IS “TRUMPISM” BECOMING “McCARTHYISM”?

…A panicking Donald Trump?

President Trump is broadcasting calls for scrutinizing judges.

It is appearing obvious that President Trump is becoming frantic about what could come from Trump's former Campaign Manager’s trial, and from his former lawyer Michael Cohen.  That is if Cohen starts to cooperate with the US attorney’s as has been reported.  He's also getting more concerned about whatever will eventually come from the special counsel, Robert Mueller’s Russian investigation.

Trump may be calling it a “Witch Hunt” and a “hoax”, but for this investigation, there are already 5 of the campaign’s members charged, 4 guilty pleas and 27 indictments.  In the Paul Manafort case alone, he has 32 counts against him for bank fraud, money laundering, and financial skulduggery.  Doesn’t sound like much of a “Witch Hunt” to me.

But what is seriously startling to me is what is happening to what is being called “Trumpism”.

Trumpism today is starting more and more to look like “McCarthyism”

The Justice Department has for the first time ever, released a redacted warrant application that the investigators submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court) asking for permission to surveil former Trump adviser, Carter Page.  President Trump and his enablers had made this document central to their claims of FBI bias in its conduct of the Russia probe.  But in fact, the documents showed that the investigative process was totally sound and the Republican narrative is totally paranoid and cynical.

Also participating in this degradation against the FBI on Sunday was the House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), who insisted that “there is a serious problem with the FBI” presenting a warrant application that, he claimed, was based on the so-called Steele dossier.  But the released application document showed that it wasn’t.  The dossier is a collection of some verified and some unverified reports about the behavior of Mr. Trump and his associates.  As Goodlatte echoed his line against the FBI, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said that: “the warrant, the FISA warrant process needs to be looked at closely by Congress.”

I was surprised that Graham put himself in this group as he is usually a more balance and sensible GOP member in these areas.  And Graham had served in the US Air Force JAG Corps.  He should know better than to assist in the trashing of a legitimate federal law enforcement operation.

Fortunately, not all the Republicans are acting like Goodlatte and Graham.  The facts support a different Republican’s take: “You have an individual here who has openly bragged about his ties to Russia,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said of Mr. Page. “And the FBI’s job is to protect this country from threats. . . . So they look at all this information. They say: We have a guy here who’s always in Russia, brags about Russia, and we have reason to believe, and they list those reasons, why this is someone we should be watching. And they [FBI] followed the legal process by which to do so.”

The document did show that the federal investigators did rely in part on the Steele dossier, but they also clearly informed the judges that the dossier came from a politically motivated source.  As it happens, the dossier’s information on Mr. Page turned out to be more credible than some of its other claims.  The document also contained other credible information on Mr. Page’s connections to Russia. Moreover, as The Post’s Philip Bump has noted, the redacted sections that obviously contain sensitive information on Mr. Page’s activities, those grew larger with every application renewal.

The document was compelling enough to persuade all the judges to authorize the surveillance and to renew it three times. This is not surprising as Judges routinely grant warrants on the basis of preliminary evidence. If they did not, law enforcement officials would have an impossible time gathering proof of wrongdoing in cases large and small.

One would think that real conservative Republicans would normally not want to hamstring law enforcement.

But, just as it was with classic McCarthyism, with Trumpism, the number of targets to go after is now expanding, even as any evidence of official wrongdoing is non-existent.  That was also the case with McCarthyism.

Now the president is panicking as he is broadcasting calls to scrutinize all of the judges involved in the multiple authorizing’s of the surveillance.  How many Republicans will continue to support this vicious attack on the Justice Department and the judiciary?  

This is not just an attack on a single government agency, it is an attack on American democracy.

And we have a president that is starting to come unglued.  A president that is kissing up to our enemies and talking down our friends.

If this doesn't stop, this is how democracies begin to decline.

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