The Conspiracy Deepens

Yesterday, the New York Times broke the story (link here) that two months before his fateful call to the president of Ukraine, Donald Trump told his former national security advisor "to help with his pressure campaign to extract damaging information on Democrats from Ukrainian officials."

This demand was made in front of other administration officials, including his chief of staff and the White House counsel.

This damning revelation makes the case against Trump far worse and further ensnares him in the conspiracy.

Of course, this startling revelation had little effect on the majority of Senate Republicans, all but two of whom voted late yesterday against calling the former national security advisor John Bolton as well as others who witnessed Trump violating the law. What kind of trial has no witnesses?

With that Republicans revealed their contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law. They are putting Trump and the GOP before country and conscience.

The veteran Washington journalist John Harwood wrote an excellent piece about this yesterday (link here) in a piece titled "Republicans prove they refuse to defy Trump under almost any circumstance."

He writes: "The ongoing diversification of American society further unites an overwhelmingly white GOP around a shared fear of impending doom.... The Republican tilt is even more lopsided among white evangelical Christians and those without college degrees. Both feel threatened by demographic and cultural changes that have tripled the size of the non-white electorate, and cut in half the share of Americans who are white Christians, over the last half-century."

Republicans are no longer a political party but, instead, they have become a paranoid cult. They rally around their corrupt leader with blind loyalty out of fear of otherness — other races, other beliefs, other sexual orientations.