Name: Richard Painter: Trump is an "incompetent dictator" — but a "shrewder" plot might have worked
Brand: salon.com
SKU: salon-com-215
Availability: OnlineOnly

critic

Richard Painter: Trump is an "incompetent dictator" — but a "shrewder" plot might have worked

preview

Donald Trump--He is also a&nbsp;professor of corporate law at the University of Minnesota&nbsp;Donald Trump has no respect the rule of law and has&nbsp;engaged in a coup attempt against democracy by trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Even if he&nbsp;fails, the precedent is a threat to the United States and&nbsp;a type of victory&nbsp;for fascism in this country. As an expert on constitutional law, how are you making sense of these events?The jig is up. Trump is not going to try a real coup. But the message, the warning to the United States, is that we better get our act together pretty damn fast. The next person who follows Trump's example is going to be much smarter. He's an incompetent dictator. On Twitter, for example, he is always talking about himself well over half the time. Whereas a real dictator is always talking about "the people."&nbsp;The next person who has Trump's aspirations to power may be a lot shrewder, more manipulative&nbsp;and therefore more effective.Trump is also&nbsp;transparent as a self-centered crybaby. As a country we have to figure out: Do we believe in facts? We can have ideological differences. We can have different preferences and different views on public policy. But we should be able to look at facts and then have an opinion based on roughly the same reality. Of course, there will be some differences of opinion. But are we going to have wild deviations from the truth? If we do, I believe that the United States is going to be very vulnerable to a dictatorship or a successful coup.There's all this celebration&nbsp;of the courts and the law&nbsp;and the country's "institutions" because even Republican judges have dismissed Trump and his allies' scheme to overturn the 2020 election. That is premature and misguided. They made those decisions not out of principle but out of pragmatism, because Biden won by such a large margin. If the election were closer, I have no doubt that Republican judges from the Supreme Court on down would have sided with Trump against Joe Biden.What Trump and his attorneys have been trying is so ridiculous that I do not think even the most conservative court would have gone for it. What we are seeing is not a Bush v. Gore situation — and I do not agree with what the court did in Bush v. Gore. The Supreme Court should have left it alone. But&nbsp;what Trump is trying with the 2020 election is so far out that you would have had to have Supreme Court justices who were subject to removal by the president, or in fear of the president, for it to have worked.In a close-call election, however? Yes, they probably would have given the election to Trump and the Republicans. But they were not going to give him the 2020 election. If the country keeps going in this direction, we are going to have someone in the future who is much shrewder than Donald Trump, who gets more respect from&nbsp;the military and the like, who could engineer a coup quite easily. That is my ultimate concern.Trump's coup attempt is an effort to overthrow the people's will in the context of a decades-long extremist push by the Republicans to take total control&nbsp;by ending democracy and replacing it with one-party rule. The Republican Party knows that they cannot win if they allow everyone to vote.We're either committed to democracy or we are not. We are committed to one person, one vote, or we are not. But what is happening now is that Trump and the Republicans are just trying to further polarize our society.There are legal scholars, historians&nbsp;and other political observers who are warning that Trump's coup attempt, however ridiculous it may look to some people, is a test run, a prototype for the future. Republicans and other elements of the right wing see what works now and then perfect it for later. What is your assessment?What is happening is a test of how much can one get away with in the courts. Moreover, how much can one get away with in the court of public opinion by distorting facts and reality?&nbsp;Donald Trump and his Republican Party's coup attempt has been described by some people as&nbsp;sedition&nbsp;or treason.&nbsp;What does the law actually say on these matters?I don't think you can prosecute him. If you ask, "What is treason, in the broader sense of the word?" Donald Trump is betraying his country. He has held the highest office in the land for four years. If he were smart, Trump would consider that an honor. I think he wasted those four years. He is a narcissist with an obsession about himself and his own ego.He tried to undermine and attack the government. I am not a big fan of using sedition statutes and so forth, because that is what Joe McCarthy did. The problem with Trump and the Republicans now is that we are dealing with people who really do believe that there is this "deep state."