Over there on his podcast, New York Times columnist Ezra Klein was blunt.
The topic was another potential government shutdown over spending issues. The question: Should Democrats partner with Republicans to prevent a shutdown and keep funding the government? In his answer, Klein said this:
I want to be very clear about what I am saying here. Donald Trump is corrupting the government — he is using it to hound his enemies, to line his pockets and to entrench his own power. He is corrupting it the way the Mafia would corrupt the industries it controlled. You could still, under Mafia rule, get the trash picked up or buy construction materials. But the point of those industries had become the preservation and expansion of the Mafia’s power and wealth.
This is what Trump is doing to the government. This is what Democrats cannot fund. This is what they have to try to stop.
Amazing. Mr. Klein seems to have developed a serious case of amnesia.
Take this line from him on Trump: “…he is using it to hound his enemies….”
Hello? As noted here back in January of 2024:
As of March 2024, Donald Trump has been personally charged with 88 criminal offenses in four criminal cases. This total reflects charges related to Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, election interference in Georgia, falsifying business records in New York, and mishandling classified records after leaving the presidency. Donald Trump is the first former president in U.S. history to be criminally indicted.
It has apparently skipped Mr. Klein’s memory that the record of the Biden government using the federal government (lawfare) to hound Trump — encouraging state and local Democrat prosecutors to do the same — is mind-boggling and completely without precedent.
For the record:
As of March 2024, Donald Trump has been personally charged with 88 criminal offenses in four criminal cases.
On March 30, 2023, a Manhattan grand jury approved a thirty-four-count felony indictment against Trump…..
On June 9, 2023, Special Counsel Jack Smith charged Trump with thirty-seven felonies related to his handling and refusal to return hundreds of documents containing classified information.
On July 27, 2023, a grand jury issued a superseding indictment alleging additional charges against Trump….
On August 1, 2023, Smith charged Trump with four federal criminal counts after a grand jury investigation into Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, culminating in the January 6th insurrection.
On August 14, 2023, Fulton County (Georgia) District Attorney Fani Willis charged Trump and 18 others in a 41-count indictment
Then there was this story — one of many similar stories:
An IRS whistleblower on the Hunter Biden probe told Congress that the president’s son invoked his father to pressure a Chinese business partner and claimed the elder Biden was in the room while he was making deals.
The House Ways and Means Committee on Thursday released testimony from two IRS whistleblowers who said the Justice Department, FBI and IRS interfered with the investigation of the tax evasion case against Hunter Biden.
One whistleblower, IRS Criminal Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley Jr., who oversaw the IRS probe into the president’s son, said the IRS obtained a WhatsApp message dated July 30, 2017, from Hunter Biden to Henry Zhao, CEO of Harvest Fund Management, in which Hunter alleged he was with his father and named him to put pressure on Zhao to fulfill a commitment.
In short? To use Klein’s own words:
It was Joe Biden, not Donald Trump, who was “corrupting the government…. using it to hound his enemies, to line his pockets and to entrench his own power.”
It was Joe Biden, not Donald Trump, who was “corrupting it the way the Mafia would corrupt the industries it controlled. You could still, under Mafia rule, get the trash picked up or buy construction materials. But the point of those industries had become the preservation and expansion of the Mafia’s power and wealth…”
In short, Klein has it exactly backwards.
Why? Who knows.
But one can sense the aroma of Trump Derangement Syndrome rising here.
Note. Donald Trump became a billionaire working entirely in the private sector, never having served a day in public office. Mysteriously — or not so mysteriously — Joe Biden and family became millionaires by using his public office to make those millions.
Which is to say, the record speaks for itself.
And it ain’t good for Democrats and their defenders.
READ MORE from Jeffrey Lord:
Democrats Reject Law and Order
Democrats’ Double Standard on Harris, GOP VPs, Losing Secret Service