Category: DonaldTrump

Senate Republicans are not bothered one bit as Trump’s abuses of power escalate

Posted on by Laura Clawson

Donald Trump is going to war with the very idea of equal administration of justice in the United States of America, and the Senate Republicans who voted last week to acquit him of abuse of power are just nodding along, barely even pausing to furrow a brow. Trump has intervened in the sentencing of his old buddy Roger Stone and publicly thanked Attorney General William Barr for doing his bidding. He’s attacked the judge and a juror in the case. These are not trifling matters in a democracy, but Republicans just don’t care.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell dismissed it with a simple, “I do not have an opinion on that.” To Sen. John Cornyn, it’s “kind of immaterial” if Trump intervened to reduce a sentencing recommendation for a friend. “It doesn’t bother me at all, as long as the judge has the final decision,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley—of the judge Trump has been working to publicly intimidate. In translation: Trump’s escalating assaults on the rule of law change nothing for Republicans.

The list of Republican senators who just don’t give a damn goes on and on. Sen. Lindsey Graham is “comfortable the system is working,” even though he gave lip service to the principle that Trump shouldn’t be speaking out about specific cases in the courts. Sen. Lamar Alexander said that “politics should never play a part in law enforcement,” without mentioning Trump by name.

Another series of Republicans pretended not to know what the issue was, falling back on the old Paul Ryan favorite, “I don’t know the facts of the case; I haven’t been following it” (this time, that one came from Sen. Ted Cruz). 

The other thing that goes on and on is Trump’s abuse of power. The Washington Post reports that, according to a former senior administration official, when aides try to persuade Trump that he should stay out of legal cases, he says, “I have a right to say whatever I want.” According to that official, “He knows exactly what he’s doing. He knows that he has more power than anyone else in the government—and when he tweets, everyone has to listen to him.”

A Republican congressional aide told the Post, “It’s like bad weather. Nothing more, nothing less.” Yes, abuse of power and the destruction of democratic norms and institutions is just a little bad weather.

“We cannot give him a permanent license to turn the presidency and the executive branch into his own personal vengeance operation,” Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown said Wednesday, addressing his Republican colleagues in a committee meeting. “If we say nothing—and I include everyone in this committee, including myself—it will get worse. His behavior will get worse.” 

Republicans are on board with that, is the problem.

Every day that goes by and every new abuse that Trump commits shows why it's so important to retake the Senate. Please dig deep to defeat vulnerable Republicans in 2020.

John Kelly defends Vindman for doing ‘exactly’ the right thing in response to an illegal order

Posted on by Mark Sumner

For better than a year, John Kelly played the role of chief of staff for Donald Trump, during which time he was the designated the “adult in the room” who would supposedly keep Trump’s bad-baby behavior under control. That went so well. Kelly, who spent the six months before that running Homeland Security and turning the Border Patrol into a meaner and also a meaner force, was apparently unhappy during those White House days. But he could keep quiet for the sake of the children … that he put in cages.

Since then, Kelly has sat out any number of outrages. But it seems that in the post-impeachment world, as Trump is systematically disassembling the vestiges of the Justice Department and sending a key witness in his impeachment proceedings, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, off to somewhere so that “the military can do what they want” to him, Kelly has reached the point of being concerned enough to speak up—just like everyone else who leaves Trump’s White House and speaks out only when it can’t do a damn bit of good.

During his time sitting outside Trump’s office door, Kelly was often described as angry at some Trump policy, or frustrated by his inability to control Trump’s chaotic behavior, or infuriated by Trump’s willingness to listen to anyone who praised him, even when they didn’t have a clue about the facts. But the only effect of that anger seemed to be that for much of his time in office, Kelly was something less than a figurehead. He and Trump seemed to rarely talk, and policies were made without his knowledge or presence.

Now that he’s borrowed Susan Collins’ wagging finger of concern, Kelly has quite a few items on his list. As The Atlantic reports, Kelly spoke to students and guests at Drew University in New Jersey for over an hour, laying out concerns about

Trump’s personal relationship with Vladimir Putin and how it shaped U.S. policy with regard to Russia. Trump’s personal relationship with Kim Jong Un and how it shaped U.S. policy with regard to North Korea. Trump’s intervention in military discipline to pardon service members accused of war crimes. Trump’s absolute fixation on building a border wall and how it shaped policy with regard to Mexico and Central America.

