Impeachment Hearing Proves Even Dumb Fascists Can Be Dangerous

A common refrain on the broad left has gone something like: “Well, Donald Trump may be a fascist, but at least we can take solace in the fact that he’s stupid, because imagine the damage he could do if he were smart.” And that is true to some extent; one big reason we worry so much about the prospect of a second Trump presidency is that he now knows things that eluded him the first time he took office, potentially making him much more dangerous.

On the other hand, let’s not forget: Trump taught us from 2017 to 2021 that fascist and stupid can be plenty bad. And this week, House Republicans are drilling the same lesson into our weary heads, maybe even more emphatically than Trump did. Day one of their impeachment hearing was … well, words nearly fail me. One was repulsed by the obvious and blatant lies, yet simultaneously amazed at just how dumb these people seem to be.

The sorry display actually kicked off the day before the formal hearing, when Representative Jason Smith of Missouri, who chairs the Ways and Means Committee, released 700 pages of documents proving—and I’m summarizing here—blah blah blah. He spoke gravely of “evidence of corruption and misconduct,” referring at one point to a June 2017 WhatsApp message that Hunter Biden sent to a business associate. Here commenced a hilarious exchange between Smith and an NBC News reporter, in which the reporter reminded Smith that in June 2017, Joe Biden was neither the president nor even the vice president but rather what is known as “a private citizen.” Smith finally asked the reporter, “What source are you with?” When the reporter said NBC, Smith said, “So apparently you’ll never believe us.”

That’s the playbook. When the facts fall apart, cry Fake News and Deep State.

Then came the hearing itself. CNN delivered a blistering fact-check of the antics, listing eight instances where Republicans omitted crucial context or simply lied through their teeth:

1. Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said the Bidens had “raked in over $20 million between 2014 and 2019.”

Truth: While $20 million is roughly accurate, much of that money went to Hunter Biden’s business associates. And more importantly, they offered zero proof that any money went to Joe Biden.

2. Jim Jordan claimed that Hunter Biden admitted he was not qualified to sit on the board of the Ukrainian company Burisma.

Truth: Hunter Biden acknowledged that he probably wouldn’t have been asked to be on the board if he weren’t Joe Biden’s son, but he has defended his qualifications in detail. A subtle but crucial twisting of his words.

3. Jordan argued—this has been a GOP talking point for a while—that the Justice Department blocked investigators from asking about Joe Biden during a 2020 investigation into Hunter’s dealings.

Truth: A deputy did say to then–U.S. Attorney for Delaware David Weiss that there was no justification for adding Joe Biden’s name to a warrant, but this is plausibly just how the law works: If prosecutors believed there were no grounds to include the elder Biden’s name, doing so would be inappropriate and even illegal. Also, people like Jordan speak murkily of “the Justice Department” in sinister terms to suggest conspiracy. It’s worth remembering that at the time in question, Trump was president and Justice was led by Bill Barr (then still in Trump’s pocket).

Actually, I’ll stop there. You can click on the link above to see them all, but you get the idea. In addition, you should watch committee member Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s evisceration of Republican committee member Byron Donalds’s photoshopped text message in her appearance on Chris Hayes’s show Thursday night. Donalds made a text message—which, by the way, was not about business dealings but about Hunter’s alimony problems—look like a real iPhone text, which was totally made up. “And this is supposed to be the Republican case for impeachment?” AOC told Hayes. “At this point we should be investigating the investigation.”

All of this comes in addition to the other, more widely covered embarrassments at Thursday’s hearing, notably Jonathan Turley, the GOP’s star lawyer, saying, “I do not believe that the current evidence would support articles of an impeachment.”

Oh, and remember this: Comer’s star witness, a man named Gal Luft, is on the lam. Luft was supposed to deliver various goods on “the Biden crime family,” and back in June, Comer and Jordan and the New York Post were very excited about him. But in July, the Southern District of New York indicted him on eight charges that involved Luft acting as an unregistered foreign agent for China, trafficking arms, brokering the sale of Iranian oil to China, and more. He was in Cyprus, free on bail, and he jumped it. The star witness is literally a fugitive from the law.

