Have you heard about the president who received money from China and other foreign countries? No, not the current president. The former one.
House Republicans recently launched an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, premised on the claim that he is hiding, in the words of Speaker Mike Johnson, “millions of dollars in payments from America’s foreign adversaries.” As yet, they have produced no evidence to back up the idea that Biden profited. (The payments they have flagged involve the business interests of his son Hunter Biden, who is facing two separate federal indictments at the moment, and his brother James.)
Meanwhile, House Democrats on Thursday released a report detailing how former President Donald Trump received, and then tried to hide, millions in payments from America’s foreign adversaries. Unlike in the impeachment inquiry, which is premised on a suspicion that Republicans hope will turn up evidence, the receipts are here.
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The saga of the foreign payments is a good case study in how Trump has taught Americans to tolerate brazen corruption—so long as it’s his. To do this, Trump relies on two tactics. First, he does much of it out in the open, recognizing that voters tend to assume that only hidden deeds are nefarious. Second, he finds ways to slow-walk the release of the most damaging information, so that by the time the full picture is clear, the public has become almost inoculated—as though it had been out in the open all along.
Partly because the idea of himself having to face any real consequences for his actions is, at this point in his life, actually literally inconceivable at many levels to him, having spent essentially his entire life conning people and breaking all kinds of laws all the time and never really suffering any serious drawback from this due to his enormous wealth and social privilege.
Also, partly due to him seriously believing that he has so much influence and so many fanatical supporters that he can rely on being easily able to whip them up into a frenzy to, you know, just do a coup for him and install him as dictator.
On a societal level, why isnt he hanging for treason yet?
He stacked many government positions that would be likely to be important in the actual legal mechanics of a treason conviction with his own corrupt cronies, and also has so many ardent supporters of himself personally that many of these supporters were elected to other powerful positions of government, and again he generally has so many violent and stupid supporters that an extremely credible threat of mass domestic terrorist violence exists should anything bad happen to dear leader.
We are talking about a person whose legal team recently argued, in court, that Trump, having been president, is actually legally able to order a special forces team to assassinate his domestic political rivals, and this is ok because there is a check and balance in the American political system of a president doing this, of being able to be tried and convicted by congress.
You know, congress, which is also comprised of many of his political rivals, who he is allowed to order assassinations of.