On that last point, Kelly also expressed concern about about the language and tactics Trump used in his immigration policy, including calling all immigrants rapists. Which was very much not an apology for his role in the whole system.

However, one topic on which Kelly was particularly vocal was Trump’s actions against Vindman. Kelly praised the Army colonel, saying that Vindman did just what he was supposed to do when he reported his concerns about Trump’s call to the Ukrainian president. As The Hill reported, Kelly painted Vindman’s actions as just what would be expected of a good officer. “He did exactly what we teach them to do from cradle to grave,” said Kelly. “He went and told his boss what he just heard.”

Kelly described what Trump has said was a “perfect call” as a fundamental change in the relationship between the United States and Ukraine. Until that point, starting during the Obama administration, the United States had a policy of supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russia. With that call, Trump predicated that support on getting a personal political advantage.

“We teach them, don’t follow an illegal order.” said Kelly. “And if you’re ever given one, you’ll raise it to whoever gives it to you that this is an illegal order, and then tell your boss.”

But, of course, John Kelly is just one of “Trump’s generals”—the group that Trump used to give himself a semblance of credibility during his first days in office. All of them have since been disposed of, and Kelly’s words are likely to have all the sting of a tongue-lashing from James Mattis, or … Pufnstuf? Something like that.

Trump doesn’t need generals anymore. Or laws. But he may learn something from Kelly—that it’s time to get rid of the idea of an illegal order. When it comes from Trump, it can’t be illegal.

Cartoon: A Calvinesque and Hobbesian look at impeachment acquittal

Posted on by RubenBolling

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Susan Collins really doesn’t want to talk about what lessons Trump learned in impeachment anymore

Posted on by Joan McCarter

Following the Tuesday Night Massacre, which happened after last week's revenge binge from impeached president Donald Trump, intrepid CNN reporter Manu Raju caught up with Sen. Susan Collins to see what she's thinking about it all. She clearly did not appreciate the fact that Raju remembered what she said last week. The part about "I believe that the president has learned from this case," which she downgraded to "hopes" after Trump point blank said there was no lesson to be learned because "it was a perfect call."

Fast forward a week, and she really wants to be done talking about it. Asked by Raju if, after the actions Trump has taken, she still thinks there's "any lessons he heard from being impeached," she snapped. "I don't know what actions you're referring to. I've made very clear that I don't think anyone should be retaliated against." Then she launched into lecturing Raju: "That has nothing to do with the basis by which I voted to acquit the president, as I made very clear to you, Manu, on numerous occasions because his conduct, while wrong, did not meet the high bar established in the constitution for the immediate ouster of a duly elected president." Which had absolutely nothing to do with the question at all.

Collins has chosen her side, and Maine knows it. Please give $1 to help Democrats in each of these crucial Senate races, but especially the one in Maine!

Because she doesn't want to answer the question. She didn't want to answer it later, either, when she continued to insist that she bore no responsibility at all for Trump being totally unfettered now. Her vote against impeaching Trump, she told reporters, "wasn't based on predicting his future behavior." Which is a hell of a cop-out for the person who once said impeaching him would be enough to make him curb his future behavior.

Collins is completely abdicating responsibility for both her past and her future failures to do her goddamned most essential job of being a check on the president. What she does think is her job is not obvious (besides granting defense contracts to companies that in turn contribute tens of thousands of dollars to her reelection campaign).

Watch: 

catch that chyron: "GOP Sen. Collins Won't Say If Trump Learned Any Lessons After Acquittal." of course, last week she excused her vote by saying he did learn from impeachment & would be more cautious.....#mesen #mepolitics pic.twitter.com/QMTKd7g2TJ

— Lauren Passalacqua (@laurenvpass) February 12, 2020

MR: In light of the president's actions, do you think there's any lessons he heard from being impeached?

SC: I don't know what actions you're referring to. I've made very clear that I don't think anyone should be retaliated against. That has nothing to do with the basis by which I voted to acquit the president, as I made very clear to you, Manu, on numerous occasions because his conduct, while wrong, did not meet the high bar established in the constitution for the immediate ouster of a duly elected president. And that was the rationale for my vote to acquit him. That is the reason why….

MR: Do you think he learned any lessons?

SC: … In all the years that … since George Washington was inaugurated as our first president that we have never removed a duly elected president from office. It's because the conduct alleged should be so dangerous to our country and so egregious and proven by the House managers that the person should not remain in office one moment more. That was the standard established by the House managers. It was the standard that I used in acquitting President Clinton and that's the reason for my vote and I don't know why you're equating the two.

