Democrats in Congress and talking heads on television will be consumed in the coming weeks by whether the evidence in the Mueller report, especially of obstruction of justice, merits impeachment.
Meanwhile, the question of “wink-wink” cooperation with Russia still looms. Mueller’s quote of Trump, when first learning a special counsel had been appointed – “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m fucked” – has already become a national tagline. Why, Americans wonder, would Trump be “fucked” if he hadn’t done something so awful as to cause its revelation to “fuck” him?
Added to this will be Mueller’s own testimony before Congress, and Congress’s own investigations of Trump.
But let’s be real. Trump will not be removed by impeachment. No president has been. With a Republican Senate controlled by the most irresponsible political hack ever to be majority leader, the chances are nil.
Which means Trump will have to be removed the old-fashioned way – by voters in an election 19 months away.
The practical question is whether the Mueller report and all that surrounds it will affect that election.
Most Americans hold a low opinion of Trump. He’s the only president in Gallup polling history never to have earned the support of majority for single day of his term.
Yet Mueller’s report probably won’t move any of the 40% who have held tight to Trump regardless.
So how to reach the 11% or 12% who may decide the outcome?
Reveal his moral loathsomeness.
Democrats and progressives tend to shy away from morality, given how rightwing evangelicals have used it against abortion, contraceptives and equal marriage rights.
But that’s to ignore Americans’ deep sense of right and wrong. Character counts, and presidential character counts most of all.
Even though Mueller apparently doesn’t believe a sitting president can be indicted, he provides a devastating indictment of Trump’s character.
Trump is revealed as a chronic liar. He claimed he never asked for loyalty from FBI director James Comey. Mueller finds he did. Trump claimed he never asked Comey to let the “Michael Flynn matter go”. Mueller finds he did. Trump claimed he never pushed the White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller. Mueller finds he did. Trump even lied about inviting Comey to dinner, claiming falsely, in public, that Comey requested it. Trump enlists others to lie. He lies to his staff.
Trump treats his subordinates horribly. He hides things from them. He yells at them. He orders them to carry out illegal acts.
He acts like a thug. He regrets his lawyers are not as good at protecting him as was his early mentor Roy Cohn – a mob lawyer. When reports surface about the now infamous Trump Tower meeting of June 2016, Trump directs the cover-up.
Trump is unprincipled. The few people in the White House and the cabinet who stand up to him, according to Mueller – threatening to resign rather than carry out his illegal orders – are now gone. They resigned or were fired.
This is a portrait of a morally bankrupt man.
We still don’t have the full story of Trump’s tax evasion and his business dealings with Russian financiers. But we know he has lied to business associates, stiffed contractors, cheated on his wife by having sex with a porn star, paid the porn star hush money, and boosted his wealth while in office with foreign cash.
It continues. In recent weeks he wilfully endangered the life of a member of Congress by disseminating a propaganda video, similar to those historically used by extremist political groups, tying her to the 9/11 tragedy because she is a Muslim American speaking up for Muslim Americans. She has received death threats, including one by a supporter of Trump who was arrested.
He has also attacked the deceased senator John McCain, whom he falsely accused of leaking the Steele dossier and finishing last in his class at Annapolis. Then Trump retweeted a note from a supporter saying “millions of Americans truly LOVE President Trump, not McCain”. Americans know McCain was tortured in a prison camp for five years, in service to this country.
How many of Trump’s followers or those who might otherwise be tempted to vote for him in 2020 will recoil from this moral squalor?
Donald Trump is the living embodiment of the seven deadly sins – pride, greed, lust, gluttony, wrath, envy and sloth – and he is the precise obverse of the seven virtues as enunciated by Pope Gregory in 590 AD: chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness and humility.
Legal debates about obstruction of justice are fine. But no voter in 2020 should be allowed to overlook this basic reality: Donald Trump is a morally despicable human being.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. He is also a columnist for Guardian US
It was in Egypt that the first wave of the Arab Spring was crushed. So too will it be in Egypt that the dictatorship which followed will die
Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi (L) talks to Sudan's former President Omar al-Bashir (Reuters)
In a breathless 48 hours, a president, defence minister and security chief have all been ousted in Sudan.
