By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) August 11, 2020 (see related articles: August 20, 2020: I Was Wrong about Harris. Why I Changed My Mind and How She Won Me Over and August 8, 2020: Based on Experience, Susan Rice Is Easily—by Far—the Best Choice for VP for Biden (Sorry Harris Fans, that Includes Kamala))

WASHINGTON and SILVER SPRING—In my earlier recent piece comparing the careers of California Senator Kamala Harris and former Obama Administration National Security Advisor and United States Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, I noted that I have been watching and really enjoying ESPN’s The Last Dance (the documentary series about Michael Jordan and his Chicago Bulls’s championship teams, especially their final championship run).  I noted that there are two main facets as to how a player gets selected for a team and how they perform: the first facet is the stats: the numbers that would be a on a player’s trading card; that is what I looked at in that last piece as far as Harris and Rice.  In this piece, I want to look at some of the intangibles, the second facet: the stuff that you would not get by looking at a trading card, but which speak more to personality and traits that are more about how you operate or fit on a team in ways that numbers cannot display.  And a lot of these intangibles can come across in informed first impressions voters get from seeing each for the first time.

First Impressions

I will begin first by just explaining how I remember being introduced and familiar with both Rice and Harris.

Rice

With Rice, I do not really remember anything specific.  I did not watch or read a lot of news in the 1990s in middle school or high school.  I was super busy in both: lots of activities (music, sports) and taking advanced classes throughout.  I also went to a fairly strict boarding school for high school (shout out to Canterbury), where TV-watching was quite limited (and when we had freedom to watch TV in the common room, it was usually sports and MTV that the other kids had on; I never, ever recall seeing the news on in the dorms.  If I had put the news on, I probably would have been physically driven out of the dorms) and where I was busy enough that I did not get to read the news too often, either.

I still followed politics a bit somehow in high school, but I can say that I have no recollection that I ever heard of or even saw Susan Rice when she was with the Clinton Administration or in the time that followed before she was with the Obama campaign.  I do not have any recollection of becoming aware of her existence during the 2008 election either, though perhaps I saw her on TV or read an article or few that mentioned her.  I do know that I became aware of her as our Ambassador to the United Nations.  I recall nothing specific between the first term and the Benghazi “scandal,” other than a few times she would have been speaking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the UN and I am sure I saw her other times in clips of other UN deliberations as well as press conferences, interviews, and in articles.  Each time, I remember seeing her calm, composed, knowledgeable, competent, sharp, and articulate, a solid representation of America to the world and a competent National Security Advisor, one of the only black women in American history to reach such heights in government and on the world stage representing America.  Until recently, I only had a vague—I had never digested her in depth or at length—but strongly positive impression of her, with no complaints that I can recollect; this was, in part, because I researched the Benghazi situation deeply in advance of Clinton’s marathon Congressional testimony of October, 2015, and realized that entire case against Hillary Clinton (and, by default, Susan Rice) in terms of the Benghazi fiasco, was, as I noted at the time, a cynical, disgusting, disingenuous, dishonest, witch hunt-like, purely political attempt to damage Hillary Clinton and the Obama Administration before the 2016 election (check out my in-depth article examining this hearing for a dismantling of all the specious, misleading, and/or untruthful arguments put out by Republicans).  The first experience I ever had that really focused on Rice was watching while working out in the fall of 2019 an interview of her by Walter Isaacson for Amanpour and Company on the event of the release of her memoir.  I was incredibly impressed with her, and have since paid more attention to her and her interviews and tweets since her book tour started, and her public interactions have consistently been at a level that keeps impressing me at a very high level.

Harris

When it came to Harris, my introduction to her was very much at a time when I was glued into politics as a freelance reporter who was then focusing much more on American politics than I had previously, and, she was also being built up as a star; for these reasons, I ended up paying way more attention to her when I first came across her than I did with Rice.  I was still living in the Middle East, but had found, most disappointingly and quite sadly, that Trump and the U.S. election cycle giving me much more opportunity and paid way better than covering Syrian refugees, ISIS, Iraq, or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  I had been closely following the whole Trump-Russia saga, in particular, since July, 2016.  Thus, when there was a highly-anticipated hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee with key figures from the intelligence and law enforcement community, including Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who had only weeks earlier appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as Special Counsel to investigate Trump’s ties to Russia, Russian election interference, and any possible collusion between people around Trump with the Russian government or its intermediaries, I was highly interested. 

One of the Democratic senators taking part in the hearing was the newly-elected Kamala Harris from California.  Her win in 2016 was certainly met with some excitement, the second black woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate and the first South-Asian (her father was black and her mother was Indian).

Full disclosure: I grew up near New York, and we East Coasters pay little attention to California politics.  So, I barely paid attention to her in the 2016 campaign, which was an extremely busy time for me when I was trying to cover the primaries and Clinton vs. Trump.  Thus, I was pretty excited about this hearing: in many ways, it would be Harris’s biggest stage yet, her introduction to the national scene, and it was certainly her introduction to me.  I remember hearing a lot of hype about how she could be the next Obama, presidential material, and the future of the party, so I was expecting to be mightily impressed and looking forward to seeing one of our brightest new stars of my left on the national stage in action.

Now, full disclosure: before you read my take on what transpired, you should know I watched the entire hearing live and closely (full video and transcript).  I was deeply interested in all the proceedings and was at least somewhat, sometimes very, familiar with the issues being discussed.  And I have to say that from the very beginning of her allotted time (video beginning with that here) during the hearing, I was shocked at how obnoxious, grating, and disappointing I found her performance to be.  From the very beginning, she was rude and grandstandy, first very briefly to Admiral Mike Rogers, cutting him off after asking him a question so that he asked, respectfully, “Senator, if you could, could I get to respond, please, ma’am?” He then tried to continue but she interrupted him again.  “No, sir. No, no.”

