Kmgw9v Loc: Miami, Florida

"Polls show that President Biden’s attacks on extremist MAGA Republicans are working. In a recent Reuters-Ipsos survey, 58 percent of respondents said the MAGA movement threatens U.S. democracy — because, of course, it does.

Having been exposed to public obloquy by the president, ultra-MAGA Republicans are reacting with the ultrasophisticated “I know what you are, but what am I?” defense. In their telling, it is Biden Democrats, not Trump Republicans, who threaten democracy. Don’t fall for this malarkey, as Biden might say.
Former vice president Mike Pence tweeted last week: “Never before in the history of our nation has a President stood before the American people, and accused millions of his own countrymen of being a ‘threat to this country.’ ” Pence, of all people, should understand that an unprecedented threat calls for an unprecedented response. If he had only a tiny bit of backbone, he, too, would be calling out the f*****ts who almost lynched him while Donald Trump did not lift a finger to save him.

Naturally, the very same right-wingers who accuse Biden of intemperate rhetoric are engaging in not-so-temperate rhetoric themselves. While charging Biden with being d******e, Republicans compare him to Hitler and Satan. It’s pretty rich to hear Trump, in particular, excoriate Biden for delivering the “most vicious, h**eful, and d******e speech ever delivered by an American president” when Trump himself has called Democrats “vicious, horrible” people — and “treasonous” and “un-American” to boot.

Trump accuses Biden not just of h**eful rhetoric but also of “weaponizing the Justice Department and the FBI like never, ever before, and raiding and breaking into the homes of their political opponents.” There is no acknowledgment from Trump, or his purblind defenders, that the FBI only searched Mar-a-Lago because he refused to turn over classified material that might endanger national security. The court-ordered search on Aug. 8 unearthed more than 100 classified documents — including, reportedly, top-secret information about another nation’s nuclear arsenal.

Far from being weaponized against Trump, the Justice Department has shown great forbearance in dealing with him. The FBI waited many months to take back the documents Trump was hoarding and did not arrest Trump when they were found in his possession, as it surely would have done with any other disgruntled former government employee.

If you want to see evidence of the Justice Department actually being weaponized against political opponents, read the new memoir by Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York from 2018 to 2020.
Berman claims that political appointees at “Main Justice” repeatedly pressed him to investigate John F. Kerry after the former secretary of state and senator made Trump furious by criticizing his decision to leave the Iran nuclear deal. Trump demanded that Kerry be prosecuted for violations of the Logan Act, which forbids private citizens from engaging in unauthorized diplomacy. Berman writes that he refused to act, because the law is vague and no one has ever been convicted of violating it.

According to Berman, Trump appointees also pressured him to launch an investigation of Gregory B. Craig, a former White House counsel under President Barack Obama, on charges of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Berman reports that a Justice Department official told him, in reference to the indictments of Trump supporters, “It’s time for you guys to even things out.” After Berman refused to indict Craig, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia charged him with a single count of making false statements. Craig was acquitted by a jury.

While insisting that he go after Democrats, Berman writes, Trump appointees pressured him successfully to scrub from the indictment of Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen any references to Trump (“Individual 1”) having “coordinated with” Cohen to violate campaign finance laws.

For refusing to regularly do the president’s dirty work, Berman writes, he was fired in June 2020 by Attorney General William P. Barr: “The t***h was that Barr was desperate to get me out of the job I was in, and it was not to put a better U.S. attorney in place. The reasons were perfectly obvious. They were based in politics.” (Barr himself would leave office a few months later after refusing to go along with Trump’s demands to use the Justice Department to overturn the e******n results.)

If we were dealing with a normal ex-president, the Berman revelations would be a major scandal that would be considered worse than Watergate. But because we are dealing with the most scandal-ridden president in U.S. history, they have barely registered. In a familiar pattern, Trump’s misconduct in keeping classified documents has drawn media attention away from his misconduct in politicizing the Justice Department. At least the Senate Judiciary Committee will now investigate Berman’s allegations.

These latest revelations, assuming they are accurate, further show that Biden was absolutely right to warn about the threat to democracy posed by Trump and his followers. If Trump returns to office, he will find minions far more pliable than Berman — or even Barr — to carry out his authoritarian agenda. Biden is defending democracy, not threatening it, by calling out the MAGA plot against America. Any suggestion otherwise is simply gaslighting."

Max Boot

InfiniteISO Loc: The Carolinas, USA

This article is incoherent garbage. Every politician in recent memory has used the their access to Justice and/or the IRS to throw shade at their political opponents, it's the nature of politics and the documented examples are endless. Obama was an expert.

Trump has the unique distinction of getting reamed by many of the top operators in his own Justice department in an attempt to remove him from office. You can't prosecute Trump for some minor crap if you're not going to prosecute everyone involved in Russia, Russia, Russia.

Speaking of Russia, Max Alexandrovich Boot should move back to his mother country where statist apparatchiks are really appreciated.

