MMR Weekend September 8-10 2023: Shutdown?

There are a number of crazy political events taking place right now, from the impeachment trial of embattled Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton in the Texas Senate to the GOP threat to remove a Democratic Supreme Court Justice in Wisconsin and the impending impeachment of Joe Biden. (Oddly, the only one that's justified is the one in Texas, brought by Republicans against a Republican so corrupt even they couldn't ignore it.) We also have trials against former president Donald Trump in civil and criminal court pending in five different jurisdictions. Oh, and we're also looking at a possible government shutdown. It's a lot.



The one place that seemed relatively sane, at least by comparison, was the U.S. Senate. Sure they had some big dramatic fights last year over President Biden's legislative agenda but they were pretty standard policy battles that mostly took place within the Democratic caucus. The Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson were as ugly as usual but they didn't feature a lot of fireworks. All in all it's been a fairly functional institution lately.



That's not to say that the Republicans haven't been playing any games at all.



Rand Paul, R-Ky., has abused the power given to any senator to block nominations to the executive branch by putting holds on all State Department nominees in order to force the foreign relations committee to "access COVID-19 documents being held by various government agencies." His complaint is that he's only allowed to read the documents in private and isn't allowed to take them out. As a result, no ambassadors are being confirmed.


Texas Senator Ted Cruz likewise held up State Department nominees for months because he wanted the president to reimpose sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. He generously released them when Biden did what he wanted.



In case you were wondering, there is nothing in the Constitution that grants an individual senator this power. It's simply one of the Standing Rules of the United States Senate which has been around forever but never was used to block entire categories of nominees until fairly recently. This could be changed, but like so many of the undemocratic rules of the Senate which have no place in a modern democracy, there is no will to do it.



The holds by those GOP senators are not all that surprising. Republicans have traditionally been hostile to the State Department going all the way back to the McCarthy era when old Tailgunner Joe claimed that it was crawling with commies. (With that epithet gaining new currency on the right lately, I expect we'll see it rolled out again.) They tended to think of diplomats as being pretty useless, preferring the big stick to the soft talk, which translated to reflexive support for military solutions to all foreign policy questions.



That's why the actions of freshman Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Al., are so astonishing. I never thought I'd see the day that any Alabama politician would even dream of holding up the promotions and assignments of military officers but that's what's happening. The worship of the uniformed services in the Deep South has always, well, run deep. Anyone who questioned it would be called to task for their lack of patriotism. Yet here we have this former college football coach telling the officer corps of the U.S. military that he could not care less if they get their promotions and assignments because he basically thinks they're all a bunch of "woke" pansies who don't know how to fight.

ATLANTA (AP) — A report released on Friday revealed that a special grand jury investigating efforts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 presidential election results recommended indictments against a much larger group than prosecutors ultimately charged, including one current and two former U.S. senators.



The nine-page report showed jurors recommended charges against 39 people, compared to the 18 who were charged along with former President Donald Trump. Those not indicted included Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, former U.S. Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue of Georgia and former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn.



Parts of the report, which has 19 pages of appendices, had been released in February, but a judge had delayed the release of any recommendations for specific charges against specific people until after last month’s indictment. While most of the intrigue in the inner workings of the case has diminished with the filing of charges, it is notable that the special grand jury recommended charges for many people who were not actually indicted.



A spokesperson for Trump, the early front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, criticized the release in a statement, calling it “biased, un-American.”



Graham, Loeffler, Perdue and a lawyer who has represented Flynn did not immediately return messages seeking comment Friday.



The special grand jury included Graham’s name in a section about “the national effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost to Joe Biden, a Democrat. The South Carolina Republican called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger shortly after the November 2020 election. Raffensperger has said Graham asked him about whether he had the power to reject certain absentee ballots.

Trump — who has lied about his golf scores, his weight, the size of the crowds he draws, and, according to New York Attorney General Letitia James, his net worth — also took the opportunity to lament over the alleged “billions” he lost while in office.

“I’m the only president that ever lost money while serving in office,” he bemoaned on stage. “I lost a number of billions… I could’ve made a fortune. I could’ve gone to these countries and made deals,” he said wistfully before adding, “I put thing in trusts, I said my kids are gonna run it. I said, ‘Don’t do deals outside of the country’… They go, ‘Dad can we do something? I said, ‘No, you know, I’m president. We have a higher standard.'”

A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.



Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.



Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.