Not long after the full Mueller report was released, and well before anyone could have read it all, I got a personal email from the President. That is, me, and probably about ten million other people on some mailing list. “Sorry, haters,” it began.
“NO COLLUSION & EXONERATION AGAIN!” it then said, in all capital letters. It went on to say that I needed to help send a message to the Trump haters by contributing to efforts to raise a million dollars in the next day to defend Donald Trump.
Well, somehow I couldn’t find my credit card.
What was interesting, though, is that what the report did say was “while the report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
Which means that the fund-raising appeal I was sent was clearly not true. Once upon a time, that might have mattered. But today, in the world of “alternative facts,” it may not.
Jeffrey Toobin, an attorney and author of The Nine, an important book on the United States Supreme Court, said on CNN before the report was released that for many people, what it said wouldn’t matter, that they would believe what they wanted to believe.
The rise of ideologically driven cable “news” networks has contributed greatly to this, which I happen to believe has become a very scary cancer on our democracy.
I am old enough to remember when it wasn’t always like this. Flash back to July 1974, during the Watergate Scandal, when President Nixon was attempting to withhold the tape recordings he had made of secret White House conversations from the special prosecutor.
The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ordered him to turn over the relevant tapes, saying “no person, not even the President of the United States, is completely above the law, and the President cannot use executive privilege as an excuse to withhold evidence.”
Nixon then turned over the tapes, one of which proved that he had directed the cover-up and attempted to obstruct justice all along. All the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee who had opposed impeachment instantly said they had been wrong to do so.
Nixon, facing certain impeachment and conviction, then resigned. After taking the oath of office hours later, President Gerald Ford said, “Our constitution works; our great republic is a government of laws, and not of men.” We all felt relieved.
But would that happen today? Would today’s Congressional Republicans dare call for Trump’s impeachment, and would he comply with an order from the U.S. Supreme Court?
Sadly, I’m not at all sure that they or he would. We need to be a government of laws. On the other end of the spectrum, I was also a bit disheartened by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel proclaiming that she wouldn’t enforce laws against abortion if Roe v Wade were overturned. Personally, I am completely pro-choice, and admire the attorney general.
I think it is perfectly fine for her to indicate she will fight for reproductive rights. But it is not a good thing when any law enforcement officer says in advance that they may not obey a law that doesn’t suit them, because that gives others the excuse not to do so.
We need to be a government of laws, where men have the ability to change those laws, and honest, fair and intelligent judges interpret the meaning of those laws. We also need to be a people who are open to truth and are willing to accept proven facts.
Or, comrades, we will all be doomed.
