Editorial: Is Bernie Sanders Trump’s Alter-Ego?

In recent weeks, many Americans have posited that Bernie Sanders is the liberal alter ego of Donald Trump. Both are loud and irascible, and both talk of big (some would say “grandiose”) ideas. They both have cult-like followers, and they are both Washington outsiders. Different, yet alike.

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank writes, …”Their styles are similar: shouting and unsmiling, anti-establishment and anti-media, absolutely convinced of their own correctness, attacking boogeymen (the “1 percent” and CEOs in Sanders’s case, instead of immigrants and minorities), offering impractical promises with vague details, lacking nuance and nostalgic for the past.”

Sanders, who calls himself a Democratic Socialist, is the political opposite of Donald Trump, who has hitched his wagon to an ultraconservative evangelical base. Yet, for their respective supporters, each holds the promise of a similar type of revolution; one that will “explode the status quo.”

Trump brags of leading “a movement the likes of which the world has never seen.”

Sanders talks of a revolution that will result from “the most unprecedented campaign in the modern history of this country.”

And though each man’s base interprets “hope” differently, both men have a message that appeals to the hope of a similar mindset, at least on the surface: Blue collar workers, mostly white, who are disillusioned, tired of falling through the cracks, and weary of a system they think is rigged against them. Their base supporters see these figures, older white men though they are, as outsiders who have their backs, and who came to challenge the system and set it right. (“Help me, Obi-wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.”)

Both have bases that include extremist supporters who are loud, often abrasive, fanatical, and unconditionally loyal to their respective movements in similar ways. Black-and-white absolutes define and categorize the world into good people and bad people; smart people and stupid people. Villains and victims.

“…Sanders is a populist of the left as surely as Trump is a populist of the right, with a familiar distaste for compromise and a comparable appeal to Americans outraged or disgusted by politics as usual and by the usual politicians,” writes Frank Bruni of the New York Times.

Sanders offers hope in “Medicare for All” while Trump ridicules the idea, signing legislation that gives financial protections to the multi-million-dollar commercial health insurance industry. Where Sanders warns about climate change, Trump has rolled back environment-friendly legislation. Sanders refuses to take funding from Wall Street billionaires as Trump cozies up to them. Sanders wants stricter gun control laws, and Trump promises, “unlike the Democrats, we’ll never take your guns away!”

To say that Sanders and Trump are just opposite sides of the same coin, though, is to not consider a key difference between the two. Our president has bluffed and cheated his way through his presidency, and through his life, making up impressive statistics about his accomplishments, putting himself above the law (and tweeting about it), petulantly supporting corrupt practices and people (such as his recent grants of clemency to 11 of his friends and associates who were all convicted of federal crimes), and practicing corruption himself (for which he was recently impeached).

For all of his bravado and bluster, Bernie Sanders, unlike Trump, is not a cheating businessman, a vindictive employer, a briber of porn actresses, or a sycophant of Putin. And for all of his pie-in-the sky ideas, Bernie Sanders, unlike “alter-ego” Trump, talks about his vision in terms of “you” and “we” and “us,” while alter-ego Trump seeks to magnify only “I” and “me.”

Can Bernie Sanders Defeat Trump? Jacobin’s Bhaskar Sunkara & The Atlantic’s David Frum Debate | Democracy Now! [2020-02-04]

BERNIE SANDERS to Trump: ‘You are a liar, you are a fraud’ | The Hill
[2020-02-18]

Impeachment Trial Begins, Lev Parnas Surfaces with New Damning Evidence

With 290 days until the 2020 U.S. presidential election, the impeachment of President Donald Trump dominates the news. On Wednesday, January 15, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi signed the two articles of impeachment against Trump, who is charged with abuse of presidential power, and obstruction of Congress.

Prior to signing the articles, Pelosi announced the names of the seven impeachment managers she has chosen to present the case for impeachment to the Senate. They are House Representatives Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), Val Demings (D-Fla.), Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Jason Crow (D-Colo.), and Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas). After the signing of the articles, Pelosi and the impeachment managers walked across the Capitol to the Senate chamber to deliver the articles, per protocol.

The articles charge that Trump abused his power by withholding already-approved military aid to Ukraine, as well as the promise of a White House meeting with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy in order to pressure Zelenskiy to announce an investigation of Democratic primary candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who held a high-paying job as consultant to Burisma, Ukraine’s largest energy provider. The articles further charge that Trump obstructed Congress by blocking key evidence and testimony.

