Trump's acquittal has unleashed the most 'corrupt, unfit, demented and malevolent president' ever: columnist

In a scorching column for the Daily Beast, David Rothkopf accused Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Attorney General Bill Barr of standing by while President Donald Trump purges anyone who crossed him with their testimony during his impeachment trial, with the columnist saving most of his vitriol for Republicans who are letting the president continue to break the law.

In short, he blamed the entire Republican Party apparatus of giving more power to "the most corrupt, unfit, demented and malevolent president" in history.

"Donald Trump unleashed a Friday night massacre at the end of the week the Senate acquitted him, one that reveals yet again not only who Trump is but how he intends to act thanks to the carte blanche to abuse his powers handed him by the Senate and his attorney general," Rothkopf writes while noting the firings of Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, his brother and EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland.

"Their firings and forced departures from their jobs are, by any definition, retaliation against witnesses in the case against the president. That’s a crime. But of course, that crime will never be enforced because the U.S. government agency responsible for enforcing such laws, the Department of Justice, has been taken over by an attorney general who has perjured himself before Congress, violated his oath and placed the protection of the president ahead of the interests of the American people to whom he owes his highest duty," he wrote. "Between Barr and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump has been given free rein to be his worst self. And Trump never disappoints those who expect the worst of him."

"He has been told he is above the law, incapable of committing a crime. He has been told that Article II of the Constitution grants him unlimited powers. He has been told he does not have submit to the oversight of the Congress," the columnist continued. " He is, in other words, free to be himself. And we all know who that is—except perhaps Senator Susan Collins and the other Senate suckers who expected that somehow our felon-in-chief had learned a lesson from this impeachment ordeal. Trump is a man who thinks the law is for little people, that the rich can buy their way out of any legal predicament. He thinks character and courage and duty, the traits displayed by Yovanovitch and the Vindmans, are for suckers."

Calling the current state in the U.S. a " dark period in our history," Rothkopf writes that Trump is likely to do even more damage before the November election.

"Nine months is also enough time to give birth to many crimes. Indeed, we must wonder how much wrongdoing by the criminal gang that has seized our government will be devoted to stealing that election to come. In an erratic administration, a concerted focusing on cheating at the ballot box is one of the few consistent initiatives that has been a priority for them since the very beginning. And they have never been so empowered to abuse their power as a way to maintain that power. Punishing truth-tellers and witnesses is the technique mob enforcers use to escape the consequences for their crimes," he warned before concluding the Donald Trump has become, "The most powerful president in American history and the most dangerous and corrupt public official the United States has ever known."

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