Alternate Title: “Trump's Lap Dog Relieves Himself on Wisconsin”...
I trust Senator Ron Johnson...to make a fool of himself.
But Johnson will also say and do exactly, consistently, unerringly, the wrong things for Wisconsin and the nation. He never, ever, fails to deliver. He fails us all, without fail. He is our perpetual-motion failure-machine, dependably damaging and dismantling democracy and the economy.
Johnson is the cardboard cutout Senator fronting two mutant strains of Badger State Republicans. Both strains have checked out of civil engagement and chucked any pretense of acting for the common good.1 Johnson married into the first strain, consisting of one-percenters, Republican politicians and corporate dolts, i.e., narcissists who fancy themselves worthy of deference, eager to reduce the unworthy to permanent servitude. The other strain is the conservative have-nots, who are desperately seeking a messiah. They are indiscriminate. Any tyrant will do. They are also quite gullible. No surprise there.
The latest Republican propaganda barrage was unleashed to deflect attention from GQP culpability in that failed coup of January 6th, and to defend the Offender-in-Chief who incited it. In sync with his fellow insurrectionists, Ron Johnson, Wisconsin's clueless and incoherent fool2, sent an email to Wisconsinites. In it he “shares his thoughts”3 about Trump's second impeachment trial.4 True to form, Senator Brain Clot discharges a mishmash of laughable right-wing conceits, delusions and lies, AKA, “Vintage Johnson.” But really, there must be at least one coherent thought somewhere in his muddle-headed missive...one? (Maybe, uh, check behind the semicolon?)...Nope. MIA...
Johnson identifies the domestic terrorists of January 6th only as “agitators and others at the Capitol that day, who became violent and broke laws.” Senator Weasel-Speak never correctly calls them Trump supporters, Republicans, and far-right militants. And to distract readers from recalling this damnable fact, Johnson then drops the flashiest spinning top in the GQP toy box: the Due Process Whirlyturd!
Weeping Johnson: “Even though every American should be guaranteed due process, none was provided to the former president. President Trump’s defense did not have the same access to information and evidence that House managers did.”
Yeah, no. Wrong again, Johnson. You got it completely wrong.5 No style points either, fool.
Due Process Highlights:
-Drafters of the U.S. federal Constitution adopted the due process phraseology in the Fifth Amendment, ratified in 1791, which provides that “No person shall…be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”A
-The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution each contain a Due Process Clause. Due process deals with the administration of justice and thus the Due Process Clause acts as a safeguard from arbitrary denial of life, liberty, or property by the government outside the sanction of law. The Supreme Court of the Unites States interprets the clauses as providing four protections: procedural due process (in civil and criminal proceedings), substantive due process, a prohibition against vague laws, and as the vehicle for the incorporation of the Bill of Rights.B
-Procedural due process is a concept that requires that a person be given notice and a chance to be heard when the state is taking action to deny him life, liberty or property. For example, this means that the state cannot simply put someone in jail for a crime without first notifying him and giving him the opportunity to defend himself in court.C
The problem with the Republicans’ due process drivel is this: The Senate trial that Johnson is whining about could not have deprived Donald Trump of life, liberty or property. It was not a civil or criminal trial. It was an impeachment trial. Had a two-thirds majority of Senators voted to convict Trump, he would have been stripped of his elected office.
Political Scientist Gregory S. Weiner: “The word deprived implies that the individual possessed something to which he or she was entitled. No one is entitled to hold elective office.”D Such an office is not the private property of any citizen.
If Senator Blather-Monkey and his fellow GOP idiot-sociopaths had bothered to do their homework, they would have seen the problem with their misplaced and misapplied due process argument and chucked it. But idiots...then again, will rank and file Republican voters ever check the accuracy of a statement uttered by any Republican politician? No. The latter are free to lie and spin themselves into sociopathic ecstasy.
Even Trump's first impeachment and subsequent trial in the Senate yielded several moments that put to the lie any Republican whining about due process.6 Not that Ron Johnson will admit it...
“As with criminal investigations and a potential criminal defendant, a potential impeachment subject does not have a due process right to be involved in any nascent investigations. Moreover, there is no basis for claiming a due process right to present evidence or testimony at the impeachment hearings. Nonetheless, President Trump received such an offer from Speaker Pelosi (emphasis mine). Having rejected a chance to participate in the impeachment proceedings, it is difficult to then assert that the impeachment proceedings lacked due process.”E
Wisconsin's Lap Dog Senator also (ahem), “overlooked” this embarrassing fact:
“The (first) Senate trial was problematic before the Senators even received the articles of impeachment. Senator Lindsey Graham indicated that his mind was made up to acquit President Trump before the House even voted. Even more significantly, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell indicated that he would not be an impartial juror while coordinating with the White House as to the procedures to implement at the Senate trial (emphasis mine). The actions by both Senators Graham and McConnell bolster the notion that the Senate impeachment process is a political one as opposed to an actual trial in which jurors must be impartial and fairly weigh the evidence. In their approach, due process is inapplicable given its political nature.”F
And the same thing happened in the second impeachment trial. “Republican senators have already signaled that they will vote to acquit the former President of the charge of “incitement of insurrection,” preventing a subsequent vote on Trump’s political future.”G
Do these declarations sound like those of “impartial jurors” who are waiting for the presentation of evidence and testimony before they deliberate? No. These sniveling Republican Senators declare how they will vote, prior to the Senate trial, hell, even before the House impeachment vote! They don't sound like jurors in any civil or criminal proceeding. This, Ron Johnson, is due process? Sounds more like the fix is in. Your reply, Senator Pinhead?
