There’s no guarantee that what happens in America, stays in America

HALIFAX—Living next to Russia requires watching very closely what happens in that country. As Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has found out, it can be a life-and-death proposition to misread Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intentions. It is no accident that both Sweden and Finland have joined NATO in the wake of Russia’s unprovoked and illegal invasion of Ukraine. Once upon a time, Canadians didn’t have to worry about such things. Our neighbour was our best friend. But living next to the United States in Trump times requires watching very closely what is happening south of the border. Will the U.S. be a liberal democracy after this November? If it isn’t, what will Canada be facing on the world's longest undefended border? A populist banana republic, an idiocracy, or something worse? The distemper in the American political system is worsening, and we ignore it at our peril. Dialogue is dead south of the border. It’s tribe over truth, rage over rationality, and partisanship over patriotism on almost every major issue. The national conversation is now a screaming match between mortal enemies. That is a far cry from the days when politics was how we mediated our differences with a semblance of civility. The proof of that sea-change is everywhere. Trump loyalist Steve Bannon recently gave a speech in which he told a cheering audience that the “vermin” would soon be removed from the White House, and that Biden would be put out like the “trash.” He then led the crowd in a “Trump won” chant, working on the theory if you just lie consistently, your mendacity will somehow become the truth. Another Trumper appeared on CNN disputing that next November is really an election at all. Instead, he said it was going to be the second American Revolution. What does that mean? Another Jan. 6, 2021, this time with guns, should Trump lose again? Donald Trump is the well-spring of the caustic extremism that has turned the United States into a bitter and divided nation. Consider what he and his enablers have in mind with their so-called Project 2025 plans. Those plans are based on a massive increase in executive branch powers, an expansion that would bring currently independent agencies under direct presidential control. Like the Federal Communications Commission, that sets the rules for television and internet companies. Or the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces antitrust and various other consumer protection measures. As reported by The New York Times, after stripping employment protections from federal civil servants, Trump plans to scrutinize intelligence agencies, the State Department, and the Department of Defence with a view to removing what he calls “the sick political class that hates our country.” As part of his commitment to suspending the U.S. Constitution, and terminating the “deep state,"Trump wants to neuter the justice system. He plans to do that by removing its independence as the guarantor of the rule of law. No guardrails for Trump, just the kind of licence he used to perpetrate frauds in New York for more than a decade—or so the courts have found. Throughout his bid for the GOP nomination, Trump has gone out of his way to trash the justice system. Facing four indictments and 91 felony counts, he has responded not with a defence, but with an attack on judges and prosecutors. The old O.J. thing: accuse your accusers. One judge who found him guilty of fraud observed that Trump had an almost “pathological” lack of remorse. The former president has insisted that the charges against him are politically motivated, aimed at keeping him from winning back the White House. Which has led to a frightening new reality. Several court officials dealing with Trump’s myriad trials have faced death threats. They have had to hire security personnel to protect themselves and their families. Special counsel for the U.S. Department of Justice Jack Smith spends a lot of time looking over his shoulder. And in Trump’s Georgia election interference case, one prominent lawyer turned down the job of lead prosecutor because of his fear of personal reprisals from the former president’s supporters. Trump’s attacks on the judiciary have been aped by one of his co-defendant’s in the Georgia election interference case. Mike Roman, who was charged with seven criminal counts, including racketeering and conspiracy to commit forgery, is trying to have Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis disqualified from the case. This is the same Mike Roman who made his reputation digging dirt on the opponents of his conservative clients. Roman’s lawyer is basing her attempt to force Willis off the case on a romantic relationship that existed between the DA and her deputy on the Trump case in Georgia, Nathan Wade. Some of the details of that relationship were obtained in court filings from Wade’s divorce. Roman’s lawyer contends that Willis has a conflict of interest because after hiring Wade in 2021, she went on trips with him, and therefore enjoyed a financial benefit. Presiding Judge Scott McAfee will now have to decide whether defence lawyer Ashleigh Merchant made the case to dump the DA. The stakes here are enormous. The case against Trump and his co-defendants in Georgia is as momentous as it gets in a democracy. The charge is no less than that Trump and his confederates tried to reverse the results of the presidential election in that state. Everyone has by now heard the tape-recording of Trump brazenly asking Georgia’s secretary of state to find him 11,780 votes. Enough to reverse the actual result. Enough to steal an election. But if McAfee finds that Willis must go because of a real or perceived conflict of interest, there are those who say the DA’s office could be disqualified along with her. More than that, the entire prosecution may have to be abandoned. That would not only be a tragedy in this particular case, but also a setback for the rule of law in America. It would support Trump’s big lie that the justice system is rigged and politically tainted. And that’s how a personal lapse of judgement in a romantic relationship on the part of a DA could make a coup attempt in a great democracy legally disappear. Talk about viewing the world through the wrong end of the telescope. So Canada must remain vigilant. And not just because of what is happening in the United States. There is no guarantee that it will stay in the in the U.S. Before people say it could never happen here, they should consider that some of the same influences now visible in the U.S. have already entered our politics. Canadian public officials have been subject to death threats because of public policy to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, just like American justice officials. David Parker, the leader of Take Back Alberta, made sleazy allegations against Pierre Poilievre, just as Trump did against his Republican primary rival Niki Haley and her husband. And the man at the centre of the Willis reality TV farce, Roman, has been a player in Canadian domestic politics. There have even been reports that he showed up at the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa. And no one on the Conservative side has ever explained why this uber Republican fixer and senior member of Stephen Harper’s International Democrat Union attended a closed-door meeting with then-Conservative leader Andrew Scheer and oil company executives at a luxury resort in the Alberta foothills. The subject that day was not energy policy, but political campaigns—a timely subject given that the meeting took place just six months before our 2019 federal election. Roman’s contribution to the talks about campaign strategy that day focused on digging up dirt on environmentalists. It's what he did for years for the Koch Brothers, the Republican National Committee, and Trump. You get the picture. There is no guarantee that what happens in America stays in America. Michael Harris is an award-winning author and journalist. The Hill Times

There’s no guarantee that what happens in America, stays in America

So Canada must remain vigilant. And not just because of what is happening in the United States. Some of the same influences now visible in south of the border have already entered our politics.

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There’s no guarantee that what happens in America, stays in America

So Canada must remain vigilant. And not just because of what is happening in the United States. Some of the same influences now visible in south of the border have already entered our politics.

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