Is this the future that Trump and the Republican Senate have in store for you?

By Glen Reaux

Dereliction of duty is a specific offense under United States Code Title 10, Section 892, Article 92 and applies to all branches of the US military.  It is a felony crime punishable by court martial.  Although there are no civil statutes that address this issue in relation to civilian federal officials, the fact remains that elected and other federal officials including the president and all members of congress take an oath of office swearing to uphold and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies both foreign and domestic.  If the president or a member of congress is found in violation of that oath, there is no constitutional remedy.  They can simply choose not to do their job or chose to place their interest, that of special interest groups or those of a foreign nation ahead of their constituents interest and nothing can be done about it.  Short of committing a crime, as citizens, our only legal recourse is to vote them out in the next election.  In the case of the presidency, the 25^th amendment may apply under rare circumstances.  But, it has never been used to remove a sitting president.  The 25^th amendment does not apply to congress so there is no viable remedy to this problem. Right now, from so-called President Trump, this country faces a new form of government emanating from “The Republican Senate’s Dereliction of Duty and Co-Dictatorship.”

The founding fathers in all of their wisdom designed the government be dictatorship proof, or so they thought.   The Executive Branch is the most powerful branch in our system and left unchecked can very easily lead to an American president becoming a dictator.  Our government is divided into three coequal branches, the executive, legislative and the judicial, each having specific duties and the responsibility to keep watch over the other (checks and balances).   But, our founding fathers never imagined the day would come when either the legislative or judicial branches would be derelict in performing their duties of safeguarding the nation against an out of control president.  That day has come.  Donald J. Trump has become the first American Dictator.

President number forty five (#45) has consciously chosen not to uphold his oath of office.  This is evidenced by the facts that he has dictated actions and established policies that are in violation of the constitution which have been proven to be so in numerous court cases.  He has dictated policies that have destroyed a century of work that established America’s foreign policies and its leadership position in the world.  His negligence in foreign policy has cost the lives of American servicemen.

In January of 2017, shortly after taking office President Trump issued Executive Order 1j769, titled Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States.  It was also referred to as the Muslim ban or the travel ban.  A court battle quickly ensued which led to more executive orders and presidential proclamations.  Eventually, on June  6, 2018, the Supreme Court upheld a modified travel ban.  During the time of this fight, suddenly and inexplicably on September 24, 2017, Trump added the country of Chad to the travel ban.  Chad an American ally, neither harbored nor had a history of supporting or promoting terrorism.  Chad was in a joint defense agreement with the US.  Chad was known as the best counter terrorism military force in Africa and was conducting joint military operations with the US at the time when it was added to the travel ban.  Shocked by the revelation of being placed on the ban, being falsely accused of being a terrorist state and feeling betrayed by an ally, Chad immediately ceased all joint military operations.  Less than two weeks later, on October 4, 2017, four US Green Berets were killed in an ambush by ISIS fighters near the village of Tong Tongo, Niger.  Niger is a neighboring country to Chad and is normally patrolled by Chad forces.  Many US military and foreign affairs officials believe that the death of these soldiers was preventable and are directly attributable to the Trump travel band.  Point of note, while the Trump administration never offered an explanation for placing Chad on the travel ban, in October of 2016, while Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was CEO of Exxon Mobil, a Court in Chad fined Exxon Mobil $75 billion for unpaid royalties.

Other elements of Trump foreign policy has brought about our withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate change, the dissolution of NAFTA, a trade war with China and he has criticized the WTO.  Contrary to our allegiance with other trading partners, he has advocated for Russia’s readmission to the G7, has demeaned NATO (the most successful peacekeeping alliance in history), advocated for NATO’s dissolution and has for the past year been working on a plan to remove the US from the organization.   NATO consists of 29 member countries.  Leaving the organization is the greatest threat to national security.

