenges to the election have been rebuffed in state and federal courts, including the Supreme Court, involving more than 90 judges, nominated by presidents of both parties. But for scores of millions of mesmerized Trump Republicans, who think the absence of evidence is the most sinister evidence, this proves that the courts, too, are tentacles of the “deep state.” Hawley and Cruz, both of whom clerked for chief justices of the Supreme Court, hope to be wafted into the White House by gusts of such paranoia.
As does Vice President Pence, who says about Hawley et al.: Me, too. To fathom Pence’s canine devotion to Trump, watch a video from June 7, 2018. Seated next to Trump in a meeting, Pence saw Trump take his water bottle off the table and place it on the floor. So, Pence did likewise. Google the 22-second video. It is a sufficient Pence biography.
Republican Sen. Ben Sasse (Neb.) obliquely but scaldingly said of Hawley: “Adults don’t point a loaded gun at the heart of legitimate self-government.” America’s three-party system — Democrats, Hawley-Cruz Republicans, and McConnell-Sasse Republicans — will continue to take shape on Wednesday. Watch how many of these Republican senators who might be seeking reelection in 2022 have the spine to side with the adults against Hawley-Cruz et al. and the Grassy Knollers among their constituents: John Boozman, Richard Burr, Mike Crapo, Charles E. Grassley, John Hoeven, Mike Lee, Kelly Loeffler (if she prevails on Tuesday in the special election), Jerry Moran, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul, Rob Portman, Marco Rubio, Tim Scott, Richard C. Shelby, John Thune, Todd. C. Young. By aligning with Cruz, three — Ron Johnson, John Neely Kennedy and James Lankford — have reserved their seats at the children’s table.
Hawley, Cruz and company have perhaps rescued Biden from becoming the first president in 32 years to begin his presidency without his party controlling both houses of Congress. On Tuesday, Georgians will decide control of the Senate. While they have been watching Republican attempts to delegitimize Biden’s election (two recounts have confirmed that Georgians favor Biden), Republicans were telling them: a) elections in the world’s oldest constitutional democracy, and especially in Georgia, are rigged, but b) the nation’s fate depends on their turning out for Tuesday’s (presumptively) sham run-off Senate elections, lest c) Democrats take control of the Senate and behave badly.
Be that as it may, on Wednesday, the members of the Hawley-Cruz cohort will violate the oath of office in which they swore to defend the Constitution from enemies “foreign and domestic.” They are its most dangerous domestic enemies.