#hypocrisy | #WhatTheyVotedFor
*sighs* The hypocrisy would be hilarious, if it wasn't so bloody pathetic...
I like the narrative from
David A. Graham↱, for
The Atlantic:
Late Sunday night, Josh Dawsey of Politico dropped a story that, in any other administration, would have been cause for concern but hardly surprise.
“Presidential son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner has corresponded with other administration officials about White House matters through a private email account set up during the transition last December,” Dawsey wrote. “Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, set up their private family domain late last year before moving to Washington from New York, according to people with knowledge of events as well as publicly available internet registration records.”
On Monday, Newsweek reported that Ivanka Trump had also used the domain to communicate with at least one government official, Small Business Administration chief Linda McMahon. By Monday night, The New York Times had reported that at least six officials, including former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, former strategist Steve Bannon, and aides Stephen Miller and Gary Cohn, had used personal accounts for at least some official business.
What is important here is simply, as the headline puts it, the "brazenness" of the Trump administration's behavior. But that's also part of the problem, because—
Administration officials conducting business on personal accounts raises concerns because it suggests some intention to skirt public-records laws and conceal things from the public. While troubling, this is hardly unusual. Sarah Palin was busted for using one. So were officials in the George W. Bush administration. Lisa Jackson, who ran the Environmental Protection Agency under Barack Obama, used an alias for her email.
Of course, the most famous example of someone using a personal email is Hillary Clinton. The case of the Javanka domain is brazen for its mimickry of Clinton’s actions at the State Department, right down to the use of a domain specifically for the family. The only way it could be more slapstick would be if Kushner and Trump also used BleachBit.
—we
just made a big deal out of this sort of thing despite the fact that it really wasn't so unusual as the mandatory panic required people to believe.
There are significant ways the Kushner-Ivanka domain differs from Clinton’s. Neither of them is a Cabinet secretary. (Trump, despite her title as special assistant to the president, says she doesn’t even want to get involved in politics.) Neither of them is running for office (at the moment). The scale of their usage pales in comparison to Clinton’s, and there’s no indication that they deleted any emails. Nor is there any indication that classified information was sent in the emails.
Yet it takes a special sort of hypocrisy, or dark sense of humor, or lack of self-awareness for Trump’s daughter and son-in-law to do this after watching a race in which Donald Trump campaigned for, and arguably won, the presidency because of Clinton’s imprudent decision to use the private email domain. She was cleared by the FBI and the Justice Department of any crimes, though then-FBI Director James Comey called her “extremely careless” with classified information. It was the political sin of looking like she had something to hide, and was trying hard to hide it, that stuck to Clinton. Somehow, Kushner and Trump still decided to set up their own family domain, and no one convinced them it was a bad idea.
But here's the thing:
This is #WhatTheyVotedFor.
See, Republicans never really cared about the email. They just needed to stop the first female president in order to put a boasting sexual assailant in the White House because that is the moral character of Republicans and conservatives. Priorities are as priorities do; they don't care that they elected a bunch of crooks except to pat themselves on the back for doing so, and then raising a glass to putting women in their place.
Okay, let's try it this way:
What part of this story is surprising to whom, and why?
Seriously, who is going to say they thought Republicans were above behavior they've shown before? And who would pretend Republicans haven't called out behavior they've shown before? Who is going to say they elected Trump for his sterling ethical reputation? They didn't elect the bumbling fool whose excuse is getting outplayed, repeatedly, by foreign adversaries, for the benefits of his acumen.
They elected crooks because they felt the kinship. And, really, after over a year and a half of expressing just that sympathy, that he says what people feel and that's a good thing, it's kind of hard for them to pretend they didn't know.
Yes, really. What you're seeing in this story is the moral worth of Republicans and conservatives.
It really is kind of disappointing, when we get right down to it. For all the evil they do, for all their dedication to human harm, it really is just flaccid grotesquerie.
But this is what people vote for when they vote for Republicans.
And if I'm wrong, then Republicans can prove it by removing President Donald Trump from office, and holding Vice President Mike Pence to account for his actions aiding and abetting the corruption of the presidency.
That is to say, if I'm wrong, Republicans can prove it by doing the right thing.
Because what will it take? It won't be for the sake of doing the right thing; the easy prognostication is that Republicans will roll on President Trump, as they did the infamous President Nixon, when the fact of his presidency
endangers their re-elections↗.
____________________
Notes:
Graham, David A. "The Brazenness of Trump's White House Staff Using Private Email". The Atlantic. 25 September 2017. TheAtlantic.com. 26 September 2017. http://theatln.tc/2yFssO3
See Also:
Rich, Frank. "Just Wait". New York. 25 June 2017. NYMag.com. http://nym.ag/2usbSP2
