If President Trump manages to win re-election it will be in no small part due to the fact that he’s exhausted the opposition with so much outrageous conduct that regular people simply can’t find the emotional energy to engage in the fight anymore. This week we are expecting to see the result of Attorney General Bill Barr’s redacted version of the Mueller report. It’s very possible that it will leave us with that now familiar feeling that we can believe the president or believe our lying eyes.
We know we saw Trump praising Russian President Vladimir Putin in truly odd fashion throughout the 2016 campaign. We know we saw him deny the Intelligence community’s unanimous conclusion that the Russians interfered in the election, and we know he lied repeatedly to the public about a major real estate deal he was negotiating during the campaign, all of which was at best suspicious and at worst disqualifying. Yet, even if the report lays out in colorful detail that although investigators “did not establish” that Trump committed a crime but did establish that he was ignorant and unethical, it will go down as a victory for him. That’s how degraded our standards have become in just two short years.
So far the country has survived, even if we are a bit worse for wear. But consider the fact that the more Trump gets away with, the bolder he is becoming. Last week we learned that the president of the United States is offering pardons to officials who will agree to break the law. CNN reported:
View the complete April 15 article by Heather Digby Parton with Salon on the AlterNet website here.