Omar al-Bashir held absolute power for three decades as president. Awad Ahmed Ibn Auf, the defence minister who announced Bashir’s arrest and declared the country would be run by a military council for two years, lasted all of 24 hours.
Salah Gosh, whom I revealed had talked to Yossi Cohen, the head of Mossad, at the Munich Security Conference in February, after being lined up by the Saudis, Emiratis and Egyptians as the future ruler, went soon after.
A lesson learnt
The uprising is delicately poised. Unlike the 25 January revolution in Egypt in 2011, Al Jazeera is not in the front line. Access to the internet has been restricted for months, and newspapers have been censored.
The international media is absent.
The only record of mass demonstrations, which remained on the streets for nearly four months, has been taken by the mobile phones of activists. Women have taken a leading role in the protests.
A sit-in outside the defence ministry in Khartoum is set to continue until a civilian transitional council is formed. Few trust the new faces on the military that continues in power.
The Sudanese protesters appeared to have learned the lessons from Egypt’s failure in 2011
Thus far, the Sudanese protesters appeared to have learned the lessons from Egypt’s failure in 2011. They have stopped chanting that "the people and the army are one", because often they are not.
They don’t trust senior figures in the army or anyone in the old regime to deliver a new one, and nor should they. They are not looking to the outside world for support, because they realise they are on their own.
Why are Sudanese protesting against their government?
A similar dogged determination not to be blown off course is also apparent in Algeria.
Hundreds of thousands of protesters continue to demand the prosecution of "le Pouvoir" (the power) and do not trust Abdelkader Bensalah, the head of the upper house and interim president, to deliver it to them.
Bensalah is in power until elections scheduled for 4 July. The army leader General Ahmed Gaid Salah has turned overnight from a loyal supporter to Bouteflika of 15 years to a man who claims he will guarantee "transparency and integrity" in the forthcoming election.
An Algerian man marches with a sign against the "3B" (Interim leader Abdelakder Bensalah, constitutional council chief Tayeb Belaiz and Prime Minister Noureddine Bedoui) in Oran on 9 April (AFP)
The arrest of 180 people on Friday after clashes with "infiltrators" says otherwise.
Still, protesters in both Sudan and Algeria appear to have learned important lessons from the first wave of the Arab Spring in 2011.
Arab Spring redux
The first is that the Arab Spring did not "die" either in Egypt, when over a thousand were massacred on one day in Cairo in Rabaa Square in August 2013, or in the civil war in Syria, which began, it must be remembered, with unarmed protesters in Daraa.
The embers of popular revolt stayed alight, despite all the Gulf money poured into repressing it
The embers of popular revolt stayed alight - despite all the Gulf money poured into repressing it, labelling the protesters as terrorists; despite the mass arrests, the deaths in prison, the torture and suffering.
Why? Because the causes of that revolt for a youthful population have, if anything, intensified - unemployment, corruption and repression.
The second is that protesters are paying no heed to those who tell them that they are not ready for democracy and that if they don’t accept the crumbs they are given, their country’s fate would resemble Syria’s, Yemen’s or Libya’s.
They continue to cry for political freedom in the same way that their brothers and sisters did in Tahrir Square. They are young, they are fearless and they will not be fobbed off with fake messages of support.
The third is that popular uprising is just as infectious and transnational as it was eight years ago. If tiny Tunisia could provide the spark for a much greater revolt in Egypt, what could events in Sudan and Algeria lead to?
Same old, same old
No such lessons appeared to have been learned by the counter-revolutionary dictators installed on or after 2013.
The legislative committee of the Egyptian parliament, dominated by supporters of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, will vote on Tuesday to extend the dictator’s current term by two more years, and to allow him to run for one more six-year term.
Almost every Egyptian political faction, from Islamist to secular, realise that Egypt can not continue as it is
A new constitution could be drafted allowing Sisi to extend his term beyond 2030.
