If "Democracy dies in darkness," as The Washington Post declares, so, too, does authoritarianism, according to conservative columnist Bill Kristol in The Bulwark.
In his latest column, Kristol cited House Speaker Mike Johnson's (R-LA) justification for why President Donald Trump can't possibly be accused of "wrongdoing": "The reason that many people refer to the Bidens as the ‘Biden crime family’ is because they were doing all this stuff behind curtains, in the back rooms. They were trying to conceal it. . . Whatever President Trump is doing is out in the open. They’re not trying to conceal anything. . . . President Trump has had nothing to hide. He’s very up front about it," Johnson said.
Kristol called this defense "an admission" of Trump's "open corruption and lawlessness," but argued that it's "far more dangerous" than the cloak-and-dagger shenanigans of, say, Richard Nixon.
"But if you’re bolder than Nixon, if you think you can get away with more than Nixon did or more than Nixon even wanted to do, then you’re not going to bother with a little surreptitious law-breaking and a subsequent cover-up. You’ll test the limits of impunity," Kristol wrote.
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Kristol explained that the "Tricky Dick" moniker assigned to Nixon doesn't apply in Trump's case.
"Trump’s not a particularly tricky politician. He’s much more like a crime boss," Kristol wrote. "And he understands that you’re more powerful the more your criminality can afford to be demonstrated to others."
Kristol argued that "an authoritarian project has to come out of the shadows to really succeed."
Harassment, assault, and targeting all "need to be public and publicized to have the desired effect," he wrote.
That's why Trump is being so "open" about the $400 million "gift" plane from Qatar that even MAGA Republicans see as a "bribe." In a bit of reverse psychology, Kristol wrote that "if such a politician wants not just a bribe or two but a cascade of bribes, he has to let people know that he welcomes bribes, and that everyone is expected to offer bribes."
With this expectation out in the open, all ethical and legal concerns purportedly melt away.
"Everyone also has to understand that they can get away with the bribes and benefit from them, and conversely that they’ll pay a price if they don’t step up," Kristol wrote.