MR: Well you said the president learned his lesson. Do you think he learned any lessons?

[Collins’ office door slams shut.]

National security adviser O’Brien claims Vindman’s removal wasn’t retaliation. Trump disagrees

Posted on by Mark Sumner

One good measure of how very, very far down an unpleasant rabbit hole the nation has plunged is simply this: John Bolton’s time as national security adviser now seems not so awful. Sure, Bolton is a paranoid warmonger who never met a bomb he didn’t like. On the other hand, he did seem to have some concerns other than whether he was making Donald Trump happy in every moment. When it comes to new national security adviser Robert O’Brien, the best that can be said is that he seems to be … unencumbered by ethics.

On Tuesday, not only did O’Brien embrace xenophobic Twitter conspiracy theories that the coronavirus outbreak in China might be a bioweapon, but he also claimed that the removal of both Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and his twin brother from the National Security Council was not retaliation for Vindman’s testimony during House impeachment hearings against Donald Trump. But this seems like a time when O’Brien should be reading Twitter. Because that claim is absolutely counter to what Trump has openly admitted.

O’Brien’s claims about Vindman came at the same venue where he made his chuckling suggestion that China might have created a virus that has now infected over 40,000 of its own citizens, a discussion at the Atlantic Council think tank. During that discussion, The Wall Street Journal reports, O’Brien claimed that he could “absolutely” say that the Vindman brothers were “not retaliated against.” Instead, said O’Brien, it was simply “time for them to go back” to the Army, because “their services were no longer needed.”

Alexander Vindman was the White House’s top expert on Ukraine, including on its governmental affairs and its military concerns. Clearly Trump no longer needs that expertise. He has Rudy Giuliani to fill that role. Yevgeny Vindman’s role on the NSC was as an expert on international law and ethics. So … clearly a superfluous position in the Trump White House.

Of course, Trump has given a different reason for the removal of Alexander Vindman, calling him a “never Trumper” and saying that he was “very insubordinate” for responding to a congressional subpoena and reporting his concerns about the plot to extort Ukraine. In an appearance on Tuesday, Trump told reports that Vindman had “reported a false call,” without explaining what he meant by this. And rather than just saying that Vindman had returned to the Army, Trump said that he had been sent “to a much different location” where “the military can handle him any way they want.” Which makes it seem much more like Vindman is on his way to Abu Ghraib than to the Pentagon. Trump went on to suggest that Vindman should face “disciplinary action” for the crime of testifying—a statement that made a heartbreaking lie of Vindman’s assurance to his father that in America, he could come to no harm for telling the truth.

Even O’Brien’s claim that the Vindman brothers had been sent home after completing their time at the White House only lasted a few more sentences, before the new national security adviser retreated to the phrase that Trump supporters have been using to justify the firing of qualified staffers since the day Trump began his occupation: “At the end of the day,” said O’Brien, “the president is entitled to staffers that want to execute his policies and he has confidence in.”

There’s been little doubt from day one, and absolutely no doubt since the acquittal vote in the Senate, that what’s meant by this is that Trump will not tolerate anyone who presents the least obstacle to corruption. O’Brien seems safe on this point.

And O’Brien might even have an excuse for passing on Twitter-based conspiracy theories about the origin of the Corvid-19 virus: On a National Security Council so depleted of resources that only those loyal to Trump remain, conspiracy theories from the back side of the web might be the best intelligence available.

U.S. is ‘not a banana republic,’ Trump official says, but his boss is determined to show that it is

Posted on by Laura Clawson

Donald Trump isn’t stopping at getting Attorney General William Barr to reduce the Justice Department’s sentencing request for Trump buddy Roger Stone. He’s sending more messages to more parts of the government about how to show personal loyalty to Donald Trump rather than loyalty to the rule of law. Trump claimed to reporters that whether to discipline Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman is “going to be up to the military.” But then he kept talking. “But if you look at what happened,” he said, “I mean they’re going to, certainly, I would imagine, take a look at that.” And “that” is Vindman testifying to the House, under subpoena.

“We’re not a banana republic where lieutenant colonels get together and decide what the policy is,” said national security adviser Robert O’Brien, justifying the firing of Vindman and his brother Yevgeny, who did not testify in the impeachment inquiry. No, we’re a banana republic where someone can be fired for testifying under subpoena to a duly elected House of Representatives working within its constitutional authority, by a president who came into office despite more people voting for his opponent and felt freed to persecute people who testified against him—along with their family members—because he was acquitted by 52 senators who represent fewer people than the 48 senators voting for his conviction.