It looked like Harris was going to act like a Big Name prosecutor taking on a Hostile Witness, and almost immediately, she switched to question Rosenstein with the bulk of her time, confirming this impression with him, too.  She constantly interrupted him and cut him off, was rude and hostile, not yelling and haranguing like maniac and staunch Trump apparatchik Jim Jordan might in the House, not even raising her voice to the less-annoying-than-Jim Jordan-level of Republican Ted Cruz in the saucer-cooling Senate, but still clearly determined to stand out, show that she was being “tough,” demonstrate her stern courtroom prosecutorial demeanor, and make a name for herself with a figure like Rosenstein very much in the headlines.  And her whole premise was to act like she was leading an effort to protect Mueller from Trump Administration interference or from even being sacked to protect the president, citing a precedent where a previous Attorney General (AG) overseeing an independent, specially-appointed inquiry had pledged in writing to respect the independence of the investigation.  But in that case, the appointed head of the inquiry was a sitting U.S. Attorney that could be fired by the president, so there was a potential conflict in that he normally reported as a Department of Justice employee to the AG and served at the pleasure of the president.  In this case, Mueller was a retired and private citizen who was not part of the Department of Justice and did not have that conflict or reporting issues and could not be fired by the president and under law could only be fired under special, non-political, non-arbitrary circumstances by the top Department of Justice official overseeing the investigation (Rosenstein, because AG Jeff Sessions had recused himself).   Between that and the regulations of the particular law governing Mueller’s appointment—regulations that that did not apply to the precedent Harris was citing—Harris’s point was moot and so were her attempts to get Rosenstein, in a quite a badgering (do not worry, I apply that term often for male congressman) and hostile manner, to commit to a statement in writing like the one she cited earlier but that did not apply under circumstances that were quite different in relation to Harris’s line of questioning.

Rosenstein was very respectfully trying to explain this to Harris, but Harris repeatedly cut him off and continued to demand a simple answer to a complex question.  Sen. John McCain, who stood up more to Trump and Republican malfeasance and better than any other Republican senator during the Trump Administration, came to the rescue of Rosenstein, asking for Harris to stop interrupting the witness and to let him answer the question.  The Republican Chairman of the Committee, Senator Richard Burr, would join in, stopping Harris after she challenged even Burr him from repeating the same question in a hostile manner and permitting Rosenstein to make the above explanation about why a simple “yes” or “no” did not as answer given the different circumstances.

And by hostile, I mean hostile; again, I watched the entire over two-and-a-half-hours-long hearing, and nobody else acted in any way near the manner of Harris.  Only her’; everyone else—Democrat and Republican alike—was polite to the witnesses, did not repeatedly cut them off, used a respectful, non-badgering tone, and did not feel the need to be adversarial even though they found a great many things to be frustrating and concerning, but Harris adopted this adversarial tone from her very first question to the admiral and continued using it until her time was up.

There are two other reasons why this is incredibly obnoxious: despite pressure from the president to stop Mueller, Rosenstein had defended Mueller’s probe (it was Rosenstein who became alarmed enough at Trump’s behavior that he was the one who decided to appoint a special counsel to investigate Trump, and it was also Rosenstein he who chose Mueller) and had given Mueller a lot of freedom, independence, and support.  Rosenstein is far from perfect and has had some problematic aspects of his time as Deputy AG ands since, but at this point he has been very much on the right side by deciding to appoint a special counsel, Mueller, and working to keep the integrity of Mueller’s investigation secure amidst considerable pressure to compromise it by Trump, Republicans, and right-wing media.  The other reason this is incredibly obnoxious is that I am certain Kamala Harris knew the law (she is an accomplished prosecutor and served as California’s Attorney General) and knew that her point was largely moot, not appropriate, and not fair to Rosenstein.  But she was determined to establish herself as a tough newcomer, to get attention, to rise above all her peers during her first major public hearing.  She was trying to trap both the admiral and especially Rosenstein into “gotchya” questions, embarrassing them and pushing them into a seemingly hypocritical trap to make the witness look like he hiding something unnecessarily in the case of the admiral and that he was not willing to stand up for the independence and integrity of the Mueller probe in the case of Rosenstein (which by all accounts up to that point and many beyond, he had).  So Harris knew she did not need to be overly concerned over Rosenstein at that point; she knew her clever attempt to prosecutorally box Rosenstein in like he was a defendant on the witness stand back in California was not getting at the heart of any major issues with the Mueller probe, knew that her actions were designed to generate a soundbite that would hopefully go viral, and knew she was engaging in self-promotion that was a subtle attack on the integrity of both Rosenstein and Admiral Rogers over a moot point, designed to make her look like she was a tough prosecutor who was taking a version of Law and Order to Washington.  In an otherwise cordial hearing, her contentious exchanges would stand out and get her attention in a situation where most junior senators would not behave this way.  You could smell presidential aspirations on her from a mile away.  And if you think I am making this up, this is exactly how Maya Rudolph satirized Harris on Saturday Night Live: always looking to create a media moment that would go viral on the internet, designed to get her attention and often show her as a tough ready-for-primetime prosecutor, regardless of the level of substance behind what she was saying.

Yep, that was my introduction to Harris: a woman clearly of great intellect, substance, and capability that chose to engage in grandstanding devoid of substance, misleading but guaranteed to get headlines.

I was deeply saddened; is this what the internet was doing to us, hollowing out our politics to be mostly hot air?  Was Harris going to use her office to be an effective legislator or focus on promoting herself in the media and on using her office to prepare a presidential run?  Would we be elevating the likes of Bernie Sanders whose “plans” were never in the realm of reality and whose central narratives and premises justifying his campaign were crafted on fantasy, thus pretty much dooming his campaign?  Were capable women of substance going to choose to play for meme and viral moments, hoping to base their campaigns on social media likes and shares?  Were these folks really going to be the future of the Party?

But the next day, it would get even worse, as Harris tried to capitalize on her events from the day before in an even more blatantly cynical attempt to create a viral, slogan-ready moment.  Because she had been interrupted by McCain and Burr—two men, two white men—there was an opportunity to frame their actions as sexist or even racist.  One thing is for certain: Warren’s viral “Nevertheless, she persisted” moment form just a few months earlier—when Republican male Senate colleagues had silenced Warren with a rarely used technicality regarding actions that “impute” fellow senators directly—was very much on Harris’s mind, and she clearly wanted to recreate that, especially the vibe of a woman standing up to powerful men.  It was almost like she could see Warren (whom I have been fairly critical of for various reasons) getting an edge over here for 2020 and she wanted to respond, and while Warren’s moment seemed relatively authentic, this would have a feel of being manufactured.  Harris’s plan was already implemented within two days of the hearing, with Harris was advertising stickers on Facebook with the words “courage not courtesy” you could get on her website—not on her Senate site, but kamalaharris.org (translation: she’s running.  Already.  In June, 2017).

Now, first off, there is a tremendous amount of sexism in the world, in America, in politics, in the Senate.  Of that, there is no doubt among rational, informed people.  And to be fair to Harris, it was smart politics.  Gimmicky as hell?  Cringingly forced and inauthentic?  Sure.  But definitely effective: most voters would not have watched the hearing.  Some—many—will have seen the clips of Harris and taken the image of her she wanted them to; most certainly would not have known much about Rosenstein or the special counsel regulations, and she was betting on that.  She had created her viral moment, though it would pale in impact and reach to Warren’s, and, I suspect, fell far short of what she was hoping, but it certainly got the attention of the media, some outlets of which tried to make it a sequel to Warren’s big moment.

