Writing more in sorrow than in anger, “The Risky Wager of Betting on Trump”, the National Review’s Andy McCarthy has had it up to here—okay, maybe not all the way up to “here”, but almost all the way—with Donald Trump:
Since the election, we’ve had two months of a president publicly insisting the election was rigged while hoping no one noticed that his campaign expressly declined the invitation to prove massive fraud and illegality in Wisconsin. In Pennsylvania, Trump’s team did not just formally drop fraud charges, they explicitly represented to federal courts that they were not alleging fraud. Yet Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) now vows to join Trump’s House allies in objecting to the counting of Pennsylvania’s electoral votes. And other states’ votes, too. Even Hawley does not claim that the election was stolen or that any known departures from Pennsylvania’s election laws would have changed the outcome. He just wants to “raise these critical issues.”
Well, this is shocking. Who would have guessed that a man who ridiculed those with disabilities, a draft-dodger who mocked a man who risked his life, over and over again, for his country, who willingly endured imprisonment and torture, for the sake of his honor—and what is the deal with that “honor” stuff, anyway?—who has pardoned murderers, who has clearly endorsed the wanton murder of helpless civilians by the U.S. military as long as they are, you know, foreigners, who could have guessed that such a man might be, you know, a bad choice for the office of president of the United States, even when compared to a neoliberal hawk like Hillary Clinton, whose neoliberal predecessors, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, signally failed to destroy the republic?
McCarthy is seriously “far” right—he wanted to impeach Obama and (of course) remove him from office, while passionately defending Trump—so it’s (slightly) reassuring—one takes what one can get, after all—that, like former attorney general and right-wing hero William Barr, he has a bottom.1 Both are lawyers, and are perfectly happy misrepresenting evidence—because that’s a lawyer’s job!—but not inventing evidence—at least, not out of whole cloth—not a lot of it anyway—unless you really need it, to, you know, impeach a Democratic president.
So there’s that to be thankful for.
Afterwords
As a lawyer, McCarthy is acutely aware of the danger that Democrats might use the precedents Republicans are forging to argue the ultimate of horrors, that presidents should be chosen according to the popular vote! After that, goodbye America!
Jennifer Rubin struggles to get her arms around Bill Barr’s endless enormities here, and gets a lot of them, though one can blame her (a little) for missing one of the worst and most oleaginous of all, his abysmal resignation letter.
UPDATE
Wonder what Andy thinks of Trump's latest outrage, where he essentially begs Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to commit, you know, voter fraud.
1. Though, you know, probably not as big.