In violation of US and international law, Trump has dictated policies along the southern border that have caused undue hardships to migrants and refugees seeking asylum in this country.  Trump administration official Lloyd Scott,  Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement has been taken to court for violating the rights of an immigrant 17 year old girl seeking to get an abortion which would have been paid for with her own money.  Scott, an anti-abortionist activist also wrote a letter denying three other women their legal rights to abortion.  Highlighting these policies which seem to be racially motivated is the inhumane policy of separating children from their parents at the border.  This administration’s southern border policies have resulted in a minimum of 14 legal cases. Trump’s border polices have been sued by individuals, cities, states, civil rights organization and the ACLU.  These suits have been for human rights violations, violations of immigration law, violations of international law and for separating children from their parents.  According to administration officials, Trump policies separated 3,000 children from their parents and in November and December of 2018 two migrant children died while in federal custody.

The most recent despotic or dictatorial action on the part of Donald Trump is the shutting down of the United States government because he promised his base a border wall that Mexico would pay for.  Since Mexico has refused to pay for the wall, Trump has shut down the government because congress refused to place the economic burden of building a wall on the backs of the American people.   Under the constitution, the congress and only the congress, not the president, has the power to establish the budget, set spending practices of this country and procure the needed funds.  Despite the separation of powers, the president has decided to hold the country hostage and layoff more than 800,000 federal workers.  In violation of the constitution, he has ordered 50,000 federal employees to work without pay.  The Thirteenth Amendment states: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

While many Americans would like to believe that our current form of government has devolved from a constitutional democratic republic to a kakistocracy, sadly that is not the case.  The dereliction of duty on the part of the president is clearly a choice which has allowed him to become a dictator.  His foreign policies, immigration policies, attack on the free press, law enforcement, national security institutions, the military, the constitution and rule of law are clearly the actions of a dictator.   While his dereliction of duty has garnered incredible amounts of media attention, the dereliction of duty by Senate Republicans has not been publicized as much.  On the surface, it may appear that America has devolved into a kakistocracy which is a government by the least qualified or most unprincipled citizens but, when the layers of the onion are peeled back, a very competent, intelligent and dark republican senate is found at the core.

The case for Republicans, like the president choosing to be derelict in the performance of their duties is easy to make.  Republican senators have ignored his love for Vladimir Putin.  They have ignored his attacks on the nation’s intelligence agencies and law enforcement institutions.  They have ignored the atrocities of his immigration policies.  They have turned a blind eye the corruption of his cabinet members and the criminal convictions of National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, Rick Gates and his campaign manager Paul Manafort.  They have refused to act on the conviction of the president’s personal attorney Michael Cohen and the fact that Cohen named the president as an unindicted co-conspirator in the commission of campaign finance crimes. These crimes led to a successful attempt by the president to defraud the American public in the 2016 national election.  All of these convictions are the products of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the president’s obstruction of justice.  The investigation is also to determine the possibility of the president colluding with Russia to rig the 2016 election on his behalf.  Even an open admission of obstruction of justice by the President on national television in relation to the firing of FBI Director Jim Comey has not brought any action or condemnation from Republican senators.  Republican senators have refused to entertain legislation put forth by Democrats that would protect the special counsel’s investigation.  Most recently the Republican leadership in the senate used a filibuster to block Democrats and 11 Republican senators from stopping the president’s lifting of economic sanctions on a Russian oligarch tied to Putin, a sworn enemy of this country.  These actions on the part of Republican senators rise above the level of dereliction of duty and could be interpreted as a conspiracy between the Republican senate leadership and the president.   While there has not been a trial for conspiracy yet, common sense would invoke the duck test.  If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is most certainly a duck and this Republican-Trump onion stinks of conspiracy.

The Republican-Trump onion is a form of government new to this country.  This form of government was seen in Germany at the beginning of the Third Reich.  Because of its brief existence, this form of government was never given a name.  It was a co-dictatorship.  The German co-dictatorship over a few years died out and gave way to the dictatorship of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Party. The current relationship between this president and Republicans nullifies the constitutional protections against dictatorships and has created a co-dictatorship.  If this co-dictatorship is not stopped, as unbelievable as it may sound, a new Reich is in America’s future.