I have watched Harris plenty of times since then, and, at least until the 2020 campaign—another story possibly for another time—most of her performances were much better that what I saw at the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.  I would be wrong if I did not admit that this first major impression she made was strong, and that it made me more likely to read calculated political gamesmanship into some of her actions—I would say fairly—but that did not stop me from seeing her as capable, formidable, one of the top rising stars on the left, and a top-tier contender for the 2020 nomination, one of the few I thought that could compete with Biden if he was to run.

Yet still, once of the reasons I love Biden is his authenticity and positioning of substance front and center throughout his career.  As for “courage not courtesy,” just ugh.  I have written about the devolution of our politics for years and it has been happening for years, but once thing that was fairly consistent for some time was that, unlike the more unruly House, the Senate was supposed to be an elevated form of politics less prone to theatrics, more prone to comity, civility, cooperation, and compromise, with less heated rhetoric and more substantive deliberations, more removed from the passions and the whims of the masses.  There is an old, unsubstantiated tradition that Washington told Jefferson that the Senate was like a “saucer” that could allow “our legislation to cool.”  In the words of James Madison in Federalist “No. 62,” the Senate would be less “subject to the infection of violent passions, or to the danger of combining in pursuit of unjust measures” than the House.  But these days, this distinction is decidedly weakened and weakening, and I am not for that.  Today is all about “populists” on both sides smashing tradition and norms and going around institutions and political colleagues “directly to the people,” whatever that means.  Think Bernie Sanders’s mobilizing millions of people to take to the streets as a governing philosophy.  Far worse, think about Trump’s calls on his supporters to take to the streets if things do not go well for him.  Harris’s theatrics were by far nowhere near the worst I have seen in the Senate, not even close to second worst (Hello, Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton!), but they were another step in a decline that seriously worried me.  And Harris, clearly, cared little for such tradition if she felt she could blaze a trail for her advancement.

A reasonable case can be made that this is what is needed at this time, that Harris’s calculation is what is needed against the Republican and Trumpian threat.  I thought to myself, Harris might have what it takes to win in the Internet/Twitter age, perhaps even what is needed to take on Trump, and she would have my support against him, but I do not have to like it.  I do not have to like how she treated DAG Rosenstein and Admiral Rogers.  I not have to like the premeditation to stand out tonally in a setting when it just was not at all necessary.  I do not have to like the calculated attempt to prepare sloganeering stickers within days.

But that does not mean I can not like or support Harris.

Rooting for (vice presidential nominee) Harris’s Best Self

As I write this conclusion, news is breaking that Biden has picked Harris.  My preference would definitely have been for Susan Rice.  But I point out these issues I have with Harris (before or after her being picked) not to denigrate her, not to turn people against her.  Harris if anything responds to the atmosphere in the moment.  She could very likely be our next vice president.  She would have my support as VP and should have all our support, has mine as a candidate for VP, and deserves our respect for earning this pick on the part of Biden.

To an extent, some of the concerns I have about Harris are mollified by Biden’s confidence in her in selecting her.  At the same time, I am still publishing this not just because I had written most of it before the pick was announced, but because I hope these concerns I have will be shared by others in a way where we push Harris to be her best self, not the disappointing campaigner we saw in 2019 and much better than the performance I saw in the hearing from 2017 I discussed above.

I have 100% confidence that Harris is more than capable of taking the higher road.  Even though I argued recently that Rice had better experience to be a VP, Harris’s experience is still impressive and contains much substance, much to be proud of, and she is both a safer and probably a better bet politically.  It is a sad testament to our current politics that a woman of color so accomplished and so talented would feel the need to play to internet/meme culture so strongly, though Peter Beinart makes a good case defending her in The Atlantic that, like Obama, as a black trailblazer in politics she has had to play it safer, in that article’s case, with her actions on criminal justice in California, actions which have been heavily criticized.  I hope, now that she has bested all but one man to be the second survivor of the Democratic primaries, that she will feel less pressure, feel more freedom, and feel confident enough in her selection by Biden to run more on substance and less on style and seeking viral moments (not that those do not help, but that is my preference as one of her supporters and one who wants to see our politics reelevated).  I hope that, if Biden wins, she can learn from someone like Susan Rice on foreign and security policy, follow Biden’s lead, be a great governing partner, and set herself up to be an amazing president of her own years down the road. 

And that is in part up to us:  it is no longer the Democratic primaries, and a much more moderate, national crowd is her audience; as her supporters or on-the-fence-voters, it is, in part, up to us to telegraph what we want from her, so lets us demand her very best, not clamor for internet gimmicks and viral videos.  I know that my complaints here were mostly about her style and how she operated, but these “little” things, the way you pursue your goals, the norms you respect and those you break, the tenor and tone you set, set all matter… just look at Trump!

Even as I am writing this conclusion, my emotions changed a bit.  Even as someone who was rooting for Susan Rice, I am happy and pleased with Harris (whom I saw as a much better-qualified candidate than Warren, both for president and vice president), and I am genuinely proud of Harris and of her selection by my candidate Joe Biden and my Democratic Party, the historic first woman of color on a major party ticket.  It is sad because of our insane coronavirus pandemic response that we cannot have a live event with a huge crowd welcoming Kamala Harris on stage with Joe Biden: both deserved that, especially Harris.  But that lost moment is the least of the slights and challenges Harris will face going forward.  I am now rooting for Harris, and confident she can help Biden win and govern.  She is immeasurably better than Vice President Pence and even more so (obviously) than President Donald Trump.

The pressure is on, but I hope and am confident that Senator Kamala Harris will rise to the occasion.  We, the people behind her, can help by pushing to keep substance front and center in a campaign that will contain a historic amount of nonsense from Trump, Republicans, the right-wing media, and the Russians.  But together and, yes, with Kamala Harris’s help, we can ensure that President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are sworn in on January 20^th, 2021.

See related previous article: Based on Experience, Susan Rice Is Easily—by Far—the Best Choice for VP for Biden (Sorry Harris Fans, that Includes Kamala)

© 2020 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s latest eBook,Coronavirus the Revealer: How the Coronavirus Pandemic Exposes America As Unprepared for Biowarfare & Bioterrorism, Highlighting Traditional U.S. Weakness in Unconventional, Asymmetric Warfare, available in Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, and EPUB editions.

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By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter@bfry1981) March 25, 2019 (Updated April 20, 2019)

James Berglie/Alamy

April 20, 2019 Update: The Mueller report very much confirms my analysis presented herein, and Russia still looms menacingly large. As I had accurately surmised well before the report was released, Mueller has handed the baton to Congress and voters: what happens now?

