Compared to what we face, Sisyphus had it easy.
What do Todd Blanche’s floundering nomination to become US Attorney General and Mitch McConnell’s six week absence from the US Senate have in common? In a word, corruption: of norms, laws, decency, and any sense of duty to the people these abominable white men purport to represent. Let’s start with Todd Blanche.
Todd Blanche served as Donald Trump’s personal attorney before Trump returned to the Oval Office for the second time. Not that long ago, Trump was spending most of his time in courtrooms, defending himself, or more accurately, attacking the legal process itself across several jurisdictions, on charges ranging from stealing government secrets to paying hush money to an adult film actress named Stormy Daniels. Todd Blanche sat by Trump’s side every step of the way, and after the 2024 election, was tapped for the post of Deputy AG — in itself a staggering conflict of interest.
Recall that it was Blanche who skipped down to Florida to stage a softball interview with Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted accomplice of Jeffrey Epstein. Maxwell told Blanche that Trump was always a perfect gentlemen who would never, ever, grope, fondle or rape an underage girl. No sooner was Blanche on his way back to DC than Maxwell was transferred to a cushy Club Fed in Texas. Minimum security. Maxwell is the only sex offender in the place. But Blanche was just getting started. He played hide & seek with the Epstein files, even after Congress passed, and Trump signed, a law specifying the terms and conditions of their release. Instead of following the law, Blanche circumvented it over and over. In his spare time he ginned up a number of bogus indictments of Trump’s political enemies, including former FBI Director James Comey. But Blanche’s big service was helping Trump perpetrate a fraud on a federal court in Trump’s baseless lawsuit against the IRS. Recall that this lawsuit — a sitting president as plaintiff, and a federal agency under his control as defendant — Trump v. Trump, in other words, heads-I-win-tails-you-lose, demanded $1.8 billion in taxpayer money, to be controlled by Trump and used in whatever manner he deemed fit, including doling out payments to January 6 insurrectionists. Now, my guess is that Trump had no intention of giving money to a bunch of losers who got arrested on his behalf; he likely planned to stiff his supporters and funnel our money into crypto. That aside, the punks and shitbirds who attacked the US Capitol, crapped and pissed in its hallowed hallways, delayed an official proceeding, caused thousands of dollars in property damage, chanted “Hang Mike Pence,” and assaulted and injured hundreds of police officers, including Brian Sicknick, who died from his injuries, were in line to be compensated for their crimes. How perfectly Trumpian is that? Wait, though, because part of this fraudulent settlement between Trump and his government also stipulated that Trump and members of his crime family be immune from investigation or prosecution for tax crimes, a cherry-on-top worth an estimated $100 million. Blanche enthusiastically guided this blatant ripoff of American taxpayers every step of the way.
But here’s what makes this episode disheartening. Despite every sleazy, unethical thing Blanche has done in service of his only client, every GOP Senator on the Judiciary Committee, with the exception of Thom Tillis and John Cornyn, is prepared to vote for his confirmation. Tillis is retiring and Cornyn lost his primary bid in Texas (to the spectacularly corrupt Ken Paxton), which prompted some stiffening of their heretofore jelly-like spines. Tillis and Cornyn are upset about the slush fund and IRS immunity and are withholding their support until Blanche delivers assurances that the settlement is dead. Apparently, however, these Senators have no issues with the rest of Blanche’s malfeasance. Use the DOJ to persecute innocent people? No problem, have at it! This astounding moral and ethical myopia is passed off in the legacy media as “principled” and “courageous.”
Please.
The GOP majority in the US Senate stands ready to confirm a man as demonstrably compromised as Todd Blanche. How can this servile toad be a candidate for the top law enforcement job in the nation? Does the Senate have any ethical standards? Power and privilege has stunted and deformed these people. Blanche = Death for the rule of law. Is this complicated or somehow unclear?
Now let’s talk about Mitch McConnell, the wrecking ball of the US Senate, who fell in his home and required CPR before being transported to a hospital, where he receives platinum-level care courtesy of the taxpayers. A couple of proof-of-life photos have circulated, and McConnell’s office promotes the fable that the 84-year-old senator is working from his hospital bed, holding twenty minute phone conversations with colleagues and journalists. Sure, sure, we believe that, just as we believe in DOGE refund checks and prescription drugs that have declined in cost by 650 percent. McConnell may be comatose, kept alive by machines, but the people of Kentucky, his constituents, are left to guess about his actual condition.
These two cases are representative of everything wrong with this political moment. But perhaps more than that, they illustrate the corrosive consequences of ten years of Donald Trump, an amoral, ignorant, racist and misogynistic man who has always believed himself immune from the law, any law. By his example, Trump has taught hundreds of political actors that laws are mere suggestions and truth optional. The unbridled arrogance of office holders, elected as well as appointed, their open contempt for the people and the laws they swear to uphold and then undermine with complete impunity represent terminal moral rot. A full-scale remediation of toxic practices, dark money, impotent laws and criminal actors will require investigations, indictments, prosecutions, new laws with real penalties, and what amounts to a revolution of values, ethics and morality.
Somehow, we-the-people must make the political ruling class and their oligarchic masters fear us, not the other way around. Compared to this task, Sisyphus had it easy.
