Crazy Bastards and the Cowards Who Keep Them in Power

The president is not fit for office. Republicans know it. They're still giving a madman access to the nuclear codes.

Are these drugs too strong or are they not strong enough?

Earlier this week, Donald Trump threatened to annihilate the civilian population of Iran in a tweet that, even for him, was remarkably unhinged. Like a lot of American politics-watchers I’ve grown somewhat inured to our childish president’s social media outbursts and bizarre rambling tangents. But the president publicly proclaiming that “a whole civilization will die tonight” is such shocking behavior I still can’t believe that it’s now been several days and there have been no real efforts to remove him from office.

I mean, I can believe it. But I guess I had hoped that “almost nukes Iran” would have been, finally, the crossing of a red line that made Republicans act.

You probably saw the tweets. But many news outlets have been (infuriatingly, irresponsibly) just publishing pieces of them, which make them sound somewhat more… well, not stable, but at least not like the rantings of a mentally unwell man screaming at the sun. On Easter Monday he tweeted:

Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP.

And on Tuesday he wrote:

A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!

If I think a people are so great I am asking God to bless them, I also don’t tend to threaten to commit a genocide against them. But I guess that’s where Donald Trump and I differ.

In any sane and stable democracy, the hundreds of other elected officials charged with protecting the constitution and keeping their constituents safe would be using the constitutional mechanisms our founders thoughtfully created to remove this deranged and bloodthirsty madman from the White House.

Instead, Republicans — the party affiliation of Trump’s cabinet members and with the majority in the House and Senate necessary to remove a president from office — are simply doing other things. Senate Majority Leader John Thune hasn’t said anything since Easter. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise is tweeting about trans women in sports. The chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee is celebrating a bald eagle hatchling. The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is celebrating “fourth-grader Betty Grandy for leading the effort to make hunting Idaho’s official state sport!”

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is one of the few Republicans who is actually talking about Iran, except of course he’s only parroting Trump’s words touting the ceasefire he only achieved by threatening to nuke Iran, torching America’s credibility and reputation in the process (and the ceasefire, unfortunately, doesn’t seem long for this world).

This is not normal. This is not sane.

Lots of liberals are jumping up and down screaming at Democrats to do something. And I too would love Democrats to do something. But it’s hard to do something when you’re a party out of power. There is simply nothing Democrats can do without Republican participation. The GOP has sustained and supported Donald Trump. They’re the ones who are responsible for him. They’re the ones with the obligation to rein him in or push him out. And they’re unfortunately the only ones who actually have the power to do what needs to be done.

The general uselessness and timidity of the Democratic Party is annoying to me, too. But there’s a world of difference between people who want the right outcome but are flailing around because they don’t have the power to execute it, and people who can see a giant glaring dangerous problem and simply decide to ignore or enable it. The many politicians who make up the Republican Party are the villains here. They are the one leaving a madman in charge — the ones who are giving him continued access to the nuclear codes. And they deserve to be on the receiving end of every American’s rage over this pointless, expensive, world-disrupting self-own of a war.

xx Jill