This is a small example of the kind of thing I feared when I made comments about what President Trump was going to do when he got control of the Justice Department.
President Elect Trump responded to calls for a recount (which worked out just fine for him, btw) of a couple of states’ votes in the November election by unleashing a whole trope of fantasy charges that there were “millions” of people who voted illegally in said election.
There was not one shred of evidence for these claims. He just made it up.
He didn’t seem to see that this buttressed the calls for a recount, but then, that kind of linear thinking doesn’t often come into his actions when he feels threatened. He has a well-worn track record of immediately going to the bully and the lie when something challenges his grandiosity.
As events unfolded, the recount upheld his win in the states in question and the popular vote tilted further and further against him. At that point the “millions of illegal” voters lie became a way to protect his threatened ego vs a vs losing the popular vote.
It appears that our president will do just about anything to protect his ego. He is so easy to bait that movie stars at awards ceremonies can do it, claims about the number of attendees at his inauguration can do it, comedians can do it. In fact, just about anybody or anything that challenges his ego can bait him out.
Lying is his first tactic when he’s challenged. Personal attacks on whomever has challenged him follow shortly. That would be disgusting in any person, much less a president of the United States, but if it ended there, it would be bearable in a there-he-goes-again kind of way.
But it doesn’t end there. He has a history of threatening and launching lawsuits; using his money to try to drive those who offend his ego down. He showed just how convoluted and determined his desire for the big get even was with the game he and Kellyanne Conway played with Governor Mitt Romney over the position of Secretary of State. This sadistic little set piece also signaled that he was going to use his power as president to play these nasty little games.
Now, President Trump has control of the Justice Department. Before his first week in office is over, he’s announced that he wants to use this power to launch a massive “investigation” into his fantasy claims of millions of illegal voters.
This kind of misuse of government investigative powers to push forward a lie has been done before by crazy heads of state in other countries. We are not the first people to elect a mad King George kind of leader. Every one of those countries suffered as a result of this bad leadership, some of them catastrophically so.
Use of the Justice Department is a brute exercise of the brute power of government. Using it this way, to investigate a self-serving, ego-salving lie, is a clear mis-use of power. It has a chilling effect on the whole country. It will almost certainly redound onto Hispanics and other people that we’ve decided it’s ok to hate.
I don’t think this is the last or anywhere near the worst mis-use of the Justice Department for the purposes of feeding and supporting President Trump’s easily threatened ego. I think we’ve just seen the beginning of the big get evens backed by the brute force of government.
Some people just aren’t smart enough to take yes for answer. And our braggart president with his fragile ego appears to be one of them.
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