AMMAN — After a nearly-two-year investigation that has been the focus of Washington like nothing since the Watergate scandal, the long-awaited report of Special Counsel Robert Mueller has arrived (at least at the desk of Trump’s newly confirmed Attorney General, William Barr).  Two days after its submission by Mueller to him, Barr has presented a summary of his own crafting to key congressional leaders that has been made public.

What’s Missing Is Just As Important As What’s Included

There will be (even already are) attempts to spin, distort, and flat-out misrepresent the summary and, eventually, whatever else of “the report” is made public.

In Deputy (and then Acting) Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s May 17, 2017, letter creating Mueller’s Special Counsel probe, the main lines of investigation that Rosenstein authorized Mueller to pursue were “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.”  Yet in both his Friday letter confirming receipt of Mueller’s report and in his Sunday summary of Mueller’s report sent to senior relevant congressional leaders, Barr noted the scope of Mueller’s report to be focused on “Russian interference” in the 2016 election, noting in the latter that the title of Mueller’s submission was “Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election.”  Specifically, Barr’s letter quotes the Special Counsel’s report that its “investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

What has been little noted, however, is how wide of a gap there is between how Muller chose to frame his final report and the and how Rosenstein initially framed the scope: if we limit discussion to Team Trump’s having “conspired or coordinated with the Russian government” this can leave out 1.) less formal intermediary channels that are a hallmark of Kremlin operations (e.g., see Konstantin Kilimnick and Oleg Deripaska) and 2.) any other issues—sanctions, Ukraine, NATO, the EU, political strategy, etc.—that did not specifically involve election interference.

This is a pretty big deal.  And it needs to sink in.

Read Carefully: Mueller As a Beginning, Not an End

Again, Barr’s summary of Mueller’s report hardly concludes that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, just that no one “conspired or knowingly coordinated” with Russia to the end of election interference, and Barr noted that Mueller’s team even explicitly noted that, when it came to obstruction of justice, “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

Some important things to note here: as has been oft-repeated, Mueller’s only main public obligation as far as issuing reports is limited to whether or not it recommends criminal charges against the president or senior officials beyond those people it has already charged.  The burden of proof for these charges would have to be backed by evidence supporting conclusions of provable criminal guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and when it comes to conspiring with foreign powers to interfere with U.S. elections, Barr’s letter notes that if any American “joined the Russian conspiracies to influence the election,” such actions “would be a federal crime.”   But when it comes to collusion on other issues—sanctions, Ukraine, NATO, etc.—in and of themselves, such actions would at best most likely be a crime under the Logan Act, an obscure 1799 U.S. law that prohibits those not delegated by the U.S. government to run foreign policy to engage in making foreign policy; only one charge from 1803 ever materialized under the Act, and that charge was never brought to trial.  In other words, trying to establish criminal wrongdoing with evidence that leaves no reasonable doubt by going down this path is a far shakier, more challenging task.  And it seems a path that Mueller, at least as far as his report recommending criminal charges or not recommending them, has decided to avoid traveling, which is not the same thing as finding those questions not worth asking.

This actually seems to be sound strategy on the part of Mueller: going down that path in terms of criminal prosecution would be going down lengthy rabbit holes in which the likelihood of finding actionable evidence that could convict U.S. persons under U.S. law was likely going to be minimal and the investigation would have gone beyond two years into three or more, creating even more buildup for what would probably be a similarly inconclusive payoff.  And as things stand now, Mueller has clearly farmed out and laid the groundwork for other federal, state-level, and international law enforcement to take up the banner on a whole host of issues related to Trump and/or Russia.

But the point is that Mueller seems to have decided to limit the scope of his massive investigation in ways that make it impossible for anyone to claim that his report proves there was no active collusion.  And by conspicuously limiting the scope in this way, he is all but handing the baton to others rather seeing his investigation as the end to all relevant lines of inquiry.  Mueller, unlike former FBI Director Comey, seems to understand the sensitive political environment in which he operates: for a single powerful investigation to take down a legally elected president is no small matter and partisanship has only increased exponentially since the Nixon era.  With this approach, Mueller has helped shield the Department of Justice from further politicization and delegitimization and ensured that these serious issues surrounding Trump and Russia will be less about him, Mueller, as one star prosecutor and more about the federal, state/local, and congressional machinery that must also be a part of reigning in both Trump and Putin and holding them accountable.  It is doubtful that the Barr summary will be the end of what comes out about Mueller’s report, and that doesn’t even get to the Special Counsel’s counterintelligence investigation, which can still be fertile ground going forward.  As former FBI counterintelligence agent Asha Rangappa has repeatedly pointed out, the Special Counsel’s counterintelligence investigation would be far more sweeping than the criminal investigations with which we are far more familiar, but no less important even if much less transparent, as much of the material would be extremely sensitive and since the Special Counsel statue does not call for any public report on its findings like it does with the criminal investigation.

Not the Worst Outcome for Trump, But No Reason to Celebrate

The idea that Mueller was somehow going to find a smoking gun of Trump campaign collusion with the Russian government or remove Trump from office was always the stuff of anti-Trump pipe dreams.  That Trump’s people would celebrate this is just another sign of the plummeting of the proverbial bar to unrecognizable depths.  Mueller and his people may not have found evidence to the degree of quelling reasonable doubt that Team Trump “conspired or knowingly coordinated” with Russia on election interference in 2016, but any reading of Barr’s report or the Mueller report that claims this means there was no collusion with Russia at all is flat-out wrong.  As I have noted before, the idea of collusion is so much broader and deeper than prosecutable criminal offenses and the public conversation about collusion has been ridiculously myopic to not make this a major theme, but perhaps with the Mueller report now having been filed, the opportunity to take the understanding of collusion beyond criminal wrongdoing may never be better.

There are still many questions that need answers, and those questions and answers should give Trump and Putin and their supporters serious pause as America moves beyond Mueller to decide our collective future, not least of that being our role in the world, our relationship with Russia, and how we will protect our own elections, as well as freedom democracy around the world, in the face of a concerted onslaught by Putin’s Kremlin, about which our government agencies and investigators have no reasonable doubt, including the Department of Justice and, as noted in the Barr summary, the Special Counsel.

See related article: Crime Too Narrow As Main Lens to View Putin’s Masterpiece of Collusion

© 2019 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Brian E. Frydenborg is an American freelance writer, academic, and consultant from the New York City area currently based in Amman, Jordan. You can follow and contact him on Twitter: @bfry1981

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here 

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Team Trump’s assaults on Mueller and McCabe are only the latest salvos in an intensifying Trump/GOP war on the rule of law and democracy itself

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse March 19, 2018

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter@bfry1981) March 19th, 2018

Photo by author

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AMMAN/TEL AVIV/HAIFA — One can easily go back to the domestic tyranny of Athenian democracy in ancient Greece, of the will of the demos often trampling over minority rights, to begin a long history of systems that were somewhat democratic and then failed, or democratic in appearance but oppressive in spirit. These systems had little protection for dissenters and/or minorities, and used democracy for some to destroy it for others. They were Tocquevillian tyrannies of the majority, built on exclusion of both “the other” and those not in lock-step with the ruling faction.

