Gingrich’s statement that wealth trumps the rule of law
Ok so it turns out there’s a fix – if you’re worried that Trump’s many profit-seeking ventures might conflict with his ability to do the presidenting well, just change the rules to make it so that they can’t. Yeah. By the same token, can we change the rules so that it’s ok for me to rob banks?
Newt Gingrich has a take on how Donald Trump can keep from running afoul of U.S. ethics laws: Change the ethics laws.
…
Gingrich, the former speaker of the House and one-time potential running mate for Trump, says Trump should push Congress for legislation that accounts for a billionaire businessman in the White House.
“We’ve never seen this kind of wealth in the White House, and so traditional rules don’t work,” Gingrich said Monday during an appearance on NPR’s “The Diane Rehm Show” about the president-elect’s business interests. “We’re going to have to think up a whole new approach.”
Ah, I see. So the “traditional rules” were there to cover people who don’t have financial conflicts of interest, and when there is someone who does have financial conflicts of interest, then obviously it’s time to change the rules. I hadn’t realized that. I thought the point of the rules was to avoid financial conflicts of interest, and thus are more needed, not less, when there are giant conflicts at every turn. Silly me.
And should someone in the Trump administration cross the line, Gingrich has a potential answer for that too.
“In the case of the president, he has a broad ability to organize the White House the way he wants to. He also has, frankly, the power of the pardon,” Gingrich said. “It’s a totally open power. He could simply say, ‘Look, I want them to be my advisers. I pardon them if anyone finds them to have behaved against the rules. Period. Technically, under the Constitution, he has that level of authority.”
And that would be the perfect solution in every way. It wouldn’t be or appear at all autocratic or dictatorial, nor would it appear or be the least bit corrupt. It would be fabulous to have a president milking the office for every dollar he could – it makes me proud to think of it.
“Speaker Gingrich’s statement that wealth trumps the rule of law, basically that’s what he was saying, is jaw-dropping,” added American University government professor James Thurber. “I can’t believe it. He’s a historian. He should also know that we did not want to have a king. A king in this case is somebody with a lot of money who cannot abide by the rule of law.”
Richard Painter, a former George W. Bush White House ethics lawyer, said Gingrich was off on his reading of the Constitution. “If the pardon power allows that, the pardon power allows the president to become a dictator, and even Richard Nixon had the decency to wait for his successor to hand out the pardon that he received for his illegal conduct,” Painter said. “We’re going down a very, very treacherous path if we go with what Speaker Gingrich is saying, what he is suggesting.”
A dictator is what we have. Trump will be as much of a dictator as he can. He’s not the least bit shy about it, and he’s not constrained by respect for US history or traditions or by any kind of moral scruples. He’s the self-declared pussygrabber, and he basically sees the whole world and everything in it as his pussy to grab.
Changing the rules is a standard playbook. When Dubya was governor of Texas, he attempted to bring Texas cities back into compliance with EPA rules by trying to persuade them to change the rules. If the rules were changed every time someone violated them, hey, great! It didn’t work in that situation.
During Obama’s administration, an attempt was made to stop illegal whaling by Japan by making whaling legal. Hey, it would have worked! Japan would so totally stop illegal whaling if they would just do this one little thing. They would, of course, not change a thing they were doing, it just wouldn’t be illegal anymore. Public outcry stopped that little rule change.
So he’s merely following a playbook that has a long pedigree (I’m sure there are many more examples; those were just the ones I could think of off the top of my head, because, hey, I’m an environmental scientist, and environmental shenanigans tend to catch my notice).
So TrumPEOTUS came into power buoyed by a populist wave of supporters who believed that he was the anti-establishment candidate who was going to stick it to the establishment elitists. And now it seems that the super-elitism of being so wealthy that one should be considered to be beyond established laws and conventions is somehow a new unconventional way of being anti-establishment. (Ah yes, we’ve heard this before: Four legs good. Two legs better.)
Theo has it right. I suspect many of Trump’s supporters are still cheering that Trump is sticking it to those ‘elites’ and all their rules and expectations – even as Trump and his minion horde pillage the nation of not only wealth but it’s last vestiges of pride and prestige (the prejudice they will multiply).
I suspect they were not so much anti-establishment as they were anti-diversity, anti-political correctness, and anti-immigrant (LGBTQ, etc…many blanks to fill in there). The only real anti-establishment thing I see is their disdain for such things as paying their taxes and keeping their mitts off federally owned property that belongs to everyone. Both of these are going to jibe well with Trump’s playbook.
What is the current definition of “elite”? I work in science, live in the NE, have a masters degree, and harbor anxiety about college costs & medical emergencies. Appliance purchases qualify as major decisions. I have an opinion about Oxford commas. As I understand it, I am elite, but there are a whole bunch of billionaires that are just regular folks. Please advise.
Helicam
Worried about whether you are elite = elite (if you don’t give a fuck about that or anything else you’re probably not).
Work in science = elite (possibly one of the worst)
Lives in NE = elite+bubble+devil worshipper
Masters degree = elite science bastard who lords it over other science bastards
Anxiety about elite stuff like education and emergencies – need I say more
Likewise appliances – you can even contemplate buying them…
You even know what an Oxford comma is, let a lone having an OPINION about it! Where’s my pitchfork?
Rob: Thanks for clarifying! I’ve had a bit of an identity crisis lately, but you’ve helped me see things more clearly. I forgot that American poor people aren’t really poor because they tend to have refrigerators (thanks Heritage Foundation!), and that obviously my education was merely indoctrination into politically correct liberal groupthink. I will now throw myself on the pyre to make space for the real Americans, with their steely gazes (blue-eyed, of course) across the wild frontier of real America, where men are men, and women are not, and people (i.e., men) tell it like it is.
@ 7 Helicam
“Tell it like it is”?! Wash your mouth out. You a fan of that crooked corrupt media with their biased unfair reporting of facts, liberal pinko?!
(/sarcasm)
Glad I could help Helicam. I’ve been doing night classes on how to speak Trump supporter. I think it’s working out well…
Rob, I had an entire childhood of learning how to speak Trump supporter. One thing I learned is: yell very loudly, turn red in the face, and call names…nasty, ugly, racist, sexist names. Oh, and complain about how minorities and women get everything, even though they are less qualified than you are. Then, shout guns, God, and guts at the top of your voice, and walk away smirking, because you know you just won the argument. You can tell for sure by the bewildered look on the face of the person you just smashed to smithereens with your brilliant argumentation skills.