The Vindman brothers did not try to “get together and decide what the policy is.” One of them testified before Congress, under subpoena. That’s it. But while some Senate Republicans are very concerned about the firing of Gordon Sondland from the post as ambassador to the European Union that he bought with $1 million in inauguration contributions, their concern is partly because he might be smeared by the association of having been fired on the same day as Vindman. 

“I agreed with the decision on Vindman,” Sen. Thom Tillis said. “I just felt like having the two have some distance would have been appropriate.” Heaven forbid a major Republican donor should be treated in a similar way to some immigrant Army officer with subject matter expertise rather than millions of dollars.

Trump’s escalating war with the imaginary deep state has also led to him withdrawing one nomination to an administration post and planning to withdraw another because he decided that the people he’d previously nominated had been unacceptably disloyal, with one questioning his illegal hold on Ukraine aid as he tried to coerce Ukraine into investigating his political opponents and another being involved in prosecuting Trump associates like Stone and Paul Manafort.

And even beyond the things they think are fine and dandy, like firing Vindman, Senate Republicans (minus Mitt Romney) are complicit in every single thing Trump does. They signed off on his abuse of power to cheat in this year’s elections, and in so doing sent him the message that they will protect him no matter what.

The Constitution of the United States, and the nation’s future as a democracy, have a Donald Trump problem. But they equally have a Republican Party problem.

Can you give $1 to help Democrats win each of these critical races and retake the Senate?

Trump and Barr ramp up their abuses of power—and Senate Republicans are responsible for all of it

Posted on by Laura Clawson

This is what a liberated post-acquittal Donald Trump looks like: not chastened, as some of the more dishonest Senate Republicans said they hoped he would be, but ever more brazen in his corruption and his destruction of democratic institutions. Tuesday was a nightmare for justice in the United States of America, with three top prosecutors either stepping down from the case or resigning entirely as Attorney General William Barr obeyed a Trump tweet and intervened in the sentencing recommendations for Trump buddy Roger Stone.

That came after the news that Barr is working with Rudy Giuliani to dig up and launder dirt on Trump’s political opponents, and after the firing of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and his brother from their White House jobs because he testified at the impeachment inquiry. Trump and Barr are committing the abuses, but every single Republican senator other than Mitt Romney gave them permission. Said “Go right ahead, we won’t do a thing about it.”

Every day that goes by and every new abuse that Trump commits shows why it's so important to retake the Senate. Please dig deep to defeat vulnerable Republicans in 2020.

I’m talking about Susan Collins, up for reelection in Maine. Cory Gardner, up for reelection in Colorado. Joni Ernst, in Iowa. Thom Tillis, in North Carolina. Kelly Loeffler, who will be facing Georgia voters for the first time after being appointed to replace former Sen. Johnny Isakson. David Perdue, also in Georgia, meaning there are two Senate seats at stake in one state. Martha McSally, who lost a Senate election in Arizona in 2018 and was appointed to a Senate seat anyway—she needs to lose for a second time in a row. 

Every single one of these people voted to let Trump continue his lawlessness. They voted that way when any halfway sensible person knew that he would take the vote as permission to do more and worse. These senators intended to give him that permission—and do more and worse he has. He has been publicly vindictive against Vindman for daring to testify to what Trump did on Ukraine. His attorney general is systematically perverting the administration of justice to cater to Trump’s personal desires, to protect his friends and persecute his opponents, making a mockery of the Justice Department's mission statement to “ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans.” 

Every Republican senator but Mitt Romney voted to tell Trump that he is above the law. In 2020, voters can make some of them pay for that. Give now to send the opposite message—that no one is above the law—by defeating these Republicans in 2020.

William Barr officially becomes Trump’s personal attorney—with power to persecute or pardon anyone

Posted on by Mark Sumner

On Tuesday, Donald Trump tweeted that the sentencing recommendations for his longtime associate Roger Stone were unfair. Stone, who was convicted in federal court on seven counts, including lying to Congress and obstruction, including death threats against a judge and threats to murder a witness’ dog, could have received 20 years in prison or more. The recommended sentence of seven to nine years was solidly in the middle of the possible range and was made by a quartet of veteran prosecutors.