Such systems are obvious in Erdoğan’s Turkey, Putin’s Russia, Duterte’s Philippines, but less obvious in many other places.

And today, under the leadership of Donald Trump and an increasingly craven Republican Party, the United States of America is moving in this direction.

I’m old enough to remember a time, not so long ago, when both major parties could be counted on to support the rule of law—a core foundation of true democracy—at a bare minimum. 

That is no longer the case.

At this point, it would be good to understand what we mean when we say “democracy.” In a pure, technical sense, there are no democracies today: every modern national system avoids direct rule by the demos, the people, in favor of a system in which the demos choose from among themselves a number of representatives to govern.

Modern democracy can be understood to transcend the 1.) necessary but not sufficient mechanism of popular elections and to extend to include among the sufficient conditions: 2.) a justice and law enforcement system that is applied relatively equally and not used as a political tool of self-empowerment and oppression of others by those in power (this necessitates some degree of judicial independence), i.e., “rule of law”, 3.) a free press that can hold all parties accountable and provide an accurate picture of reality to the public, 4.) and a population free to express itself and not stupid enough to be manipulated by propaganda and demagogues, that can make at least somewhat informed decisions based on reality (although organized differently, these requirements roughly line up with the UN General Assembly’s list of the “essential elements” of democracy).

The typical political candidate usually asks you to vote for her to use the system and improve it to benefit you, the voter.

Trump and many of his fellow Republicans campaign to go to war with the system, to destroy.

By their virtue and abilities and with the power of the people behind them, they will sweep away the bureaucracy, institutions, politicians, laws, rules, and norms that supposedly hold us back. There is no love or praise of the system or working within it; the system is rotten to the core, there’s nothing to work with, it only has flaws, deserves only anger and contempt. They need to take existing legitimate problems and grossly exaggerate their intensity or to completely fabricate problems that do not exist but that play into people’s preconceived notions and prejudices to create a climate where their obscenities become acceptable.

Orwell would most masterfully present to the world in his masterpiece 1984 with its concept of Newspeak the language of such politics, a formal language of propaganda, deception, and control: “The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of [the regime], but to make all other modes of thought impossible.” Umberto Eco noted Orwell’s Newspeak makes “use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”

There can be little doubt that this describes what Trump and his advance guard of language warrior beserkers are doing today in their war on reality. Such propaganda and the sheer stupidity of many people dancing together emerge in a horror of a feedback loop: more and more people are receptive to more and more absurd lies and distortions that only help to increase the numbers of the herd of credulous creatures lapping up lies like manna from Heaven. 

The dire threat to democracy today is the weaponization of the press (with which Trump is already long at war) concurrent with weaponizing the people, who, in turn, weaponize elections, the victors of which, in turn, can weaponize the justice and legal system into a political tool to stay in power, reward supporters and punish opponents, and control or bend the media to its will, corrupting or destroying all four of the key elements of healthy democracy. If this is allowed to happen, it is always with some combination of the ignorance of those voters who buy into the rulers’ propaganda, voters’ tacit approval, and/or voters’ enthusiastic embrace of a system that explicitly favors them and explicitly discriminates and punishes those with differing views and/or identities; it is always because of, not in spite of huge swaths of the population.

Thus, Trump and his Republican allies target the justice system—the FBI, including former Director James Comey, the just-heavily-pressured-to-resign and now formally fired former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and the FBI agents conducting the Russia probe; the Department of Justice, including Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his staff and their Russia probe, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and his predecessor, Sally Yates, as well as former tough-on-Russia U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara; various courts and federal judges, including the FISA court and its Republican-appointed judges; and other people and agencies—the professionals of which dare to serve the Constitution as their oath demands before serving Trump the man and his partisan agenda. 

The firing of McCabe, the “memo” baselessly attacking the FBI and Justice Department from the ridiculous and disgraced Trump acolyte Devin Nunes, Nunes’s fellow House Intel Republicans nakedly trying to cover for Trump in prematurely ending their Committee’s investigation into Trump and Russia and their baselessly disputing the intelligence community’s strong consensus that Putin acted to help Trump and hurt Clinton in the 2016 election, and now calls from Team Trump to terminate Mueller’s probe (and just after it was revealed that Mueller subpoenaed the Trump Organization for Russia-related documents) along with more Tweets from the president himself attacking those involved in the Russia investigation—including Trump’s first direct attack against Mueller and his team—are just the latest salvos in a clear effort to not only clearly obstruct justice turn the people against true non-partisan public servants in the justice system and to pave the way for partisan hacks eager to do Trump’s bidding, an effort that (of course) has the full and active support of Putin’s Kremlin and its army of cyber-Cossacks.

NBC News

We are seeing with Trump-appointed Attorney General Jeff Sessions a clear lack of vigor in pursuing civil rights and voting rights/suppression cases so central to allowing fair play in our society and elections, a lack of vigor that directly aids GOP efforts to twist elections in ways that tip the odds considerably in its favor. We are seeing that Trump’s allies in Congress seek to undermine everything related to the Russia probe and, instead, call for unwarranted investigations into Trump opponents—including Hillary Clinton—or even those investigating him. Trump and the GOP-dominated Congress will also have the opportunity to appoint and confirm more federal judges in his first term than any president in the last 40 years. All of these bits and pieces add up to a very real danger of a one-party state in which the rules and laws are twisted to allow that party to unfairly maintain control, in which the levers of justice and law enforcement are used as tools to suppress efforts to challenge this unfair use of what is supposed to be “a government of laws, and not of men,” to quote John Adams.

This is what happens in Turkey, Russia, and the Philippines, as well as in many other places more outwardly autocratic when a new leader comes to power and cleans house, installing minions ready to serve the Dear Leader, not the people or the state. In these places, the Dear Leader equates himself with the state and loyalty to himself with patriotism for the nation; Trump isn’t even being careful about his attempts to do just that.

With Rachel Brand, the no. 3 top official at the Department of Justice, resigning earlier this year, if Rosenstein quits or is fired or also has to recuse himself, Trump will likely have the Department’s leadership in his pocket, led by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and whatever likely partisan loyalists Trump appoints and Republicans confirm to replace Brand and/or Rosenstein. This could place Mueller’s entire Russia probe into jeopardy, since, with Sessions having had to recuse himself from the Russia probe (which enraged Trump) because of his own Russian entanglements, the replacements of Brand and Rosenstein could act on behalf of Trump and end the investigation with little to stand in their way. And we now that Trump is even considering firing Sessions and replacing him with Trump loyalist and current E.P.A. head Scott Pruitt, who would not be under obligation to recuse himself and could easily squash Mueller’s entire probe.

