A government of scoundrels and villains, compromised by Russia
How bad can it get? We are about to find out.
Or rather, we are finding out.
On the back cover of my latest book, Don’t Be Stupid. Pay Attention, Damn It!, I wrote:
Is there any more important qualification to be president than to be honest?
Isn’t the presidential race ultimately about character?
The answers to these rhetorical questions are NO and YES.
On November 5, 2024, American voters got both answers wrong. Now, we must all suffer the consequences, MAGA supporters and opponents of Trump alike.
We have entered into a period that may be like no other in American history.
There seems to be no one in a leadership role in the future administration to whom arguments based on reason may be addressed.
We are back in the days of kings and Roman emperors, where the future of a country or an empire, and the daily life of its citizens, depended on the qualities of the king or emperor. There were good kings and good emperors.
And then there were the others.
We should have no illusions about the kind of king we are going to have now.
It seems that there is little we can do other than to gear up to win back the House and the Senate in 2026. And in the meantime to defeat pro-Trump Republicans in every federal, state, and local election in the country.
Well, actually, there are other things we can do besides gearing up for future elections.
We can pray that Republican Senators will find the backbone—which has been lost in recent years—to stand up to Trump and deny confirmation to the worst of the scoundrels and villains he has nominated to high office. We can hope that a lightbulb goes off in their heads and they grasp that their own power and raison d’être are at stake.
We can mobilize the population to resist Russian influence on and within the Trump administration. This may require mass demonstrations.
Democrats and others must set up mechanisms to refute Republican lies and distortions in a rapid, timely manner and to break through Trump’s propaganda bubble. Individually, they need to stand up and puncture holes in such propaganda immediately wherever it is found—with reasoned arguments and facts, to be sure, but also with humor, ridicule, sarcasm and whatever else may be required to pierce the bubble.
We can urge career officials to stay in their positions and to fight to uphold the rule of law and fair administrative practices. However distasteful it may be to them personally to work under Trump and the knaves and villains he has appointed to oversee them, nothing would be gained by their resignations.
A resignation would not be a point of honor. It would be an act of surrender. The honorable thing to do is to stay and fight—from within. Let’s show Trump and his lackeys just how deep the “deep state” is. That is, the cohort of officials selected on the basis of merit and meeting certain qualifications in the civil service, the military, and other agencies in the government.
For every illegal or unjust transfer, demotion, or dismissal, a grievance and/or lawsuit should be filed. And we should all foot the bill for the legal expenses involved.
We can fund organizations that will employ dismissed employees for a year or two when they are fired, and help them find other jobs.
We can gather together a billion-dollar legal defense fund, to defray the expenses of bringing lawsuits for wrongful dismissals or harassment or punishment of government workers for correctly doing their work as they seek to uphold the rule of law and proper administrative procedure.
There is no need to wait and see what the Trump administration is going to do before taking these measures.
The United States is a powerful democracy with a long and ultimately honorable history.
Now is the moment when every citizen, regardless of how they voted in November, must stand up and fight to defend that democracy, with every muscle and sinew in their body.
To the world, America can still be a shining city on a hill. Many countries are threatened by the rise of right-wing authoritarianism and even fascism as in the United States.
America can give an example to the world as to how each and every citizen in a democratic country under assault by knaves and scoundrels can stand up and act to defend that democracy.
In a country built on law and webs of law and administrative procedure, from the Office of the President down to every department in every city and town in the country, we the people are not powerless.
Armed with the law, we are not powerless to resist the current assault by Donald Trump and his knaves and scoundrels on the core institutions of American democracy, which we have built up over the last 228 years.
Nor are citizens powerless to defend America against the designs of Donald Trump to serve the interests of Vladimir Putin and Russia. Trump, a soon-to-be president, is a likely Russian asset according to all available evidence, which is abundant.
See,
1) Olga Latman, “What’s Going on Between Trump and Russia? ;From Praise to Mafia Style Concerns About Trump’s Safety,” Unmasking Russia, November 19, 2024.
2) James Rowles, “”Russia’s Man in Washington” Prepares Pro-Putin and Pro-Russian U.S. Administration,” Trenchant Observations, “November 14, 2024;
3)Régis Genté, Notre homme à Washington, Trump dans la main des Russes (Paris: Editions Grasset, October 15, 2024).
Trump’s nominations to cabinet and other high positions include pro-Russian officials like Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, and others who will loyally do whatever Trump tells them to do.
The danger here is extraordinary.
With a pro-Russian Director of National Intelligence, the identities of all CIA agents in Russia could be quickly compromised, with executions soon to follow. At the same time, moles could be placed in key positions in the U.S. intelligence community.
Significantly, CIA agents in Russia involved in the Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections were arrested days after Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2017. A former KGB head reportedly involved in the election interference and in fingering Putin as directly responsible for it, and involved in the release of the Christopher Steel dossier, also turned up dead.
See,
Jame P. Rowles, The Rape of American Democracy: Republican Actions and Democratic Failures, 2016-2021 (2024), pp. 49-52, 60-61.
To defend against the evident risks of Russian infiltration of the CIA and other intelligence agencies, Senators must insist on full FBI background investigations into all nominees requiring Senate confirmation.
At the FBI, which Trump has just nominated Kash Patel to lead, agents should keep meticulous records of all attempts by Katel or others to influence their investigations and recommendations.
See,
1)Holly Bailey, Mariana Alfaro, and Mark Berman,”Lawmakers express doubt over Trump’s plan to replace FBI’s Christopher Wray; On Sunday, members of Congress on both sides of the aisle said the FBI director, whom Trump appointed in 2017, should be allowed to serve out his 10-year term, Washington Post, December 1, 2024 (2:52 p.m. EST);
2) David Frum, “A Constitutional Crisis Greater Than Watergate; Trump’s nomination of Kash Patel threatens to turn the FBI into an instrument of personal presidential power, The Atlantic, December 1, 2024 (updated 10:17 a.m.EST);
3)Elaina Scott Calabro,”The man who will do anything for Trump: Why Kash Patel is exactly the kind of person who would serve in a second Trump administration, The Atlantic, August 26, 2024
Career FBI and intelligence officials must act energetically to ensure that Patel, Gabbard, and others do not receive access to any highly-sensitive classified information before their full background investigations are completed—without any interference—and before the Senate holds regular confirmation hearings, and confirms each nominee pursuant to the regular process.
Even taking all of these measures, mass demonstrations may be required to effectively counter Trump’s and Putin’s subversion of American democracy and security.
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James Rowles (The Trenchant Observer) is a former Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School and professor of international law at other universities.
He is the author of The Rape of American Democracy: Republican Actions and Democratic Failures, 2016-2021 (September, 2024). His most recent book, Don’t Be Stupid. Pay Attention, Damn It! Advice for Undecided Voters and Voters Leaning Toward Trump, (November 11, 2024) is now available on Amazon.
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