The prospect of Sisi carrying on in power for the next two decades appals most Egyptians. If popular opinion could be expressed in Egypt without fear of arrest, disappearance or murder, they would be overwhelmingly against it.
An online petition called Batel or "void" in Arabic has attracted over 250,000 votes despite a gargantuan effort by Egyptian and Sudanese service providers to block the website.
Netblocks, a civil society group mapping web freedom, discovered that internet providers in Egypt blocked access to an estimated 34,000 internet domains to stamp out the opposition campaign against the constitutional amendments.
A police officer stands guard as defendants accused of involvement in the 2015 assassination of Egypt's top prosecutor on 17 June 2015 (REUTERS)
The collateral damage of this attempt to block an alternative political voice was enormous. "Websites and subdomains unreachable via Telecom Egypt, Raya, Vodafone and Orange include prominent technology startups, self-help websites, celebrity homepages, dozens of open source technology projects, as well as Bahai, Jewish and Islamic faith group websites and NGOs," Netblock reported.
Sisi’s regime is behaving like a frightened little rabbit.
The creators of the website range from two former ministers in Mohamed Morsi’s government to the two Egyptian actors who cheered his overthrow as president in 2013.
Almost every Egyptian political faction, from Islamist to secular, is represented in between. All realise, from very different political backgrounds, that Egypt cannot continue as it is.
Absolute power
Meanwhile Sisi’s alter ego in Libya, General Khalifa Haftar, is continuing his military offensive on Tripoli which has so far killed 121 and wounded 561 in his bid for absolute power.
A picture of the self-appointed field marshal meeting the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on 5 April, just before the offensive began, said it all.
The more important man of the two was placed in a side chair, somewhat lower than the one Haftar himself was sitting in. On the wall behind Haftar hung a huge gold crest. This is how Haftar delusionally sees himself governing Libya. He owns it. He runs it. It’s his.
The only green light that mattered to him - before he broke the talks with Fayez al-Sarraj, the head of the Libyan Presidential Council, and launched his unprovoked attack on Tripoli - was the one he got from the Saudis.
This is the breed of military dictator that Libyans rebelled against when they got rid of Muammar Gaddafi.
As Jamal Mahmoud, one resident of Tripoli’s Airport Road area, told MEE: "Libya will not become the next Egypt … We’ve already lost so much. So many of our youth gave their lives to get rid of a tyrannical leader, and their lives were not lost just for another dictator to take Gaddafi's place."
Secretary General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres meets with Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar in Benghazi on 5 April (Reuters)
The international community - if such a phrase has any meaning - is split about Haftar. French special forces helped him clear Benghazi of a variety of Islamist groups.
The French oil giant Total is waiting eagerly in the wings for Haftar to secure Tripoli. Italy is backing Tripoli - for now.
If he succeeds, Haftar can only provide one thing - a return to the days Libyans, from all coastal cities, did everything in their power to overthrow.
Seeing is believing
None of this means that the outcomes in Sudan and Algeria are foregone conclusions. A second wave of the Arab Spring has to be seen to be believed. Many obstacles lie in its path.
The Sudanese street has to realise that no party, faction or current, secular or Islamist, can be excluded from the transition process. Whether this lesson has been learned by the Freedom and Change Coalition in Sudan, who are currently calling for a transitional civilian government, which would rule without elections for four years, is open to doubt.
One of the leaders of the opposition parties and the Sudanese Professional Association (SPA) trade union is a 77-year-old communist, Mohammad Mokhtar Alkhatib. The other is Ali Alsanhouri, who is leader of the Baath Party, still loyal to Saddam Hussein. Each have a fair amount of history and baggage of their own.
Dictators have no ideology, other than their own self preservation. Saddam Hussein and Bashar al-Assad were Baathist. Bashir was an Islamist and created many splits in the movement.
Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, describes himself as the bearer of something called "moderate Islam". Sisi has proved to be the cruellest of Egypt’s leaders, outclassing Hosni Mubarak’s autocracy, in the name of "stability".
