“I wouldn’t believe Donald Trump,” once said felonious Manhattan hotelier Leona Helmsley, “if his tongue was notarized.” This insight came again to mind last week when the president denied knowing Lev Parnas, the henchman hired by the president’s personal lawyer to execute the president’s personal instructions on the president’s personal behalf, as a dozen photos and video of Parnas right next to the president were released for all to see.
Indeed, the Time of Trump has provided not merely an inexhaustible supply of conduct evoking Alice in Wonderland on steroids, but a flood of it, lately approaching tsunami levels. One particular laugher was highlighted Friday by an organization called Republicans for the Rule of Law, spearheaded by prominent conservative Bill Kristol, which has taken on the (shall we say) daunting challenge of turning the light switch on for that vast majority of Republicans whose attitude about the president’s spree of trashing democratic institutions can be summarized in three words: “Couldn’t care less.”
The group circulated tape of Ken Starr, who, having once led the effort to impeach Bill Clinton, is now the latest addition to Trump’s defense team, telling Congress in 1998 that Clinton’s removal was supported by what Starr claimed was his obstruction of the impeachment investigation. President Clinton’s refusal to turn over evidence to Congress, alleged Starr, constituted a “misuse of presidential authority,” since Clinton had purportedly asserted legal privileges to shield evidence in order “to conceal relevant information.” According to Starr: “The privilege assertions were legally baseless in these circumstances. (They) delayed and impeded the investigation.”
Coming from someone who is about to declare gravely that Trump has committed no impeachable offense, this would be a joke were it not so unfunny. This president hasn’t merely asserted wholly frivolous privileges in order to blockade congressional requests for evidence; he has issued blanket orders that his administration disregard all requests for evidence about his use of his office to extort a foreign government by withholding taxpayers’ funds in order to extract a bogus announcement of an “investigation” for his personal gain. Starr, whom Trump once called a “lunatic,” appears so bent on recapturing some last flicker of limelight at the end of his career that he is prepared to cement his legacy as someone who, let us put it this way, will not win any awards for being notably principled.
But he isn’t the only one. Sens. Lindsey Graham and Susan Collins were among the unfortunate souls who have had their jaw-droppingly hypocritical proclamations from the Clinton impeachment retrieved for public consumption. Graham, who conducts himself more like Donald Trump’s pool boy than a U.S. senator, has rejected any suggestion that witnesses to Trump’s activity should be permitted to tell the truth about that activity to the Senate, which is constitutionally responsible for deciding whether Trump should be removed. Here is what then-Congressman Graham, one of the Republican House Managers urging Clinton’s removal, said at the time of the Clinton impeachment proceedings: “The whole point that we’re trying to make is that in every trial that there’s ever been in the Senate regarding impeachment, witnesses were called.” Without “meaningful witnesses,” Graham argued, “you’re basically changing impeachment.” As for Collins, her oh-so-high-minded pronouncement in 1998 that she intended to go down “every road” to hear from witnesses so that she could determine “the truth” has made her look mighty pathetic as she twists this way and that to avoid committing to have those with direct knowledge of Trump’s conduct tell the simple truth, under oath.
In the “say anything” America established by this president and enthusiastically embraced by his supporters, the bigger and bolder the hypocrisy, the better, and the more energizing. There was a time when hypocrisy so flagrant as to resemble fraud was a bad look, and one to be avoided if at all possible. Those days, apparently, are over.
Jeff Robbins is a Boston lawyer and former U.S. delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