Kmgw9v Loc: Miami, Florida

Trump was removed from office by the v**ers of this country. As far as the argument that every president does the same is a lame rationalization. No other President have ever before been exposed as a corrupt, Mafia-thinking, autocrat-wanna be by the number of Trump appointed government officials as Trump has been.
Directing his Vice President to circumvent his Constitutional duty to fail to certify a l********e e******n, and when that didn’t work, inciting armed supporters to cOnduct a violent siege on the Capitol, again in an attempt to stop the certification of Biden as the elected President; and then breaking the law by secreting top classified documents in his golf country club residence, and obstructing the recovery of those documents until a search warrant had to be issued; is not “minor crap”. You cite Obama, but any political meddling Obama engaged in pales in comparison to Trump. Trump has turned on, and disparaged every bedrock institution in the country, but still professes to love America. I find that disingenuous. No President in my lifetime has been as d******e or as corrupt as Trump has been. Trump coined the chant “Lock her up” for Hillary when the same chant more appropriately now applies to him. Mueller found that Trump obstructed his investigation (Volume ll), but did not recommend indictment based on a memo of sitting p**********l privilege.
Just as Trump does, you have no confidence in any opinion or fact, that does not comport with your own, and you dismiss any writer or government official who has a problem with Trump’s lack of political integrity. Do think that maybe sometimes those with dissenting opinions from Trump’s are correct in their judgements, based on solid evidence that is true, not manufactured to suit their position?
Trump is a con-man who thought he could run the government the way he ran his organization, with loyalists and yes men. That is not America, and it is not the America that anybody should want. Trump is finding out that most government public servants are loyal to the Constitution, not one man. The spineless Republicans who have put their jobs over the Constitution and sat on their hands enabling Trump in his aspirations to be an autocrat will be remembered for their misplaced allegiance.
Trump has serious legal troubles like none of his predecessors, even Nixon. There is a reason for that—-and it has to do with disrespect for the rule of law, not his persecution complex. He will face accountability for watching the i**********n that even Mitch say he inspired; for 187 minutes before acting, he will face accountability for trying to influence the e******n officials in Georgia, he will face accountability for taking documents to his residence and obstructing their recovery; because in this country, no man is above the law.
None of this is “minor crap” as you want it to be—it is the fabric of the rule of law, which hopefully still prevails in this country. Trump has made history during his presidency, but not in a way we should take p***e.

InfiniteISO Loc: The Carolinas, USA

If you think Trump is more corrupt or has been more damaging to this country than Obama or Biden, there's no hope for you. Biden has the FBI seizing cell phones from Trump supporters in that hopes that they can find anything to sustain the bad press against Trump into the midterm e******n. The FBI is raiding people's homes on the rumor they were in Washington on J****** 6. Our Justice Department is out of control and it all falls back on the Democrats.

Hopefully before you die you'll see the light and realize the current Democrat machine is monstrous and since Biden is too befuddled to be orchestrating any of this, there really is no president.

jcboy3

This is conspiracy nonsense. Biden has nothing to do with the FBI investigation of the t*****r Trump.

JRiepe Loc: Southern Illinois

If Trump and his supporters are a threat to democracy that would the one thing they have in common with Biden and the Democrat party.

Fotoartist Loc: Detroit, Michigan

The t***h is Trump threatens the Demoncrats.

The Democrats want to abolish the E*******l college, pack the Supreme Court, abolish the Filibuster, open our sovereign borders to the world, do away with cash bail and empty the prisons. The Democrats have passed laws, issued executive orders, and directed the FBI and other government agencies to ignore (and attack) Constitutional directives of free speech by parents and freedom of assembly by Conservatives, as well as customary and effective policies concerning secure v****g and political practices.

The Democrats always accuse others of exactly what they are trying to do.

Kmgw9v Loc: Miami, Florida

Your post is not responsive to anything I said about Trump and what he has done. Your exaggerated attack on the democrats is more of the same deflection, rather than a defense or comment about my post.
You are consistent, however.

Fotoartist Loc: Detroit, Michigan

No. You miss the point. Max von Boot just makes conjectures and assumptions. What Biden and the Democrats are doing and have done are deeds and actions that have directly attacked democracy. That is the point.

btbg

You have got to be kidding. Berman is proof that Trump is right. Kerry broke the law when he went to Iran and tried to undermine Trumps efforts to get us out of the terrible deal that Obama struck with Iran. It is illegal for a private citizen to go to a foreign nation and work against what our government is doing. So, Kerry should have been investigated. The fact that Berman was refusing to do his job for political reasons is exactly why he got fired.

btbg

Oh, but he does. He has admitted that he was the one who removed Trump's executive privilege. The raid could not have happened without that action. So to say Biden has nothing to do with it is bull. Also, if Biden didn't know what was going on in advance like he claims then his entire administration is incompetent because his attorney general had to have signed off on it and it would have been their job to inform Biden of what was going on.

So, either Biden is in the middle of it or his entire administration is incompetent. Which do you think it is? Personally I think it's all of the above, but that's just my opinion.

ScottWardwell Loc: Maine

Typical word-salad from 9V. He does swerve into one thing though- gaslighting. Which he is a master at.
9v is everywhere with this garbage; like a Chlamydia super-spreader.

Blurryeyed Loc: NC Mountains.

LOL... Biden himself is an existential threat to the US.

bob44044 Loc: Ohio

Dream on