Thom Hartmann for Buzzflash: Because Bush Got Away With Torture, Trump Thinks He Can Get Away With Secret Police: It’s Got To Stop

July 20th 2020

President George W. Bush signs into law S. 3930, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (George W Bush White House Archives)

By Thom Hartmann

Axios is reporting that Donald Trump was inspired to create his secret police force, which he has now deployed to Portland, Oregon, because George W. Bush issued an executive order authorizing the military and CIA to illegally torture and kill innocent people and got away with it.

On Fox News in an interview with Chris Wallace, Trump said that the Supreme Court’s DACA decision had told him how he could do things like Bush did and get away with them. Basically, the Court said that when something is started by executive order, be it torture, secret police, or any other god-awful thing, it will last for the rest of the presidency, and can only be reversed by the next president.

So now Trump has issued an executive order to create a national secret police force fashioned after Germany’s SS, and to train civilians in the use of weapons and how to perform citizens arrests fashioned after Germany’s Brownshirts. Both programs are now fully implemented.

He has also issued executive orders to end virtually all environmental regulations and protections, to give billions of dollars to his cronies and buddies, and to create a broader infrastructure of fascism within the US government that may take a generation to dismantle.

These are crimes against democracy, and our republic will never again be safe until they are decisively reversed.

Jerry Ford pardoned Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter decided to “look forward, not back,“ so now we have Trump who figures he can get away with things.

George HW Bush, on the advice of his Attorney General Bill Barr, pardoned Casper Weinberger, Ollie North and several others so that he and Reagan could avoid prosecution for Iran Contra, so now we have Trump who figures he can get away with things.

Bill Clinton chose not to look into Iran Contra, Iraqgate, or any of the other crimes committed by the Reagan administration, and so now we have Trump who figures he can get away with things.

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney ignored the law and the Constitution and tortured and disappeared innocent civilians, and Barack Obama decided it wasn’t worth investigating, prosecuting or even passing legislation to prevent from happening again, so now we have Donald Trump who knows he can get away with these things and even step them up and use open violence against peacefully protesting Americans.

We now know what happens when three generations of Democratic presidents ignore the crimes and illegal executive orders of the Republicans who preceded them them.

It’s got to stop.

Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of The Hidden History of American Oligarchy and more than 30 other books in print. His most recent project is a science podcast called The Science Revolution. He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute.