Mark Meadows (photo below; bio here), a former GOP congressman from North Carolina, and Trump’s final White House chief of staff, should never hold any public office ever again.
Why? He egregiously abused power. He can’t be trusted.
CNN political reporter Chris Cillizza explains,
“In the final days of President Donald Trump’s time in office,” i.e. after he was defeated in the election and his presidency was winding down, “his chief of staff sent five emails to the acting attorney general designed to pressure the nation’s top cop to investigate a series of ridiculous claims of election fraud in the 2020 election — among them that Italy had deployed technology that somehow switched votes from Trump to Joe Biden.
“No, that sentence above isn’t parody although it reads like it. … That actually happened. In the United States of America. In 2021 (and in late 2020). Which is absolutely terrifying.”
Which, by the way, I agree with. The idea of a White House occupant ordering — or attempting to order — federal law enforcement to fabricate “election fraud” in order to overturn an election and deprive the American people of their Constitutional right to choose their government is on a par with a South American or African coup.
In writing this, Cillizza conceded that Trump commits so many outrages the public has grown numb to them. Or, as Cillizza puts it, “stories about Trump (and his top allies) pushing the bounds of acceptable conduct became so common in the last four years that we may have lost our ability to be shocked by, well, anything the former President and his backers do or did.”
We shouldn’t let ourselves get to that point. Shocking conduct should shock us — and prompt a response.
Remember when Republicans claimed to be “the party of personal responsibility”? Well, let’s give them an opportunity to be that party again, by holding them responsible for their conduct. In our country, the power of government belongs to us, and we entrust it to public officials to use for our benefit — not theirs. Most public servants understand this, and act accordingly. When someone doesn’t, they shouldn’t be trusted with government power again. A country that doesn’t trust people convicted of crimes to vote shouldn’t trust Mark Meadows to hold public office. Any office, whether elected, appointed, or as an employee. He’s demonstrably unsuitable for public service.
Read Cillizza’s column here.