Donald Trump-- Enemy Of The People

In a column published by The Guardian this morning, Robert Reich noted that In fighting all oversight, Trump has made his most dictatorial move. He worries that Trump has gone off the deep end to make sure there would be "no congressional oversight of this administration: no questioning officials who played a role in putting a citizenship question on the 2020 census. No questioning a former White House counsel about the Mueller report. No questioning a Trump adviser about immigration policy. No questioning a former White House security director about issuances of security clearances. No presidential tax returns to the ways and means committee, even though a 1920s law specifically authorizes the committee to get them. Such a blanket edict fits a dictator of a banana republic, not the president of a constitutional republic founded on separation of powers."

All true. And the twin crime here is Trump's jihad against a free press. Hobbling Congress and hobbling the media leads to just one thing: tyranny. Trump needs to be removed-- by the people of the United States in November of 2020. Congress may go down in history as cowards for not doing their duty, but what we need to focus on now, as citizens, is doing our own.

Last night Trump was in Green Bay Wisconsin last night, rallying his fans by spewing bile about Mueller (who he claims cleared him of treason), spewing bile Bernie, Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden, and bile about the "fake news" media. "Can you imagine," this asshole babbled, "Sleepy Joe, Crazy Bernie. ... Can you imagine any of those people up here doing what I'm doing?" Frankly it's inconceivable that any American president, past or future, would "do what I do"-- stooping to the levels he stoops to when he addresses his low-IQ, predominantly racist fans around the country-- overwhelmingly men who hate their own lives and hate everything around them. Last night they chanted "CNN sucks" as their Hitlerian idol raged against them for daring to offer news independently of his own distorted vision.

Back in Washington, the "fake news" media was being enlightened and entertained by a decidedly higher-brow speaker, historian Ron Chernow, whose speech is embedded up top. Trump was too frightened to go-- or to even allow members of the Regime to attend.

Chernow broke the ice by quoting Will Rogers: "People are taking their comedians seriously and their politicians as a joke," adding "and that certainly describes our topsy turvy moment." But he talked more about journalists than about Trumpanzee. "We've seen past administrations threaten the press directly, whether it be Lincoln shutting down disloyal papers during the Civil War, or Woodrow Wilson stifling dissent with the Espionage Act in World War I. But what is happening today is perhaps even more insidious-- a relentless campaign against the very credibility of the news media. Even the smartest courtroom lawyers can't defend the press against such vague and sweeping attacks. You folks can only preserve that hard-won credibility in one way-- with solid, fair-minded, accurate, and energetic reporting... Now, you folks in the media write the early drafts of history and we historians the later ones. Your work gives freshener, and color, and immediacy to our sagas. I know how embattled you feel at this critical juncture as you combat the mistrust of a significant portion of the American electorate. I think you do noble work to preserve democracy at a time when a rising tide of misinformation masquerading as news threatens to make a mockery of the First Amendment... The press is a powerful weapon that must always be fired with reluctance and aimed with precision."

Samantha Bee's Not The White House Correspondents' Dinner was... less high brow:

The Donald J. Trump Regime-- Hostis Publicus, Ennemi Du Peuple, Vrag Naroda...

An Enemy of the People was an 1882 play by Henrik Ibsen that inspired a Steve McQueen film of the same name (1978), based on Arthur Miller's adaptation of Ibsen's original. In between the play and the film, we had Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, whose use of the term was a turn-around from the Roman Senate's very reasonable declaration in AD 68 that Nero was a hostis publicus... enemy of the people. The French Revolution revitalized the term-- ennemi du peuple-- and in 1793 Robespierre declared that the revolutionary government owed the Enemies of the People nothing but death, codified the following year and meted out to... Robespierre himself a few months later. In Russian the term is враг народа (pronounced vrag naroda) and it was a term Lenin used right from the beginning. But it really came into its own under Stalin, who used the term to deprive Russians of citizenship and to internally deport them to the gulags. The term faded from popular usage until February 17 of this year when Señor Trumpanzee, who probably had no idea of the historical context and was no doubt fed the term by either Comrade Bannon, Comrade Miller or Comrade Gorka, tweeted: "The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!" and then followed that up on February 24 during his CPAC speech: "A few days ago I called the fake news the enemy of the people and they are. They are the enemy of the people."

