The impassioned discussion on Friday’s Washington Week with The Atlantic of course involved the Trump administration’s decision to indict former FBI director James Comey for lying to Congress.
Moderator Jeffrey Goldberg set the scene: "The indictment of former FBI Director James Comey represents an important Rubicon crossed. Never in modern history has the president used the tools of state power so blatantly to punish his foes. Tonight, what all of this means for the future of American democracy, next…."
Never?
After Hayes of the right-leaning Dispatch (the show's token conservative journalist) agreed with a cued-up clip of Trump’s former attorney Ty Cobb that Trump’s actions marked “a wholesale 180 from the norms of what made America different from third world dictatorships, authoritarian regimes and tyranny,” Hayes actually made the conservative point that this is nothing new historically and that Democratic administrations have previously abused the Justice Department. (NewsBusters would add that those Democratic administrations did so accompanied by either silence or approval from the corporate media.)
Host Jeffrey Goldberg's pitch to Hayes was the epitome of smug liberalism.
Jeffrey Goldberg: I need your expertise as a shrink here for a minute, not for me, by the way, but for constituency that you understand, the conservative voting constituency that you've covered for a long time. Why is there such acquiescence to the destruction of a not obscure norm? This is not -- we're not talking as a highly technical USDA rules that are changing slightly from administration to administration. We're talking about the defense of the idea that justice is blind and that the people who have the ability to change people's lives forever, their indictment, prosecution, conviction, and imprisonment, have no connection to the dispassion and impartiality that we've always held up to the rest of the world as a gift, as a symbol of our American advancement.
Always?
Hayes tapped the brakes on the liberal hysteria, bringing up the liberally sainted Kennedy administration, the IRS targeting the Tea Party under Obama, and the Democratic lawfare against Trump.
Stephen Hayes: Well, I said that the way that they talk about it is unprecedented. And I said it that way for a reason. I do think there is precedent for these kinds of political prosecutions and targeting of political opponents. Robert F. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy went after radio -- used the IRS and the FCC to go after the rising Radio Right, which is what historian Paul Matzko calls these people. It was sort of the precursor to talk radio. And they said in an Oval Office conversation, in effect, go get them. Use the government to go get them.
We saw during Barack Obama's administration, the IRS targeting conservative groups. You'd hear from a MAGA people that Joe Biden went after Donald Trump previously. I don't there are -- I'd say, supporting evidence is weak in that regard. But I would -- I think the prosecution in New York was a stretch, a lot of people who weren't --
Goldberg: The prosecution for Donald Trump, the one that led to the 34 convictions.
Hayes: That led to the 34. So, what you'll hear from MAGA voters is this is the way that Washington always works. You're so naive that you're so precious that you think this is new and different. This is the way that it always works, and it's about time that we're getting --
Goldberg: All right. What is your answer to them?
Hayes: It's not. It's not new and different. I mean, to a certain extent, you know, it's like the, you know, shock to find that they're gambling here. Of course, people use the levers of government to go after their political enemies for the reasons I just suggested. What I think makes this different is that he's so bold and aggressive and unapologetic about it. He's just announcing it in public….
NewsBusters’ Jeffrey Lord ran down some of the more recent historical details of Democratic lawfare and corruption.
