At 12:37 pm yesterday, Sunday 5/20 Donald J. Trump issued the following tweet, “I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes – and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!”
If you were not aware of the source of this message, I would understand if you thought it sounded like a royal decree, or more likely the demands of an arrogant dictator. Instead it was the command of an emboldened narcissistic President throwing his weight around in his own Justice Department. Some seem to think that Trump doesn’t understand that the chief executive of this country must maintain an arm’s length relationship with the primary law enforcement arm of our government. They are mistaken. He understands the concept; he just doesn’t believe that it applies to him.
Therefore Trump believes that he is well within his rights to order an investigation of the investigation into his possible obstructions of justice and his campaign’s possible collusion with foreign nations to tip the scales of the Presidential election in his favor. This is where the checks and balances of our constitution are supposed to kick in to protect us from massive overreaches of the executive branch of our government. The courts and our judicial system are supposed to ensure that no one, not even the President of the United States is above the law. Congress is supposed to maintain oversight of the executive branch and ensure that the powers of President are not abused.
However, if the President is allowed to try to bully the Justice Department personal investigating him into overlooking his misdeeds, the court system may be deprived of the information necessary to enforce the law. Then it falls upon the Congress to perform their own investigations of alleged misdeeds and step in and protect the Justice Department’s investigation from President’s abuses of his power. Unfortunately this Congress, especially the Republican controlled House of Representatives, has failed miserably in its responsibilities to the Constitution and the American People.
Republicans in the House have not only failed to properly investigate the possible criminal offenses of the President, his administration, and his campaign staff. They have instead tried to use their constitutionally granted powers to instead try to intimidate the leaders of the Justice Department and FBI, many of whom are Republicans and appointed by Trump. Instead of protecting the investigation, they have misused their Congressional powers to attack it and attempt to protect Trump and his cronies from justice.
Obviously the checks and balances protections installed by our nation’s founders in our Constitution when they devised our system of three coequal branches of government are in danger of failing. However, when such a situation occurs, our Constitution also provides the ultimate protection against a tyrannical chief executive – the will of all Americans informed by a free press and expressed in the ballot boxes across this nation. Our next opportunity to express our will as free Americans comes in 2018 when one third of the Senators and every member of the House of Representatives are up for reelection.
In this election the Republicans should be favored to maintain their control of the Senate simply because the Democrats have to defend far more seats than their opponents. It is important to overcome these odds in order to prevent Trump from continuing to flood our judiciary with under qualified, ultra conservative judges. If the past is predictive of the future, Trump will also continue to require Senate approval of administration replacements as he continues to make his staff more responsive to his political whims. However, at least Senate Republicans have been somewhat willing to investigate Trump and his cronies and criticise his abuses of power.
It is the House of Representatives which should be of great concern to educated voters. If the Republican party in its present configuration is allowed to continue to maintain its power in the House, Congress cannot and will not attempt to check Trump’s abuses of executive power. Quite the contrary, Republican House members will continue to be his biggest cheerleaders and protectors. It is also almost inconceivable that that they would ever move to impeach Trump regardless of the findings of Mueller’s investigation.
It is absolutely essential that Democrats take control of the House in the 2018 elections, not only because Republicans in Congress continue to contribute to growing wealth gap between the richest Americans and the rest of us, not only because the Trump administrations intends to continue to allow the destruction of our environment, the rights of labor and our public school system, and not only because Trump continues to coddle our enemies, alienate our best allies and make our country the laughing stock of world. Ending Republican control of the House is absolutely essential to maintaining our country’s Constitutionally mandated system checks and balances and reigning in the power of a would be authoritarian dictator.
Let the Blue Wave wash the House of Representatives clean.
Cajun 5/22/2018