But rather than ignoring Trump’s tweet, within hours Attorney General William Barr had instructed the Department of Justice to take an appallingly unprecedented move. The DOJ announced that it was overruling the action of the U.S. attorneys in order to reduce Stone’s suggested sentence—even as Trump threatened to pardon his henchman altogether. It was a moment when American justice teetered on the edge.

Then, overnight, it fell over completely. And the attorney general of the United States officially became Trump’s personal attorney.

Three of the four U.S. attorneys who signed on to Stone’s sentencing recommendation have now withdrawn from the case in protest. At least one has resigned from the DOJ entirely. Rather than seeing this as a moment to rethink how much he had been putting his thumb on the scale of justice, Trump responded by slamming down his whole fat hand. Trump spent the night mocking and threatening the career prosecutors, accusing them of being allies of Robert Mueller, then accusing Mueller of lying to Congress—one of the same charges on which Roger Stone was convicted.

It was a staggering sequence of events—Trump demanding a lighter sentence for someone who participated in both collusion and obstruction for Trump’s own campaign; Barr stepping in to give Trump what he wants; U.S. attorneys who had spent their whole careers with the Justice Department protesting in the only way available to them by resigning; Trump responding by mocking them and threatening to prosecute both them and others. In a matter of just a few hours, every possible flare had been launched to reveal that the Department of Justice wasn’t just being politicized—it was being corrupted, turned into an instrument of Trump’s will.

And then Barr doubled down. As NBC News reports, Barr has taken “control of legal matters of personal interest to President Donald Trump.” That includes persecution of Trump’s enemies, such as former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe. That includes protecting Trump allies such as Roger Stone and Michael Flynn. Barr isn’t turning the Justice Department into a political instrument—he’s already done that. He’s using his role to create revisionist history and to actively support and generate nothing less than corruption.

The entire Ukraine plot underlying the impeachment of Donald Trump revolved around a corrupt prosecutor general who persecuted political opponents but refused to go after his allies, no matter how large their crimes. And what Trump learned from this is was that that way of operating was a really good idea.

Fortunately, Trump already had William Barr on hand. Barr has already proven, with his manipulation of the special counsel’s report and his round-the-world conspiracy hunt, that he’s up to the job. And now the attorney general of the United States has officially made himself Donald Trump’s personal attorney—except that this personal attorney has the ability to protect Trump’s friends, persecute his enemies, and bring an end to the idea of apolitical justice in America.

Barr’s interference in Stone’s case follows his already reaching into that of Michael Flynn. Flynn, one of Trump’s former national security advisers, whose convictions were limited to lying to the FBI only because he had made a deal to provide information to the FBI in a number of other cases—including his illegal lobbying for Turkey and his participation in a plot to kidnap a U.S. resident cleric and return him to certain death in Turkey—began backing away from his deal and stalling on sentencing hearings last year. As a result of Flynn breaking his deal, prosecutors recommended a six-month sentence—and an angry judge seemed to agree that Flynn was still getting off easy. Then, in the midst of the process, Barr withdrew the attorney who had been handling Flynn’s case from the beginning and replaced him with a new attorney who rewrote the sentencing guidelines to suggest that there was no need for Flynn to be punished for his lying, obstruction, and defiance of investigators. Instead, the new recommendation was probation.

What’s happening in both the Flynn and the Stone cases is an overt subversion of the role of the attorney general and the Department of Justice. And Trump isn’t backing away—far from it. He has stated that he has an “absolute right” to tell the DOJ what to do. In addition to threatening the attorneys who withdrew from the case, Trump also expressed “congratulations” to Bill Barr in his new role of minister of justice, or prosecutor general, or whatever. 

When the Republicans in the Senate voted to allow Trump to get away with abuse of power and obstruction, he did learn a lesson. But it was the same lesson he’d learned before—that he can do anything. There are no laws except the laws that Trump declares. No justice except that which he permits. No republic remaining except what he deigns to allow.

That may seem like an exaggeration. It’s not.

Trump cover-up achieved, Moscow Mitch returns Senate to acting as Trump’s conveyor belt for judges

Posted on by Joan McCarter

This is some truly hilarious spin from Senate Republicans, pretending that they exist to do stuff for the nation post-impeachment. "Hopefully the better angels of people will begin to emerge, and we’ll see a willingness to focus on a common agenda. […] I think both sides have things they need to get done." That's Sen. John Thune, Moscow Mitch McConnell's No. 2, talking about all the bipartisan bills they're going to do now.

