While much of the media continues to pretend that the nation would enter a constitutional crisis if Donald Trump were to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the truth is the United States has been in a constitutional crisis since Trump’s election. A crisis in which conspiracy between domestic and foreign agents to alter the outcome of the election by using stolen information and planting false stories, has been compounded by obstruction of justice, the transformation of the Republican Party into a cult of personality, and a rapid decline of institutional power. Republicans, who have spent decades weakening the rules and traditions of the House and Senate, are working to tear down the last walls between those institutions and executive power, putting their personal support of Trump above all other considerations.
Both the Department of Justice and the FBI have been improbable bastions against Trump from the beginning. Not only are they directly under Trump’s command, with the DOJ operating under the first Senator to announce his support of Trump, there have been multiple demonstrations that the executive is willing to destroy the lives and careers of life-long public servants that don’t fall it line. It has taken extraordinary bravery for any agents or officers in either area to continue attempting as if the normal rules of law still applied. But Trump is making it clear that he intends to crush any remaining pockets of resistance and do to the FBI what he’s already done with ICE — turn it into an instrument of his capricious will.
Meanwhile, House Republicans have only stepped up their support of Trump and joined in the attempt to rip open the FBI by publicly exposing intelligence sources at risk to lives and the security of the nation. As more revelations of corruption and conspiracy appear, Republicans are closing ranks around Trump, not the constitution or institutions of the nation.
For all these reasons, the Fascism Watch moves two minutes closer to midnight. The United States is still in a constitutional crisis, but that crisis is now closer to be resolved in the form of an autocratic state.