These people are a joke. And yet—don’t underestimate the danger they can do. On balance, sure, smart fascists are more dangerous. Hitler was smart in the early 1930s as he gained power (he saved his stupid moves—declaring war on the United States for no reason; thinking he could win a two-front war—for later). He knew exactly what laws he was breaking, and how, and why.

Today’s Republicans aren’t that cunning. This idiot Ways and Means chairman—who, by the way, hates puppies; read this eye-popper—doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Comer has shown time and again that he’s a dope. Jordan, for all his seething self-righteousness, knows nothing about the Constitution (by the way, I recently referred to him as a lawyer; he did finish law school, but he never passed a bar exam, and that means he’s not actually a lawyer).

But all that doesn’t mean they can’t do damage. A clever trained assassin armed with a Beretta behind enemy lines can do one kind of damage. A blind man with a machete can do another kind. But it’s still damage. Especially when his motivation is to provide cover for a fascist candidate.

Thursday night on his MSNBC show, Chris Hayes offered up a provocative thesis for why the House Republicans appear to be ready to shut down the government. Yes, there’s their general raging hatred of government and desire to blow the place up. But there is also, Hayes noted, a very specific reason: It’s an attempt to spare Donald Trump from prosecution.

This isn’t coming out of Hayes’s head. No, it’s coming out of Trump’s head. He “truthed” the other day on Truth Social: “A very important deadline is approaching at the end of the month. Republicans in Congress can and must defund all aspects of Crooked Joe Biden’s weaponized Government that refuses to close the Border, and treats half the Country as Enemies of the State.” 

Where do I start? First of all, there’s the usual fascist projection. This is Trump telling us what he plans to do in a second term. He will weaponize the government, close the border, and treat half the country as enemies of the state. He’s basically told us as much already. He did close the border for a while back in 2020 when the pandemic hit. That was a decent excuse (several countries closed borders for a time). If there’s a next time, he won’t need an excuse, he’ll just do it. And as for treating half the country as enemies, he basically signals that in every speech he gives.

Second, it’s blatantly unethical if not outright illegal. Once a prosecutor has brought charges, you can’t just defund his office because you don’t like what he’s done. But there are no rules anymore with Republicans, who are proving the point in Wisconsin, where they’re trying to oust a recently elected liberal state Supreme Court justice because they don’t like the fact that she appears likely to rule against them on a gerrymandering case, which would mean they couldn’t rig the state House and Senate the way they’ve been doing for years. We’ve now reached the point where if they don’t like outcomes or possible outcomes, they just seek whatever means they can to cancel them.

But third … well, here’s the thing. And this is hilarious. A government shutdown would not end the four Trump prosecutions! Two of them, of course, are being undertaken at the state level, in New York and Georgia, so Congress has no power over those at all. And the two federal ones, both led by Jack Smith, one in Washington, D.C., and one in Florida, are protected from any shutdown. In the past, reports NBC News, federal criminal matters have been exempted from government shutdowns. A Justice Department memo from 2021—long before Trump was indicted anywhere, so presumably written not with him specifically in mind—states that in the event of a shutdown, “criminal litigation will continue without interruption as an activity essential to the safety of human life and the protection of property.”    

Bozos.

Of course, that’s just departmental policy, not a law, so Republicans are looking for ways around it. Representative Andy Clyde—the guy who called January 6 a “normal tourist visit”—is seeking to add amendments to the appropriations bill to remove all federal funding from all three prosecutors (Smith, Fani Willis, and Alvin Bragg). Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene want to defund Smith. And Jim Jordan (of course) wants legislation dictating that the department can’t spend money on “politically sensitive” investigations.

Can these people possibly get more corrupt? (Don’t answer that.) But this is what happens when reality is turned on its head. Trump has created a “reality” that is the direct opposite of real reality. In real reality, ample evidence exists to suggest that Trump committed serious crimes, and he tried, right in front of our eyes, to lead a violent coup against the United States. But in Trump reality, it’s all McCarthyism.

