Trump Says Congress Can't Legislate & Investigate, But How About Impeach?

EVAN VUCCI / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

While we live in and suffer through an era of profound uncertainty, one thing is certain: So long as Donald Trump remains president, nothing will get done in Congress beyond keeping government huffing and puffing along, and even that is in peril.   But then doing nothing has been the coin of the congressional realm since Barack Obama became president 10 years ago and Mitch McConnell infamously declared that the Islamofascist from Kenya would be a one-term president because Republicans would obstruct everything he tried to do.   

So what's different now? 

What's different, to belabor the obvious, is that while Obama was level headed and a decent if flawed president who ended up treading water for two obstructive terms, Trump is a paranoiac, indecent and deeply flawed. 

And obsessed with the many congressional and other inquiries into his criminality, which has resulted in his blanket defiance of subpoenas and consequent court battles to the point where not only is nothing getting done but America is in the throes of a full-blown constitutional crisis that makes Richard Nixon, his own paranoia and the Watergate scandal seem like quaint relics from a long-ago time.  

The nut of that crisis is Trump's disdain for the Constitution, rule of law and separation of powers, which resulted in his extraordinary declaration last week following an orchestrated temper tantrum directed at the Democratic leadership that Congress could not legislate with him and investigate him at the same time. 

"President Trump is quite willing to sacrifice his agenda to defend himself,” says Tom Daschle, another relic, this one of a somewhat gentler -- or perhaps less vicious -- era who was the Democratic Senate leader during Bill Clinton's impeachment trial.  "That takes priority over any legislative issue." 

This, in its own perverse way, is a not bad thing because the legislative issues that matter to Trump are shot through with his own brand of vitriol.  In other words, they are bad. 

These include delivering a death blow to Obamacare, an even more draconian immigration policy and border wall funding, additional tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, making it easier for Wall Street to engage in the excesses that led to the 2008 financial collapse, and further packing federal courts with far right-wingers.  So what if the nation's deeply ailing infrastructure -- its bridges, highways and power supply -- continues to crumble? 

"He does outrageous, nasty, destructive things, knowing full well he's crossing a line, and then he pretends he didn't,” says Trump biographer Tim O’Brien of the president's feigned ignorance over the altered Nancy Pelosi video brouhaha, which our patriotic comrades at Facebook refuse to take down even though they know it's fake.  "He doesn’t care what people think about how mean or dumb he is." 

And like an Energizer Bunny, this one with rattlesnake fangs, horns and a pot belly instead of cute teeth and floppy ears, he just keeps going and going. 

In a truly remarkable scene that should not be forgotten at least until it's overtaken by another truly remarkable scene, the president of the United States assembled his senior staff in the Roosevelt Room of the White House last Thursday after that orchestrated temper tantrum and name-checked them one by one. 

"Kellyanne, what was my temperament yesterday?" Trump asked White House counselor Kellyanne Conway of what had obviously been a meltdown.   

"Very calm.  No temper tantrum," Conway replied. 

Mercedes Schlapp, White House director of strategic communications: "You were very calm and you were very direct." 

Economic adviser Larry Kudlow: "Very calm and straightforward and clear." 

And so on and so forth. 

But the greatest praise for Trump came from . . . Trump, who declared for the gaggle of agog reporters who were present,  "I'm an extremely stable genius. OK?"  

If you detect some tail chasing in this post, then you're paying attention, which is more than can be said about most of us, who could care less about Trump's latest outrages -- planning to pardon war criminals and denigrating his own intelligence officials by downplaying North Korean missile tests and then joining with dictator Kim Jong Un in attacking front-running 2020 rival Joe Biden.  

So how to begin to end the stalemate between Trump and Congress? 

For openers, I've been very wrong about Trump in several instances: His improbable ascendancy to the Oval Office, the unwavering support of his base and his ability to sanitize the highly damaging Mueller report, although I do not dare predict his defeat in 2020.   

But all three of my misapprehensions have a common thread.   

Trump stole the election with help from Russia, his base sticks with him primarily because they love how he games the system, and he has slithered out from under the Mueller report thus far because his purpose-picked attorney general has lied about it with bold strokes of the whitewash brush.       

Anyhow, end the stalemate by letting that word-slurring Pelosi know that it's time to stop winding up Trump, which is incredibly easy because of his victimhood obsession but at this point has become a distracting exercise in stooping to his own infantile level. 

And begin impeachment proceedings. 

Clinton's impeachment was about partisan overreach and Nixon's impeachment about restoring the appropriate checks and balances between executive and legislative branches. Trump's impeachment, lest we need reminding, is about saving American democracy.   

Click HERE for a summary of ongoing Trump-related investigations.