Talvez Trump acabe por sair da Casa Branca pelo seu pé, talvez não seja necessário expulsá-lo de lá (e quem e às ordens de quem iria fazê-lo?), talvez o aviso de perigo contido nestas reportagens da CNN e noutros media media norte-americanos se esvazie com o passar dos dias e, pelo contrário, não se agrave até ao ponto de, no limite, desencadear um clima generalizado de violência que desemboque numa guerra civil.
Mas que esse perigo existe, existe, por mais inimaginável que seja a hipótese de nos EUA nestes trinta dias que faltam para Biden tomar posse se replicarem situações que, até agora, só eram notícia em países do terceiro mundo, incapazes de gatinhar no sentido da democracia, do respeito pela vontade maioritária dos povos livremente expressa.
Basta que Trump faça um sinal aos seus raivosos rapazes.
cf. AQUI
(CNN) Joe Biden will be president in 30 days. Until then, the question is how much damage can be done by a vengeful, delusional soon-to-be ex-President swilling conspiracy theories, whose wild anti-democratic instincts are being encouraged by fringe political opportunists.
Donald Trump
will retain the awesome powers of the presidency until noon on January
20, and there's never been a time when he has been subject to as few
restraining influences or has had a bigger incentive to cause
disruption.
The President
is spending day after day in his White House bunker, entertaining
crackpot theories about imposing martial law, seizing voting machines
and staging an intervention in Congress on January 6 to steal the
election from Biden.
Surrounded
by the last dead-end loyalists, Trump is flinging lies and political
venom like King Lear in a crumbling Twitter kingdom, alarming some
staffers about what he will do next.
On
Monday, he huddled with a cabal of Republican lawmakers who plan to
challenge the election on baseless claims of fraud at a special session
of Congress to ratify the results on January 6.
Two ways Trump can hurt America
Trump
can further damage the United States in the coming days in two ways --
by aggressive design and by his passive neglect of his sworn obligations
to lead.
His attempts to crush
American democratic traditions by claiming a landslide victory in an
election that he lost and that was not especially close fits into the
first category. The President's behavior has sown huge mistrust of the
fundamental underpinning of the US political system -- fair elections --
among millions of his voters and threatens to compromise the legitimacy
of Biden's White House.
Trump's
indifference to multiple crises stirred by his rule make up the second
category of his political vandalism. This includes his apathy about a
raging pandemic that has infected 18 million Americans and killed nearly
320,000 as an aching nation marks its darkest holiday season in
generations.
There is no substitute
in the US governing system for the engagement of a President during a
massive national enterprise. But there is also no sign that Trump cares
to offer leadership to ensure the success of the mammoth vaccination
program that holds hope of eventually ending the pandemic. This after
his denial of the virulence of Covid-19 undoubtably worsened the death
toll.
Trump
is also running interference for Russia, prioritizing the interests of
an adversary over America's after a massive cyberattack blamed on the
Kremlin.
These infractions add up
to the dereliction of presidential duty on a grand scale. It is
impossible to imagine any other president of the modern era behaving in
such a way or for either of the political parties to tolerate his abuse
of power. Former President George W. Bush's neglect during Hurricane
Katrina in 2005 seems tame by comparison.
The
current President's anti-democratic behavior since the election is
validating the fears of critics -- and more than 80 million Biden voters
-- who worried about his unchained behavior in a second term. Like many
fading strongmen leaders, his antics are becoming more unhinged as the
prospect of losing power becomes tangible.
Madcap schemes
Even
Trump's White House staff is concerned about what happens next, at a
time when Washington is already braced for a flurry of politically
self-serving or legally dubious presidential pardons in the coming
weeks.
"No one is sure where this
is heading," one official told CNN's White House team on Monday in a
disturbing behind-the-scenes glimpse at the mayhem unfolding in the West
Wing. "He's still President for another month."
The
madcap schemes of some of Trump's acolytes -- such as retired Gen.
Michael Flynn's mooted plan to send troops to battleground states to
redo elections that the President lost -- have no chance of playing out.
Even if Trump's renegades had the competence to mount such a threat,
the courts have shown zero tolerance for the President's autocratic
attempts to destroy US democracy. It is unthinkable the military would
deploy to reverse a popular vote on US soil.
Trump's
extremism is also unfolding in the context of a landmark election after
which the safety valves of the courts, the electoral safeguards in the
states -- and eventually on parts of Capitol Hill -- stood firm in
defense of democracy.
