John Bolton: Time is running out for Trump -- and Republicans who coddle him (WaPo Editorial)

[BumRushDaShow]

John Bolton: Time is running out for Trump — and Republicans who coddle him


A television screen is seen through a window near the entrance to the West Wing at the White House on Tuesday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Opinion by John R. Bolton
November 11, 2020 at 11:56 a.m. EST


It is simply a truism that Trump has a legal right to pursue all appropriate election-law remedies to ensure an accurate, lawful vote count. To be credible, however, any aggrieved candidate must at some point produce valid legal arguments and persuasive evidence. Trump has so far failed to do so, and there is no indication he can. If he can’t, his “right” to contest the election is beside the point. The real issue is the grievous harm he is causing to public trust in America’s constitutional system. Trump’s time is running out, even as his rhetoric continues escalating. And time is running out for Republicans who hope to maintain the party’s credibility, starting with Georgia’s two Senate runoffs in January.

Here is the cold political reality: Trump is enhancing his own brand (in his mind) while harming the Republican brand. The party needs a long internal conversation about the post-Trump era, but first it needs to get there honorably. Consider the competing interests. Donald Trump’s is simple and straightforward: Donald Trump. The near-term Republican interest is winning the Georgia runoffs. The long-term Republican interest emphatically involves winning those Senate seats, but it also involves rejecting Trump’s personalized, erratic, uncivil, unpresidential and ultimately less-than-effective politics and governance.

One approach holds that coddling Trump while he trashes the U.S. electoral system will help him get over the loss, thereby making it easier to reconcile him to leaving the Oval Office. But this coddling strategy is exactly backward. The more Republican leaders kowtow, the more Trump believes he is still in control and the less likely he will do what normal presidents do: make a gracious concession speech; fully cooperate with the president-elect in a smooth transition process; and validate the election process itself by joining his successor at the Jan. 20 inauguration.

Coddling proponents plead that an enraged Trump will jeopardize the chances of victory in the Georgia runoffs. But that is true only if party leaders do not speak up, explaining to voters what the real facts are. Do we in the GOP not trust our own base enough to absorb the truth? They will find out in due course anyway if Trump’s election litigation indeed crashes into reality. Once in court, state or federal, before judges appointed by Republicans and Democrats, actual witnesses will have to raise their right hands and tell the truth, and then face gale-force cross-examination from lawyers for President-elect Joe Biden’s campaign. It’s one thing to tweet; it’s another thing to testify.

More: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/john-bolton-trump-republicans-concession-transition/2020/11/11/aabcf372-2430-11eb-a688-5298ad5d580a_story.html

[exboyfil]

1. We really could have used you in the impeachment trial

This is on you as much as anybody else. He could have been removed at the start of this Covid pandemic and maybe things could have gone better. You own everything for this past year.

[BumRushDaShow]

2. Yup

this crises is partly his (and all the others who cowered in fear) for "sitting it out".

[crickets]

6. +1000000

Bolton only speaks up when it suits him. There is a calculated personal reason he is saying something now; he made it obvious long ago that love of country and respect for its institutions mean little to him unless he himself is somehow rewarded. He is no less transactional than trump. My respect for him is at the same level as for trump: nonexistent.

[UpInArms]

3. Bolton swings .... and misses again

The ONLY thing that is motivating trump is fear of prison ... which he will face as soon as he is not a Sitting President.

He will do anything to destroy the country before he faces his own fate.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

4. Hey, John Bolton, you're right, but you could have done a lot

to prevent this whole mess if you'd testified at the impeachment hearings instead of saving your information for your book. So fuck you, and I hope the whole GOP goes down in flames.

[Autumn]

5. Fuck John Bolton, one of the biggest fucking coddling fools in the country.

That asshole can lick a lice ridden comb.

[abqtommy]

7. Exactly!

[BumRushDaShow]

9. Yes - remember they "project"

and he is doing just that. His refusal to comply with the House subpoena to testify was EXACTLY the type of "coddling" that he is describing.

[kurtcagle]

8. This is a case of not shooting the messenger

Bolton is an asshole, yes, but he was also pretty much of the same school as Cheney and Rumsfeld - committed to the GOP first, and Trump only peripherally (if at all). He is credible in many Republican circles in ways that most Democrats are not.

Trump is not helping the GOP - indeed, he's a lot like a firehose filled with sewage under high pressure and no one able to hold it. He doesn't care about Congress, and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if the first thing he wants to do is dissolve Congress - not just the House, but the Senate as well. I think this is beginning to finally filter through to McConnell's brain - Trump is trying to make himself unremovable from office, and McConnell represents a significant threat to him.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

10. We live in strange times when Bolton sounds like the voice of reason

[BumRushDaShow]

11. It's pretty sad how far we've fallen

[struggle4progress]

12. "Now where will I go?"