Tag: Enablers

President Trump Continues to Break Many Laws and to Violate the Constitution. Woe to Those Who Enable Him

The Epstein Files – A month ago, both chambers of Congress passed a bill (the Epstein Files Transparency Act) that required the Department of Justice (DOJ) to release all of the Epstein files regarding sex trafficking by December 19, 2025 (with a limited amount of material to be redacted in order to protect the identity of the victims). On Friday some 13,000 files had been released but Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche admitted that not all of the files would be released by Friday.

Republican Congressman Thomas Massie from Kentucky who co-sponsored the bill is not convinced that the DOJ is acting in good faith.. Prior to the release of this first trove of files, in a post to X, Massie described the information he was expecting. “The victims’ lawyers have been in contact with me. And collectively, they know there are at least 20 names of men who are accused of sex crimes in the possession of the FBI. So, if we get a large production on December 19th, and it does not contain a single name of any male who’s accused of a sex crime or sex trafficking or rape or any of these things, then we know they haven’t produced all the documents”. In addition, sixteen files with pictures that were inadvertently released on Friday had already been taken down from the website by Saturday because they contained a photograph of Trump. After reviewing the material, Massie accused the DOJ of “flouting the spirit and the letter of the law.”

If President Trump is truly innocent of any criminality, he should order the DOJ to release all the files immediately. To not release them means allowing guilty pedophiles and sex traffickers to continue to freely roam our streets. (Breaking news: a second trove of documents has just been released. This is due to the outcry raised by citizens of both parties.)

War with Venezuela? – In early September, Secretary of Defense Hegseth began to order military strikes against small boats off the coast of Venezuela and also in the eastern Pacific. As of today, more than 29 boats have been destroyed and over 100 people have been killed. Hegseth has alleged that Venezuela was smuggling drugs Into the United States but the evidence makes the allegation quite unconvincing for the following reasons:

  • Athough Venezuela is far from perfect, it does not have a history of shipping drugs to the United States. Fentanyl comes through Mexico and Cocaine through Colombia or Central America.
  • Drug smugglers would not use precious cargo space for people; they would fill up the holds with drugs.
  • Although several boats were destroyed in the Pacific, these could not have been Venezuelan, because Venezuela does not even have a coastline on the Pacific! These boats would have had to come through the Panama Canal. Ridiculous!

More recently, three Venezuelan oil tankers have been stopped and/or seized by the U.S. military, Republican Senator Rand Paul claims that Trump is trying to provoke a war, so that the U.S. can take control over Venezuela’s vast oil reserves.

Trump’s attacks on boats and detention of oil tankers are acts of warfare. According to our Constitution, it is Congress that should declare war. If the president has a legitimate case for war, let him present it to Congress where both the House of Representatives and the Senate are controlled by Republicans.

Trump’s Name on Government Buildings – During his second term in the White House, Donald Trump (and his acolytes) have tried to place his name or face all over the place (on a new one dollar coin, on Mount Rushmore, on the Institute of Peace, and most recently, on the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. This last attempt is a most obscene demonstration of his narcissistic megalomania. First, he fired members of the Board and replaced them with his cronies. He also named himself Chair of the Board. He then feigned modesty and unawareness when the Board voted to add his name (and in front of JFK’s!) to the Kennedy Memorial Center.

He and his Board also showed a complete lack of knowledge of the meaning of the word “memorial”. “Memorial” is used to honor people who have already died, not those who are still alive. Perhaps the White House knows something about the state of the president’s health that we don’t know. In any case, it was Congress that originally named the Kennedy Center and only Congress can rename it.

Enablers – Enablers are people who through their silence allow their leaders, family members, or others to continue practicing bad or criminal behavior. This silence is quite damaging. Although every administration has had its share of enablers, the current one seems to be permeated by “Yes men and women”. People of integrity praise what is good and denounce that which is immoral. I invite supporters of Trump to find their moral backbone and to reject his most unjust and illegal actions.

What Kind of Republicans (and Democrats) does our Country Need?

In the United States, we have had two main political parties (Republican and Democrat) since before the Civil War. There have been third parties on occasion, but these have not been very successful. Political parties are subject to the same challenges that other institutions have: leadership structures that do not encourage change from within. Leaders gather around them “yes men” and “yes women” who say what the leader wants to hear and not what needs to be heard. These people are “enablers” who contribute to the corruption of their institutions from within. This is unhealthy for the institution and for the broader society.

In the current reality of the Republican Party, some leaders who are no longer in office (like former Ohio governor John Kasich and former White House Chief of Staff, John Kelly) have felt free enough to criticize President Trump’s policies and personal behavior. Nevertheless, most officials who are still in office or who are running for reelection have become enablers and have jumped on the president’s bandwagon on every single issue, no matter how absurd.  It is accurate to say that Republicans have become the Trump party and have moved away from traditional Republican principles (fiscal conservatism, standing against dictatorships, etc,).

An exception to this trend is Republican senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska. Earlier this week he criticized President Trump on a phone call with 17,000 of his supporters. He pulled no punches in his use of words. Regarding Trump’s support of dictatorships around the world like Russia, North Korea and others, Sasse says he strongly condemns “the way Trump kisses dictators’ butts. I mean, the way he ignores that the Uyghurs are in literal concentration camps in Xinjiang right now. He hasn’t lifted a finger on behalf of the Hong Kongers,”

Sasse continued his criticism, “The United States now regularly sells out our allies under his leadership. The way he treats women and spends like a drunken sailor. The ways I criticized President Obama for that kind of spending I’ve criticized President Trump for as well. He mocks evangelicals behind closed doors. His family has treated the presidency like a business opportunity He’s flirted with White supremacists.”

The Nebraska senator explained that he is concerned about the large number of people leaving the Republican Party. “If young people become permanent Democrats because they’ve just been repulsed by the obsessive nature of our politics, or if women who were willing to still vote with the Republican Party in 2016 decide that they need to turn away from this party permanently in the future, the debate is not going to be, you know, ‘Ben Sasse, why were you so mean to Donald Trump?’ It’s going to be ‘What the heck were any of us thinking that selling a TV-obsessed narcissistic individual to the American people was a good idea?’ It is not a good idea.”

The senator also honed in on the main issue of the election: Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. “The reality is that Trump careened from curb to curb. First, he ignored Covid. And then he went into full economic shutdown mode. He was the one who said 10 to 14 days of shutdown would fix this, and that was always wrong, So I don’t think the way he’s led through Covid has been reasonable or responsible or right.”

Senator Sasse is trying to shape the future of a post-Trump Republican Party. Republicans need to decide today what kind of party they want. Who has the better understanding of reality, Donald Trump or Ben Sasse? The future of the Republican Party hangs in the balance.