Of course that's not what is going to happen. "My preference I guess would be […] we start working on things that unite us," said Sen. Kevin Cramer, Republican of North Dakota. "Not just as Republicans, but as a Senate, as a Congress, as Americans." Yeah, that's not happening either. Here's what's happening: According to The Hill, "McConnell tees up five Trump judges after impeachment trial wraps." One of those judicial nominees is Andrew Brasher, nominated to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, the federal appellate court for Alabama, Georgia, and Florida, where he would be the sixth Trump nominee on the 12-member court. Yes, Trump will have half of this bench. Brasher is 38 years old.

It's time to end McConnell's destructive stranglehold on the republic. Please give $1 to our nominee fund to help Democrats and end McConnell's career as Senate majority leader.

Brasher is opposed by leading national, state, and local racial justice organizations. A coalition of 29 advocacy groups called for a halt to his nomination pending Trump’s impeachment, and remain opposed to him now. "In his short career as a lawyer," the Alliance for Justice says, "Brasher fought against voting rights, rights for women, communities of color, and the LGBTQ community and zealously worked to dismantle consumer, worker, and environmental protections."

Par for the course for Trump and McConnell, in other words. And of course he's a Federalist Society member. But his presence on this court would be particularly scary looking ahead to the 2020 election. Georgia will have two Senate races, and Florida is always a presidential battleground. Republicans will try every voter suppression tactic in the book in those states, and now there'll be a federal court overseeing those states that will rubber-stamp them. That's McConnell—he'll never stop cheating now. But he won't be able to overcome a nation united against him and a vote swarm to take back the Senate.

GOP senators alarmed by firing of Sondland, a Republican donor—but not by the rest of Trump’s purge

Posted on by Hunter

We now know that a handful of Republican senators were, in fact, alarmed by Donald Trump's Friday firings of government officials who testified to House impeachment investigators about Trump's Ukrainian extortion scheme. More accurately, we now know that a bare handful of Republican senators were concerned only about the firing of U.S Ambassador Gordon Sondland, while remaining unconcerned by Trump's removal of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and his brother, who did not testify.

The likely reason? Gordon Sondland, unlike the others, was a big-money Republican campaign donor.

The New York Times is reporting that Republican Sens. Susan Collins (yes, Susan Collins), Thom Tillis, Martha McSally and Ron Johnson contacted the White House to try to halt Sondland's firing. Sondland, who was made a U.S. ambassador after giving $1 million to Trump’s own inaugural fund, was signaling he was planning to resign; the Republican senators wanted Sondland to be given a graceful exit. That was not to be: a vengeful, frothing Trump was insistent on making a public example of him.

Why were the senators concerned about Sondland but not the others? Sondland, reports the Times, was "a donor to Mr. Tillis and other Republicans."

So there you go. We now know the one, the only thing that would get the slightest pushback from the now-fascist Republican Party: Trump humiliating a top-dollar donor. The rest of it they're fine with.

That's not hyperbole. Sen. Susan Collins, in particular, made a special point of telling the Times that her prior "hope" that perhaps Trump would learn a "lesson" from impeachment was excruciatingly narrow. It didn't apply, she explained, to Trump's purge of the witnesses who spoke out to confirm the Trump-Giuliani Ukrainian plot.

“The lesson that I hoped the president had learned was that he should not enlist the help of a foreign government in investigating a political rival,” she told the Times. “It had absolutely nothing to do with whether or not he should fire people who testified in a way that he perceived as harmful to him.”

So yes, Susan Collins is fine with Trump retaliating against those who testified to his "perfect" actions. It was just the Republican donor whose plight roused her enough to make a simple phone call.

Her new statement is, yet again and of course, another reversal of a prior Susan Collins statement of supposed principles. On Friday she told a Maine crowd that "I obviously am not in favor of any kind of retribution against anyone who came forward with evidence." This new statement clarifies that she is not specifically against such retribution either.

In a non-authoritarian, non-fascist movement, Dear Leader retaliating against those who testified under oath about his own actions would be astonishingly corrupt. It would be close to the very definition of corrupt, in fact. It is now considered an acceptable act, by Republicans, subject to mild private pushback only if the purge happens to touch on one of their own campaign donors. And even the most "moderate" of Republicans, Susan Collins, is now releasing statements clarifying that she is in fact not expressing any concerns about that.