This is not normal, and this is entirely unprecedented in American history. The people and the media and elections failed, their pillars crumbling, to prevent a man who so clearly had contempt for the rule of law from becoming president; now, the last pillar that can prevent us from a real danger of becoming a banana republic—a generally professionally-run non-politically-partisan justice system that is faithful first and foremost to the Constitution and its rule of law—is under siege. The women and men manning its ramparts are doing an exemplary job of standing up to tyranny, but they need help from the people and the press and elections that will punish those laying siege, not reward them.

See related articles by the same author on Comey firing: With Comey Firing, Trump Moves America Closer to Banana Republic Status; How We Respond Is Vital to Preserving Our Democracy and on much of the deep history Mueller is almost certainly looking into between Team Trump & Team Russia: Think You Know How Deep Trump-Russia Goes? Think Again: This Chart/Info Will Blow Your Mind; also see his June 22, 2017, article for The Jordan Times: Ideal governance in ‘the rule of law, and not of men’

© 2018 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here 

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981). If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content, or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse May 10, 2017

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) May 10th, 2017

NBC News

AMMAN — In banana republics, in increasingly-dictatorish dictatorships like Egypt, when someone challenges the Dear Leader, they are removed from power. When the dictator feels far more powerful, like Kim Jong-Un in North Korea, that person may be executed with an anti-aircraft gun.

If liberals smug in their “accomplishments” in their marches (I’ve lost track of how many disparate marches there are) think they and the nation are winning against Trump now, it’s time for them to wake the *&^% up, put aside their “boutique issues,” and unite behind the Democratic Party (for all its imperfections), which is the only entity in the here and now able to stand up to Trump besides the bureaucracy within the government (a government that is clearly intent on and is in the process of carrying out a purge of that bureaucracy), before we succumb to what I label democratic fascism.

Liberals and America are not winning. Every temporary win is at the mercy of the presidents’ whims; the Muslim ban? Trump will have plenty of time to appoint new judges to do his bidding and an unusually high number of them. Flynn out? Trump is already souring on McMaster, his replacement, one of the few “adults in the room” in the “axis of adults” that non-Trump supporters desperately try to tell themselves and the public will moderate/are moderating the “madness of King Donald” (and remember, as quickly as Trump “moderated” on any particular issue, he can just as quickly un-moderate). Senate Republicans have zero women working on health reform after the House’s passage of Trump/Ryancare. What does the women’s march mean when women’s health services are gutted, when judges are appointed that will take away women’s access and ability to decide on how to handle their own pregnancies? And Trump and the unhinged überpartisan Republicans will now be able to appoint an FBI director (Giuliani? Christie?) who will, in effect, bury the FBI’s investigation into ties between Trump and Russia and the 2016 election.

To quote Gen. Michael Hayden, former NSA and CIA chief, “I’m trying to avoid the conclusion that we’ve become Nicaragua;” to quote Jeffrey Toobin, CNN’s all-star legal analyst, “this is not normal;” and to quote Bill Maher, to those of you who though Hillary Clinton was merely the lesser of two evils, “go &^%$ yourselves,” because we now have the worst threat to our system of government, to the survival of our republic as a republic, since the days of Nixon, mainly because you couldn’t bring yourselves to support a candidate who was easily closer to your politics and beliefs and instead saw that a serial-lying narcissistic monster of a man-child was installed in the White House after only winning 46.1% of the vote in what was a de-facto two person race, since far too many of you threw your votes away on non-Clinton non-Trump votes.

In fact, the only times anything like this Comey firing has happened with a president was during Nixon’s presidency, during the 1973 Saturday Night Massacre, when Nixon fired the special prosecutor—Archibald Cox—investigating the Watergate scandal, and arguably when Andrew Jackson—Trump’s apparent historical idol—ignored the Supreme Court when it came to removing Native American tribes from America’s Southeast. In Nixon’s time, significant numbers of Republicans put country over party and helped to lead the fight against Nixon’s abuse of both office and power. 

Does ANYONE not drinking GOP Kool-Aid think that today’s farcical Republicans will do the same? Whether the “Benghazi” (really Clinton e-mail) “investigation” (really witch hunt) or the recent Russia hearings where the vast majority of Republicans focused on leaks and unmasking, it’s clear that, no, Republicans in Congress will not put country over party, even when it comes to vital issues of national security. Even as I write this, I am seeing Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell defend Trump’s firing of Comey using hackneyed partisan talking points that ignore the current context. I fully expect Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan to do the same thing, and I expect the same as well from the vast majority of Congressional Republicans or at least expect their reactions to be far from condemnation, and so far, this has clearly been the case.

If you read Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s letter about Comey’s firing, you’d think that Trump fired Comey because of his unfair treatment of Hillary Clinton during the e-mail/server investigation, treatment of which I wrote about repeatedly before the election and which, all things being equal, seems to have cost her the election (not that other factors did not also play into the loss). So, yes, objectively, Comey should have been fired, but fired by Obama long ago, and yet, this would have looked so unseemly for Obama, Clinton, and the Democrats, and been such political suicide for Obama, that that was never really an option. Long after these events in question, Trump apparently expects us to believe that those reasons related to the handling of the e-mail/server investigation are why he fired Comey.

Nothing could be more absurd or further from the truth. 

There are three real reasons for why Trump fired Comey: Russia, Russia, and Russia (and a fourth: Trump feeling he could not control Comey). And Trump made it clear that the investigation of both Trump’s ties to Russia and Russian election interference (cyberwar!)was at the center of his concerns when he mentioned that investigation in his own letter firing Comey.

It is fitting that Trump included what is virtually certainly a lie—that Comey thrice told Trump that Trump was not under investigation—in his own letter; still, I don’t believe nearly enough people are paying close attention; rather, I believe this is how democracy dies. So soon after Star Wars day, Trump is showing his authoritarian Emperor Palpatine colors faster than some would have anticipated.

Oh, and all this is the same day (just hours after!) that federal grand jury subpoenas went out in relation to the Russia investigation, just days after Comey had requested more resources to conduct his Russia investigation, just one day after Sally Yates’s testimony in front of a Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee had made it clear she was fired just days after she had warned the White House about Gen. Flynn being compromised by Russia, and with Attorney General Jeff Sessions—who had pledged to recuse himself from all Russia/election 2016-related matters because of his own misconduct—acting to help remove Comey, who had been leading the Russia investigation, despite Sessions’ vow of recusal.

