Trump’s Coup, Part Deux
". . .The last time we took note of Dick Cheney and Patrick Leahy at the Capitol was in 2004 when the then vice president hurled a vulgarity — one not usually heard on the august Senate floor — at the Democratic senator from Vermont. Democrats had accused Cheney of using his government position to help win contracts for his former firm, Halliburton.
Now, 17 years later, the two men were back. Senator Leahy was snapping photos at the memorial on the first anniversary of the desecration of the Capitol. And Cheney was there with his daughter Liz, a congresswoman from Wyoming who is persona non grata in her own party and persona grata with the Democrats for speaking truth about Trump.
This time, Dick Cheney was not Darth Vader, employing his Death Star to blow up Democrats. This time he was Darling Dick, one of the only Republicans willing to defy Trump and say the obvious: The G.O.P. is embarrassing.
Trump is such an egomaniacal thug that Dick Cheney, christened “a self-aggrandizing criminal” by The Atlantic in 2011, seems saintly by comparison.
No matter, as The Atlantic pointed out, that as vice president, Cheney “advanced a theory of the executive that is at odds with the intentions of the founders, successfully encouraged the federal government to illegally spy on innocent Americans, passed on to the public false information about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and became directly complicit in a regime of torture for which he should be in jail.”
Cheney, who had subverted the Constitution at every turn, was greeted as a defender of the Constitution. From Vice to Nice. This is the world we’re in now.
There were other topsy-turvy moments . . ."
READ MORE >> https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/08/opinion/cheney-jan-6.html
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