The Senate formally accepted the articles on Thursday. On Thursday afternoon, Chief Justice John Roberts, who will preside over the trial in the Senate, administered the jurors’ oath to all 100 senators, to swear to deliver “impartial justice.” It should be noted, however, that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already openly promised not to be impartial.

“This is an example of all of the president’s henchmen,” Pelosi reflected, “and I hope that the senators do not become part of the president’s henchmen.”

The actual trial is expected to begin on Tuesday, January 21.

Meanwhile, The Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan agency that reports to Congress, has determined this week that Trump’s hold on the military aid to Ukraine was a violation of federal law governing how the White House may disburse funds approved by Congress.

“Faithful execution of the law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law,” the decision states. “OMB withheld funds for a policy reason, which is not permitted under the Impoundment Control Act.”

Though impeachment does not require violation of a federal law, this development will no doubt be significant as the impeachment trial plays out. Republicans are already trying to point out that the GAO is pointing the finger at the OMB (Office of Management and Budget), not at the president. It was the president, however, who ordered that the military funds be put on hold.

And as impeachment trial preparations were brewing this week, additional evidence was unearthed, appearing to confirm the nature of Trump’s motivation in his plan to have the Bidens investigated.

Trump maintains that he was simply motivated by his concern about corruption in Ukraine for the sake of “the American people.” Strong evidence indicates, however, that Trump was motivated purely by personal gain — uncovering dirt on the Bidens, or, at the very least, stirring up controversy and casting doubt on Joe Biden’s integrity as he runs for president.

Lev Parnas, a former associate of Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has provided documents and granted interviews containing information that indicate that Donald Trump was directly involved in the Ukraine pressure campaign, and that his motivation was for personal gain, not for the good of the U.S. Further, Trump’s intent was to investigate the Bidens, not to investigate general corruption in Ukraine.

James Hohmann of the Washington Post writes, “Evidence of the president’s hands-on role bolsters the Democratic case that Trump himself abused his power, not outside advisers who were pursuing personal interests in the president’s name.”

Included in Parnas’ documents was a message thread from March 2019 between Parnas and Robert Hyde, a current Republican candidate for Congress in Connecticut. The subject of the messages was former ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, who was recalled from her post by the Trump administration in May 2019. In his interviews with the media this week, Lev Parnas confirmed that Yovanovitch was seen as an obstacle to Trump’s plan for investigation of the Bidens.
The messages suggest Hyde and others may have been following the diplomat in Kiev. “They are moving her tomorrow,” Hyde wrote to Parnas. “The guys over there asked me what I would like to do and what is in it for them.”

He then noted that Yovanovitch turned off her phone and computer.

“They are willing to help if we/you would like a price,” Hyde said. “Guess you can do anything in the Ukraine with money … what I was told.”

“Lol,” Parnas responded, indicating “laugh out loud.”.

Several days later, Hyde wrote: “It’s confirmed we have a person inside.”

Though the U.S. State Department continues to remain silent about the exchanges and the possibility of unauthorized surveillance of Yovanovitch by associates of Trump, Ukraine has announced that it will launch an investigation.

“Ukraine’s position is not to interfere in the domestic affairs of the United States of America,” Ukraine’s Interior Ministry stated. “Ukraine cannot ignore such illegal activities on the territory of its own state.”

Parnas has since said that he didn’t take the exchange seriously. Hyde, too, dismissed it as a joke.

Though some of Parnas’ new information still needs to be corroborated, other portions of it support the existing evidence against Trump and his associates. It’s yet to be determined whether, or if, this new evidence will be used in the Senate impeachment trial.

On the other side of the world, Russia’s entire cabinet resigned on Wednesday. Russian president Vladimir Putin had, earlier on Wednesday, announced that he would be pushing through reforms to the constitution. The changes would redistribute power so that parliament and the prime minister would have more power, but Putin’s successor as president would be considerably weakened. Putin, whose term as president ends in 2024, could then take on a new role and continue to be a powerful figure in the Russian government. (Speaking of abuse of power…)

Putin simply thanked his former government and said that “not everything worked out.”

Given what our president has successfully been able to get away with, given his statement, “Then I have an Article 2 (of the U.S. Constitution), where I have the right to do whatever I want as president,” and given that our current GOP largely disregards the checks and balances system of our three-branch government, we can only hope that Election 2020 eliminates the possibility of something similar happening in the U.S.

Impeachment process moves ahead amid new revelations from Lev Parnas | CBS News [2020-01-16]

Trump reacts to photograph of him with Lev Parnas: “I take thousands of pictures” | Global News [2020-01-16]