Yes, but the problem is it is illegal and completely anti-democratic for an unelected official to go around snatching papers off the President’s desk and whatnot to control the government.
It really is a sort of mini-junta.
I mean, if it’s literally that or nuclear apocalypse, maybe; but otherwise I don’t see how it can be justified.
You act like Junta against Trump would be a bad thing. I know it would set a dangerous precedent yada yada, but I think our institutional norms have a better chance at surviving a military or internal coup, than the country and the world surviving 2.5 years of Trump. At best Trump is the least competent president ever, at worse he is a Russian mole.
The founders never anticipated Congress willing handing over their power to the Executive branch for decades and then merely speaking out against the President being hailed as an act of courage.
The problem is, once you go Junta it’s really hard to walk things back.
I still apparently hold out some flickering dessicated hope that the Republic can survive all this.
At this point I’m not even sure. The country would categorically be better if Mattis shot Trump in the head and declared himself President in the short term, but long term that’s a scary spectre to have hanging above things.
Likewise, but if I’m honest it gets less and less as midterms close in and we keep hearing about how we’re sitting with our pants around our ankles bending over a barrel as far as security. Add in some voter roll purges to taste.
Also:
https://twitter.com/TheDweck/status/1037732736453070850
Yeah I don’t know that I’d call this a resistance exactly, this is more like passive aggression. And I live in the Pacific NW, I know passive aggression.
But is it illegal? I would assume someone in a position to do that is serving at the behest of Trump, or in a position appointed directly below them. Do they take oaths to protect the constitution or to protect the nation? I actually have no idea.
That would actually be the best defense they could muster, but it doesn’t make it not illegal per se.
Now if Trump ends up impeached, odds are they’ll get off fairly light, maybe completely.
I’m sure you’ve heard the term Minnesota Nice. You are an intelligent fellow, after all. No, it’s ok, we can all agree that the Northwest is the best at this. Here let me help you rearrange your desk papers.
After the blue wave, the Republican survivors will hail from safe Republican districts and will see lots of the new Democrats as vulnerable, plus they will gleefully shed the responsibility for governing. Republicans have a structural lock on the Senate from the over-representation of small population, heavily rural states; that lock becomes stronger as the rural white vote increasingly identifies with white identity politics and becomes more cohesive. Republicans are not going to be shedding Trumpism; they are going to be embracing it for a generation to come.
Obvious mental deterioration may force Trump to resign, but elected Republicans never will.
Snatching papers off desks works only because it’s trump. Not only is he incompetent, apparently the entire WH staff is too.
It works physically, but it is completely outside the realm of legitimate governance, either in respecting a democratically elected leader* or in going through proper channels to remove him.
Again, if it’s that or H-bombs falling, I get it, but otherwise I think it stinks.
*and yeah, if Russia genuinely put him there then the whole issue gets a lot murkier…
To me this is the least plausible part of it. No one who joined the Trump team failed to know what Trump was long before they got close to any appointment. It’s simply not believable that they were unpleasantly surprised after they decided to be part of the team. They all knew what he was,and they helped him get elected anyway, and then they joined his administration to help him fuck the poor, kick immigrants, and so on. They don’t get a medal for whining about their secret struggle and asking for our thanks.
That’s where I get tripped up - I don’t see trump nor the Republican party as legitimately governing. (I recognize that’s not the best place to be but I can’t escape it.)
My amateur reading of history suggests that once this happens — even if it is for ‘good reasons’ — it will happen over and over again, with the principals in each case justifying their actions based on what the prior coup leaders did. Start with Rome.
Well, for me it depends. If Russia didn’t actually alter votes and just flooded our info ecosystem with misinformation to take advantage of a bunch of dumbass voters, then it seems to me that Trump’s election fell within reasonable bounds of legitimacy, which also means that either a) he needs to be removed the old fashioned way, or b) shit needs to be really dire to resort to junta techniques.
If Trump colluded and all that, he should be impeached; if he is mentally ill he should be 25th’d; if he directed Michael Cohen to commit felonies he should be impeached; but in all such cases let’s have that fucking process. I know: Congressional GOP will never let it happen. But the solution is just to let random staffers decide to what degree they will let the president do what he was elected to do?
Agreed.
So what you’re saying is that Anonymous Op Ed guy is Sulla?
I think I agree with that. But, well, shit. If that is genuinely what is happening then we have a Problem.
It blows my mind that some people here actually believe that if the whistle blowers went public Republicans would do anything other than focus entirely on going after the leaks with 110% of their effort. What world are you living in because i want to join you there. As long as Republicans totally control the government, Trump is very nearly immune to justice and he gets closer the more he saturates the justice system with his people.
It is a terrible question though. What is the best thing government officials can do, mass quit or try to contain the rot until batman arrives (Gotham)? Even if high level positions resign, someone else will just be hired to fill the spot and it will be yet another mindless and/or corrupt flunky. Maybe the best they can do is to hide the racy headlines from the child in chief so he doesn’t have a tantrum.