Right. The little woman, who was George W. Bush’s ambassador to NATO and has decades of foreign policy experience in both Republican and Democratic administrations, must be under her husband’s thumb.
Under ordinary circumstances — that is to say, circumstances in which Trump’s reelection were not a serious possibility — Vance’s missive would be dismissible for what it is: a preening, Trump-toadying stunt. No sane Justice Department would take any action other than tossing Vance’s letter in the trash. No sane State Department would touch Nuland’s clearance.
In the current climate, however, the stunt must be taken seriously as a preview of what life under a Trump presidency — or, to use Kagan’s term, a Trump dictatorship — might entail. Because we know, not from Kagan but from Trump himself, along with his constitutionally illiterate enablers, that this is just the kind of abuse of power they contemplate in a second Trump term.
If you missed it, please read Kagan’s anguished plea, and his follow-up essay this week, about the need for the country to confront the clear and present danger to democracy. Vance seized on a few sentences about what resistance to Trump overreach might entail. “Resistance could come from the governors of predominantly Democratic states such as California and New York through a form of nullification,” Kagan observed. “States with Democratic governors and statehouses could refuse to recognize the authority of a tyrannical federal government.”
Kagan then predicted this would not happen, noting that “not even the bluest states are monolithic, and Democratic governors are likely to find themselves under siege on their home turf if they try to become bastions of resistance to Trump’s tyranny.”
Vance, of course, omitted this caveat in his letter to Garland and Blinken. A graduate of Yale Law School, he also omitted any actual understanding of the Constitution, including the importance of free speech and a free press.
Instead, Vance used his argument to make what I’m sure he thought was a clever point about the Justice Department’s supposed overreach in charging Trump with trying to overturn the 2020 election. The headline on his office’s accompanying press release said it all: “Senator Vance slams left-wing journalist for encouraging insurrection against potential Trump administration.”
Oh, please. Maybe try Wikipedia? The first sentence of Kagan’s entry describes my colleague as “an American neoconservative scholar.” He has also, among other roles, been foreign policy adviser to Republican congressman Jack Kemp, a speechwriter for Reagan secretary of state George P. Shultz and a foreign policy adviser to John McCain during the 2008 presidential campaign. Kagan backed the U.S. war in Iraq. Some left-winger.
Yet that was just the start of Vance’s sophistry. “I suspect that one or both of you might characterize this article as an invitation to ‘insurrection,’ a manifestation of criminal ‘conspiracy,’ or an attempt to bring about civil war,” the letter states, mischaracterizing Kagan’s essay as arguing that “a second Trump presidency would justify secession, treason, and (likely) political violence.” That is not even close to a fair reading.
But then Vance gets to his real point. “As you know, prosecutors in the Department of Justice have embraced several stunningly broad interpretations of federal law in their bid to ensnare President Trump in criminal wrongdoing,” he writes. “For example, prosecutors have relied on a broad reading of 18 U.S.C. § 241 to argue that President Trump has conspired to ‘threaten’ or ‘intimidate’ one or more persons in their free exercise of the ‘right to vote, and to have one’s vote counted.’ By that standard, I would like to know whether a supporter of President Trump might be ‘intimidate[d]’ into foregoing the right to vote after learning that Robert Kagan has encouraged large blue states to rebel against the United States if Trump is elected. If so, I wonder further whether the editors of The Washington Post, having put Kagan’s call to arms in print, might have conspired to suppress the vote.”
So, this is the Vance analogy, such as it is: a defeated candidate accused of pressuring state officials to subvert election results, scheming to submit slates of false electors, and strong-arming his vice president to refrain from performing his constitutionally prescribed role — this person is on a par with a historian and opinion columnist, and the institution that publishes him, performing their constitutionally protected roles.
As I said, not worth denouncing — until now. Trump’s mouthpieces have not been coy about their disdain for the First Amendment and their zeal to use the levers of executive power to punish perceived enemies in the media.
Witness former Trump administration official Kash Patel, who warned on Steve Bannon’s podcast, “We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly. We’ll figure that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice.”
And witness Trump himself, declining Sean Hannity’s invitation to disclaim, as the Fox News host put it, “any plans whatsoever if reelected president to abuse power, to break the law, to use the government to go after people.”
“You mean, like they’re using right now?” Trump replied. He keeps announcing the illegal part out loud — his willingness to use the power of the presidency and the criminal justice system to wreak vengeance on his political enemies.
Vance’s letter is a stunt, sure, but it’s not only a stunt. It’s a blueprint that proves Kagan’s point.
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