If you follow these things, you'll be aware of the latest violations from America so let's just sum them up. A common feature is that the President rewards his friends and attacks all who don't grovel before him. It really is as crude and simple as that. What's more, it all goes on in public. It used to be that the corrupt lied or evaded or blamed someone else. These days excess is Trumpetted.

When he was being impeached, reports leaking from inside the White House claimed that Trump was surprised and hurt by the charges brought against him, so it is possible that he does not know that people think it's wrong to lie and cheat. This interpretation predates the political period. Within the family business Trump has always been said to be a spoilt child who gets his own way as he can fire and bribe people.

The impeachment debate played out as farce. The Democrats laid out an impregnable case that Trump had extorted a foreign government and denied it military aid already approved by Congress (to defend the country from Trump's pal, Vladimir Putin) unless the President of Ukraine announced they were investigating for corruption the son of a Democratic rival (Joe Biden). They did not have to pursue the investigation. It was enough to damage the rival's reputation by saying there might be wrongdoing. No evidence was ever produced to justify the suspicion.

That was routine Trump and it should have surprised no-one. The shocking part is not what he did. Nothing but self-centred whines can be expected from the man. The issue is that his entire coterie of Republican puppets pretended nothing wrong had happened, or that, if it had, it was not serious, or that there was nothing unusual in bribery and extortion. In the Senate debate it seemed that no Republican ever addressed any fact. There was no charge and counter charge.

One gambit was to deny a crime had been committed, but who knows? It is judges and courts who decide what's a crime; politicians need to go for the "misdemeanour*" part of the charge. Of course, proceedings were "political. They were conducted by politicians. Uniquely for a trial no witnesses were allowed. That's because they would have confirmed Trump's guilt. * Impeachment is for "high crimes and misdemeanours". Ed.

The Man Who Would Be King

The politicians are worried that they will be tossed out at the next election if they defend the rule of law against a vindictive sociopath. For the bosses of federal agencies, whose only interest is to be there, the one need is to fall prostate before the would-be king. The Secretary of State, invited to defend his abused ambassadors, insulted and demeaned by Trump, remained silent. After the inevitable verdict of not guilty Trump fired the few federal employees who had given evidence which he did not like, and mused that he might be President for ever.

Shortly after this, Trump let it be known that one of his old cronies (Roger Stone), about to be sentenced to jail for several crimes, had been treated unfairly. Whereupon his Attorney General (AG), whose predecessors had never made public comment on trials, took his cue, agreeing that the sentence - as recommended under legal guidelines - would be too harsh. Soon, Trump was to demand a new trial for his co-conspirator, at which his AG would doubtless intervene and pick a toady judge to preside. But Roger Stone was convicted, forcing Trump to say that he would be "exonerated" because the judge and the jury had been biased. Has Trump ever found a judge who wasn't corrupt?

Does this matter? In NZ terms it would be as if a sitting Prime Minister had a friend convicted on multiple charges and got our AG to quash the sentence. It's never happened here or in other jurisdictions with the same conventions. It does happen though in places more attuned to Trumpian values, places like Saudi Arabia, Russia, Turkey, North Korea or China (for more on the latter, see my review of "We Have Been Harmonised", elsewhere in this issue).

Days later, in post-acquittal triumph, Trump pardoned or commuted sentences on a rogues' gallery of crooks, 11 of them, tax cheats, racketeers and fraudsters, all violators of trust. But these guys, Trump's Eleven, differed from the previously favoured in that they were not the President's staffers. A common factor is that they were well-publicised cases. Trump's emotional maturity peaked in childhood, and just as a small boy might worship super heroes or sports stars, Trump wanted to associate himself with the baddest, the most notorious, the ones who would be big names at Fox News. It's expected that, if he is re-elected, all of Trump's criminal partners will be similarly pardoned.

Budget: Cut Health, Boost Military

Meanwhile, drowned out by the flood of misadventures, the reaction continues. Almost unnoticed in the main media was Trump's Budget proposal, which featured a cut in health funding and a big increase in military spending. The former is a direct refutation of Trump's election promise; the latter is simply waste. The amount spent on weapons and bombs and all the accompanying hangers on is already hugely bloated. In brief: anything to do with a healthy and clean environment is being squeezed; anything to do with corporate power or fossil fuels is being boosted.

A very Trumpian gambit was to add six more countries to his banned list on the grounds that America needed educated immigrants who would fit in. Norwegians would do nicely. One of the excluded places, Nigeria, is only partly Muslim, so that won't be why it's incurred the President's anger. As immigrants to the US Nigerians are notably more qualified than most when it comes to education and skills.

They are almost twice as educated on average as the population as a whole. What's more, they speak English. So, the only possible explanation as to why they are to be excluded is that their skins are the wrong colour. Trump has left no room for doubt, having advised his country that Africans need to "go back to their huts" in their "shithole countries".

You'd think that there was no basis for an average sort of person to like the man, but, no, the country has taken sides, with two tribes unlikely to change their opinions of their President whatever he says or does. So, the impeachment trial and the evidence of corruption make no difference to Trump's prospects. If anything, the worse he gets, the better his chances, as his supporters like nothing more than their guy sticking it to the "system". Anyway, his supporters have no idea there is anything wrong. Apparently 90% of them receive no independent news, listening only to Trump himself, so successful has been his claim that the traditional media, with their "fake news", are liars.

No comparison should be made between 2020's trial and the last two impeachments. Richard Nixon's sin was to allow a 1970s' burglary of the Democrats in Washington and then to try to cover it up. It was literally a Beltway matter. Clinton's impeachment was about an 1990s' affair with an intern, an abuse of power to be sure, but not one that Congress could claim amounted to a "high crime or misdemeanour".

Well, they could, but not sincerely. It's noteworthy that Clinton's offence was not said to be his taking advantage of his power over an impressionable young woman: it was that he lied about having done so. In reality, Clinton was impeached because he was a Democrat, while Trump's abuses are way worse than Nixon's were.

Neither Nixon nor Clinton, nor any modern President, tried to subvert the Constitution. Trump does so openly, tweeting his outrages to an adoring mob. Only those prepared to give their loyalty to Donald, the man, will get the jobs. As long as the political balance remains in his favour, he has been given a free pass to do whatever he likes. Scum rises to the top.