Spoiler alert: Contrary to his stated intentions, President Donald Trump has not “drained the swamp,” but has in fact amplified D.C. corruption and special-interest power—currently, more than 300 lobbyists have seats in his administration—unseen in modern times. The Swamp understands and exposes this fact, and yet Daniel DiMauro and Morgan Pehme’s HBO documentary (premiering August 4) nonetheless tackles the issue of politics and money via a decidedly wishy-washy look at three of Trump’s staunchest faux-“renegade” GOP congressional acolytes: Colorado’s Ken Buck, Kentucky’s Thomas Massie and Florida’s perpetually sycophantic Matt Gaetz.It’s Gaetz who’ll likely be best known to viewers, thanks to a series of headline-making (and social media-inflaming) stunts, including tweeting out a not-so-veiled threat to congressional witness (and former Trump attorney) Michael Cohen, and leading a group of rabble-rousing Republicans on a raid of a closed-door impeachment hearing deposition. A perpetual fixture on Fox News, where he parrots Trump talking points in the most extremist fashion imaginable, he’s a young, eager go-getter who’s hitched his post to the current commander-in-chief. That’s certainly the figure depicted by DiMauro and Pehme’s film, which captures him articulating his staunch support in personal phone calls to the president (and is told, in return, “You’re doing fantastic…you’re tough and smart and you have the look”), as well as stating outright “I love him so much.” Throughout the film, Gaetz is repeatedly seen fawning all over Trump, receiving marching orders from the president and delivering near-daily progress reports. When Trump calls him “handsome,” the congressman acts like he’s won the lottery. John Oliver Unloads on ‘Idiot’ Trump for Endorsing Dr. Demon SpermNetflix Targets the ‘World’s Most Wanted’ CriminalsGiven his fawning admiration for the president, it’s predictable that Gaetz spends a lot of time in The Swamp criticizing D.C. venality at the hands of wealthy special interest groups, whose checkbooks are coveted by politicians wanting to maintain their membership in the party, and their position in committees. Gaetz, Massie and Buck’s dismay over this flawed paradigm is voiced at regular intervals throughout the film (set in 2018-2019), as is a greater desire for bipartisanship, which Gaetz himself partakes in alongside California’s Ro Khanna with their Khanna-Gaetz amendment designed to take unilateral war powers (specifically with regards to Iran) away from the president and return them to Congress. In this effort, as in their many censures of super PAC influence, the three come across as principled outliers committed to upending the “new normal” of donor-driven governance ushered in by Newt Gingrich in 1994.Like an introductory scene of Gaetz dressing and putting on makeup in the office work closet he calls home—the better to maximize his daily productivity, he says—such commentary is the trio’s (and film’s) means of casting them as hard-working against-the-grain mavericks. At the same time, though, directors DiMauro and Pehme fully recognize that these supposed rebels—and Gaetz in particular—are bald-faced hypocrites who don’t walk their own talk. While it’s true that, in 2020, Gaetz became the first Republican to swear off any campaign donations from super PACs (a worthwhile stand, to be sure), he otherwise comes across as a guy who doesn’t care that his beloved president is far from the reformer he claimed he would be on the campaign trail. First during the Mueller hearings and again throughout the impeachment process, Gaetz readily takes to his Fox News pulpit to rail against the “witch hunt” and Democrats, as well as to vilify immigrants as “criminals, thugs, special-interest aliens…jihadists,” habitually using the president’s very own polarizing language. He’s akin to a Trump ventriloquist dummy.The discrepancy between Gaetz’s anti-“swamp” pronouncements and his adulation of a leader whose entire Oval Office tenure has been designed to enrich himself is hard to ignore, and The Swamp certainly takes pains to underline it, as it does the dissonance between Buck and Massie’s avowed disgust for special interests and yet dubious connections to the NRA and the coal industry. Massie himself likens his congressional pin to The Lord of the Rings’ ring (because its limitless power is corrupting), and equates himself to Star Wars’ rebel fighters and Congress to the Death Star, and the nerdiness of the latter point is only outweighed by the silliness of the analogy, especially since Trump’s former campaign manager Brad Parscale recently associated the president’s re-election as a villainous Death Star juggernaut ready to wipe out its enemies.Despite routinely pricking Gaetz and company for behaving in ways that are diametrically opposed to their declared values, The Swamp still spends considerable energy lavishing fond attention on them. Slow-motion shots of Gaetz strutting down D.C. streets, sunglasses on and the sun shining from behind him, contribute to puffing up his media-friendly persona as rock star-ish upstart contrarian driven to shake up the status quo. Since the film knows this isn’t really the case—at its conclusion, Gaetz votes along party lines for a military bill even though his beloved war powers amendment was cut out of it—the effect is to