The US Government is Broken
I’ve lived in the United States for my entire life, but I’ve benefitted from extensive travel to Europe and Asia during the last 40 years. I appreciate the perspective of my friends who live in other countries. Balance.
Which brings me to my current thought about the state of politics in the United States. I’ve observed Donald Trump since the early 1980s. He has always been controversial, brash, and a bad leader. Business surveys from the 1980s and 1990s consistently listed Trump’s companies as some of the worst places to work in the United States. It’s no surprise that his time as President of the United States resembles how he ran his companies. Disastrous. He has always been a low-talent grifter. His latest grift is on a different level.
His recent settlement with the DOJ (himself) for his $10 billion lawsuit he filed after starting his second term. A President of the United States suing the United States after becoming President is unprecedented. Here’s the current outcome that Trump awarded himself:
- An Anti-Weaponization Fund created by the Department of Justice for nearly $1.8 billion. This can be used to pay off his lackeys, his family, and the January 6th rioters.
- Blanket IRS Immunity for past cases against Trump and his family, and their associated business entities.
Todd Blanch, the acting head of the Department of Justice, must please is boss if he wants to get the “interim” part of his title removed. His willingness to participate in this graft should be grounds for his disbarment.
Article III issue: the President is the head of the executive branch, which includes the Department of Justice and the IRS. Critics argue that a president cannot effectively sue himself, and the DOJ—representing the government—should have contested the claims rather than negotiating a settlement that grants the President and his family permanent tax immunity.
I’m with the critics, and I believe most people in the United States, if they followed the details and understood them, would view this as corrupt.
Perhaps enough Republicans in the Senate and House will decide this is too corrupt even for them to support.
I’m not confident, merely hopeful that will be the case. The last thing I want to see is Trump being granted immunity for anything he has done.
Trump is a mentally crippled grifter. He is dishonest and an embarrassment to civil society and the rule of law, domestically and internationally. I suspect that’s why he gets along so well with dictators, they understand him and his motivations.
My hope is that the Trump fever breaks before the midterm elections. It would be nice if the Democrats had better positions and candidates. If they don’t flip the House and Senate in November, they will have unpresented proof the extreme left wing of their party needs to be purged.
The political discourse needs to change. We need centrists from both major parties to work together, compromise, and deal with the fiscal disaster that is progressing unabated. We need to return to the rule of law domesitically and internationally. We need term limits and age limits for the House and Senate. We need age limits for the Executive and The .