I’m carefully ignoring the Daily Kos postings for today so that I can get through the transcript of an episode of Gaslit Nation. There are a couple more that look interesting, but I’ll devote this post to the one that has the most immediate importance. This episode is titled “The Republican Party is on Trial” and is dated January 22, which was just before the Senate impeachment trial. As in previous episodes, the hosts are Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa.
Attention first turns to Lev Parnas, who has been described in the press as an associate of Rudy Giuliani and who Kendzior describes as a Giuliani goon. He’s been talking a lot lately. That included a claim that he is in danger.
What Parnas has been saying does correspond to what we already know. There is a long list of people who have gotten death threats (I’m just listing names, you’ll have to look up their relationship to the nasty guy): Yovanovich, Vindman, Fiona Hill, Stormy Daniels, Paul Manafort’s judge and jury, Roger Stone’s judge, Lisa Page, Jamal Khashoggi (who was then murdered), countless other members of the media, and every woman who has alleged the nasty guy committed sexual assault. In addition, Michael Cohen has said that the nasty guy has directed him to threaten 500 people.
The nasty guy was acting like a mafioso decades before taking office. This is nothing new from him.
Kendzior asks, so why did it take a mobster like Parnas to convince people of this? Yeah, Chalupa is grateful Parnas is speaking about it. But, because he is in the pocket of Russian organized crime, he is obviously an unreliable narrator. His also saying what we already know. Is Parnas trying to slow down investigations by tossing out new threads that then need to be followed? Is he keeping himself alive by being a fount of information? Is he trying to charm the Democrats? Is he merely spouting propaganda?
Don’t underestimate the Russian Mafia, their ruthlessness, their long reach, their power, and their eye on the long game.
Also remember that most of the major players in the nasty guy orbit have committed crimes and confessed to crimes, but were not punished for those crimes. They hide crime with scandal. They focus attention on the Ukraine shakedown to avoid attention on the rest of their vast crime apparatus.
And the Democrats fell for this by limiting the scope of impeachment to the Ukraine shakedown.
A criminal, like Parnas, is not a savior. Don’t expect him to be.
It is disturbing that the words of Marie Yovanovich, who is facing threats for her efforts to bring these crimes to light, are taken less seriously than the words of Parnas, who is in thick with the criminals. We must remember that Yovanovich, and the others listed above, are good and brave people we desperately need to combat this crime syndicate. The good people are being threatened.
Attention now turns to the GOP and the Senate. Kendzior has a question: Because the Republicans lie so flagrantly why do they feel they have to hold the trial under the cover of darkness?
Kendzior said:
The majority of the American public want him removed. But what's been consistent throughout this Administration and even predates it with the Republicans, is how little the Republicans care about the will of the American people. In their mind, the will of the American people exists to be subverted. That's why they have voter suppression. That's why they have a giant propaganda apparatus in Fox News. They completely don't care what even their own voters want, even the people voting Republican, even the people who love Trump. They don't care what anybody actually wants. This is purely about the accumulation of their own power.
Democrats are driven by acting in good faith and good governance. They try to establish a culture of respect and decency in the highest offices of the country. Culture is powerful. This is in contrast to the nasty guy’s culture of brutality. A lot of Republicans are retiring rather than putting up with that culture and the way it is dehumanizing them.
Chalupa says the Democratic good faith means they have a hard time fighting GOP fire with fire. They don’t want to start putting people in handcuffs for defying Congress because those tactics could be used against them when the House swings next to GOP and those cuffs are used for small, stupid, and invented stuff leading up to show trials. Kendzior disagrees – the GOP will do all that anyway.
Some people believe SDNY, the Federal Court of the Southern District of New York will catch whatever crimes the FBI or Congress don’t. Kendzior says SDNY won’t be our savior. They have a really bad track record of acting – it was the SDNY that should have indicted the Trump Crime Family long before he entered politics. They’re more like accomplices.
