Trump now placed to end U.S. democracy

Should Republicans lose their razor-thin majority this November, Trump faces an agonising two years of lame duck conflict with this coequal branch of government, writes George Grundy.

SUCH IS THE SHEER VOLUME of corruption carried out daily by Donald Trump that one more outrage barely makes the headlines, but an announcement from the U.S. Justice Department earlier this week bears particular scrutiny.

It appears to be one of the final pieces now in place that will allow Trump to functionally end the American experiment this November.

Back in January, Trump announced he was suing America’s Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for USD$10 billion, over the leak of his tax return data to the media in 2019. As an aside, the leak showed that Trump had paid no income tax whatsoever in ten of the previous fifteen years, and just USD$750 in 2016 and 2017, despite his much-touted billionaire status.

On the face of it, the legal action was an absurdity. As the sitting President, Trump controls the IRS, so the case was one where the plaintiff was effectively suing himself. The judge in the case made this query, and recently seemed set to rule on this obviously disqualifying contradiction.

However, as with so much about Trump, it appears the litigation itself was a smokescreen for a more nefarious end.

On Monday, Trump requested that the case be dismissed, and hours later, the Department of Justice announced it had reached a settlement with the President, including a USD$1.776 billion ‘Anti-Weaponisation Fund’ controlled by Trump himself.

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Trump has said that the money should go to reimburse "people that were horribly treated", strongly hinting that he meant those convicted following the insurrectionist riot in Washington on January 6th 2021.

The USD$1,776 billion figure is symbolic, of course — 1776 is the birth date of the American republic, and often referred to by members of the Far-Right as a moment of heroic revolution (January 6th insurrectionists chanted "1776" as they broke into Congress).

Trump pardoned around 1,500 of the convicted rioters on the first day of his (second) term in office. Now those people seem likely to get an official apology from the government they tried to overthrow, and generous compensation to boot.

This is outrageous in and of itself, but it forms part of a broad and truly sinister effort as the mid-term elections in November approach.

Trump now has a loyal paramilitary army of armed insurrectionists, legally pardoned, soon to be well funded, and presumably loyal to the man who freed them.

He has an immigration (ICE) law enforcement wing of thugs who have terrorised and murdered American citizens on city streets, and who report directly to him (via the Department of Homeland Security). As the Atlantic recently reported, election deniers (who still claim that Trump defeated Joe Biden in 2020) have now been appointed to ‘election integrity’ positions within the government.

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Joanna Lydgate of States United Democracy Center described the situation as:

"Whether it's an executive order or death by 5,000 cuts, it's chipping away at our election system. They need to sow doubt; they need to undermine public trust; and each one of these narratives is a tactic to that end."

Republicans, including the Speaker, have made it very clear that they agree with Trump that a loss of the House this November would functionally be the end of Trump’s presidency.

Trump is uniquely exposed to oversight and censure, given his rampant corruption and still as yet unresolved links to paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

Should Republicans lose their razor-thin majority this November, as almost always happens when a President is this unpopular and gas prices this high, he faces an agonising two years of lame duck conflict with this coequal branch of government.

Trump can’t allow that to happen. He clearly hates elections, has contested nearly every political loss he has experienced, and continues to claim – without evidence – that he, in fact, beat Joe Biden in 2020. It is impossible to imagine him accepting a loss this November, and it’s clear he is doing everything possible to stop the process of free and fair elections.

Bit by bit, Trump’s efforts to undermine, steal or even cancel the mid-term elections are taking shape. American democracy is hanging by the slenderest of threads.