Last week PRI interviewed Nikita Khrushchev's great granddaughter, Nina Khrushcheva, a professor of international affairs at the New School in New York, and she explained why she finds Trump's use of the phrase "horrifying... It was used by Leon Trotsky, it was used by Vladimir Lenin, but it was really ratcheted up during Joseph Stalin. It became a very convenient political tool, so when you say so-and-so could be an enemy of the people, then you really don’t have to look into any context or any crimes. Somebody would report that you don’t wink the right way, and that would be enough to prosecute you. So that’s how gulags were created."

The term became so loaded that when Khrushcheva's grandfather, Nikita Khrushchev, came to power, he demanded that people stop using it.

That’s why Khrushcheva was startled to hear those words getting tossed around again, and this time, in the US.

“It does sound shocking that in the greatest democracy in the world, in American democracy, you can hear from the White House podium the language that even the Soviets, after the death of Joseph Stalin, actually dismissed,” she says, “because even for the Soviets that language was too divisive."

Khrushcheva doubts that Trump knows about the history of the phrase he adopted. “I’m not certain he understands what it means in larger global context,” she says.

But she still worries about the impact of resurrecting-- even unknowingly-- a phrase that caused so much anguish in the past.

“Those words,” she warns, “create an atmosphere that could lead to really horrible, very tragic consequences.”

Even with clowns like Ted Cruz, Orrin Hatch and Tom Cotton still (lamely) defending Sessions, by later yesterday afternoon, Sessions and Trump were tired of being beaten to a pulp over Sessions' contacts with the Russians during the campaign and the scandal growing around his perjury. He offered to recuse himself... when most people think he needs to resign and face a trial.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, facing a chorus of criticism over his contacts with the Russian ambassador, recused himself Thursday from any current or future investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. His conversations with the ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, came amid suspected Russian hacking directed at Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Mr. Sessions said he made the decision after meeting with senior career officials at the Justice Department. He said he would not take part in any investigations “related in any way to the campaigns for president of the United States.”

Mr. Sessions said “I don’t recall” whether Mr. Trump or the presidential election, which was then two months away, came up in the discussion with the ambassador.

The remarks by Mr. Sessions came not long after President Trump on Thursday expressed his support for Mr. Sessions and said he should not recuse himself from the investigation. Mr. Sessions was a key adviser and surrogate for Mr. Trump’s campaign.

...Sessions’s decision exposed rifts between the White House and the Justice Department not only over whether he should recuse himself-- President Trump said less than an hour earlier that he did not think he needed to do so-- but also on the president’s public assertions about the controversy.

Asked why the White House had frequently asserted that no one from the Trump campaign had any contact with the Russian government during the campaign, a Justice Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said: “That’s the White House’s answer. I don’t know.”

The clash was the latest escalation in the continuing fallout over what intelligence officials have concluded was Russian interference in the 2016 election to help President Trump, including by hacking Democratic emails and providing them to WikiLeaks for release.

F.B.I. officials have been scrutinizing contacts between people affiliated with the Trump campaign over communication with the Russian government. And last month, the national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, resigned after it emerged that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence about a conversation with Mr. Kislyak.

Now, Mr. Sessions, formerly an Alabama senator, appears to be at risk of becoming caught in that same wave. He was the first senator to endorse Mr. Trump and became an architect of his populist campaign strategy who sharpened the candidate’s message on immigration and trade. Mr. Sessions became a trusted adviser and is seen as one of the power centers in the administration.

At the confirmation hearing for attorney general in January, Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, asked Mr. Sessions about a CNN report that intelligence briefers had told Barack Obama, then the president, and Mr. Trump, then the president-elect, that Russian operatives claimed to have compromising information about Mr. Trump.

Mr. Franken also noted that the report indicated that surrogates for Mr. Trump and intermediaries for the Russian government continued to exchange information during the campaign. He asked Mr. Sessions what he would do if that report proved true.

Mr. Sessions replied that he was “not aware of any of those activities.” He added: “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign, and I didn’t have-- did not have communications with the Russians, and I’m unable to comment on it.”

But the Justice Department acknowledged on Wednesday that Mr. Sessions had twice communicated with the Russian ambassador last year. The first time was in July, at the Republican National Convention, after he gave a speech at an event for ambassadors sponsored by the Heritage Foundation. The second time was a visit to his office by Mr. Kislyak in September.

Trump's hand in the coverup yesterday: "Jeff Sessions is an honest man. He did not say anything wrong. He could have stated his response more accurately, but it was clearly not intentional. This whole narrative is a way of saving face for Democrats losing an election that everyone thought they were supposed to win. The Democrats are overplaying their hand. They lost the election and now, they have lost their grip on reality. The real story is all of the illegal leaks of classified and other information. It is a total witch hunt!" Sounds definitive (not).