Donald Trump's Corruption FINALLY Collides With Kitchen Table Issues

He's stealing a luxury jetliner and building himself a palace while creating economic carnage for the rest of us.

Over a month before Donald Trump took office I ran a piece called “The New Gilded Age Will Be Streamed,” which argued that GOP corruption and decadence, held up against a regressive, contractionary, wealth-extracting economic agenda, might finally drive sustained backlash among Republican voters.

A Trump-aligned aristocracy was beginning to take shape in the U.S., but at the time many of Trump’s voters valorized these gilded elites, many of them centimillionaires and billionaires. Would they still envy these men and their extravagances after losing their jobs or their Medicaid or if their local hospital closed?

We’re about to put this to the test.

Republicans are no longer content to dip into the kitty when no one’s looking. Under Trump, their excesses must be blatant, and flaunted.

Trump has already stolen about $1 billion to retrofit a luxury jetliner that he intends to abscond with when he leaves office. Now he wants taxpayers on the hook for turning the White House into a gaudy palace.

Meanwhile we’re all stuck paying more for groceries and health care in a faltering economy.

My general view on scandals is that the scandalous behavior is the thing of political value. Wrong is wrong; most people don’t admire crooks and liars. Donald Trump isn’t trying to cover up his entanglement with Jeffrey Epstein because he’s worried it’ll remind people he likes to pal around with rich guys, or show he doesn’t care about middle-class concerns. He’s doing it because the entanglement itself is intolerable.

Similarly, Trump’s self-enrichment would be scandalous even if his economic agenda were more equitable. But his theft of taxpayer money provides perfect thematic contrast to his intentional efforts to make almost everyone else poorer. Particularly now, as Trump begins driving the economy into the ground.

Friday’s monthly government employment report reflected the immense damage Trump has already inflicted on the economy. Under the yoke of his lawless agenda—erratic tariffs, industrial-scale extortion, immigration dragnets—the labor market has essentially stopped growing and may already be shrinking.

People will lose their jobs. Their expenses will increase. But Trump’s richest supporters will get richer. And we’ll all still be paying for his personal luxury jetliner.

Now comes the question: How to keep these things juxtaposed in the public’s mind?

QAT TO THE BONE

Trump wants to erase the juxtaposition not by disclaiming his personal extravagances, but by erasing credible economic data. He responded to the jobs report by firing the Labor Department statistician who oversees Bureau of Labor Statistics. The message to federal bean counters: Want to keep your jobs? Cook the books.

At some level Trump believes that if enough television and computer and phone screens display graphs with arrows pointing up, people won’t realize that he’s strangled the national economy. If he could control enough screens, that bet might pay off. Before the election, television and computer and phone screens were awash in grim economic headlines, and most people thus didn’t know that the national economy was historically strong.

So part of the challenge will be to put up a fight for credible government information, expose further efforts to corrupt the data, make as many screens as possible reflect on-the-ground reality. The other part will be to make a more consistent stink about Trump’s self-enrichment.

Chris Murphy has been leading Dems by example, and he deserves credit.

But he needs more support from the party and its leaders, and acting as one, they could take things further.

Unless Congress passes new appropriations before September 30, the government will shut down.

It’s a huge problem that Democrats are even talking about voting to fund the government so long as Trump continues impounding funds, and Republicans refuse to surrender the right to rescind funds unilaterally, after a budget has been agreed to.

Murphy has this one right, as does Elizabeth Warren.

But whatever they choose to do, they can make the Qatari airplane and the White House palace conversion regular sticking points. Force Republicans to vote repeatedly to funnel those taxpayer dollars into Trump’s personal luxury account. Ideally: filibuster any legislation that funds Trump’s lavish lifestyle.

In my dreams, though, they do this from a posture of aggressive insouciance. Not angry really. More like bemused: We don’t understand why you’re voting over and over to help Trump steal this money. Because no matter how many thieving votes you cast, it will all be for nothing. He’ll never fly on that plane as a private citizen. We will run you out of power and confiscate it. And if you ever attend a ball in his $200 million royal annex, enjoy the memories, because they’ll be all that’s left: Democrats will have it demolished; the White House will be restored into a relatively humble residence, as soon we take power. No kings. No palaces. If Republican presidents can remove solar panels from the White House out of spite, Democrats can dismantle a monument to Trump’s narcissism.

This is a posture I’d like to see Democrats adopt across controversies.

TIE ‘EM IN A BOVE

Consider Emil Bove, the one-man crime spree Trump just got confirmed to the third-circuit court of appeals.

The Democratic Party as currently constituted paved the way for the Trumpification of the judiciary. Democrats honored GOP “blue slips” during Barack Obama’s presidency—allowing Republicans to informally veto his judicial nominees. They ignored timely warnings that Republicans would eliminate the courtesy if Trump won the election in 2016—which is exactly what happened. They also helped pave the way for Bove in particular last year. A few chickenshit frontline Democrats bent to a bigoted Republican smear campaign and tanked Joe Biden’s nominee for the vacancy Bove will now fill.

These are the kinds of instincts that will have to change if Democrats want to earn back the trust of their own voters. They need constant reminders: You can’t fight if you’re prone to caving; you can’t rise to the occasion from a permanent defensive crouch.

To be sure, Democrats did everything they conceivably could to block Bove once Trump submitted the nomination. The question is what should they say and do now that he’s a judge.

Many have noted that Bove won confirmation by impeachable means. As Trump’s enforcer at the Justice Department, Bove instructed DOJ lawyers to defy court orders, then lied to the Senate about it. Future Democrats can, thus, justifiably impeach him, and should do so when they regain control of the House.

I’m all for more impeachments. But Bove’s conduct is also just straightforwardly criminal. In an impeachment trial Republicans would simply vote to acquit him. It’s what they do. They cover for criminals. But if Democrats control the Justice Department, Senate Republicans won’t be able to protect him.

Bolder Democrats would simply assert that Bove will not spend the rest of his days on the bench. He may not have the job for more than a couple years. Democrats possesses airtight evidence that Bove perjured himself, so whether by impeachment or prosecution or both, he’ll be driven from office.

When Democrats get comfortable in a confrontational posture, they’ll no longer need to agonize over how to respond to Trump’s abuses of power. There aren’t many different ways to refuse to take things lying down. They’d sound more like Chris Murphy, and Elizabeth Warren, and their threats would seem more credible.

We just don’t have enough confrontation-ready Democrats…yet.