It’s not even clear that Trump actually believes this. He says it. But who knows what he believes? He has lied so regularly for so many years about so many things, and so frequently contradicts himself, that his brain doesn’t even hold what you and I normally think of as beliefs. So with respect to him, who knows.

But with respect to Republicans, I think we know. Very few of them believe this garbage. As Mitt Romney told McKay Coppins recently, GOP senators regularly criticized Trump behind his back and once “burst into laughter” after he left the room. The House is more extreme than the Senate, so maybe a dozen of them really believe Trump’s narrative. But most don’t. And yet they say it and say it and say it, with conviction. 

Let’s remember the bigger picture here when it comes to a government shutdown. It hurts people. It hurts the economy. But it hurts people and communities who count on the government to be doing the things it says it will do. Those people are Republicans and independents as well as Democrats. Republicans don’t care. 

And let’s remember the bigger picture with respect to democracy. When one of two political parties is led by people who either (a) genuinely believe a fascist interpretation of reality or (b) don’t, but pretend to out of fear of a strongman and his well-armed followers … well, if that party takes power, democracy is kaput. We’ll find out soon enough how much of the country cares.

We’re talking—and talking—about Joe Biden’s age this week. He’s old. It’s a real issue. It’s a legitimate concern. No one likes the fact that he’s 80. It dampens enthusiasm for his reelection. And there has been a large volume of reporting that suggests that many people, including many Democrats, aren’t especially enthusiastic about his vice president.

I recall hearing a news item recently that explained that among the cohort of poll respondents who dislike both Biden and Donald Trump, while their preference is for neither man to run, if pressed, they favor Trump strongly. I’m sure this is not just because of Biden’s age. It has to do with inflation and, I believe, the general state of trauma in which most Americans, having taken collective blow after blow, now live. This last point is little discussed, but it is the topic of Ana Marie Cox’s shimmering cover story in the October issue of The New Republic, which I think explains more about the dyspeptic national mood than anything else I’ve read.

And yet: I think about those poll respondents mentioned above. Really? Is Joe Biden that bad? They’d really rather have Trump?

Biden’s age was a topic of conversation on Morning Joe earlier in the week, and Al Sharpton asked a good question: “What is Biden too old to do?” Is he too old, Sharpton wondered, to steal nuclear secrets and other classified documents? In knowing violation of the law, as Trump may have just accidentally admitted to Megyn Kelly Thursday?

It’s an excellent question—it flips conventional logic on its head and forces us to consider the problem of Biden’s age not in the usual moral vacuum but in a moral context vis à vis his likely opponent.

In that spirit let’s pose a few more of these inquiries. Is Joe Biden too old:

•  to insist that his inaugural crowds were the biggest of all time, sending his quaking and feckless and ill-attired press secretary out there to tell an obvious and totally unnecessary and pointless—but all too tone-setting—lie on his very first day in office?

•  to have an adviser, trying to spin her way out of that lie, speak in all seriousness of “alternative facts” that he believed in and adhered to?

•  to demand personal loyalty from his FBI director at a private dinner, at a time when it was known that his own campaign might be under FBI investigation?

•  to invite the Russian foreign minister to the Oval Office and reveal highly classified information to him there that “jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic state”?

•  to fire the aforementioned FBI director and admit on national television that he did so because the FBI was investigating him?

•  to doctor a hurricane forecast with a Sharpie to make it seem like an obvious lie he told was correct, potentially frightening millions of people in one state into worrying that their homes might be destroyed or they might have to flee when they were never under threat?

•  to get the Boy Scouts—the Boy Scouts!—to boo his predecessor?

•  to assert that a crowd of white nationalists carrying torches and chanting “You will not replace us” included “very fine people”?

•  to try to buy Greenland?

•  to try to find a way to bomb Mexico?

•  to want to use a nuclear weapon on North Korea?

•  to say that he believed a murderous autocrat over his own country’s intelligence agencies?

