Democrats, middle-class “resisters” against President Donald Trump, and Republican “Never-Trumpers” have all cranked up their hysteria around his presidency. Their efforts to drive him out of the White House intensified after the Democrats took control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections.
The New York Times editors printed what they claimed was a new “exposé” Jan. 11 saying “agents and senior FBI officials had grown suspicious of Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign” and then began an investigation of the president immediately after he fired FBI boss James Comey in 2017. This was days before Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein set up the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The Times says FBI leaders’ “concerns” about Trump’s relations with Moscow were aroused by former British spy Christopher Steele. But the paper omits any mention of the fact that Steele’s dossier of unproven claims against Trump was paid for by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. These kind of smears have long been used by the FBI, which is the capitalist rulers’ domestic political police. The agency has a long record of spying on and disrupting working-class fighters, defenders of Black rights and opponents of Washington’s wars.
But in this case the unidentified agents are using their political police methods as part of the campaign to oust a real estate mogul who was elected president. Their probe against Trump is a reflection of the sharpness of the protracted political crisis wracking the rulers’ twin parties. Robert Mueller, the anti-Trump special counsel, like Comey, is a former FBI chief. Since the Times article hit the newsstands, it has been used to pump up cries for the president to be brought down. “With a newly seated Democratic majority, the House of Representatives can no longer dodge its constitutional duty,” proclaims Yoni Applebaum, a senior editor at the Atlantic magazine, in a cover story headlined “Impeach Donald Trump.”
House leader Nancy Pelosi says the timing is not right and there isn’t the bipartisan support needed to impeach the president. A slew of House committee chairs, now all Democrats, say they will probe Trump’s family, his tax returns and Russians he’s met.
Rehash of past slanders
But, in fact, the whole Times “exposé” is a rehash of past slanders and innuendo. The only FBI employee the papers’ editors quote by name is Lisa Page, who they present as an expert. But Page resigned in disgrace in May 2017 when it came to light she had exchanged some 10,000 cellphone messages, including derogatory attacks on Trump with FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok when they worked together going after the president.
Strzok helped rewrite a report that allowed Hillary Clinton to avoid indictment for running her government communications off a private server. He was fired by the FBI when his part in the anti-Trump campaign became public. One of Strzok’s messages to Page — “America will get what the voting public deserves” — showed his contempt for working people.
Page and Strzok didn’t leave the FBI because top FBI spooks disagreed with what the two did. Retaining the two anti-Trump zealots made the agency look too politically biased after their communications became public, so FBI bosses pushed them out.
The anti-Trump frenzy is also reflected in press coverage of the composition and character of the U.S. Supreme Court. Liberal commentators flew into a panic when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was diagnosed with cancer, sparking speculation that the 85-year-old would have to leave the court. They fear this would open the door for “arch-reactionary” Trump to nominate yet another justice in his image. Liberals view the court, and Ginsburg, as the agent for adopting political policies they favor but are unable to get through Congress, not as a court that makes rulings based on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Trump strives to govern in the interests of the capitalist rulers. As working people begin to organize to defend our interests we will need to use rights that the liberals are undermining in their efforts to oust him.
“Women’s” marches held on Jan. 19 weren’t organized to fight for women’s right to abortion, which is under attack, or other steps toward the emancipation of women, but to recruit for the “resistance” to the Trump presidency. Organizers aim to mobilize support for installing a Democrat in the White House in 2020, if not before.
Liberals growing fear of working people
The uproar against Trump’s presidency is rooted in liberals’ growing fear of working people. “They fear us because they recognize that more and more working people are beginning to see that the bosses and their political parties have no ‘solutions’ that don’t further load the costs — monetary and human — of the crisis of their system on us,” Socialist Workers Party leader Steve Clark wrote in the introduction to The Clintons’ Anti-Working-Class Record: Why Washington Fears Working People by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes.
Over two years later the situation Clark describes continues to bear down on working people. The book is one SWP members and supporters use to introduce the party to working people on their doorsteps. The goal is to build a working-class fight against the capitalist rulers’ assaults and a course toward independent working-class political action.