Walter Shapiro has been a speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter, erstwhile stand up comedian and is a current political satirist. If he could play the piano, he might be confused with one of my favorite skewers of politicos Mark Russell.
In this article for The Guardian he delivers his take on the current slap-fight between drumpf and Chief Justice John Roberts...it is a rollicking good read.
He begins by noting that only an extreme el stupido like drumpf would pick a fight with the courts after so recently stacking them in his favor through the efforts of his pet Yurtle and a bloody victory, thanks to Susan Collins and Joe Manchin, in the battle over Devil Triangulator Bret Kavanaugh.
Shapiro is gratified that, while extremely slow to provocation, Roberts has finally bestirred his robes to answer drumpf’s constant slurring of the Federal Court system.
He goes on to discuss Itself’s desire to bring charges against HRC and Jim Comey.
Shapiro then slings some ink, as satirists eventually get around to doing, on the darkest facet of this issue — Trump’s desire to operate without judicial oversight like his friend MBS….
“As he pursued such thuggish fantasies, it is possible Trump was influenced by Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who had imprisoned hundreds of his political foes in the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh. (That, of course, was the more benevolent version of Prince Mohammed, before he became closely associated with a bone saw.)
In the American version of such a dragnet, you might see Robert Mueller confined to a room next to Elizabeth Warren with a couple of dozen recalcitrant federal judges down the hall. Of course, the incarcerated would be residing in a Trump hotel – and the president would be billing the federal government at inflated rates for its use.”
But Shapiro really sharpens his quill for this spot-on assessment of Hair Groppenfuhrer’s disdain for the rule of law and democracy in general:
“Part of Trump’s disdain for judicial independence is probably rooted in his days as a New York real estate hustler under the tutelage of the notorious judge-fixer and ultimately disbarred lawyer Roy Cohn. In Cohn’s cynical world, the questions you asked about a judge were: “What do we have on him? Who can get to him? And what does he want?” The idea that a real estate case would be tried solely on its merits was as alien to Trump’s worldview as the quaint notion that creditors and contractors need to be paid in full.
Another factor is that Trump appears incapable of handling patriotic abstractions. It is why the ceremonial aspects of the presidency, like visiting Arlington Cemetery on Veteran’s Day and bearing witness to the first world war dead in France, seem so baffling to him. The best he can do on such solemn occasions is to woodenly read someone else’s words off a teleprompter as he flashes the thumbs-up sign.
Concepts like democracy, a free press, due process, an independent judiciary and the rule of law are lost on Trump. As far as his understanding goes, the constitution might just as well be carved in cuneiform characters on stone tablets.”
Shapiro ends by hoping that the very Justice Department and Courts that drumpf has tried to stack in his favor might be his downfall.
We can only hope along with him.
Click over to The Guardian to enjoy it all.