Recently Mitch McConnell let it be known that he would not let a bill designed to protect the Mueller investigation get to the floor. In this I think he erred, and I’m not speaking from the perspective of a person who cares about the Constitution, but from the perspective of a right wing Republican who wants to destroy the middle class, the environment, Social Security, Medicare, public schools, etc. You know, the perspective of Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and the rest of the Republican Party.
If the genius had set out to choose the most unqualified people to fill his cabinet and other federal posts, he could not do better than what he has done. Let’s start with Robert Redfield, the nominee to head the Center for Disease Control:
>Redfield, a physician and a researcher in HIV/AIDS at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, was investigated in 1993 for allegedly misrepresenting data in a clinical trial as he worked to develop a potential AIDS vaccine. In an era when public health officials were desperate to find an effective treatment for the raging AIDS pandemic, Redfield, an Army officer and researcher at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Maryland, even announced positive results at the International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam in 1992, to great fanfare, according to Laurie Garrett, writing for Foreign Policy.
>The results were trumped up. A US Defense Department investigation concluded that Redfield’s “overstatement” was an error, and the military scrapped the program. “Either he was egregiously sloppy with data or it was fabricated,” Craig Hendrix, a former Air Force officer who was a whistle-blower in the vaccine inquiry, told NPR.
>More troubling, Redfield also helped instigate a compulsory program to test all military troops for the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS, without allowing for confidentiality. He was also associated with Americans for a Sound AIDS/HIV Policy (ASAP), an evangelical Christian group that backed mandatory testing and isolation for those who were infected.
via [The Boston Globe](http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2018/04/18/controversy-shadows-trump-pick-cdc-director/PEYTDOB8UhtZHwtZgzZtWL/story.html)
Not only are his appointees dedicated to serving the interests of the most despicable elements in our society, they are also totally corrupt as they do so. Add this to the well known examples of Scott Pruitt and Ben Carson (not to mention the genius himself):
>A broadband deployment advisory council created by the FCC to help shore up the nation’s broadband coverage gaps has been plagued by scandal, resignations, and accusations of telecom sector cronyism.
>When he first took office, Trump’s FCC boss Ajit Pai breathlessly and repeatedly claimed that one of his top priorities as agency head would be to shore up broadband availability gaps and close the digital divide.
>“I look forward to working with my fellow Commissioners on this aggressive agenda to connect Americans on the wrong side of the digital divide, to allow broadcasters to innovate and better serve viewers, and to reduce unnecessary regulations,” Pai said in a Medium post early last year.
>…
>Pai’s panel this week also made headlines when one of its former chairs was arrested for a scam that bilked investors out of $250 million. According to the Wall Street Journal, Elizabeth Ann Pierce, who served as CEO of Quintillion Networks, was charged with wire fraud after investigators discovered a fiber deployment scam built largely upon forged contracts.
>Pierce, who was charged with wire fraud and surrendered this week in New York to FBI agents, faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Pierce was was appointed by Pai last April to chair the committee, resigned from her role as Quintillion CEO last August , and stepped down from her chair position on the BDAC last September.
>”The Commission was fortunate to have an excellent and deep pool of applicants to serve on the BDAC,” Chairman Pai noted when he appointed Pierce last year. Apparently, that well wasn’t quite deep enough.
via [Motherboard](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/7xdqdx/ajit-pais-broadband-advisory-panel-plagued-by-corruption-accusations)
Then there’s the [CIA pick ](http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2018/04/17/trump-cia-pick-faces-rocky-confirmation-over-torture-role/fkwTGFXgfjjSUgQbjxutyI/story.html)who mocked a prisoner as he was tortured.
Everywhere you look there is self dealing, depravity, and corruption. It is pretty much impossible to name an appointee who is not dedicated to subverting the mission of the agency to which he or she has been named.
But the fact is these stories come and go, because Trump, and the Mueller investigation, are like shiny objects that distract the national press from what’s going on beneath the radar. If you really consider the nature and quality of Trump’s appointees, along with the fact that he has no interest in policy and no fixed principles of any sort, it’s hard to come to any other conclusion but that Michael Pence is the genius’s Dick Cheney. So long as Trump continues to distract, Pence and his ilk can continue to impose the Koch agenda, with a dash of fundamentalist imposition of religion on the rest of us. True, they may pay a price at the ballot box, but the damage will be done by that time, damage they may not have been able to do with a less distracting fellow in the White House. So, they have an interest in keeping Mueller in place, so we can all talk about Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels and Russia, while forgetting all about Scott Pruitt, Ben Carson, Robert Redfield, Betsy DeVos, and all the other appointees that are systematically destroying our country.
So Mitch, rethink your position. So long as Mueller sticks around, you can continue to destroy the country and rest assured that the national attention span will assure that no one really takes notice.
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