Again, from Johnson's email: “Even though every American should be guaranteed due process, none was provided to the former president.” That is an incredible sentence. See how it spins and lies? Trump was not entitled to due process. It wasn't mandated by the Constitution for either his House impeachment or his Senate trial, neither of which can be confused with civil or criminal proceedings.
On February 4th,2021, “House impeachment managers issued a surprise request for Mr. Trump to testify under oath in his Senate trial. It was quickly rejected by his lawyers.”H So, Trump could've faced his accusers, just like the defendant and the accused do in civil and criminal trials. He could've told his (Cough! Cough!) “truth.” Wonder why Ron Johnson's idol, the self-proclaimed “stable genius,” took a pass on a chance to show how easily he could outmaneuver those dim-bulb House Impeachment Managers...
The following bit of whine, heard escaping with a squeak from Johnson's email, is pure fantasy: “President Trump’s defense did not have the same access to information and evidence that House managers did.”
That is an incredible lie. Trump's speeches about imaginary election fraud, and the riot he incited, were matters of very public record. That is the reason the House of Representatives passed the article of impeachment on January 13th, only seven days after the violent Republican mob stormed the Capitol. Moreover, Trump's lawyers had direct access to representatives and senators, some of them eyewitnesses to (and quite nearly victims of) the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol. Odd the Trump defense team didn't think Republican legislators would have gladly defended the president via testimony and/or by supplying evidence.H
Johnson is easily the clumsiest, most incompetent practitioner of the Fascist Party practice of getting the lies and spin out as fast as possible, no matter how bald the lies, no matter how incoherent the spin. His handlers are convinced, with good evidence, that Wisconsin's Republican voters are addicted to political melodrama, and uninterested in facts. And it's true. Wisconsin Republicans have been conditioned to lapping up ideologically-tainted gossip and “Gotcha!” tableaus, thinly disguised as news and as “conservative” political opinion. They have been “dumbed-down.”. This brain-numbing bilge that is passed off as news and “opinion” is also laced with right-wing fear mongering, conspiracy theory, intolerance, misogyny, xenophobia...a diet Johnson and his fellow Fascists stuff into the ears of Republican-leaning voters, saying that acting on their “alternative facts” will “Make America Great Again.”
“Great for whom?” you must ask. “The ugliest, ugliest Americans,” is the answer.
Footnotes:
1. Needless to say, both strains despise, and I mean revile, democracy.
2. This honorary is bi-idiotical, i.e., it is bestowed on the two biggest political idiots in the Badger State. At last week's annual Idiot Investiture, Ron Johnson and Glenn Grothman were again awarded the title and the disparagements that attend it. This is the ninth consecutive year in which the two established Republican idiots have beaten all challengers. Past recipients include former Republican Governor Scott Walker and former Republican Governor Scott Walker (being awarded both halves of the honorary is a remarkable political and cognitive nadir). There is talk of establishing a Lifetime Achievement Award.
3. This statement is suspect. “Thoughts” imply brain activity higher than that found in, say, a bowl of jello. Yet scans of twelve hundred bowls of jello, of every flavor, found clear evidence of higher brain activity in every bowl, no matter the flavor, than was evident in a scan of Ron Johnson's cranium.
4. Uh, because one impeachment trial wasn't enough for the Mango Mussolini? Born to excel?
5. Johnson also expressed an opinion that sunspots cause global warming, was certain that ISIS would purposely infect its own followers with Ebola virus and send them to the US to spread the disease, has hawked hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID...you're seeing a pattern here. I know you are.
6. Pause a moment to consider just how remarkable it is read, or say out loud, “President Trump was impeached twice, for two different offenses, during the same term of office..” The GOP's pathetic excuse for a president was so egotistical, so personality-disordered (read: flaming sociopath), so incapable of taking counsel from aides, staffers and cabinet members, so unsuited to public service and the duties of a public servant that he was impeached and tried on two separate occasions for two different offenses during the same term of office.) The scale of these offenses is staggering.
The sane citizens of generations to come, along with historians and scholars, will double check historical records and accounts (and interview extant survivors) to make sure this is not some misprint or miss-characterization of recent events. No one, they will reason, could be this ill-suited to lead the Executive Branch of government. No electorate, they will reason, could possibly ignore all the warning signs that such a creature would be hopelessly outmatched by the duties and responsibilities of the Executive Office. No electorate, they will reason, could be so deluded, so willfully misinformed, so misled, so delusional, so ignorant, as to elevate such a misfit to an office that is embrued with such power.
Wisconsin's idiot-puppet Senator has always worshipped, stood by and propped up such a misfit. He is that deluded, that willfully misinformed, that delusional, that incompetent. Johnson is unfit for public office. He has never demonstrated any grasp of the responsibilities and duties of his office, and spurns the notions of public service and accountability. There. is. Something. Wrong. With. Him.
Bibliography:
A.https://www.britannica.com/topic/due-process
B.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Due_process
C.https://www.smokeball.com/blog/what-does-due-process-mean/
D.https://www.aei.org/op-eds/due-process-rights-dont-apply-in-an-impeachment-trial/
E.https://illinoislawreview.org/online/due-process-and-the-impeachment-of-president-donald-trump/
F. ibid.
G.https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/02/11/three-gop-senators-meet-with-trumps-defense-team/
H.https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/02/08/us/politics/trump-second-impeachment-timeline.html “The difference, of course, here (in the second impeachment trial) is that the Senate does know most of the facts because they were in fact directly involved. In some cases, they were victims of the attempted insurrection,” said Frank O. Bowman III, an impeachment scholar at the University of Missouri School of Law.