Depending how much you think reality in politics is more surreal than fiction, one of America’s more bizarre official activities took place this week ahead of Thanksgiving, when President Trump pardoned a giant turkey. Technically he’s supposed to “choose” between two of the birds, but such life-or-death optics might appear a little too much like a roman emperor, so they both escape the knife for now.

The birds – this year named “Bread” and “Butter” – had been put up overnight in a luxury hotel, surprisingly not a Trump property, before the “winner” got to share the Rose Garden with the president and listen to him make some predictable political jokes – how both turkeys have “already been subpoenaed by Adam Schiff” – and make up an alternative history of the ceremony (it wasn’t Lincoln who started it, as Trump announced) before being officially “pardoned” and sent off to live at Gobbler’s Rest – yes, really – in Virginia.

More seriously, though, it was three other high-profile presidential reprieves that caused feathers to fly in recent days, culminating with Navy Secretary Richard Spencer leaving office after Trump controversially stepped into the disciplinary process of a Navy SEAL who had been court-martialed for his actions in Iraq. Spencer subsequently laid out his side of the story, concluding that “the president has very little understanding of what it means to be in the military, to fight ethically or to be governed by a uniform set of rules and practices.”

Sasha Abramsky wrote in The Nation: “Usually, US presidents try to preserve a veneer of plausible deniability. They don’t go out of their way to celebrate soldiers accused or convicted of war crimes. It doesn’t look good for the so-called leader of the free world to openly show complete disregard for human rights and the rule of law.”

Trump, however, has apparently already said that he wants the men he absolved to campaign for him.

 

‘A fictional narrative’

The thanksgiving break – for which, believe me, we’re all very thankful – comes after two weeks of absolutely fascinating impeachment hearings, with perhaps the standout appearance being that of coal miner’s daughter and County Durham native Dr Fiona Hill, a former Russia specialist at the National Security Council who spoke with a clarity, precision and authority that should have left the committee members and those watching at home in little doubt as to what was true and what was not.

“Some of you on this committee,” she said in her opening statement, “appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country – and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.

“The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies, confirmed in bipartisan Congressional reports. It is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified.”

Yet Republicans on the committee and elsewhere seemed to shut their ears and think  otherwise.

Cue an appearance on Fox News by Louisiana Senator John – no relation – Kennedy, the man who, in a move you just knew was going to come back to bite him, famously appeared at a recent Trump rally and proclaimed of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, “It must suck to be that dumb.”

Kennedy later tried to backtrack on CNN, but of course the important thing from his perspective was that he made the original statement to the audience on Fox. It would seem that Republican lawmakers know better; the real question is why, as the fact picture around this whole story builds, they persist with such committed denial.

They do so purely and simply because they believe such an approach works with the president and the GOP base.

In a brilliant, if pessimistic column, Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Inquirer writes that: “The challenge for 2020 seems increasingly less about how to prosecute a president’s bribery and extortion, or even how to defeat such a bad actor in a general election, but whether America can figure out how to deprogram a cult before it’s far too late.”

 

‘Presidents are not kings’

Nevertheless, the president’s legal worries intensified this week after a judge ruled that former White House counsel Don McGahn – whom House Democrats want to question about Trump’s actions surrounding the firing of FBI director James Comey – must testify, and that there is no basis for claims of “absolute immunity”. The judge said that “stated simply, the primary takeaway from the past 250 years of recorded American history is that Presidents are not kings … This means that they do not have subjects, bound by loyalty or blood, whose destiny they are entitled to control.”

The ruling is on hold while the government appeals, but has implications for the likelihood of testimony from other senior White House officials who have been blocked from appearing by the administration. Most notably these include acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, as well as former National Security Adviser John Bolton, whose publisher will doubtless be watching events closely. The Los Angeles Times reported this week that Bolton “understands that the impeachment process is only in the seventh-inning stretch of a one-run ballgame – there is much more that is going to happen.”

Another potential witness, the President’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, also appears to be on increasingly uncertain ground over his Ukraine connections; along with his already-indicted associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman.  After the president appeared to distance himself from his lawyer’s activities, Giuliani again said that he had “an insurance policy” against being “thrown under the bus”. Almost immediately, though, he reportedly called his client to say he was “joking”.

Meanwhile, the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee and fierce defender of the president, Devin Nunes – currently embroiled in a lawsuit against an online cow – took to blaming the “corrupt media” amid allegations that he had met with a former Ukrainian prosecutor.  That led to this reaction from CNN’s John King.

So if you’re following along, that’s plenty of confusion, frustration, angry outbursts, insults and a couple of uses of the word “horses*it” this week, with the virtual certainty that much stronger language is being used away from the table.

Just like an ordinary family thanksgiving, really.

 

Echoes of Watergate

It may have been some kind of karmic coincidence that this week saw the death of a key figure in the Watergate scandal, William Ruckelshaus, who as part of the infamous ‘Saturday Night Massacre’ that likely sealed Richard Nixon’s fate, resigned rather than fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox.

Last year, Ruckelshaus wrote a piece for the Washington Post saying that President Trump’s behaviour now appears just as desperate as Nixon’s did back then, as the walls closed in.

“It’s hard to believe that, 45 years later, we may be in store for another damaging attack on the foundations of our democracy,” Ruckelshaus wrote. “Yet the cynical conduct of this president, his lawyers and a handful of congressional Republicans is frightening to me and should be to every citizen of this country. We are not playing just another Washington political game; there is much more at stake.”

So what happens next?

House Intelligence committee chairman Adam Schiff, declaring that Trump’s actions have been “worse than Nixon’s” will submit a report to the House Judiciary committee sometime next week, and that committee will then decide whether to move forward with articles of impeachment to be laid before the whole House and what form that will take.

Judiciary chairman Jerry Nadler might still want to get more witnesses and has invited Trump or his legal representative to appear at the committee’s meeting next Wednesday, but right now that looks unlikely. More closed-door depositions are still possible, but while there is no such thing as too much evidence, the Democrats are on a timetable of their own choosing.

But it seems that, as was widely predicted, no-one’s mind is being changed and the polarization of the country appears as unmovable as it has been.

Right now, there is likely no widespread appetite among Republicans in the Senate to remove the president from office and he will surely use his “exoneration” as a weapon in next year’s general election contest.

As for the president himself, as well as some inevitable speculation about his health this week after an unscheduled hospital visit, there were reports that he has taken to his bunker because he doesn’t trust the staff around him. But his “executive time” invariably ends up with him practicing his Photoshop skills.

It’s almost enough to make you miss Sarah Sanders – who this week hinted at running for Governor in Arkansas and showed she was still up to speed on burnishing her former boss’s image, saying he “reads more than anyone I know” an assertion that has been greeted with exactly the sort of reaction you’d expect, depending on what you think about the president.

And the fact that Sanders’ former boss claimed this week, with literally no factual justification, that “some people want to change the name Thanksgiving” gives some idea of the relative insanity of what the country has come to, and what we have come to accept as normal.

So as America’s families gather today and for the holiday weekend, it might seem like a traditional turkey dinner with all the trimmings is the only thing everyone has in common anymore. Enjoy it while you can.