That left the impeachment process. As mentioned before it only highlighted a small part of the nasty guy’s crimes. Democrats could have (and still can) get the whole story out there. But they seem to have given away the bit of leverage they have.
Kendzior goes into detail about the goon squad the nasty guy has assembled as his defense team. Most of them, especially Dershowitz, are implicated in their own crimes (I’ll let you read the transcript for the juicy details) and have their own associations with organized crime. Their hypocrisy and shamelessness are an asset. They very much match the nasty guy. Which is why he chose them.
After noting many of these same players were in Richard Nixon’s orbit Chalupa said:
I think America's story is a story of unfinished business, whether it was the failed reconstruction following the Civil War and all the racist policies that came after and the impact they had for generations. That story of unfinished business, a lack of accountability followed Nixon. That story of unfinished business and a lack of accountability followed Reagan's Iran-Contra. Oh. And that story of unfinished business and the lack of accountability followed George W. Bush and his horrific invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and his policies that helped Wall Street become a gambling den, which brought down the world economy. All of this is just a big story of unfinished business and a lack of accountability.
Finally attention turns to their endorsement for the Democratic candidate for president. Before they reveal the name they remind us that during the Obama years when we had elected the first black president and some progressives through their work was done Karl Rove and the GOP flipped many state governments – House, Senate, and Governor – to red. The attacked people’s right to vote, to help further their corruption and hold on power.
There have been many great progressives battling against this red tide. Even so, no matter who wins in November, our work is far from over. So find a candidate you love and get engaged. Allow campaign colleagues to become family. Deepen your community.
Even though none of the candidates are perfect, they endorse Elizabeth Warren. Kendzior is more excited about her than any person running for office that she’s known. The choice is based on who is capable of beginning to clean up from the horrible mess we’re currently in. She believes Warren is capable of doing that.
I do believe she sees things for what they are. She sees the depth of that corruption. She has pragmatic plans to solve it. She's not afraid to take the lead on things, like impeachment. She's not afraid to make enemies out of terrible people. That's why billionaires hate her. That's why Wall Street hates her, but she's also able to actually get along with others to pass through legislation. It's a really rare combination and she has actually created fleeting moments of relief for me in the last few horrible years of this Administration. Just to know that someone else can see these problems.
Someone else realizes that kleptocracy in the United States is inseparable from kleptocracy abroad and is thinking and is listening and is meeting with people and is able to take in others' ideas without being defensive and build upon them and create ways of starting to get us out of this situation. Because I don't want to overstate what she can and cannot do because the situation is very dire. But I think she knows that. She has that realism. She has a combination of realism and warmth that I think is rare. And so, this is the first candidate that I've been this confident in, in their abilities to operate at multiple facets of governing. So, we're lucky that we have Warren for this moment in time.
They get into the wealth tax Warren has proposed. In support of Warren’s tax they tell a story:
And there's an incredible heartwarming story that the New York Times covered of an incredibly wealthy man by the name of Harris Rosen, who owns a chain of successful hotels. Harris Rosen invested, gave away, let's say, but really, it's an investment because he's strengthened his own country by doing this. Harris Rosen gave away millions of dollars to turn around a community in Florida and he invested in schools and early education. And what he saw by essentially living out Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax was he saw this once troubled community blossom into high school and college graduates completely turn itself around.Even with this endorsement they will get behind whoever is the Democratic candidate. However, they wish a few of them would talk more about white supremacy. Kendzior said:
You cannot separate race from class in America, in a country that is founded on slave labor. You simply can't. You need to view these issues holistically. You can't separate civil rights from corruption.Kendzior and Chalupa have a few more paragraphs in praise of Warren. I’ll let you read it on your own.
It's not a coincidence that Trump's Administration is made up of white supremacist mafia affiliates. That these are overlapping categories. And so, we need people, in whatever the next administration is, hopefully not Trump's, that are able to bring all these issues together and see how they intertwine and begin to gut out that corruption and that cruelty at its roots. And I do trust that [Warren] sees this.
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