This is where we are now, and this is the first truly tipping-point moment in Trump’s presidency: many years from now, historians will look at this moment and look at how the people and their elected political leaders reacted, in particular the leaders of the Republican Party now (especially in the Senate) and the American people when they get to weigh in during the 2018 midterms. If we don’t handle this appropriately, this moment will likely be seen as a moment when the system failed and a lurch toward tyranny happened; even if that lurch doesn’t put us firmly in the realm of tyranny and authoritarianism, it will be a tall task to lurch back in the right direction and it will put us ever closer to even more dangerous tyrannies that may yet be self-inflicted upon our body politic.

The ancient Roman Republic lasted far longer than America’s republic has thus far lasted; looking at its example of the erosion of democratic (small “d”) republican (small “r”) institutions and their eventual collapse, once centuries-long precedents were broken, the ensuing consequences proved fatal for a system that had been stable for longer than America has existed as a nation; this should all give us pause as we wait and see if, or to what degree, the United States has descended/will descend to the level of a banana republic under President Trump, his Administration, and with the help of his supporters, enablers and voters.

© 2017 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, no republication without permission, attributed quotations welcome

See related articles:

Trump & GOP Destroying the Pillars of Democracy

The Trump-Russia-Mob Connections Details You Won’t Find Anywhere Else

The (First) Russo-American Cyberwar: How Obama Lost & Putin Won, Ensuring a Trump Victory

Welcome to the Era of Rising Democratic Fascism Part I: Defining Democracy, Fascism, and Democratic Fascism Usefully, and Spin vs. Lies

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here. 

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981). If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content, or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse December 29, 2017

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter@bfry1981) December 29th, 2017; republished by IR.net on March 23rd, 2018, and updated March 27th, 2018, to reflect Putin’s abstemious nature

Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

AMMAN — Those wishing for impeachment might get more than they wished for, and either way, America may be irreparably damaged.

Disclaimer: this is a fictional, hypothetical situation

Sometime in April of 2019…

The House vote to impeach President Donald Trump set off a firestorm in American politics not seen since at least the 1960s and perhaps even the Civil War and Reconstruction era.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into all things Trump-Russia ended on August 10th, 2018. In the process, nearly two-dozen Trump associates—from lower “unofficial” campaign officials to senior Administration officials—had been charged with various crimes, from lying to federal investigators to money laundering, some resulting in stiff prison sentences. Mueller uncovered enough information that made it clear people very close to Trump had attempted to collude with Russia, then lied about it and attempted to obstruct justice. While specific evidence making it clear that Trump had himself colluded did not emerge, clear evidence that he had attempted to obstruct justice did.

And yet, this information only came out in and drabs leaked to the press, as the Republicans in Congress who received the report decided to sit on its details and not release them to the public, ignoring the recommendation of charges by the Special Counsel and signed off on by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Just a few months before the midterms, the actions of the Congressional Republicans, combined with the juicy leaks to the press about some of what they were hiding, set off an uproar that allowed a November Democratic sweep of all House Republicans on the West Coast—alone accounting for nearly 20 seats—as well the flipping a number of seats in East Coast liberal areas, including suburban districts in places like Virginia, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, and even a few rural districts in places like Maine and Maryland. A few of the key Republicans who deliberately kept Mueller’s findings from the public were voted out of office, too, the so-called “Resistance” pouring inordinate amounts of resources into their races, and Republicans overall—facing many more tight races than expected across the country and with the donor class demoralized—were unable to match the intensity of their rivals in those marquee races.

Even allowing for all this, the Democrats were unable to take back the House, but they had eroded the GOP House advantage to just a handful of seats and managed to score a 50-50 tie in the Senate.

The public had spoken, a voting coalition that included conservatives in many liberal states who had united with “the Resistance” to stand against the blatant Republican obstructionism in the Trump-Russia investigation, sending send a clear message as the 116th Congress took power in 2019. It was obvious that the GOP would find it much more difficult to get away with its blatant obstructionism, and the House Judiciary Committee with only a few GOP defections was able to pass a vote allowing the contents of the Special Counsel’s detailed findings to be made public late in January, though with some redactions. 

Then in mid-February, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan reluctantly agreed to allow the House Judiciary Committee to take up discussion of impeachment articles that had been introduced by Democrats months ago.

The evidence was clear and overwhelming, and the committee—with just a few Republican defections—was able to vote in March to recommended several articles of impeachment for President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.

A right-wing media assault led by former Trump advisor (and still confidante) Steve Bannon from his perch at Breitbart News had already begun once Speaker Ryan had allowed impeachment to be taken up by the Judiciary Committee, but it went into overdrive once the House debate on impeachment began. The vast majority of the well over 200 GOP House members stayed loyal to the President, but all that was required to reach a majority were a handful of Republican defectors—some of the few remaining Republicans from states like New York and New Jersey, ironically, Trump’s backyard—and the House voted to impeach both Trump and Pence on April 9th, 2019, in a vote that featured two fistfights on the House floor.

The vote’s symbolism—154 years after General Lee’s surrender of “Confederate” rebel forces at Appomattox in Virginia—was not lost on Trump’s supporters, who used it as a galvanizing call. The day of the vote, hundreds of protests and counter-protests all over the country were held, violence breaking out in many; a good number of the protests against impeachment were organized by alt-right groups as armed open carry protests, and were often men by Antifa folks ready for a fight. Dozens of protesters, counter-protesters, and even some law-enforcement officials were wounded and, all told, there were 14 fatalities, the worst political violence in America since the 1992 Los Angeles riots and, before that, since the unrest of the 1960s and 1970s.

That same day, Russia launched offensives (with soldiers in unmarked uniforms) in Moldova and in Ukraine, taking the capitals of each and removing what Putin, in a speech televised live nationally in Russia, called “criminal regimes installed by the West.” Russian jets also buzzed U.S. planes in Syria, the Black Sea, and over the Baltic states, where aggressive Russian activities resulted in several air defense missiles being fired in Latvian airspace at Russian jets that nevertheless maneuvered safely back to Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave. 

North Korean forces fired several test missiles into Japanese waters but also shot down a U.S. spy plane with newly equipped anti-air missiles purchased from Russia, taking the American pilot prisoner. 

Iran—reacting to the U.S. decision nearly a year earlier to ignore the nuclear deal reached under the Obama Administration and to unilaterally reimpose sanctions, as well as fearing war from a bellicose American government—conducted the first nuclear test in that nation’s history in the middle of the night, even catching Israel’s Mossad by surprise. 

