This country needs to send a message to Trump and his law-breaking comrades: Crime does not pay. But who in this criminal administration will be the messenger?

After first attempting to conceal a threat to the Ukrainian president of putting on hold prior-approved military assistance unless he “cooperated” with the Trump re-election campaign and opened a bogus investigation into alleged corruption involving Joe Biden and his son in that country, it seems that Donald Trump has resorted to the tried-and-true defense of largely admitting it was true, attacking the source of allegation against him as being “unpatriotic,” and that any accusations of impropriety on his part is “fake” news. We have to come to the realization that what Trump calls “fake news” is anything that makes him look bad, and no one really needs to know about these things because they don’t “matter.” Trump has been committing white collar crimes and other ethical lapses for his entire adult life, yet like many crooks of his sort, he has managed to insure that other people paid the price for them. Conspiracy to commit a crime is a crime too; Trump knew exactly what Michael Cohen was doing on his behalf because he instructed him to do it, and he knew it was illegal—but Cohen is the one in jail. 

With Cohen in jail, former prosecutor and New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani is playing the role of “fixer” for Trump, at least in a rhetorical fashion. You would think that having once been a prosecutor, that Giuliani would have some slight grasp of what is legal and what is not, but when personal politics and survivability is involved, what is legal or not is a matter of “opinion” and jumbled “logic.” Giuliani is a world class hypocrite and disseminator of bullshit; time and again he has first denied, then lied, then equivocated, before finally confessing and insisting that nothing wrong was ever done.  The guy has turned himself into a joke without a shred of credibility. There has to be some element of “crime” in all of that.

Then you have another Trump stooge named Corey Lewandowski admitting during a House Judiciary committee hearing that he had previously lied on national television when he was asked about an allegation that he was tasked to pass on a message directly from Trump to Jeff Sessions asking the latter to end the Mueller investigation—a clear attempt at obstruction. Lewandowski defended himself by claiming that he had “no obligation” to tell the truth because the media never tells the truth anyways; I wonder if he was talking about Fox News. Of course lying on both national television and in a committee hearing is just “fake” news. All the “fake” news about Trump’s unlawful and unconstitutional activities are being stuffed into a gigantic, festering pustule.

One wonders what will be needed to puncture that pustule. The Washington Post’s Jennifer Ruben asked last week about where all the “patriots” were—principally those who call themselves Republicans—who will say that enough is enough. Trump must have read that op-ed, because he twisted it into questioning the “patriotism” of the whistleblower on the Ukrainian “deal”—although anyone who dares question the legality and ethics of his activities tends to be “unpatriotic.” Trump seems to believe that what is “good” for him is “good” for the country, and we have seen much evidence to suggest that those two roads seldom intersect; in the quest for what they believe is “good” for the country, he and his cohorts in the White House act on one thing and one thing only: on who they hate. It isn’t necessarily “what” they hate, because clearly they are more than willing to look the other way when some other people they “like” are doing something they claim to hate; it is who they hate that is important. And who their supporters hate is the only thing that matters—even when it takes lawbreaking and unethical activities to accomplish their ends.

No Republican is “patriotic” enough to stop Trump; in the House, many Republicans seem all too willing to jump into the abyss with him. Democrats in the House are frittering away the time trying to find someone willing to puncture that fetid pustule that is the Trump administration, without much success, since “executive privilege” is cited every time a Trump stooge is asked a simple question. Will a John Dean armed with a pin finally emerge to do what is “patriotic”? Let us remember that White House counsel John Dean wasn’t merely an “observer” in the Watergate scandal, he was neck-deep in it, along with Attorney General John Mitchell. He didn’t just decide one day he would do the “right thing,” he pleaded guilty to one criminal charge and was given immunity for the rest of his crimes in exchange for testifying before Congress. 

In order to take down someone like Trump who has no moral or ethical values that most people take for granted, it is going to be someone in the administration who doesn’t want to spend a lot of time in jail for him who will talk—which might be difficult since Trump has already suggested that people who break the law for him may get pardoned. That is where we are it; this administration and millions of (mostly white) voters and media supporters are immune from the effects of crime in this administration because they believe that any criticism is politically-motivated and “fake.” Someone who does not want to burn for Trump and want's to be that "good guy" that the history books faun on is likely the conduit through which Trump will be stopped short of an election loss—and that is not all that certain.