When Congressman Elijah Cummings appeared on ABC’s “This Week” recently, he told host George Stephanopoulos he is “not going to war with anyone,” but from all the repeated emphasizes on demanding “transparency and accountability ,” punctuated by his steely facial demeanor, you sure get the sense he is gearing up for one.
After a bruising midterm election that played out with all the optics of a plebiscite on President Donald Trump, Democrats, as widely predicted, wrestled control of the U.S. House of Representatives from the GOP, essentially teeing up a potential daggersdrawn against the White House now bracing for hostility from incoming House leaders. Cummings, who is a shoo-in to become the Chairman of the Oversight and Government Committee and his colleagues are expected to kibosh what many have long bemoaned as Trump’s Pharoanic presidency goaded by the imprimatur of the GOP led congress that irresponsibly relegated itself to a vassal status.
But the flipping of the House of Representatives will change all of that. Come January, when the 116th congress will be seated, Democratic leadership in control of the House will restore its constitutional oversight function. And soon after, you can bet your healthy kidney that their top priority will be to push for accountability and transparency from a White House that has been sheltered like a Faberge egg by cowardly GOP leaders. Emboldened by that partisan shield, combined with a stubborn swagger and a staggering lack of eloquence, a dilettante and clueless President Trump presides over a highly combative White House operating with impunity and immunity, demanding and having things his way, his efforts resulting in nothing but an epic mess characterized by extremely chaotic leadership at home and abroad. The daily onslaught of verbal brutalities meted out by Trump to anyone who dare pillory his ill-conceived policies and actions, the smorgasbord of partisan viciousness that has become his brand and the constant act of solipticism, and nonchalant spew of glaringly misleading shibboleths, all nicely converge to paint a tragic and unbecoming portrait of the office of the President of the United States. In short, this president has taken us all for a cheap ride with his effluvium of bold faced lies and wild hyperboles; his clodhoppering White House hopelessly dogged by a gallimaufry of scandals, a laundry list of amateurish indulgencies and myriad instances of leviathan breach of presidential norms. It is a seismic mess, folks.
But hopefully, the simmering caterwaul and saber-rattling since the election won’t actually erupt into all out bedlam when Democrats take the gavel. That optimism, however, precariously hinge on the hope that a little bit of growing up is going to occur among the core, apostolic consigliores in the Trump orbit since the midterm shellacking; hopefully also their collective approach to dealing with the House is now being tectonically adjusted to conform to the contours of a looming new reality of the day; and hopefully Trump himself, always wallowing in a funk and kiaugh from the grueling and vexing fog of Mueller investigations hovering over his presidency and also the really pointless tangling up with just about everyone, most recently Chief Justice John Roberts, will swallow a chill pill and quickly realize that rabid gadflies such as California Representatives Maxine Waters of the “Low IQ” fame, and Adam Schiff of the “Little Adam Schitt” fame, and their Democratic pals now wield political power —- tremendous power that can be easily deployed to unleash a torrent of subpoenas to get to the bottom of a rash of investigations dogging his administration.
Democrats must be filled to the brim with bliss. And why not. For more than two years, they wallowed in abject doldrums and fallow, a period during which they pouted lymphatically and lugubriously, glumly pacing the sideline of congressional beehive paralyzed and taciturn as the GOP congressional caucus, led by pusillanimous Speaker Paul Ryan and Leader Mitch McConnell, repeatedly turned blind eye to Trump’s swaggeringly menacing ways, which have deepened the partisan gulf in government, poisoned the civil discourse, pitted Americans against one another, stoking ethnic hate and gnawing at civil right gains. This president has brazenly torn down all gossamer boundaries and barricades of presidential norms and conducts. The eye-popping Kafkaesques deluged in his formal speeches and cacophonous twitter utterances speak volumes here, and often depressingly lays bare his child-like proclivities, jaw-dropping unhinged and ignorant buffooneries all while bombastically trumpeting his pedigree as a strong leader committed to his vastly demagoguery laced Trumpian ‘America First’ doctrine.
But Cummings, mindful of the need to convey a sense of optimism in his responses, even going as far as glibly dangling the olive branch to warm up to the administration, downplayed the growing appearance of a looming battle to suppress even a slight chance of Democrats appearing as though they are aggrieved revenge-mongers out to annihilate the Trump administration, saying, “I’m not going to war with anyone.”
Okay. Cummings understandably might hesitate to characterize the looming collision with the White House as war, but he sure didn’t mince words when he expressed his readiness to brandish the subpoena club in pursuit of what he believes American people want: “transparency and accountability.”
“What I am going to do is what the American people say they want us to do in this election, even in Trump country they basically are saying that we want transparency, we want honest and we want intrepidity,” said Cummings.
He added, “they want accountability with regard to this president. That’s exactly what I am going to do.”
And that’s precisely what President Trump has already characterized as “war-like posture” during his combative news conference the day after the midterm elections.
“War-like posture?” Well —- that kind of volcanic and bellicose retort coming from an obstreperous, pugilistic and effete president essentially makes one thing hugely clear. There’s no way subpoena, perhaps a cascade of it, will not be part of any meaningful and successful effort to secure Trump’s compliance with anything. The president’s profusely demonstrated disregard for the rule of law combined with his truculent and chutzpah impulses, unapologetic hauteur, and narcissistic personality, all offer a compelling argument in favor of an aggressive pushback as a response. And hopefully, Cummings knows it. Still, he maintained, perhaps diplomatically, that he is not “going to be handing out subpoenas like somebody’s handing out candy on Halloween.”
Taken the entire shebang together, there is no denying that the days of irresponsibly glossing over Trump’s irrational and imperial actions are about to come to a screeching halt, by way of subpoenas, if it comes that. And Trump, will neither be pleased with it nor quietly comply to it. From all indications given his past, he is sure to stonewall and flout any attempt to hold him accountable for his administration’s vastly unchecked waywardness. But Cummings, still careful not to appear as though he was itching for war, noted that he sees subpoena as “a method of last resort.”
“As a lawyer I know the power of subpoena. Once you send somebody a subpoena, they’ve got to get a lawyer.”
“I am going to do what I think is best. And I am going to do what the constitution demands,” he said.
Cummings issued a warning” “I would ask that the president not try to stand in our way of doing our job as members of congress.”
Asked what he and colleagues would do if Trump refuses to comply with subpoena fiat, he replied, “We will cross that bridge when we get to it.” He added,” I am more optimistic than that,” meaning that he has no reason to believe that President Trump would refuse to abide lawful subpoena.
We got a lot on our plate, noted Cummings, who cited a few of the plethora of issues of priority such as the Mueller investigation, Trump’s blustery threat to end birthright citizenship, another threat to go after CNN —– which has received the lion share of the president’s sustained pillory of the media, calling the network “fake news” and “the enemy of the people.”