ISIS also conducted attacks on several American embassies in the Middle East, killing dozens (though mostly local bystanders and local military), and al-Qaeda even managed several attacks in Afghanistan and against the U.S. embassy in Pakistan, though no Americans were killed in either attack.

The next day, Mike Pence resigned as Vice President, and Congress made it clear that it would not vote on anyone Trump would nominate as a successor until (at least) the Senate had decided its verdict.

Even before the Senate began its proceedings, cries among rightists that the country was being stolen from them, that liberals and the “Deep State” were conspiring to thwart the will of the voters and to illegally overturn a valid presidential election, had been mounting. Vigilantes in Texas and Arizona assaulted migrant workers, seriously injuring a dozen, claiming that liberals were trying to get them to illegally vote after Trump tweeted concerns about illegal voting helping change the balance of power in the new Congress amid an unprecedented Twitter storm the day of his impeachment.

In one day, several apparently spontaneous assaults on congressmen and senators in town halls being held across the country before the Senate’s trial resulted three failed assaults but also in two dead congressmen, one seriously wounded senator, and one slightly wounded senator (the seriously wounded senator the result of an attack by an Antifa extremist, the lone leftist among the assaulters). All town halls were subsequently canceled and Congress began to operate amid unprecedented security, with the special election to replace the murdered congressmen operating in a state of fear and rage.

Meanwhile, many alt-right groups were organizing a combined armed march on Washington, to begin in Northern Virginia the day the Senate trial of Trump—who was showing no signs of backing down and had ordered military units to protect him in the White House—was to begin. They had weeks to organize, and well over 100,000 arms-bearing Trump supporters—including some full militia groups—gathered during the days before the Senate trial was to start. Since it was illegal for armed protests to happen in when the groups tried to march across the Potomac over several bridges into Washington, they were blocked by authorities; rather than cooler heads prevailing, gunshots rang out and pitched battles occurred on the bridges. The shots could be heard from the Senate floor as the trial commenced. When Sec. of Defense Jim Mattis acted to deploy units to restore order, Trump abruptly removed him from office that day, and the militia groups and civilian law enforcement, each sustaining wounded and dead, settled into a stalemate as Washington went on lockdown. Protesters protesting the march were also shot, and of protesters, inspired by a defiantly unhinged Trump and the first wave of protesters who refused to back down, began to organize. Throughout the country, federal government installations were attacked by militias, which in some cases took over smaller facilities and took hostages. More deaths occurred during these developments, and protesters of all stripes took to the streets that evening, with scuffles and deaths reported in a wide range of locations. 

Many governors reacted to the shocking events by imposing state-wide curfews and calling in the National Guard. In many instances, the National Guard had to use force to restore order after overwhelmed local law enforcement officials were unable to do so.

By the next morning, from the Memorial Bridge connecting Arlington and Washington to Austin’s Texas State Capitol and many other locations, over 200 Americans were dead, more wounded. The fighting in the U.S. had sent world markets into their worst plunges since the 2008 financial crises, and many governments halted trading. Governors in West Virginia, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Texas, North and South Dakota, and Kentucky called for secession, as did dozens of state lawmakers elsewhere.

By this time, Israel had already carried out military strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, and Iran had retaliated by firing missiles that hit Tel Aviv and had killed several hundred Israelis, while Hezbollah missiles from Lebanon had killed scored of Israelis and Israel’s retaliatory strikes in Lebanon and in Syria against Hezbollah-stationed units there killed over 1,000 people. Israeli jets had ended up in dogfights with Russian jets while American planes just looked on, though the Russian and Israeli leaders were said to be reducing tensions, all this occurring without any mediation 

On the Korean Peninsula, several border incidents resulted in several dozen U.S., South Korean, and North Korean dead, with fears of war gripping East Asia and Kim Jong-un threatening nuclear attacks on Seoul, Tokyo, Honolulu, and Los Angeles. 

When the UN convened the Security Council, none of the other representatives knew if America’s ambassador spoke for the U.S. Government anymore (even more so than before).

The Senate, fearing what a prolonged trial would lead to and with some surprising defections from Republicans who were taken aback by the national violence, got exactly 66 votes to remove Trump from office.

The President, suffering from a mental breakdown, then said that he refused to acknowledge the result and called on his supporters to “fight to take the country back.” With Mattis gone, chaos reigned at the Pentagon as individual local unit commanders took it upon themselves to assist local law enforcement officials in beating back the armed pro-Trump militias converging on Washington; fatalities crossed the 1,000 mark and continued to rise rapidly in this second day of increasing violence, and members of the Secret Service, as well as the military units that had been ordered to the White House by Trump, felt torn. 

With violence erupting across the country and law and order breaking down in some areas (even though most Americans remained safe), with the Senate having convicted a President of High Crimes and Misdemeanors for the first time in American history (one who was still defiantly occupying the White House), and with several million angry Trump supporters—many armed—converging on Washington, the U.S. was faced with a constitutional crisis that went far beyond Nixon and even the Civil War. Whatever would happen in the coming hours, days, weeks, and months, there was serious doubt that such a polarized and wounded nation could come back to “normal order” anytime soon. It seemed clear that Trump would be gone soon, and Paul Ryan in as president, but how could he govern? And how could the violent fury that had been unleashed and the calls for secession be contained?

Vladimir Putin sat in in bed in his presidential palace, breaking his usual abstemiousness by sipping vodka with one of his mistresses lying naked on top of him, and gleefully watched the Breitbart News Network (BNN) coverage of the fighting on the Memorial Bridge. “You Americans were so arrogant thinking you had ‘won’ the Cold War,” he said aloud, his mistress chuckling. “Who is winning now?” he asked and downed the entire rest of his glass before turning his attention to his mistress, gunshots in America providing the mood music for his date night.

CTK/AP

*****

It is impossible to know if or when Donald Trump will be impeached. But if he were, none of the events described above are so far out of the realm of possibility that they can be regarded as mere fantasy. Whatever events do transpire, it is far more likely that impeachment would only further divide the nation rather than bring it together, the same as the prospects for a continued Trump presidency. It seems, then, that for the foreseeable future, we are the Divided—not United—States of America.

With or without Trump in office for a full term, Putin has already won. 

Disclaimer: the author does not hope for, nor does he encourage, any of the violent acts depicted in these hypothetical scenarios

September 21st, 2019 note: I absolutely think as a matter of principle, Trump should be impeached. But in practical terms, it’s not so simple, and bad timing or moving without enough support could hurt Democrats, empower Trump, and even help Trump go after his political enemies. So I’m with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, I trust her judgment and if it can work she’ll know the time to strike if it presents itself or if it will be better to hold off. After all, there are a lot of possible side-effects to consider…

© 2017 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here!

See author’s Amazon eBooks here!

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981). If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!