These labels are meaningless if the result is brutal autocracy. It is only reconciliation and inclusion of all currents in the new political process that will ensure it is not hijacked by the ever watchful generals.
All eyes on Egypt
If it succeeds, the new wave of the Arab Spring will only do so in Egypt. For all of Sudan’s and Algeria’s size and importance, Egypt is the litmus test of revolution in the Middle East.
Egypt is heading for one-man rule, unless this constitutional calamity is stopped
One third of the budget is committed to paying the interest of this debt. Dictators can kill, but they appear incapable of ruling. The modern Arab states - those that are not torn apart by civil war - are in a perpetual state of crisis precisely because their rulers can not contain the forces their misrule has unleashed.
By every parameter Egypt today is more vulnerable to popular unrest than it was in 2011. It was in Egypt that the first wave of the Arab Spring was crushed. So too will it be in Egypt that the dictatorship which followed will die also.
Once that happens the writing will be on the wall for everyone else in the Arab world that seeks to deny its population basic human rights.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Christina Ali is a 25-year-old nursing student at the University of South Florida and, for the last 7 years, has been a loyal Democrat. She voted for Hiliary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election and has always voted blue for every prior election since she turned 18 years old.
But it is now in 2019 that as a young black Muslim woman, Ali is left feeling deeply frustrated and disappointed with her party — primarily due to how the Democrats have treated Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) ever since she was sworn in earlier this year.
Muslim voters like Ali are closely evaluating where each of the 2020 Democratic candidates have positioned themselves in relation to the attacks on Omar — primarily taking into account which politicians defended her and which ones engaged in the same Islamophobic rhetoric. When the election rolls around, they plan on taking action at the polls, many told HuffPost.
They say the attacks on Omar are perceived as an attack on the entire Muslim community. The lack of support for the congresswoman is also perceived as weak support for the overall Muslim-American community.
“I don’t see how Democrats can go into these communities of color and ask for our votes and say they are going to defend us and protect us when they’re not defending their own,” Ali said.
The Muslim vote is not insignificant. In New York alone, nearly 400,000 Muslims came out to vote in 2016. In Michigan, nearly another 120,000 Muslims voted.
If you attack our Muslim sisters and brothers, you are attacking the entire community. We don’t vote blindly.Nada Al-Hanooti, executive director of Emgage’s Michigan chapter
Nada Al-Hanooti is executive director of Emgage’s Michigan chapter, a nonpartisan organization that focuses on advocating and mobilizing Muslim voters. Al-Hanooti said for years Democrats took advantage of the Muslim vote and rarely engaged with them in a way that was authentic and deliberate. More than 66% of American Muslims identify with the Democratic party, compared to only 13% of Muslims who identify as Republicans. However both groups were critical of the way each of their respective parties treated their communities.
“Muslims are definitely taking notice of our allies,” Al-Hanooti told HuffPost. “If you attack our Muslim sisters and brothers, you are attacking the entire community. We don’t vote blindly.”
When asked about which 2020 candidate responded best to the attack’s Omar, both Ali and Al-Hanooti agreed upon Bernie Sanders. The Vermont senator was the first among the 2020 candidates to respond, just hours after Trump’s inflammatory tweet.
“Ilhan Omar is a leader with strength and courage. She won’t back down to Trump’s racism and hate, and neither will we. The disgusting and dangerous attacks against her must end,” he tweeted.
Raihan Faroqui is a resident physician based in West Nyack, New York, and a registered Democrat. Like Ali and Al-Hanooti, the 31-year-old Muslim American felt that Sanders was not only swift and strong in his response, but he had the the track record to back him up.
“I’ve always been team Bernie. So his tweet and Elizabeth Warren’s tweet was great because I know they have a history of calling out Islamophobia and a history of calling out anti-Muslim bigotry,” Faroqui told HuffPost.
Although Faroqui was happy to see the other 2020 Democrats follow their lead, he believers the other Democrats may not be authentic in their outrage against Omar. He worries those candidates only jumped on the bandwagon for the sake of their reputation.
