Dan Rather Outs Trump Administration Corruption In Brilliant New Op-Ed; WH Leveled

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The president, in an incident that at this point took place some time ago, slammed the American press as the “enemy” of the American people. In the time before and since that particular comment, he’s employed an endless barrage of threats and undercuts in his rampages against the press; among the most well known of his lines is, no doubt, “fake news.”

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There’s a fitting reason for the president and his team being so standoffish when it comes to the press that one can ascertain when perusing even a small number of stories about the administration. Without the free press, the corruption that has come at this point to define the Trump administration would largely stay in the dark. With the free press intact, Americans have the opportunity to see just how desperately corrupt the Trump administration really is. Every week it seems like new avenues of corruption get revealed.

Veteran news anchor Dan Rather wrote a short essay addressing this issue this week, expressing grave concern with the possible effects on American democracy of the sheer volume of corruption and volatility inherent in the Trump administration. He wasn’t all doom and gloom, though, offering towards the end of his short piece thoughts about the future — a future in which he, apparently, sees a wave of anti-Trump electoral victories coming soon.

Rather began his new essay by writing:

‘As… a student of history, I have learned that corruption often lays waste to the powerful. That is why I am stunned by what is taking place today. Over the course of my life I have never seen a level of corruption in the United States equal to that emanating from the Trump Administration. It is the ultimate threat to effective governance. It is morally repugnant and a repudiation of the very ideals of our democracy. It is the rot of power for sale. Of all the current dangers to the norms of our democracy, and there are many, I worry most that we will become a nation that shrugs off corruption as business as usual.’

There is an ample supply of available examples of the corruption that’s come to define the Trump team as time has gone on, and Rather mentions some of them.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has become embroiled in scandal after scandal, seeming at virtually every turn to be seeking to use his office for his personal economic advantage. He’s reported to have sought an official reason to go to certain travel destinations just because he’d wanted to go to those places in the past. He has also been caught spending large amounts of taxpayer money to fly first class, joining a substantial list of current and former Trump administration officials to have faced scrutiny over their travel habits.

The entirety of Trump administration corruption is well beyond the scope of Rather’s essay, as it is well beyond the scope of this article. It’s staggering.

Rather, though, as mentioned, has hope — he believes that “the American people will not sit idly by and allow the fleecing of their country to take place without a reckoning at the ballot box, and likely in the halls of justice.”

Rather will likely be proven correct considering both the signs of a “blue wave” of Democratic electoral victories this fall and the ongoing investigations into the president’s team, the most recently revealed inquiry being the criminal probe into Trump lawyer Michael Cohen.

Check out Rather’s full round of commentary below.

Featured Image via Robert Daemmrich Photography Inc/Corbis via Getty Images