Plans for the future
David Frum says the monster will devour all of us if we let him.
The charges against Comey are not just about the president’s abuse of his power for personal retribution. They represent a test of the president’s plans for the future.
Since the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Trump and his top aides have spoken of their plans to bring cases against people who give money to anti-Trump causes. “My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country,” Trump said on September 10.
In real life, there is no known evidence that any organization funded Kirk’s assassin. But there are donors to left-wing causes that Trump wants to defund. In the White House today, the president signed an order to investigate those donors. He cited the liberal donors Reid Hoffman and George Soros as potential targets. In April, Trump ordered an investigation of ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising platform.
I somehow missed the moment where it became illegal to be to the left of donaldtrump.
Trump faces a very immediate problem. He and his family have already amassed an enormous fortune in the first nine months of his second term, in great part from gifts and deals with foreign powers. That behavior is likely to be investigated if Trump’s party loses control of either house of Congress in November 2026. Trump’s bad economic management has put that control at extreme risk. His overall approval numbers have dropped to the very low 40s; his economic management, to the mid-30s. Grocery prices are up, and electricity prices are rising even faster. If honest congressional elections were held today, the Republicans’ two-seat margin in the House of Representatives would vanish. The protective screens for Trump’s self-enrichment would vanish with it.
So his move on Comey, Frum explains, is “another step in a forward-looking plot to shred the rule of law in order to pervert the next election and protect his corruption from accountability.”
It’s remarkable how much a person can achieve by having no scruples of any kind.
If things don’t improve, instead of being ruled by laws informed by the Constitution of the United States of America, you’ll be ruled by an out-of-control group of MAGA billionaires informed by the Whims of Trump.
We already are.
‘Honest congressional elections’ are unlikely already. Enough vote-suppression and Gerrymandering will do the trick. January 6th shows the declaring victory may be enough to overcome that pesky electorate anyway. And meanwhile our Butler-Zinn-Chomsky pseudo-left will be too busy waffling about 3rd parties, chanting ‘death to Israel’ and TRAW to vote.