Ever since news began to leak that Vladimir Putin had allegedly helped Donald Trump become president of the United States, the media has accused him of kowtowing to ‘authoritarians’, painting this more as a regrettable character trait than as a threat to America’s ‘democracy’.
Suddenly, Trump has been able to emulate those he admires. What is worse is that he appears to favor the right-wing model, known as fascism, rather than the left-wing version which tends toward some version or other of socialism.
We suddenly discover that claims of Trump having the intelligence and knowledge of a fifth grader, may have been erroneous. It is unlikely that his canny business sense alone enabled him to set up a fait accompli without anyone realizing it. In October, 2017, he appointed as Chief of Staff to the Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, Matthew Whitaker, an attorney who, from a position outside the government, had suggested that funding of the Mueller investigation into the President’s relations with Russia be cut off. The day after the Republicans solidified their majority in the Senate, Trump fired Sessions, toward whom he held a grudge since his appointment, due to the fact that he had respected the law by recusing himself from that crucial investigation.
Then, in an unprecedented move, Trump named Whittaker as acting attorney general, bypassing the person whose position as Deputy should have led to him exercising that role until a new Justice Department head could be appointed and confirmed by the Senate. That man is Jeff Rosenstein, whose main job is overseeing the Mueller investigation.
It turns out that Whittaker is not only a conservative, but a former football player, whose appearance is still suggestive of raw power. Perhaps inspired by that, when announcing his promotion at a news conference, Trump became openly belligerent toward individual journalists, instead of merely criticizing the press as he usually does. It looked as if he was trying on the costume of a strongman, shrugging off the facade of a politician.
Now, to appoint an outsider to head the Department of Justice even temporarily, rather than a career public servant or an elected official, is shocking enough. With Republicans having solidified their majority in the Senate, Trump could appoint anyone he wants as a successor to Jeff Sessions rather than someone from inside government. Candidates are being mooted, but in any case, Kirkpatrick will remain in his position as what has already been described as “the president’s eyes and ears at the Justice Department”, and it remains to be seen whether Mueller will be able to complete his investigation into the President, his businesses and his family. Meanwhile, political news is taking second place to yet another mass shooting, in a California bar frequented by students.
Deena Stryker is an international expert, author and journalist that has been at the forefront of international politics for over thirty years, exlusively for the online journal “New Eastern Outlook”.
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