•  to constantly mock the United States military and its generals and say that he—whose “military experience” ended in boarding school and, later, included a bone-spur deferment that got him out of being drafted into the armed services during the Vietnam War (thereby forcing some other young, less connected man from Queens to go in his stead)—knew better than all of them?

•  to say that certain members of Congress should “go back” to their own countries, when most of them were in fact born in the United States and the one who wasn’t became a citizen in 2000 at age 17?

•  to watch a dangerous virus spring to life across the globe and be warned universally by experts that his government had better be buying ventilators and masks—and resolutely refuse to do so?

•  to say, just as that virus was reaching American shores, that “when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done”?

•  to make that statement, and many, many others like it, even while knowing that the truth was much uglier and the virus much more dangerous (“deadly stuff”) because he wanted to “play it down”?

•  to suggest seriously that people should inject chloride as a cure for that virus?

•  to wallow in such inaction that said inactions were responsible, according to a highly respected medical journal, for 461,000 excess U.S. deaths?

•  to order the tear-gassing of peaceful protesters so that he could walk to a church and use it as a prop, standing in front of it, holding a Bible?

•  to threaten to withhold crucial aid to a foreign head of state unless said head of state agreed to announce an investigation into his top political opponent?

•  to openly encourage an armed assault on the U.S. Capitol, marking the first time the Capitol was stormed by a mob since the War of 1812, and the first time ever it was stormed by Americans?

•  to make attempt after attempt to steal an election, telling lie after lie after lie on social media, eventually losing 61 of 63 court cases?

•  to make himself, day after exhausting day, hour after ceaseless hour, the center of attention, demanding that we focus our thoughts on him, as authoritarian leaders do?

I’ve barely scratched the surface here. The point, of course, is that no, Joe Biden is not “too old” to have done these things—people can be corrupt and venal and stupid and hateful and arrogant at any age. These are just things that Biden would never, ever do, because within his long life and political career there is an abundance of proof that he respects the Constitution, tradition, and our governing institutions.

So, to those voters more repulsed by Biden’s age than Trump’s deeds: Is your memory really that short? Do you seriously want to live through all this again? And all the above, of course, is to say nothing of the far worse things Trump has already told us he will do if he’s returned to the White House, from insisting on loyalty to him rather than the Constitution to handing Ukraine to Vladimir Putin.

I don’t believe that most voters are that shallow. Some may be, but most aren’t. However, they have to be reminded of all these things. The Democrats are going to have to inspire voters to recall what those four years of chaos, corruption, and misrule were like: living through the 30,753 lies, the constant tension and drama, the horrors of those early days of Covid that could have been much better (as they were in other countries), and the rest of the nonsense that peppered the tenure of the also-advanced-in-age Trump, when he had his chance to do it right seven years ago, and failed.  

Watching democracy die isn’t like watching a movie, where (at least in a well-constructed movie) the plot points are made clear to us, to make us sit up in our seats at the crucial points and help us follow along. It’s more like driving (in the pre-GPS world) along an unfamiliar road at night in the rain: You see things that appear to be landmarks, but you’re not sure of their significance and you’re always a little unsure that you’re going to arrive at your destination.

So let’s be clear about two things going on this week that are direct attacks on democracy. Jim Jordan’s attempt to interfere with Fani Willis’s prosecution of Donald Trump and Wisconsin Republicans’ threat to impeach recently elected state Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz represent blatant efforts to crush law and custom and exert anti-democratic power over duly elected officeholders who happen to be doing things they don’t like.

We start with Jordan, who has repeatedly made clear that all he cares about is power. He recently wrote to Willis demanding that she turn over certain documents relating to her decision to prosecute Trump. His ridiculous letter asserted a federal interest in overseeing local prosecutions. She replied this week with an incendiary letter of her own laying out all the ways in which he’s wrong.

Willis writes that it is “clear that you lack a basic understanding of the law, its practice, and the ethical obligations of attorneys generally and prosecutors specifically.” That may be true. But Jordan is a lawyer. I’d say it’s far more likely that Jordan knows the law and doesn’t care. He’s the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and he has the power to subvert or change the law if he wants to.

