The Ever-Changing Excuses From Donald Trump

 

(Dobbs) The Ever-Changing Excuses From Donald Trump

His inconsistency itself is almost enough to implicate and indict.

Greg Dobbs

6 hr ago

It’s enough to make you dizzy. 

In the less-than-four-weeks since the FBI seized secret and unsanctioned documents from Donald Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago, the one-time president and his apologists have taken the nation on a roller-coaster ride of excuses. Dishonest, duplicitous, capricious, even contradictory excuses. That’s what a con man does.

You’ve probably been following it in bits and pieces, but at this stage it might be instructive to lay it all out in one fell swoop.

The first thing we heard from Trump’s people about the August 8th search was that his home was “under siege, raided and occupied by a large group of FBI agents.” Trump himself called it “unAmerican, unwarranted, and unnecessary.” Basically what he tried to feed us was that old bromide, “Nothing to see here,” because there was nothing important ever stored at Mar-a-Lago. 

First fact check: it was not “unAmerican” or “unwarranted.” The FBI was executing a legal search warrant, approved by a federal judge who had to conclude that there was probable cause that a crime had been committed— serious stuff like obstruction, theft or destruction of government records, and violations of the Espionage Act. And it wasn’t unnecessary. As we learned last week, there was plenty to see there: 31 documents marked confidential, 54 marked secret, and 18 marked top secret.

That might explain why one of his lawyers shamelessly told Fox News shortly after the search, “I'm concerned that they may have planted something. You know, at this point, who knows?” Trump then built on that ugly smear, complaining that the FBI did not allow his people to observe the search to “see what they were doing, taking or, hopefully not, ‘planting’.”

Next fact check: the FBI doesn’t have to let anyone watch, and usually doesn’t.

Then, in case that didn’t take root, the Trump team turned to a new one: who doesn’t take work home with them? “As we can all relate to,” one of his lawyers said, “everyone ends up having to bring home their work from time to time. American presidents are no different.”

Except… another fact check here… he’s not president any more. TV host Trevor Noah said it best: “It's not 'taking work home with you' if you no longer have the job.” And his “work” belongs to the nation. Under the provisions of the Presidential Records Act, it is supposed to go to the National Archives, not to a country club in Florida.

Then they put the roller-coaster in high gear.

One of Trump’s aides went on Fox and scapegoated the government: “The GSA has since come out, the Government Services Administration (my note: it’s the General Services Administration, and it oversees the National Archives), and said they mistakenly packed some boxes and moved them to Mar-a-Lago.”

Except… fact check again… the GSA has publicly said they didn’t. They oversaw the shipping of sealed cartons from the White House to Mar-a-Lago, but they didn’t pack them.

So Fox News tried to help Trump with a new “out”: he was so caught up in the “chaotic time” of January 6th and its aftermath that he never got around to sorting through what would go to Mar-a-Lago and what would stay.

Fact check yet again: the only thing he was busy with was continuing to subversively try to overturn the election. 

Then the roller coaster took another sharp turn: after the first reports that sensitive classified documents were among the records seized, Trump told a tall tale on his website: "Number one, it was all declassified. Lucky I Declassified!” His office went on to claim that Trump "had a standing order… that documents removed from the Oval Office and taken to the residence were deemed to be declassified the moment he removed them.”

Except… another fact check… two of his former chiefs of staff and 16 other former aides publicly declared that they never heard of that. They used words, on the record, like "ludicrous," “ridiculous." and “bullsh*t.” What’s more, there is a prescribed procedure for a president to declassify sensitive documents. A “standing order,” with zero documentation to back it up, isn’t it.

As former Attorney General William Barr said the other day, “If in fact he sort of stood over scores of boxes, not really knowing what was in them and said 'I hereby declassify everything in here,' that would be such an abuse and that shows such recklessness, it's almost worse than taking the documents.”

Furthermore, there are laws prohibiting the willful retention of national defense information, the obstruction of a federal investigation, and the concealment or removal of government property. They are crimes, whether the documents in question are classified or not.

But Trump kept the roller-coaster rolling and came up with a new one: “They could have had it anytime they wanted—and that includes LONG ago. ALL THEY HAD TO DO WAS ASK.”

This calls of course for another fact check: they did ask. For more than a year. Ultimately they had to serve a subpoena in January to collect more documents from Mar-a-Lago and after that, Trump’s lawyer attested in writing that there were no more of the documents at issue at Trump’s resort. Except… there were.

So then came yet another excuse: Trump said it should be no surprise that there were still classified documents in those boxes because they were presidential records. “Simply put,” his lawyers wrote, “the notion that Presidential records would contain sensitive information should have never been cause for alarm.” Trump even had the chutzpah to claim that the National Archives had no right to anything he’d brought from the White House because, "It's not theirs, it's mine.”

Fact check: not according to the law. That’s the law called the Presidential Records Act, created after Richard Nixon’s scandalous presidency, to protect against another scandalous presidency.

The latest “nothing to see here” excuse, part of Trump’s newest argument last week before a federal judge, is that his failure to return all those controversial documents to the National Archives is on a par with “an overdue library book.” 

Fact check. We’re not talking here about an overdue library book. We’re talking about documents that, if they should fall into the wrong hands, could compromise our national security. Documents “strewn,” as William Barr put it, “all over a country club.”

