For the past week or more, many people in the media and politics, including us in Salon, have been accusing Donald Trump of sending federal police to Portland, Oregon, and now a little further north in Seattle, almost by complete to fuel the violence he thinks will help him win reelection. Not that such speculation was far-reaching, of course. It was clearly obvious that politics, not a real concern for “law and order,” was driving Trump’s decision.
On the one hand, while protests against police brutality have been ongoing in those cities since the assassination of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May, they were greatly reducing, until Trump’s thugs appeared and began snatching the people without cause, beating protesters and tearful Peaceful crowds. On the other hand, local and state politicians in Oregon have pleaded with Trump and his henchmen, especially acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, to withdraw the federal police, who are prepared to look like an invading army. The Oregon attorney general has filed a lawsuit against the federal government for this abuse of power, although a federal judge denied his request for a restraining order. Third, if Trump really cared about protecting Americans, he would focus on fighting the coronavirus, not a group of youths who shoot fireworks and spray-painted buildings.
But now White House aides have come out and admitted that the reason Trump is waging a war in American cities and terrorizing peaceful protesters is because he thinks he will look amazing in his campaign ads.
In an article published Friday, the Washington Post reported that “Trump campaign officials say the president wants to amplify his public order message” and that Portland was chosen not because of a real threat to the safety of anyone in the city, but because Trump and his assistants considered that it was the best “theater for their fight”.
Trump has shown much more interest in this campaign hack, one involving tear gas, beatings, and terrorizing real people for campaign publicity purposes, than he has ever had in the fight against the coronavirus. Trump gets up early in the morning, the Post reported, eager to call Wolf “to receive real-time updates from the front.”
Trump’s behavior is not just rude and sadistic. It is also an abuse of power and a misuse of taxpayer funds, which are being openly deployed in order to create campaign materials. The fact that he’s using the bodies of innocent people as props in his brutal campaign theater only makes the whole situation worse.
Given the circumstances, despite how exhausting this is, Democrats must impeach Trump. Yes again.
Over the weekend, the editor of the editorial page in the Washington Post, Fred Hiatt, published an opinion piece detailing the numerous crimes Trump has committed since he was formally indicted by the House of Representatives last December. (He was acquitted in the Senate, despite being obviously guilty of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, because 52 of the 53 Republicans in the House, with the exception of Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, refused to convict him.)
Trump’s “abuse of law enforcement powers” with “the recent and reckless deployment of federal forces in US cities for political ends” is an impeccable crime, Hiatt argues. She notes that this crime overshadows even the abuse of law enforcement in the past few weeks, such as Trump’s firing of Justice Department officials for investigating her abundant corruption and abusing her presidential powers to free her criminal friends.
Hiatt says he “is not suggesting that the House again impeach the president” so close to the election, when “the voters should be left to pass judgment.”
That sounds reasonable at first, but Hiatt overlooks a crucial factor: Trump’s abuse of law enforcement powers is endangering the well-being and even lives of Americans, while illegally trying to trample on their rights to the First Amendment. Unless someone stops him, Trump will continue to escalate these tactics, and there is a real possibility that these federal thugs will kill people. (Trump’s provocations have already led to an inadvertent death, when a motorist shot at a protester in Austin, Texas.) The indictment may be the only way that Congress can stop Trump’s unwarranted violence against citizens he was allegedly elected to serve.
In December, Trump was caught red-handed in the act of trying to cheat in the 2020 election by using the powers of his office to blackmail the President of Ukraine to aid in a smear campaign against Trump’s Democratic opponent. , former Vice President Joe Biden. These attacks in Portland and Seattle are the same: Trump is abusing his powers to create a bogus campaign narrative about “violent anarchists” that he hopes can be used to distract himself from his immense failures as president.
The punditocracy may view Trump’s impeachment in 2019 as a failure, as the Senate, led by corrupt Republicans, did not condemn him.
In truth, the accusation served at least one important purpose: It stopped Trump’s illegal plan to blackmail Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, on his way.
Remember, Zelensky was about to give in to Trump’s threats and promise a bogus “investigation” of Biden in exchange for military aid that Congress had already authorized, but Trump was withholding. A CNN interview is scheduled for September, in which Zelensky likely intended to do Trump’s orders and defame Biden. But when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced an official impeachment investigation, drawing attention to Trump’s criminal behavior, Zelensky’s interview was canceled.
While it is not certain that Trump withdrew his federal police in the face of another impeachment investigation, previous experience shows that he may be forced to reduce his corrupt schemes in the face of exposure to the level that an impeachment investigation entails. Given that people’s health and lives are at stake, it’s worth the effort. Congress has a duty to protect Americans from a violent president who is waging war against them for political ends.
It is tempting to debate the politics of this, of course. One side would argue that holding impeachment hearings that highlight Trump’s abuse of power, which could feature witnesses such as local politicians and victims of federal police tactics, will help focus public attention on Trump’s corruption. . The other side would argue that it is a distraction from the current problems of the pandemic and the collapse of the economy, and could backfire if the public decides that impeachment is political. Pelosi would certainly not be willing to spend time in another impeachment process as Democrats in Congress are trying to rescue the country from economic catastrophe, in the face of Republican intransigence.
But what was true last December is still true now: Ultimately, there is no way to know for sure how impeachment hearings would develop politically.
What is known, however, is the morality of this situation. What Trump is doing is illegal and immoral. It is incumbent on those who truly care about the safety of Americans to do everything possible to stop their cynical campaign of violence against citizens who exercise their freedom of expression rights. Oregon is already fighting this in court. Congress must back state officials by invoking the only power that has so far worked to reduce Trump’s abuse: the prosecution.