Willis enumerates the many reasons why the federal government in all its forms has refrained from interfering in local prosecutions. Again, I would guess that Jordan knows all this. This is the point. He and his staff understand federalism. They just wish to trample it. In this case, that is. If and when defending Donald Trump requires howling about the precious importance of federalism, they’ll do that.

Now, to Wisconsin. The GOP argument there with respect to Protasiewicz is that during her campaign, she accepted around $10 million in donations from the Democratic Party and therefore can’t rule honestly on gerrymandering cases that come before her.

That’s a lot of money, and it surely helped her win—a victory that put liberals in charge of the state’s highest court for the first time in years. But what really helped her win—by double digits—was Republican extremism, especially on abortion rights. And here’s the thing. There is nothing illegal in Wisconsin law about accepting such donations. And judicial candidates of both parties have done so. Not to the tune of $10 million, to be sure, but they’ve taken the money (her Republican opponent took $1.2 million in party money). Wisconsin Republicans have not, of course, complained when conservative justices have heard cases involving their donors.

On what basis can the GOP impeach a judge who hasn’t violated any law and hasn’t done anything wrong? And remember, Republicans aren’t accusing her of having done anything wrong. They’re just saying she might make a ruling that might appear to be corrupt. And the reason they’re saying that is that Wisconsin is arguably the most corruptly gerrymandered state in the country. In last year’s midterms, Democratic Assembly candidates won about 200,000 more votes overall, but the Republicans maintained their two-thirds majority in the lower chamber.

In sum: Wisconsin is functionally not a real democracy in which each vote counts equally. The voters elected a judge who campaigned according to the existing laws and whose presence threatens to make the state a functioning democracy (there’s a lawsuit about gerrymandering that’s moving up toward the high court). The Republican response? Remove her from the bench.

That these two events are happening in the same week allows us to reflect on what has become of so-called conservatism. A conservative is someone who, well, conserves. As liberals see social problems and press for change to address them, conservatives say, Hey, wait a minute; let’s stop and think about the consequences of overreaction here, and about what we might be losing if we make the changes liberals want. I don’t agree with that stance and never have. But I acknowledge that it’s a legitimate way to look at the world, and I even acknowledge that sometimes, the conservative impulse can contribute to a decent, balanced outcome (or could, back in the days when there was actual compromise).

But these radicals don’t want to “conserve” anything, except for white people’s political power. They want to destroy. They aren’t just willing to trample law and custom. They are eager to do so. This must be understood. They seek opportunities to hack away at the pillars and foundations of democracy. They used to try to be sneaky and at least a little bit subtle about it. But since Trump, that’s out the window. In late 2018, it was this same Wisconsin Legislature, you may recall, that used its lame-duck session to move, after the election win of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tony Evers, to limit the incoming governor’s powers.

We may be driving down an unfamiliar road here. But now we have GPS, and we know the destination. We need to take note of the landmarks along the way. And we—and by “we” in this case, I mean mainly the mainstream press and the swing voters who still think both parties are equally corrupt—need to stop pretending that this is a normal American political party. It’s an authoritarian army of thugs in suits.

This article first appeared in Fighting Words, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by editor Michael Tomasky. Sign up here.

It was hard to watch that Mitch McConnell video. That’s the second time he’s gone blanko in recent weeks in front of the cameras. We have no idea how often it’s happened when he wasn’t in front of the cameras. But odds are pretty good those aren’t the only two times.

Word is that some senators are considering a meeting to try to figure out what to do about this. There does exist a rump anti-McConnell faction of a sort: Florida GOP Senator Rick Scott, the old Medicare fraudster, mounted a challenge to McConnell last year. It failed badly, but Scott did get 10 votes. One Republican senator told Politico that any attempt to dethrone McConnell “will be a rerun of last time.”

I’m sure that’s true today. But I wonder how long it will hold. The reason is pretty simple: The McConnell video is really about Joe Biden.

Why? Age, obviously. McConnell is 81. Biden is 80. Trump and the GOP (and Fox News and One America and Sinclair and so on) are going to be making Biden’s age a major issue in the presidential campaign. And I have to say you can’t blame them. Polls show that Biden’s age is obviously his greatest vulnerability.

