CBS News reports that GOP Senators have been warned by Trump team: "Vote against the president, and your head will be on a pike." How is this acceptable? pic.twitter.com/19TKOn4kSq— Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) January 24, 2020
I think we can imagine a competent White House swooping in with a plausible denial that anything like "Vote against this president, and your head will be on a pike" was never uttered except in hyperbole or jest. And of course, a literal beheading, the likely tarring of the severed head (to preserve it), and the affixing of said head to a pike is not the type of revenge that the president, resplendent in all the powers we are supposed to believe by Republican arguments that he wouldn't, nope, not ever abuse, would engage in.
But I think we could imagine some form of vengeance, and it would be no surprise at all. Revenge is his politics.
This is your White House.— Raw Story (@RawStory) January 23, 2020
‘I can’t wait for revenge’: White House aide vows payback over Trump impeachment trial#ImpeachmentTrial https://t.co/ZuJHHwy3jR
Revenge against just who in that Tweet? The opposition party? Renegade GOP Senators thinking of making a bid for a little independence? The journalists who are reporting on Trump's political fortunes? All of the above?
What does it say, then, about the Republican senators who keep faith with the president, after the evidence we already do have, and who seem dead-set against getting anything more? Are they so placid and incurious--or are they scared, and why this scared, and why not more concerned for their country than their offices? If removed, what then could the big bad man even do? Tweet mean things? Why allow him the latitude to do anything more?
If speeches heard during the trial, made by Schiff and others seem as if they were intended to rub Republican noses in their complicity, and shame them in how they are responding to Trump's bullying and threats...well, maybe they are. Maybe they need to be shocked from learned apathy. I do not know.
I also do not sympathize with them, much.
2 comments:
The funny thing is, I don't think anyone even had to say that out loud. Judging from recent history, there's no question that any Republican who votes against the president will face repercussions, via Presidential tweets, to voter backlash (probably whipped up by presidential tweets) or from changes to committee assignments.
I guess that was just a friendly reminder.
Revenge can be a double edged sword.
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