&nbsp;They want to completely transform the United States government and country to make it conform to their ideology. This is all very dangerous, because through Trump they have power at the highest levels of the government.Are Trump and his agents engaging in sedition as defined by&nbsp;the Constitution?I would not use that kind of criminal statute. But I would certainly use obstruction of justice and the false statements statutes. I think there are crimes which are yet to be prosecuted. If you want to talk about what sedition is,&nbsp;in a broader sense, it is a repudiation of our republican form of government and of the country's Constitution and history of constitutional rule.Many House Republicans have&nbsp;participated&nbsp;in Trump's coup attempt. Should Speaker Nancy Pelosi not allow them&nbsp;to be seated, under&nbsp;the 14th Amendment?I would not do it. I would just go ahead and let them be seated and shoot their mouths off. The Republicans are trying to use the power that you have as president, and in other high government positions, to suppress dissent by the Democrats and others. This is what the Republican Party wants to stand for? Filing crazy lawsuits, writing crazy letters, and saying things that are completely false? We have had people in the Congress who have said crazy things in the past. Unfortunately, there are an awful lot of them now.&nbsp;Joe Biden wants there to be "healing." He wants us&nbsp;to put this dark episode behind us. I fundamentally disagree. I am of the thinking that Trump and his administration, as well as their supporters and allies, should be investigated, and if merited, punished for their crimes. What advice would you give Biden on that question?If Joe Biden wants to pardon Trump, he can pardon Trump. The only discretion the president has is a pardon. Otherwise, the Justice Department should prosecute anyone who committed a crime. I don't care if it's Donald Trump or if it's the guy next door. We're all equal. The mandate for the attorney general is that we prosecute anyone who committed crimes.I think if there are accusations made against high-ranking people in the Trump administration,&nbsp;or high-ranking people in the Biden administration, or any members of the president's family, have an independent counsel investigate it and make the professional decision with professional prosecutors. It should never be a political decision as to whether someone gets prosecuted or not.Trump and his administration are actively trying to sabotage Biden's presidency by putting key Trump agents in positions at the highest levels throughout the United States government. What can be done by Biden to remove them?Many of these people are presidential appointees. Biden can remove an awful lot of people. Trump and his people are trying various games by putting people into career slots. It is called "burrowing,"&nbsp;where you take a political appointee and stick them into&nbsp;career slots. It is hard to get rid of them.Why are the Republican attorneys general, members of Congress&nbsp;and others going along with Trump's coup attempt? Especially since&nbsp;it appears doomed to fail in the short term.It is money. Trump has raised a lot of money for them. It is all about ideology and appealing to the right wing and getting airtime on right-wing talk radio. They are going along to not be targeted by other right-wingers. Now Republicans will do one of two things. They'll lay low and try to have nothing to do with it — those are the smart ones. There are other Republicans, such as Ted Cruz, who will play along and go for the ride. Cruz is trying to get Trump's supporters to love him so he can be the leading candidate in 2024.Should the attorneys general&nbsp;who tried&nbsp;to overturn the election be disbarred?They may want to run for Senate. Texas Attorney General [Ken] Paxton, he probably wants to run for senator. State attorneys general&nbsp;always have political ambitions.&nbsp;It's a steppingstone to the next and more powerful job. These attorneys general&nbsp;want attention. They know that they are not going to be disbarred. They probably should be,&nbsp;but the Texas bar is not going to disbar Paxton.How do you think this coup attempt, and Trump's authoritarian&nbsp;behavior more generally, has impacted the United States?It is polarizing our country. We have got much work to do to bring the United States back together. I trust Joe Biden is going to be able to do that. I'm a political independent:&nbsp;Biden was never my favorite candidate in the primaries, but he is a good guy. We as Americans need to realize that we have so much more to benefit from being together in this country. We may disagree on some things, but our political system has worked for over 200 years.Yes, we had the Civil War. Yes, we have been through great challenges. But we do have a system that works. I was never a big fan of Ronald Reagan,&nbsp;I was a moderate Republican. But the one thing I liked about Reagan was his optimism and how much he believed in America. Reagan never had the cynicism that underlies Trumpism with this idea of the "deep state" and that somehow "the establishment" is evil. With Trumpism, I see too many similarities with the fascist movements in Europe in the 1930s.Chauncey DeVega is a senior politics writer for Salon. His essays can also be found at&nbsp;. He also hosts a weekly podcast,&nbsp;. Chauncey can be followed on&nbsp;&nbsp;and&nbsp;.MORE FROM

Donald Trump--He is also a&nbsp;professor of corporate law at the University of Minnesota&nbsp;Donald Trump has no respect the rule of law and has&nbsp;engaged in a coup attempt against democracy by trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Even if he&nbsp;fails, the precedent is a threat to the United States and&nbsp;a type of victory&nbsp;for fascism in this country. As an expert on constitutional law, how are you making sense of these events?The jig is up. Trump is not going to try a real coup. But the message, the warning to the United States, is that we better get our act...

public

Chauncey DeVega

The original online source for news, politics and entertainment | Find us on Instagram & TikTok: salonofficial | Subscribe to our newsletters linked in bio.

Richard Painter: Trump is an "incompetent dictator" — but a "shrewder" plot might have worked

No article scores yet.

CRITIC REVIEWS

PUBLIC REVIEWS