make one feel as if the directors want to have it both ways, obligated to critique their subject but not too harshly because, after all, Gaetz has granted them intimate access to his life in the first place.Only in interviews with Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig does The Swamp make a truly passionate case for the need for wide-scale lobbying reform—which came, most recently, in the form of Democrats’ H.R. 1 bill, which found few receptive Republican friends in the Senate. From climate change to military funding to gun control (to name only a few pressing national concerns), “none of these issues can be addressed sensibly until we address the deep corruption inside of our government,” he says. Without that, we’re doomed to deal with a system that turns politicians into fundraisers, and because “politics of hate is the most productive technique for fundraising we have,” that in turn leads to the hyper-polarization we see today.When it’s providing an insider’s view of the ways elected representatives are compelled—often willingly—to sell themselves to the highest bidder in order to maintain their sliver of power, The Swamp is a revealing and timely survey of our broken government. Where it stumbles, however, is in its choice of tour guides through that greedy bog—a collection of pretenders whose corruption-friendly actions speak far louder than their crusading words. Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

The attorney general’s many critics saw his combative display on Capitol Hill as proof of his willingness to enable Trump’s darkest impulsesWilliam Barr was hungry. “Mr Chairman, could we take a five-minute break?” the attorney general asked Jerry Nadler of the House of Representatives’ judiciary committee. “No,” retorted Nadler, his hearing almost done. Barr responded sardonically: “You’re a real class act.”It was pure Barr: a proud, combative, unflappable and unapologetic partisan warrior in the loyal service of the White House.During the five-hour session on Capitol Hill in Washington this week, Barr made clear why he has been dubbed Donald Trump’s faithful protector and personal henchman. He defended using federal forces in US cities, denied giving Trump’s allies favorable treatment and demurred on issues such as foreign election interference or whether November’s poll can be postponed.For critics, it was proof positive that Barr’s unswerving loyalty to the president has torn down the wall that separates the White House and justice department and ensures law enforcement operates independent of politics. Some believe he now poses an existential threat to democracy itself.“Because of his position as the attorney general, he has control over a lot of what’s acceptable and what isn’t under the law up until the point where the federal judiciary can stop him. It makes him very dangerous, especially when you’re dealing with a president who has no regard for the constitution or the rule of law,” said Tara Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill.During his 18 months in office, Barr, 70, has backed Trump even as he defies norms, stokes division and is buffeted by the coronavirus pandemic, economic slump and tumbling poll numbers. Democrats have demanded his impeachment, accused him of politicizing the justice department and enabling an “imperial presidency” like no other.Democrat Joe Biden, Trump’s election opponent, tweeted on Thursday: “Bill Barr is the Attorney General of the United States – not the president’s private attorney.”Barr, a devout Catholic and keen bagpiper, previously served as attorney general under President George HW Bush from 1991 to 1993. This raised hopes that he would be an establishment Republican who could check Trump’s impulses, maintain the department’s independence and offer normality in an era that is anything but.Those hopes were badly misplaced.In reality he had always been an advocate of expansive presidential power and a hard line on fighting crime. He is therefore seen as a perfect fit for Trump, who has repeatedly tested the limits of executive authority and is now pushing a “law and order” theme for his election campaign against Biden.Weeks after his Senate confirmation Barr cleared Trump of obstruction of justice allegations even when Robert Mueller, the special counsel, did no such thing, and produced a summary of Mueller’s Russia investigation that set an unduly rosy narrative for the president.Barr has since made good on Trump’s rallying cry to investigate the origins of the Russia investigation in what Democrats see as a politically motivated attempt to damage Biden, the former vice-president, ahead of the election.He has also been sharply criticized for a decision to drop the prosecution of Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn and urging a more lenient sentence for Trump’s ally Roger Stone, a move that prompted the entire trial team’s departure. The Flynn dismissal will be reviewed by a federal appeals court but Trump commuted Stone’s sentence altogether.In addition, Barr claimed that Geoffrey Berman, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, New York, had agreed to “step down”, only for Berman to explicitly deny this. Such actions have prompted open letters signed by thousands of justice department alumni demanding Barr’s resignation.On Tuesday, Barr faced