It is no surprise that while the dominant theme from federal law enforcement is, “What laws have been broken, what jeopardy are we in?,” the theme from Trump’s people is still, “Nothing to see here.” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland a couple of days ago complaining that the Department of Justice "is proceeding in a manner that is eroding public trust and confidence.” No mention of the erosion of public confidence spawned by the insurrection of January 6th, no mention of the still baseless claims that the 2020 election was rigged, indeed no mention of the possibility that by secreting government property at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump willingly broke some consequential federal laws.

The same Donald Trump, by the way, who said during his 2016 presidential campaign, "In my administration, I'm going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information. No one will be above the law."

Heaven help us if this roller-coaster doesn’t crash.

Over almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies and politics at home and international crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.

 

 

MAGA Republicans are seething with rage because Biden hit his target

 

By Greg Sargent

Columnist|

September 2, 2022 at 11:18 a.m. EDT

 

Republicans are in a rage over President Biden’s speech in Philadelphia, in which he flatly declared that the American democratic experiment is in serious danger due to Donald Trump and the Republicans who remain allied with his political project.

So here’s a question for those Republicans: What exactly in Biden’s speech was wrong?

Many objections have been general: Republicans say his speech disparaged millions, that it was angry, or divisive, or political, or hateful, or depicted Republicans as the enemy.

 

In coming days, these Republicans will retreat into right-wing media safe spaces to fulminate without facing cross-examination. But when they venture into mainstream forums, they should be pressed on specifics.

 

Let’s take Biden’s most fundamental claim about the MAGA-fied GOP and democracy:

 

Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic.

 

Biden elaborated:

 

MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people. They refuse to accept the results of a free election.

 

Some Republicans insist they do respect the Constitution and the rule of law. But Biden carefully distinguished between MAGA and non-MAGA Republicans, casting only the former in these terms.

 

The category of “MAGA Republicans” is vague. But we can certainly say a whole lot of them — including members of Congress — were largely supportive of Trump’s effort as president to overturn his election loss.

 

That MAGA coup attempt included extraordinarily corrupt pressure on many government actors, including law enforcement, which flouted the rule of law on its face. It involved pressure on Vice President Mike Pence to violate his constitutional duty. Pence himself said he was being asked to betray basic tenets of constitutional democracy.

 

Many Republicans who are now professing outrage supported all that. A review of their own conduct proves Biden right.

 

Biden also said this:

 

They look at the mob that stormed the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, brutally attacking law enforcement, not as insurrectionists who placed a dagger at the throat of our democracy, but they look at them as patriots.

 

Biden also accused “MAGA forces” of fanning “political violence.”

 

Republicans sometimes say those who committed violent crimes should be prosecuted. That may be sincere in some cases, but again, what Biden said just does apply to Trump and the GOP’s MAGA wing.

 

This week, Trump strongly suggested that if elected again, he would pardon untold numbers who violently attacked the U.S. Capitol to prevent a legitimately elected government from taking power. Trump also said he would issue a government apology, meaning the Jan. 6 defendants are persecuted victims. This drew not a peep from most elected Republicans.

 

Meanwhile, other MAGA Republicans actually have called the Jan. 6 defendants “political prisoners” or otherwise described the rioters as patriots. Many continue to hand-wave away or actively cover up Trump’s own role in inciting that violence, implying it was perhaps excessive but motivated by an underlying just cause.

 

Here’s more from Biden on MAGA:

 

They’re working right now as I speak in state after state to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself.

 

He amplified:

 

And they see their MAGA failure to stop a peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election as preparation for the 2022 and 2024 elections.

 

Which part of this do Republicans deny?

 

Right now, dozens of Republicans are seeking positions of control over election machinery, with Trump’s active support, while campaigning explicitly on their refusal to acknowledge that Biden was legitimately elected president. All of that represents a threat to use the power of their offices to treat future Democratic election wins as subject to nullification.

 

And so, the openly declared intentions of Trump and those MAGA Republicans show that they undeniably do pose a threat to our democratic system at a bedrock level.

Does that mean the system couldn’t recover if all Jan. 6 defendants walked or if Trump (or an imitator) and his allies illicitly overturn a future presidential election?

 

Not necessarily. But their actions are plainly a threat to our foundational democratic bargain, in which electoral losses are accepted as binding and the losers live to fight another day, and a hard line is drawn at political violence.

 

On that latter score, in fact, some scholars of political breakdown fear that the MAGA takeover of large swaths of the GOP really does portend future political violence and instability. Not civil war, necessarily, but higher levels of violence directed at influencing or contesting political outcomes.

 

And so, at a fundamental level, Biden’s core claim — that Trump and the swaths of the GOP allied with him pose a foundational threat — is absolutely reasonable.

 

Here’s the most basic point of all. Despite screams that Biden’s speech was dictatorial and cast MAGA as the enemy, he said this:

 

There are far more Americans, far more Americans from every background and belief, who reject the extreme MAGA ideology than those that accept it. And folks, it’s within our power, it’s in our hands, yours and mine, to stop the assault on American democracy.

 

That’s a call for Americans to defeat Trump and MAGA in a manner that is peaceful and democratic. Biden is saying that an anti-MAGA majority exists in this country that can and must mobilize to stabilize our system.

 

And the idea that this majority is out there and exists for the rousing — well, that’s what enrages Republicans most of all.