Nobody’s In Charge In Washington Right Now. If We’re Attacked We’re Toast

The lights are on, but no one’s home at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Donald Trump hasn’t worked in months — well he never “worked” at all as you and I understand that term — he was too busy campaigning pre-November and since then he’s been too busy sulking and fomenting insurrection. Mitch McConnell more or less formally abdicated responsibility when he was asked in December about Trump’s coup attempt and he said, “The future will take care of itself.” Thanks Mitch. Now we know the truth. You’re not taking care of the future, it can go it on its own, que sera sera.

Now if you doubt for a moment that this is indeed the case, Exhibit “A” to the proposition that nobody’s minding the store is the debacle on January 6 when the chief of the Capitol Police was begging the Pentagon for troops and they ignored him. One officer he spoke to spoke of “optics.” Simply, that officer was worrying about his own optics and didn’t want to be the one to take responsibility and what that situation illuminated was a glaring lack of chain of command. We live in a world where the sitting *president* is doing just that, sitting, and nobody is in charge. Apparently Mike Pence was able to call out the National Guard when things got crazy. So right now, and quite possibly for some time, Pence is the de facto president of this country. Try not to let that give you nightmares.

And try not to let this give you nightmares, either. At a time when domestic terrorism is at an all time high, and the Republican party is on recess and permanently out to lunch because they won’t want to alienate a third of their constituents, whom they’re terrified of, we have an Acting-Acting Secretary of Defense in charge (Esper was Acting and Shanahan before him was Acting. The last real guy was Mattis and he resigned February, 2019) and he talks about communicating via mind meld like Mr. Spock, and says, “I cannot wait to leave this job, believe me.” That’s who’s in charge, folks. The party of personal responsibility has abdicated all responsibility, most of all the key one, to keep us safe. The Triad:

There are many Republicans in Congress who pride themselves on the seriousness with which they take our military operations and our security. They are all M.I.A. at the moment. Tweeting Bible quotes. Offering panglossian pablum assuring that all is well.

I’m not sure how we are supposed to take seriously future national security warnings from people who are washing their hair during one of the most dangerous periods in modern American history. […]

What could possibly be the Republican motive for completely abdicating the basic responsibilities to protect the country during the transition between administrations at this moment of crisis?

Here is the calendar for confirmations of Trump administration cabinet officials in 2017. As of this moment four years ago John Kelly, Jeff Sessions, Jim Mattis, Betsy DeVos, Ben Carson, Ryan Zinke, Rex Tillerson, and Elaine Chao had already had their confirmation hearings.

This year the Republican Senate has yet to hold a single confirmation hearing.

At a time when we have domestic terrorists threatening future attacks and an Acting-Acting (not a typo) DHS Secretary. […]

Here is a concerning fact: When Joe Biden is sworn in at noon this Wednesday, America will not have a permanent, Senate-confirmed secretary of Defense, or a secretary of State, or a DHS secretary, or a secretary of Health and Human Services. As things stand right now, the entire executive branch below the office of the president is set to be quasi-leaderless because the Republican party refused to move forward with confirmations in the normal manner. The only way out of this mess is for a “unanimous consent” resolution in the Senate on Inauguration Day. Fingers crossed.

Why are we in this position? Because before January 6 they were terrified of hurting Donald Trump’s feelings by taking any actions which suggested that Joe Biden was going to be the next president. And now they are keeping out of session so that they don’t have to confront the article of impeachment that the House has passed.

In other words: Because they were desperate to protect Trump, both then and now.

That is the plain and simple truth. The party in power now, at least until Wednesday, is more worried about protecting Donald Trump than protecting America.

First the GOP had its wingnut fringe elements, then they coalesced in 2016 to support Trump and the rest of the GOP happily jumped on the bandwagon. They didn’t care if Satan was on the ticket, so long as they had a shot at winning. Then Trump and his enablers ginned up the base to overthrow the government and the GOPers went along with him. This is not too strong language to use. If you were in another country, what would you call it when a losing political party kept giving lip service to the allegations of their crazed candidate about a stolen election, when they all knew that it was nonsense, but they wanted to appease the crazies in their party, because they were scared not to do so? The last days of Trump will go down in the history books as a time when raw political ambition triumphed over basic considerations like protecting life and the constitution, the latter of which Republicans swore under oath to do. Self interest and political cowardice rule the day in the GOP right now.

Never lose sight of the fact that Trump demanded that Pence somehow overturn the election results and get new electors in place and Pence hired a bunch of lawyers and scholars to review the fringe legal theory and see if it was possible. If Pence had found a loophole, he’d a gone for it in a New York minute. Never forget that.

And never forget Rudy Giuliani with his Game of Thrones reference, “trial by combat” minutes before Trump took the podium and told a armed and dangerous crowd of thugs to march on the Capitol and they did — chanting “Fuck Mike Pence.”

Right now the GOPers are hiding out, biding their time. And if we’re lucky, we’ll make it until Wednesday. And if we’re not — I remember a satire where an H-bomb went off in the distance and Bugs Bunny was in the foreground saying “That’s all, folks.” I don’t think it will come to that, but the fact is, nobody is on board to see that it doesn’t.