Balderdash Express: The Anti-Weaponization Guy Weaponizes Everything in Sight

There simply is no balderdash that Donald Trump hasn't elevated to an art form, a point so obvious by now that it's ceased to register. Lately, the Balderdash-O-Meter seems to crash hourly, as the president who claimed with a straight face to be running against a "weaponized" Biden administration devotes himself full throttle to weaponizing executive power against his opponents, writing a dark proto-fascist chapter of American history unlike anything we've ever experienced.

Trump's campaign tirades about being the supposed victim of a Biden administration witch hunt were BS-infused, but Americans prepared to follow him anywhere loved them. If anything, Biden's Attorney General, Merrick Garland, treated Trump timorously, consuming almost three years before even appointing an independent counsel to conduct an investigation into boatloads of evidence that Trump had committed a raft of federal crimes.

While decrying the weaponization of executive power on the campaign trail, of course, Trump was simultaneously promising it. "I am your retribution," he pledged to crowds, who howled their approval.

Here, believe it or not, was the executive order that the Prince of Projection issued on his first day in office, entitled "Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government." "The American people have witnessed the previous administration engage in a systematic campaign against its perceived political opponents, weaponizing ... Federal law enforcement agencies ... against those perceived political opponents," it began. "These actions appear oriented more toward inflicting political pain than toward pursuing actual justice or legitimate governmental objectives. Many of these activities appear to be inconsistent with the Constitution and/or the laws of the United States."

You read that right.

And, yes, it would qualify as a joke if it weren't so unfunny.

Apart from the schizophrenic imposing of tariffs, then the withdrawal of them, then their re-imposition, then narrowing them and then expanding them to include tariffs on countries inhabited principally by penguins, the first 90 days of Trump 2.0 will be remembered for the very weaponization of the federal government against his opponents that he professed to denounce. Hypocrisy is the least of what makes Trump such a danger, but even so, the brazenness of the hypocrisy is impressive.

There've been the flood of executive orders targeting law firms whose lawyers have crossed Our Strongman, barring them from federal buildings and subjecting their clients to nuclear financial consequences for using their legal services. These have included Perkins Coie, which represented Hillary Clinton, Paul Weiss, with deep ties to the Democratic Party, Jenner and Block, which had hired former Robert Mueller aide and Trump critic Andrew Weissmann, and Covington and Burling, which had provided pro bono services to former Special Counsel Jack Smith.

Coincidences all.

Last week Trump issued an executive order against Susman Godfrey, the law firm that has successfully brought defamation lawsuits against those nearest and dearest to the president for regurgitating his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. It represented Dominion Voting Systems in obtaining a whopping $787.5 million settlement from Fox News, and it represents Dominion against Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, the disgraced lawyers who dutifully repeated Trump's dishonest hooey. Indeed, Trump's executive order against Susman Godfrey came shortly after it won a decision in the case Dominion has brought against Newsmax -- whose programming makes Fox look like Walter Cronkite -- for defamation based on the very same hooey.

It ain't just lawyers.

Trump's Justice Department has fired or demoted lawyers and FBI agents who had the nerve to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol. He's terminated the security detail for former government officials who have parted ways with him, like former National Security Adviser John Bolton, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. His Federal Communications Commission has opened investigations into CBS and ABC for their coverage of him, which he has pronounced "illegal."

And that's just for starters.

In her prescient 2018 book "Fascism: A Warning," the late Madeleine Albright noted that George Orwell had suggested that if you want a one-word synonym for "fascist," the best one is "bully." We've never thought of ourselves as a country that countenanced bullies. Sad to think that we appear to be a country that's embraced one.

Jeff Robbins' latest book, "Notes From the Brink: A Collection of Columns about Policy at Home and Abroad," is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books and Google Play. Robbins, a former assistant United States attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment, he is a longtime columnist for the Boston Herald, writing on politics, national security, human rights and the Mideast.