Maybe You’d Tolerate This BS If You Could Afford Your Groceries
Endless Urgency is always free to read, but this community only grows because people choose to invest in it. Every subscription helps us reach further, build something lasting, and keep these urgent conversations alive. We’d love to have you with us. Just $8/month makes a huge difference:
Trump’s White House has been forced to delay the nomination vote for Todd Blanche. And I think I’m supposed to stand up and applaud the Republicans who are suddenly discovering their conscience — the ones now saying it’s not okay to make this man attorney general.
I won’t.
There is no universe where the President of the United States installing his personal defense attorney as the nation’s top law enforcement officer — in the middle of a cascading series of corruption crises — is acceptable. Not for a Democrat. Not for a Republican. Not for anyone. It’s absurd on its face.
Remember who Todd Blanche is. On behalf of this president, he has worked to make sure the American people never learn the truth about what Trump and his friends did inside the Epstein files. He has attacked and re-victimized the survivors — people who found the courage to speak out and got smeared for it. He tried to turn January 6th insurrectionists into millionaires through an insane “anti-weaponization” fund, one of the most brazenly corrupt things I have ever watched happen in real time. And he has helped the president and an entire class of grifters walk away from crimes committed at the expense of your dignity and mine.
And I’m supposed to praise John Cornyn for saying no to that man — at this particular moment? Please. Cornyn could fold by dinner. How many times have we watched these Republican senators talk tough, drag out a vote, squeeze a little deal for themselves, tuck something into their back pocket, and then fall right in line behind whatever Donald Trump wants?
I’m not praising Thom Tillis either. Tillis found his backbone on the way out the door. He could have stood up to Trump this entire time. He could have led his party somewhere better. Instead he handed Trump almost everything he asked for — right up until the loyalty stopped being convenient, and the world’s whiniest crybaby behind the Resolute Desk stopped being worth the trouble.
And I’m certainly not crediting Mitch McConnell, who can’t even show up to work. That’s a big part of why they’re short the votes right now — they’re down a man. They should be worried about the guy who hasn’t been to the office in six weeks and who half of Washington quietly assumes is already gone.
I keep coming back to one word: gravity. The complete and total absence of gravity in Washington, D.C. There is no accountability for anything anymore. Nothing captures it better than a knowingly corrupt president who believes it is his right to make his personal lawyer the attorney general — because he knows, deep down, that his own party will never stand up to him.
Look at the circus yesterday. Rand Paul dragging Dr. Fauci through the mud, releasing his journal entries, trying to bait him into a perjury trap so he can throw the man in prison — because he didn’t like how the pandemic was handled. They have concocted an entire conspiracy universe around it. They have unlimited energy for that.
But the blatant abuse of the DOJ? Nothing. The corruption? Nothing. The illegal war in Iran that’s gutting the global economy? Nothing. The fact that the average American now says they can’t afford to pay their bills? Nothing. On the fundamental issues that actually touch people’s lives, they will not lift a finger against this president — because they are scared.
Endless Urgency is free to read—thanks to our paid subscribers. If this work has been useful to you, please help keep it available to everyone by becoming a paid subscriber. Just $8/month makes a huge difference:
John Cornyn did everything Donald Trump ever asked of him, and he lost his job anyway. Now he’s a card-carrying member of the YOLO caucus, and I’m supposed to look at him and say, how brave. No. Fuck that. They have had opportunity after opportunity. Trump has shown us exactly who he is and exactly what he’ll do, and they have cleared the runway for him every step of the way. They lack vision. They lack backbone. They lack any capacity to stand up for what’s right — and don’t tell me they don’t know what’s right, because they suddenly rediscover it the moment they stop caring about reelection. Usually right after they’ve lost their primary.
The only one in the whole bunch with any actual guts is Thomas Massie — and they spent a record fortune trying to primary him out of existence. I cannot believe this moment has me praising Thomas Massie, a man I consider a lunatic in his own right. But that is the point, isn’t it?
Every decision in Washington right now runs through one filter: how do I get mine? How do I set up my next job? How do I get invited to the next cocktail party? How do I keep my donors happy? How do I make sure I’ve got enough stashed away to retire? None of it is about you. Nobody in this administration is sitting down and putting you — your bills, your family, your future — at the center of what this government does. That is the whole rotten problem. And they know they’ll never be held accountable for it.
Trump will never be on a ballot again. The midterms are shaping up to be a disaster for them — you can see it in today’s Fox News poll, of all things, showing Democrats on the verge of taking back the Senate. But he will never take responsibility for any of it. And how many of these members have quietly redrawn their own districts back home so they never have to face the voters at all? They know Trump’s DOJ won’t touch them, as long as they stay in line. They’ll keep pointing it at Democrats instead — at you, at me, at anyone who dares to speak up.
Maybe Americans would even tolerate corruption this naked if they could afford their groceries. But they can’t. And that’s the opening. That’s the whole opportunity — to realign all of it. To show people we will actually fight for them. That we’ll be bold, take real risks, and rebuild this country so this garbage never happens again — and so government can be a genuine force for good in their lives.
Because every one of these Republicans screaming that government can’t do a thing to help you uses that same government to help themselves. It’s a personal piggy bank. For Trump, it’s a way to install his own lawyer so he’s never held to account for his ties to the most famous pedophile in the world. For the rest of them, it’s a favor factory for the donors whose money finds its way back into their pockets — so they never have to face most voters, never have to go get a real job, never have to work with their hands. They get addicted to the power. That’s why they stay too long. That’s how you end up with members of Congress dropping dead in office, and Mitch McConnell off in Neverland doing God knows what.
So stay angry, my friends — and turn that anger into action. Because every time I check the news, I want to hurl my phone across the room. Don’t let them make you numb to it. That numbness is the whole plan.
—Mike Nellis
“Because every one of these Republicans screaming that government can’t do a thing to help you uses that same government to help themselves.” Whoop, there it is!!
Brilliantly, eloquently spot on essay.