The Biden Stories Are Just A Distraction From The Disastrous Trump Regime

The following is part of an excellent post by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich:

 The Biden news that’s been dominating headlines, exciting columnists, lighting up social media, and grinding up endless podcast hours has been something else: a so-called “cover-up” of the extent of Biden’s declining cognition before he resigned. . . .

Can we get back to reality? If one of our major parties is to rot in political hell for harboring “people who knew and said nothing,” it’s the party that now controls Congress.

Congressional Republicans know Trump has usurped the powers of Congress, is using the Justice Department to prosecute his enemies, is abducting people off the street and sending them to a brutal prison in El Salvador, and is actively dismantling American democracy — and yet they say nothing. 

The so-called “Biden cover-up” is as much a distraction from all of this as are Trump’s stream of distractions (calling DEI an “illegal and immoral discrimination program” and jurists “communist radical-left judges,” saying we’ll invade Greenland, annex Canada, remake Gaza into a Mediterranean resort). 

If you want a cover-ups, can you possibly find a bigger one than Trump’s entire regime? Every day, it seems, we learn of another effort to cover up facts to fit Trump’s wishes. 

It was reported over the weekend that the chief of staff of Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, ordered a senior career analyst to change his finding that no evidence linked Venezuela’s government to the Tren de Aragua gang operating in the United States.

Why the attempted cover-up? Because the presumed link has been Trump’s entire justification for using the wartime Alien Enemies Act to abduct immigrants without due process and send them to the El Salvador prison.

The regime continues to insist that Ábrego García is a gang member because he has “MS13” tattooed on his fingers. In fact, he doesn’t. That’s a cover-up, too. The photo released by the regime showing his hand with the “M,” “S,” “1” and “3” was photoshopped; earlier photos don’t show the tattoo.

Why the hell are we wasting time and energy debating who knew what and when about Biden’s deteriorating condition anyway, when voters really need to hear about the deteriorating condition of democracy and the rule of law under Trump?

 

Trump has always done better with so-called “low information” voters. But his second-term tactic of “flooding the zone” with all sorts of detritus is causing even average voters to lose track of major stories.

In a recent poll from the New York Times and Siena College, respondents who had not heard about his regime’s mistaken deportation of Ábrego García to a Salvadoran mega-prison — a significant percentage — gave Trump nearly a 10-point higher approval rating on immigration than respondents who had heard. 

And what about Trump’s deteriorating cognition, and the failure of anyone in the Trump White House to talk about this? . . .

Why isn’t Trump’s cognitive decline — and the failure of White House aides to talk about it — a far more significant cover-up story than the alleged failure of Biden’s aides?

Why look back to Biden at all when there’s so much that needs to be seen right now — so much that’s so devastatingly, frighteningly dangerous to all of us? When the fate of American democracy is hanging by such a thin thread?