{"id":2446309,"date":"2019-07-14T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-14T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=309380"},"modified":"2019-07-15T07:47:15","modified_gmt":"2019-07-15T13:47:15","slug":"mike-littwin-as-self-justifying-ryan-bashes-trump-gardner-must-wonder-when-his-turn-will-come","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/mike-littwin-as-self-justifying-ryan-bashes-trump-gardner-must-wonder-when-his-turn-will-come\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike Littwin: As self-justifying Ryan bashes Trump, Gardner must wonder when his turn will come"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cHistory isn\u2019t kind to the man who holds Mussolini\u2019s jacket. \u2014 Ted Cruz, as quoted in the new book, \u201cAmerican Carnage.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019d love to know what Cory Gardner is thinking as he reads the Paul-Ryan-on-Trump excerpts from \u201cAmerican Carnage,\u201d Tim Alberta\u2019s hottest of hot new books on how the GOP civil war produced Donald Trump and how Trump brought the GOP to its knees.<\/p>\n

Gardner must imagine that someday he\u2019d have to take his turn in the dock, maybe if he loses his Senate seat next year and is forced to make his return to decent society. Only then would he reveal his contempt for Trump and for his ignorance and for his casual cruelty. And only then would he try to make his peace with how he sold his soul to Trump, saying that he knows his support looks hypocritical and self-serving, but he never meant to help enable Trump\u2019s unprecedented assault on America\u2019s small-d democratic ideals.<\/p>\n

He must imagine, too, that when he does try to excuse himself, as he will, that when he says he was working from within to help moderate Trump\u2019s worst impulses, few will believe him and many will mock him.<\/p>\n

If Gardner didn\u2019t understand the trap that he has stepped into \u2014 and I\u2019m guessing he has understood it for quite a while \u2014 he would have to know by now. Ryan, an ambitious politician not unlike Gardner, has pointed the way. I mean, Ryan, who my friend Charles Pierce calls the granny starver, must know it\u2019s a little late for self-justification now.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve gotten so numbed by it all,\u201d Ryan told Alberta as he explained that he resigned as House speaker because he couldn\u2019t continue to work with Trump. \u201cNot in government, but where we live our lives, we have a responsibility to try and rebuild. Don\u2019t call a woman a \u2018horse face.\u2019 Don\u2019t cheat on your wife. Don\u2019t cheat on anything. Be a good person. Set a good example.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also said to Alberta: \u201cI told myself I gotta have a relationship with this guy to help him get his mind right. Because, I\u2019m telling you, he didn\u2019t know anything about government. .\u2009.\u2009. I wanted to scold him all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

And now Ryan sees Trump\u2019s presidency growing ever more dangerous, without the people around Trump like, you know, him who \u201creally helped to stop him from making bad decisions. All the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m assuming that Ryan spoke to Alberta because he is worried about history\u2019s judgment of him and his party. Let\u2019s just say his confession may not have helped. Ryan\u2019s words are basically being greeted as a profile in cowardice. Where was he when he was speaker and the words might have meant something? Where was he after calling out Trump for his \u201ctextbook\u201d racism? Where has Gardner been, for that matter, after refusing to vote for Trump in 2016?<\/p>\n

Speaking of cowardice, I\u2019m guessing Gardner won\u2019t even read the book. He wouldn\u2019t be able to bring himself to look that closely in the mirror. I\u2019m sure he hasn\u2019t read the Mueller Report either \u2014 or won\u2019t admit if he has. No sentient person can read the Mueller Report and also support Trump\u2019s re-election bid unless that person also is able to make himself believe that the upright Robert Mueller is the liar and the debauched Trump is the truth teller.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmerican Carnage,\u201d which won\u2019t hit the bookstores until next week but is already a No. 1 best seller, details how Republicans who once rejected Trump\u2019s reality-show vulgarity were completely co-opted by him for a tax cut for rich people and a couple of Supreme Court justices. I\u2019m so eager to read it that I broke one of my most closely held principles, which is to never buy a book through evil Amazon, so I can be sure to get it the day it comes out.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, Gardner has little \u2014 or is it nothing? \u2014 to say about the mistreated children in cages or the photo of the desperate father and his little girl, hoping to seek asylum, lying dead on the banks of the Rio Grande. He won\u2019t say what Trump himself sometimes allows \u2014 that the cruelty of separating children from parents is the point of his immigration policy, that the cruelty will discourage others from coming. He has little \u2014 or is it nothing? \u2014 to say about Trump\u2019s now-thwarted plan to undercount Latinos in the coming census as a most brutal and cynical way to promote Republican gerrymandering in favor of \u201cnon-Hispanic whites.\u201d<\/p>\n

What Gardner will say, if he\u2019s cornered by a reporter, is that we must do something about the Dreamers, without mentioning that the person who put the Dreamers at risk is the person he\u2019s supporting for president. And he\u2019ll say we must do something about immigration reform without mentioning that the person he\u2019s supporting for president routinely demonizes these migrants.<\/p>\n

These are not hypotheticals. Gardner was asked Friday and refused, naturally, to say whether he agreed with Trump\u2019s promised nationwide roundup of thousands of members of undocumented families \u2014 another move with no motive other than pleasing his base by putting the fear of Trump into people living in the American shadows. Denver is expected to be one of the target cities \u2014 and virtually every elected Democrat in the state has registered an objection.<\/p>\n

Denver Mayor Michael Hancock put it this way: \u201cEvery time there\u2019s an issue for him, most recently the Mueller investigation, Trump does something to distract from it. Trump is using immigrants as political pawns.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michael Bennet released a letter he sent to Trump, asking him to cancel the raids, saying they would \u201cstoke fear and anxiety in some of our most vulnerable communities\u201d and encourage \u201chatred and division.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Gardner?<\/p>\n

\u201cThe law is the law,\u201d he said, according to Jesse Aaron Paul of The Colorado Sun, when asked by a reporter about the raids. And when asked again, Gardner dodged again, saying \u201cWhat we need is an ability to find a way to reform the laws to make sure they work for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

And if the raids come \u2014 they were postponed once, remember \u2014 and if children in Denver are separated from their parents and if ICE, which has a long record, as reported by the Cato Institute, of arresting the wrong people, rounds up American citizens, what will Gardner have to say then?<\/p>\n

We may have to wait for an \u201cAmerican Carnage\u201d sequel to find out.<\/p>\n

Mike Littwin runs Sundays in The Aspen Times. A former columnist for the Rocky Mountain News and Denver Post, he currently writes for ColoradoIndependent.com.<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cHistory isn\u2019t kind to the man who holds Mussolini\u2019s jacket. \u2014 Ted Cruz, as quoted in the new book, \u201cAmerican Carnage.\u201d I\u2019d love to know what Cory Gardner is thinking as he reads the Paul-Ryan-on-Trump excerpts from \u201cAmerican Carnage,\u201d Tim Alberta\u2019s hottest of hot new books on how the GOP civil war produced Donald Trump […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2446309","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-21 08:24:43","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2446309"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2446345,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446309\/revisions\/2446345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2446309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2446309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2446309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}