The United States was then a comparatively poor and vulnerable country, so the Founders imagined corruption taking the form of some princely emolument that would enable an ex-president to emigrate and—in the words of Charles Cotesworth Pinckney—“live in greater splendor in another country than his own.” Yet they understood that even the most developed countries were not immune to the suborning of their leaders. As Morris said, "One would think the King of England well secured [against] bribery. … Yet Charles II was bribed by Louis XIV.”
The reasons for Trump’s striking behavior—whether he was bribed or blackmailed or something else—remain to be ascertained. That he has publicly refused to defend his country’s independent electoral process—and did so jointly with the foreign dictator who perverted that process—is video-recorded fact.
And it’s a fact that has to be seen in the larger context of his actions in office: denouncing the EU as a “foe,” threatening to break up nato, wrecking the U.S.-led world trading system, intervening in both U.K. and German politics in support of extremist and pro-Russian forces, and his continued refusal to act to protect the integrity of U.S. voting systems—it adds up to a political indictment whether or not it quite qualifies as a criminal one.
No comments:
Post a Comment