This seems to set up a situation where his fellow Republicans are going to throw McConnell to the wolves. Think about it. If they keep McConnell and defend him and say everything’s fine, they’re saying that an octogenarian who is clearly losing his connection to terra firma is just fine, everything’s hunky dory, and he’s totally up to the job. That is implicitly saying that Biden too is up to the job of president. And that is something they cannot do.

They can’t do it for plain political reasons because they would be taking an untenably hypocritical position (not that that ever stops them, but this is a high-profile matter). But it’s even more than that: They can’t do it because it would offend Dear Leader, and that, above all, they cannot do.

Donald Trump wants to talk, and talk, about Biden’s age. But he can’t do that effectively if his own party is keeping an 81-year-old man in his rigorous job. Especially when that 81-year-old man has had episodes like these last two.

And besides that, Trump hates McConnell, as we know. The aspersions are numerous. Earlier this month at a South Carolina dinner, where Lindsey Graham was once again sitting at the top of Mount Genuflection, Trump said: “These guys, what they’re doing with the election interference and the Senate has to step up and do something. The House is doing a lot of things. The Senate, under perhaps the worst leader in the history of the country running the Senate, Mitch McConnell, has to stand up and do something.” He also speculated that the Democrats must “have something” on McConnell. That’s Trump’s way of saying that he has something on McConnell, which he wants McConnell to believe, whether it’s true or not.

McConnell may be safe for now as his colleagues rally around him. But if he has one more episode, that’ll be three, and three is (for no particularly good reason, but it is) a magic number when it comes to these sorts of things. People will start asking then, if not before, how the GOP can stand behind McConnell yet call Biden too old. Trump will make his party choose: It’s Mitch or me. And they’ll throw McConnell to the wolves.

Mind you, I’m not suggesting we throw a pity party here. McConnell has set a pretty high bar of Trump capitulation himself over the years. In 2016, he offered Trump high praise right before the election. In 2020, The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer wrote a long profile that called McConnell Trump’s “enabler-in-chief.” True, McConnell has criticized Trump here and there, most memorably in that speech after the second impeachment. But remember—that speech came after McConnell voted to acquit.

That was the key moment right there, the moment that history will remember. McConnell reportedly told an aide at the time, “The Democrats will take care of the son of a bitch for us.” But this wasn’t true and couldn’t be true, and he knew it. The Democrats had 50 Senate votes, and 67 are needed to convict. Seven Senate Republicans voted with the Democrats. But McConnell had it in his power to direct 10 more votes toward conviction. He chickened out.

So did Kevin McCarthy, who on January 6 itself was outraged at Trump’s actions. But both men pulled back. In their book This Will Not Pass, New York Times reporters Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin wrote: “The leaders’ swift retreat in January 2021 represented a capitulation at a moment of extraordinary political weakness for Mr. Trump—perhaps the last and best chance for mainstream Republicans to reclaim control of their party from a leader who had stoked an insurrection against American democracy itself.”

That was the one chance Republicans had to seize their party back from Trump (and just return to the normal, pre-Trump, run-of-the-mill racist dog-whistling, xenophobia, and warmongering). And it was all in McConnell’s hands, much more than McCarthy’s. The votes of 10 more Senate GOP heavyweights, including McConnell’s own vote, might not have sealed Trump’s fate; his following would still have been rabid. But a conviction would have emboldened many in the party to speak out against Trump and start to move past him.

McConnell couldn’t do it. His stated reason—that there were constitutional issues raised by convicting a president who was no longer in office—was a thin rationale. He was afraid. He needed to hold on to his power. And now he’s held on too long. I don’t wish the man ill health. But if I’m right, and this ends up being his downfall, all because of a man he once had the power to neutralize but did not, it will be the kind of ignoble end that a man who turned the U.S. Senate into an ideological gutter deserves.

This article first appeared in Fighting Words, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by editor Michael Tomasky. Sign up here.