PAUL JAY: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay.
Well, Michael Cohen finally made his long-awaited appearance before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. And while there’s a ton to dig into in terms of his accusations against Donald Trump, who–I guess everyone has heard by now–he said he is a racist, a conman, and a cheat. But perhaps the most explosive thing that Cohen said came at the very end, when he said about a man, Trump, that he’s worked with for over 10 years, in a statement that was vetted by his lawyers, he said–at some point he was asked about that. He says that if Donald Trump loses the election in 2020–Well, here’s what he said.
MICHAEL COHEN: Given my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020 that there will not be a peaceful transition of power.
PAUL JAY: That’s essentially saying that if he loses the election there will be a coup. There will be another declaration of national emergency. I’ve been saying on The Real News for quite some time that I’m very concerned with the agenda of this administration to go after Iran, especially in the midst of all this domestic chaos; of the possibilities of some kind of staged attack on the United States in some way or another to help justify some kind of aggression against Iran. He’s surrounded by John Bolton and Pompeo and people like that who don’t seem to believe that, certainly, international law matters. And one wonders whether they think American law matters.
So we’re going to start with that statement that Trump may not give up power if he loses the election. And then we’re going to dig into more of what was said during the hearings. So now joining us to discuss Cohen’s testimony and such, first of all, is Dr. Henry Giroux. Henry teaches at the McMaster University, where he’s the Chair of Scholarship and Public Interest in the Department of English and Cultural Studies. Also joining us is Jacqueline Luqman. She’s the editor-in-chief of Luqman Nation, and often hosts on The Real News Network. And Carmen Russell-Sluchansky. He’s a journalist based in Washington, D.C., who’s appeared–his work has appeared on NBC, PBS, ABC, BBC, and such. Thanks for joining us.
HENRY GIROUX: It’s a pleasure.
CARMEN RUSSELL-SLUCHANSKY: Thanks for having me.
PAUL JAY: So, Jacqueline, let me start with you. When you heard those words, what goes through your mind?
JACQUELINE LUQMAN: Actually, that’s not the first time I’ve heard that, in regard to this administration. I can’t remember who else said something like that. I can’t remember if it was Trump tweeted something like that, or a member of his cabinet, probably his son-in-law, who said something like that, that Trump supporters would not go away peacefully if Trump did not win the next election. And when you look at the kind of people who are aligned with Trump, who he’s aligned himself with, like you said, Paul, John Bolton and Mike Pompeo; Elliott Abrams and Steve Bannon. People think Steve Bannon went away, and he’s not involved in the administration anymore just because he’s not in the White House. That’s–that couldn’t be farther from the truth. It’s not a surprise and it’s not shocking that this is a possibility. And I actually think it’s a reality. And these are not peaceful people. They didn’t rise to the White House using peaceful and fair tactics. And I don’t put it past them that they would resort to actual violence to keep it.
PAUL JAY: So, Henry, what do you think? What has Cohen got in mind? As I say, this is a guy who knows Trump for years, and his lawyers vetted the statements.
HENRY GIROUX: I think that what we’re hearing here and what we need to be concerned with is the fact that Trump is, in a sense, working right out of the playbook of a kind of updated fascist politics. I mean, his language is about the language of brutality, it’s the language of violence, language of fear. And he’s been doing this for a long time. Even before the election, I mean, there was some talk on the part of Trump and others about how he wasn’t sure what exactly was going to happen if she actually won the election. So I think that if you understand that comment as a way of both baiting his base, and at the same time making it clear that this is a guy who really trades in the notion of lawlessness and the notion of violence. And it’s very serious, and I think you need to take it seriously.
PAUL JAY: Carmen?
CARMEN RUSSELL-SLUCHANSKY: Yeah, I’ll follow up on what both of them said. I mean, we’ve been hearing these concerns since the election in 2016. I mean, maybe you remember, like, a lot of people were very concerned about what would happen if Hillary Clinton had, you know, if he had won the popular vote and Hillary Clinton had won the Electoral College. It ended up being different. But you know, people were really concerned. But then we found out that, first of all, Donald Trump didn’t expect to win the election, probably, or maybe, and that he was planning on starting this thing called Trump TV. Would he himself be out there starting a revolution? Probably not. I think he’s too lazy for that. But he would certainly be riling up supporters to think that 2020 was stolen, just as he did in 2016. And that’s–I mean, I think all the evidence points to that, for sure.
PAUL JAY: I mean, one of the things that Cohen said today is that Trump never expected to win. This was all a marketing ploy to build up the Trump brand. As he started get moving–once he wins the nomination, takes on Pence, which gives him a deal with the Koch brothers, who in the beginning wanted nothing to do with him. But Pence is a Koch brother guy, and now he’s got Pompeo, which is a completely Koch brother creation. But once he becomes president, he becomes a vehicle for so many different political forces. Evangelicals see him as a vessel. The neocons now see him as a vessel. And everything feeds into his megalomania. And so it is a convergence of this guy’s personal, as I say, megalomania, and some much more sophisticated political interests, in the context of a very degenerating, overall, political system, so that–you know, this corruption of Trump is just a tip of the iceberg of pervasive systemic corruption throughout the whole system. Henry.
HENRY GIROUX: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think that comment is right on target. I mean, I think that–you know, some of the stuff that we’re hearing today is not uninteresting, but as a number of people have pointed out, as I think Carmen pointed out, I mean, this is well known. So I think the real question here is how do you understand this corruption as something that’s so endemic to the politics that we find in the United States, that Trump is simply symbolic of it? And while Trump’s corruption is unadulterated and unapologetic, at the same time you really have to look at the larger systemic issues at work here. The convergence of money and politics, a neocapitalist system that absolutely, in a way, commodifies everything the only value that matters are exchange values, the notion that social responsibility is a burden rather than something that actually is endemic to a democracy.
The fact that this guy endlessly–if you really want to talk about corruption, I mean, this guy is basically endangering the planet. He’s changing the lives of young people with the rollbacks that he’s done with respect to environmental rules, with worker protection rules. That’s where the corruption really lies. I mean, let’s talk about the toll that’s taking place in terms of both democracy and the toll it’s taking place in terms of the planet; the toll that’s taking place in terms of human life. That’s real corruption, because it’s death-dealing.
No comments:
Post a Comment