On Bannon, Biden, and Trump
The Hump Day Hot Topics!
“The historian is a prophet looking backwards.”—Freidrich Schlegel, 19th Century German Romanticist writer/philosopher
That said, running off on my Android:
***Last night, the House Committee on the January 6th attacks, led by my Kappa Frat Brother (U.S. Rep.) Bennie Thompson (D-MS), voted to refer former Trump White House senior adviser Steve Bannon to the Justice Department for criminal contempt due to his refusal to submit requested documents and appear per a lawful subpoena for deposition. Said Thompson: "It’s a shame that Mr. Bannon has put us in this position. But we won’t take 'no' for an answer. We believe Mr. Bannon has information relevant to our probe, and we’ll use the tools at our disposal to get that information."
The full House will vote on the committee's resolution on Thursday and if it passes as expected, Attorney General Merrick Garland must then decide whether to prosecute Bannon, which I predict this morning that the AG most certainly will levy charges.
As I noted in this column space last week, in both federal and state courts across America, when a witness defies a subpoena and is held in contempt, said witness is either jailed, fined, or suffers a combination of the two. In my experience, individuals held in contempt typically are jailed until such time as they agree to sit down and have their testimony taken in deposition, open court, or even in the judges chambers.
That Bannon somehow believed for even a moment that he was shielded through former President Donald Trump's "Executive Privilege" is but another comical example of his ignorance because the four living former presidents have no such "privileges" because they are, well, former presidents!
Thus, my prediction that Bannon will eventually concede to sitting for the deposition and turning over the requested documents once it's clear that he is heading toward the local federal detention center.
But what doesn't make much sense to me is why Bannon is going to such great lengths to follow Trump's demands that his former employees obstruct the Congressional Committee and by so doing, placing themselves in peril? Think back to when Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, got locked up in 2018; the two were still close at that point as Cohen had yet to decide to testify to help himself, but according to Cohen, Trump showed little loyalty to the very lawyer who was in trouble for acts that he did on Trump's behalf!
The Cohen matter has always rubbed me wrong because I remember when I was a young prosecutor that my former boss, then State Attorney Willie Meggs, told us that if ever we were held in contempt of court for standing up to this one particular judge who despised Meggs and routinely harassed us young assistant state attorneys, that he would come sit in the jail cell right beside us until bail was granted. Something in my gut tells me that if Bannon is ultimately locked up, that Trump, unlike Meggs, will do his tired old Yosemite Sam from Bugs Bunny routine and fuss and cuss and whatnot—but won't head to the federal pen to sit it out with his former employee.
Stay tuned...
*** Turning our attention to the current president, the latest Real Clear Politics Polling data show that President Joe Biden's approval ratings are hovering right at 44 percent, a new low.
To be clear, Biden surely has had some successes this year, particularly with regards to his fight against Covid-19. And while presidents are never really actually responsible for America's economic vicissitudes, meaning, when the economy is good it's not really because of the president and when the economy is bad, it's not really because of the president, the simple truth is that political perception is often reality and at this juncture, with unemployment up, gas prices rising, stock ships mooring in the water while stock trucks remain parked at warehouses, Biden is feeling the heat from some who voted for him not because they thought he was the best person for the job, but because he was an alternative to the combative Donald Trump.
Making matters worse for Biden is the current stalemates on his own budget and proposed infrastructure bills, stalemates that leave many to wonder whether the current president has the skills to deliver promises that impact the nation's financial bottom line?
Indeed, the next few weeks will be telling and with Biden set to turn 79 in November, and with the very real possibility that if the above listed areas do not improve soon that Republicans could have a banner mid-term elections next year, Democrats may have to strongly consider whether a new prospect needs to start stumping to be the party's standard-bearer in 2024?
Now, I don't know who that prospect would be, and as much as I have always respected VP Kamala Harris and fully supported her presidential candidacy from the very start, I cannot forget how she was not very well received during that candidacy—not even by some Blacks who openly questioned her racial bona fides on policy, her gender, her interracial marriage, and their perception that she was a pawn for white supremacy.
Juxtaposed to the national dip in Biden's approval, the president is popular around the globe according to the latest Gallup Poll that has him sitting at 49 percent approval—the same high number that former President Barack Obama held during his very first year in office.
The "why" of Biden's global approval is clear; many of our global allies did not like Donald Trump and his isolationist (and oft antagonistic) rhetoric about global partners not shouldering their fair share of the world's security and economic burdens.
Now, while I was a frequent critic of Trump, I often found myself in agreement with him on such security issues and the need to scale back or withdraw from foreign intervention, even if I despised his rhetoric and style of diplomacy.
But still, these vastly different outcomes at home and abroad prove, if nothing else, that effectiveness in office is in the eyes of the beholder!
***While the next few months will greatly determine how fraught with peril the Democratic Party's path will be in 2022 and 2024, the latest Gallup Polls are also showing that 80 percent of Republicans are clamoring for Donald Trump to run for president in 2024; should Trump win that race, he would become the first president to hold two non-consecutive terms since Grover Cleveland in the late 19th Century.
I won't expend too much column space analyzing why I think that a second Trump presidency would be disastrous for the long-term viability of the American Republic, but I will list two: 1. Trump's advancing of the dialectical mendacity that the 2020 election that he lost by nearly 10 million votes was stolen and, 2. The infantile, petty, and churlish insults that he routinely hurls multiple times per day at friends and foes alike.
As I am unafraid to submit in this blog, I had some serious concerns about Joe Biden before he ran for president; I did not choose to hold my nose and vote for him until he had won the Democratic Primary and yet, I am hopeful—but deeply skeptical—that he will fully deliver on the economic, educational (read-HBCUs) and social justice/voter rights promises that he made on the campaign trail. But if there is one area that I can give President Biden kudos is that I do not have to awake each morning and see a litany of mean-spirited comments on Twitter or via press releases.
This last part, basic public decency, is something that Donald Trump is incapable of doing now—or in 2024! It's just in his rancid spiritual nature, whether it was his calling all Mexican immigrants "rapists and drug dealers," or making fun of a disabled reporter, or wisecracking military families who lost loved ones in war, or calling Muslim immigrants "terrorists," or calling Black NFL social justice protesters "ungrateful Sons of B*tches," or calling Haiti and African nations "sh*t-hole countries," Trump routinely displayed a toddler's temperament on Twitter and the vocabulary of an unenlightened fool—not the leader of the free world.
Lest we forget that in times of national mourning, from time immemorial, Americans have always expected our presidents to show respect for national icons—even if the icon was from the other party. I distinctly remember how respectful Democratic President Bill Clinton was to the family of disgraced former Republican President Richard Nixon following his death in 1994. Clinton did not take shots at Nixon's Watergate scandal, rather, he respected the office even if there remained international questions about the man who held that office from 1969-74.
Trump shows no such grace—and has no honor—as during his term he immediately insulted deceased political foes like Republican Sen. John McCain, Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings, and civil rights legend and Democratic Rep. John Lewis, all because they opposed him politically. Such is why I was not surprised (but still disappointed) in the following "statement" that Trump issued yesterday—a full 24-hours after military hero and former Republican Secretary of State Colin Powell died at the age of 84:
Classless...
Again, Trump is who he is and I do not ever expect him to be gracious towards his foes because he lacks grace. But knowing that, and knowing that there are potential Republican presidential candidates who I may differ with on policy, but at least can concede that they are endowed with grace, class, and honor, I cannot help but fear that misery and mayhem would ensue if a second Trump presidency morphs from fantasy to reality.
Thank you for subscribing to the Hobbservation Point—have a wonderful Wednesday!