The president’s disastrous week could unleash terrifying forces in our country. The Senate should finish the job before that happens.
It feels like the floodgates of Trump’s demise have finally opened — this mass resignation letter from his committee on Arts and Humanities (note the eloquent easter egg), these corporate rebukes from the leaders of Merck, Campbell’s, Walmart, Intel, and many others, these breaks with party solidarity from Republicans (including from the Terminator and Mitt Romney), these statements condemning the president from all “his” top generals. The firing of Steve Bannon, Fox News capo James Murdoch breaking with his father and donating $1mm in protest, four covers of major magazines portraying Trump as either a member of the KKK or a Nazi…take your pick.
Is this national nightmare about to end?
Possibly, but I don’t think it will end well. Certainly this past week has been the worst of what has been a terrible presidency. Certainly it can get no worse. Certainly the president knows it. And certainly he will do the only right thing to do: He will resign.
But that won’t happen. And furthermore, what we know of Trump, when cornered, is that he will lash out, that he will dig in, and therefore things can and will get worse. And that’s not something our country can tolerate. Since we’re already down this path, perhaps the only sane thing to do is to lobby Republican Senators — we only need six, according to this analysis — to do what they know in their heart they must do: Push forward articles of impeachment, and rid our country of this disaster in a legal and timely fashion. It’s time.
Who Gets to Say What: Do We Want a Court To Decide?
Technology companies now stand at the center of our country’s intractable culture wars, first with the Google diversity memo imbroglio, and now with the difficult debate around whether technology platforms should refuse service to violent, hate-spewing terrorists like the Daily Stormer. CloudFlare, Google, and GoDaddy have decided to bar the site from using their services, but online rights watchdog EFF, no defender of Nazi philosophy, begs to differ.
Private companies have the right to ban speech on their platforms as they see fit, until, of course, the government gets involved, and in this case, it’s likely the government will get involved via the courts. And it’s also likely, given the resources available to companies like Google, that this one will be appealed all the way to the highest court in our land. But we should perhaps ask ourselves: Do we really want our current Supreme Court to decide the issue?
Short Takes For Weekend Cocktailing
Uber’s chaos widens: Kalanick fires back at Benchmark, and the startup world starts to wonder if perhaps “founder as king” isn’t the best strategy.
Walmart ain’t dead yet: Amazon is now everyone’s favorite Wall St. bogeyman, but thanks to Jet.com, Walmart continues to fight back.
“Cyber” gets a promotion: Trump’s a bit distracted, but today he did elevate the military’s cyber command to the same level as its other main offensive command centers.