grandstanding Democrats and conspiracy theorist Republicans in his first appearance before the House judiciary committee. Nadler accused him of waging “persistent war” against the justice department’s independence “in an apparent effort to secure favors” for Trump. “Shame on you,” the chairman said.The attorney general defended the aggressive federal law enforcement response to civil unrest in Portland and other cities. “What unfolds nightly around the courthouse cannot reasonably be called a protest,” he said. “It is, by any objective measure, an assault on the government of the United States.”Although some protesters in Portland have been violent, most have been peaceful and have included military veterans, off-duty lawyers, school pupils and rows of women known as the “Wall of Moms”. Law enforcement officers have responded with teargas, pepper balls and flash bangs.Setmayer said: “By sending federal law enforcement officers into places like Portland and other cities, all it’s doing is offering propaganda for the Trump campaign to use to push the law-and-order scare tactics of his campaign. They don’t have anything else to run on. So this is the crux now of the fear campaign that Donald Trump plans to use and Bill Barr is a willing accomplice.”> I think he has all of Trump’s bad intentions but with little of Trump’s incompetence> > Matthew MillerPaul Rosenzweig, a senior fellow at the R Street Institute and veteran of the George W Bush administration, added: “Weaponising the Department of Justice is bad but basically your troops are lawyers with pens. Weaponising the Department of Homeland Security’s law enforcement is worse because your troops are armed with guns.”The Capitol Hill hearing raised further concerns about the fast-approaching election. Asked whether it would be appropriate for the president to accept foreign help, Barr parried that it “depends what kind of assistance”. Only when pressed did he clarify: “No, it’s not appropriate.”While Barr testified that he has “no reason to think” the election will be rigged, he said there could be a “high risk” of voter fraud due to “the wholesale conversion of election to mail-in voting”. Asked whether a sitting US president can move the election date, he replied: “Actually, I haven’t looked into that question under the constitution.”Two days later, Trump tweeted that widespread mail balloting would be a “catastrophic disaster” and floated the idea of changing the election date, which he has no power to do. Election experts point out that all forms of voter fraud are extremely rare and note that Trump himself voted by mail in the last Florida Republican primary.Stuart Stevens, a Republican political consultant and author of the upcoming book It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump, tweeted on Thursday: “Trump can’t cancel an election? Ummm. Ponder this: Trump orders DHS to impound ballots in Dade County on Nov. 1 after ‘reports’ of ‘irregularities.’ Who stops them? Courts order return. But ballots now declared invalid. Chaos. Florida re-vote? What would Barr do? Republicans?”What Barr would do remains a critical question.Once regarded as a conservative stalwart, he has proved less bulwark than bully in the Trump administration, critics allege. Rosenzweig said: “I was one who thought that his appointment as attorney general would be good for the department because 30 years ago he was within the bounds and norms of establishment Republican behavior, perhaps a little more conservative than many but an institutionalist who would restore the department’s independence and stand up to Trump in asserting that.“I have been both shocked and surprised to see that this is not the case any more. I don’t know whether the person 30 years ago was hiding all of this or if he’s changed, but it is clear that the man who 30 years ago was the attorney general for George Bush is not the same person as the man today.”In that sense, Barr is far from alone. Matthew Miller, a former director of the justice department’s public affairs office, said: “Bill Barr has gone off the deep end like the entire Republican party. His journey is just the same journey the rest of the Republican party has gone on which is very conservative, but also he’s had his brain pickled by years of Fox News.”Miller added: “I think he has all of Trump’s bad intentions but with little of Trump’s incompetence. You combine Trump’s bad intentions with someone who is actually competent and mastering the levers of government and it’s fairly dangerous.”

On his first day of retirement, key Donald Trump impeachment trial witness Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman said in a Washington Post op-ed Saturday that speaking up against the president cost him his career  — but he believes “right matters.” “When I was asked why I had the confidence to tell my father not to worry...

Remember how President Donald Trump used to say, "No collusion," at every chance, to stave off -- among other things -- impeachment? He's now using a similar craft-a-narrative tactic, this time hoping it will help him stay in office: He blasts mail-in voting incessantly.

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Vindman cited intimidation and bullying from the White House for his decision to retire. He will retire at the lower rank of lieutenant colonel instead of colonel.