“I’m extremely cleared on things like that. One tweet is not going to sway me,” he said.
During the 2016 Democratic primary, Bernie Sanders defeated Hillary Clinton in the fight for Michigan — largely thanks to the local Muslim community. (However, during the presidential elections, Trump won the state with 47.50% of the total votes compared to Hillary Clinton’s close 47.27%.)
Subscribe to the Politics email.
How will Trump's administration impact you?
Those numbers reflect a new reality. Young people are frustrated with their options, all of which is indicative of the freshman class of representatives beyond Omar such as her counterparts Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). Ali, however, doesn’t have much hope in the current leadership to support the new class and lead the country into the 2020 election.
“It makes it very clear which Democrats are open and willing to stand up for justice and and which Democrats are not,” Ali said.
Mohammed Khan, a campaign director at MPower Change, one of the largest Muslim digital advocacy organizations in the U.S. with a membership over a quarter million, aims to engage and mobilize Muslims on civic engagement issues.
Khan said the Muslim-American community learned a difficult lesson during the 2016 election when Trump was elected. Prior to that, due to the fact a large number of Muslims were not as civically engaged with their representatives, Muslim voter turnout was low.
In the wake of Trump’s presidency, anti-Muslim rhetoric and hate crimes have been on the rise. Muslims have been forced into action, Khan said. This was most apparent at the midterm elections in November, which was dubbed the Muslim blue wave. Nearly 100 Muslim candidates ran for office; in 2016 only a dozen ran.
Khan predicts that the attacks against Omar will have a similar effect going into 2020.
“There’s a lot more organizing and a lot more coordination nationally,” said Khan.
Nabintou Doumbia was one of those Muslims who became politically active after the 2016 election. The 22-year-old Detroit native with plans to enroll in law school is particularly dismayed by the Democrats’ reluctancy to call out anti-Muslim bigotry. She pointed to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s tweet as a clear-cut example of Democrats tip-toeing around Islamophobia.
“I’m really thinking about accountability this time around,” Doumbia explained when asked how the latest events have swayed her opinion about the 2020 candidates. Doumbia, who voted Democrat in 2018, will be looking for a candidate who will not only call out Islamophobia forcefully, but who will not shy away from topics like racism, two issues which have been at the center of Omar’s attacks.
When Sen. Gillibrand tweeted the morning after Trump’s attack on Omar, her response was widely criticized as political jargon.
“As a Senator who represents 9/11 victims, I can’t accept any minimizing of that pain. But Trump’s dangerous rhetoric against @IlhanMN is disgusting. It’s a false choice to suggest we can’t fight terrorism and reject Islamophobic hate at once— a president should do both,” she tweeted.
New York resident Saema Khandakar was dismayed. The 37-year-oldpediatrician was rooting for Gillibrand for the 2020 Democratic nomination. As a woman in medicine, Khandakar liked Gillibrand’s policies on health care and women’s issues.
But Gillibrand’s response to the attacks on Omar has curbed her enthusiasm.
“I was really excited for her candidacy and for her presidency,” Khandakar told HuffPost. “But her response was very tepid and I was very disappointed. It definitely turned me away.”
Like the many Democratic Muslims before her, Khandakar evaluated the lack of support for Omar as a lack of support for the overall Muslim community.
“What is happening right now now with Ilhan Omar and how they respond is just a gauge as to how they are going to respond in the future to Islamophobic attacks and Islamophobia in general in the Muslim community,” she said.
Khandakar is now setting her eyes on Sanders and Warren for their swift and strong response against the Islamophobic attack against Omar. Her excitement for Gillibrand is now just “lukewarm,” she said.
Whether it’s Khandakar in New York or Ali in Florida, Muslims are crossing off names on their 2020 Democractic list — starting with those who didn’t openly support Omar.
“Ilhan Omar is not just a congressperson. She is representative of a large population who feel unheard in his country,” said Ali. “We’re watching, we’re listening and we will be responding at the polls.”