But the fact
that a defeated President is even hearing theories about imposing
martial law in the Oval Office is unfathomable in the world's oldest,
most influential democracy.
Were
it not for the outrageous assaults on the rule of law over the last
four years and the evidence of a presidency tethered to the erratic
personality of Trump, it would not be at all believable.
"The
rest of the world is watching all this. It is just making people
wonder. What is going on in America?" an incredulous John Kasich, the
Republican former governor of Ohio, said on CNN's "The Situation Room"
on Monday.
Trump's loss of
composure is grave enough from a domestic point of view. But it sends a
signal to US adversaries of a vacuum of leadership. His bizarre refusal
to endorse his government's assessment that Russia is behind the
cyberattack suggests there is a 30-day window of impunity for enemies
dedicated to tarnishing US national interests. The thought of an
agitated, emotional President faced with any sudden foreign policy
crisis is not a reassuring one.
Barr breaks with the President
The
extreme nature of Trump's final days meltdown is best encapsulated by
the fact that Attorney General William Barr, who had accommodated many
of the President's political assaults on the spirit of the law, has comprehensively broken with Trump as he prepares to leave office before Christmas.
Barr
said Monday that he saw no need to appoint a special counsel to probe
baseless claims of electoral fraud. He drew a similar conclusion about
Trump's demands for an investigation into Biden's son Hunter, who is
already the subject of a criminal probe into his business dealings. In
his farewell news conference on Monday, Barr said he saw no reason for
the federal government to seize voting machines, a step advocated by
Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani. And he said the massive cyber breach of
the US government "certainly appears to be the Russians."
Although
Trump's most fervent loyalists have turned against him for his
political apostasy toward the President, Barr remains a credible figure
among many Senate Republicans and his comments will have strengthened
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's effort to stop any of his
caucus seeking to mount a futile challenge to the election during a
joint session of Congress to ratify the election result on January 6.
But
Barr will be gone in a few days, potentially allowing the President to
lean on Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, who faces a tense few
weeks leading the Justice Department before Biden's inauguration. Should
he refuse to bend to the President's will, it is not impossible that
Trump could fire him and seek a willing accomplice for his assaults on
the rule of law -- emulating President Richard Nixon in the so-called
"Saturday Night Massacre" in 1973.
In
an ominous sign for the days ahead, Trump told young conservative
voters in Georgia over the phone Monday that "we won this in a
landslide" and said he needed "backing from ... the Justice Department,
and other people finally have to step up."
Plotting a stunt in Congress
Trump's
meeting with Republican lawmakers on Monday was the latest troubling
sign that he is prepared to tear down the integrity of the US electoral
system on the way out of the Oval Office door.
The
group is preparing to "fight back against mounting evidence of voter
fraud. Stay tuned," White House chief of staff Mark Meadows tweeted,
giving fresh life to falsehoods comprehensively debunked by the Supreme
Court, multiple judges and Republican state election officials ever
since the election.
The effort will
not succeed in invalidating Biden's election since Democrats control
the House of Representatives and there is no sign that a majority of
Republicans in the Senate -- most of whom are now acknowledging that
Biden is President-elect -- will play along. But the pro-Trump lawmakers
can stage a stunt that would make a mockery of democracy and further
sow distrust of America's political system among the President's fervent
supporters -- a scenario that could cause years of damage.
Fringe
figures around Trump besides Giuliani and Flynn include Sidney Powell,
the lawyer who only just a few weeks ago was ousted from his legal team
over her bizarre claims of a massive international plot involving the
late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, China, Democrats and the Clintons
to steal the election.
Trump has
floated an idea of embedding Powell as a special counsel inside the
White House Counsel's Office to investigate claims of voter fraud. The
current counsel's office has pushed hard against the idea, sources told
CNN.
"There's a high level of
concern with anything involving Sidney Powell," one source close to the
President told CNN's White House team.
Another
of Trump's conspiratorial fellow travelers, populist guru Steve Bannon,
and the hawkish trade adviser Peter Navarro also have the President's
ear, the sources told CNN.
"I think
we are seeing just how desperate Trump is becoming himself. And how
desperate the last remaining rats on the ship, if you will, are becoming
because of that," Lawrence Wilkerson, a former top aide to ex-Secretary
of State Colin Powell, said Monday on CNN's "OutFront."
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