The President keeps saying the game is rigged. By this he means that somehow the “Deep State” Democrats have unfairly fixed the political rules against him and his party.
He knows of what he speaks.
The rules ARE unfairly skewed. However the skewing is being done right in front of our eyes, by him and his cohorts, members of the Republican (Tea) Party).
The Republican Party is morally bankrupt. It embraces ideology over all. Ideology over biology. Ideology over sociology. Ideology over financial equality. Even ideology over mortality!
The Republicans complain and protest. But don’t judge them by what they say, but by what they do.
Case in point: In the midst of the biggest worldwide pandemic since 1918, which has already cost more American lives than 9/11, with the coronavirus still rampaging across the country, the Governor of Wisconsin asked the state legislature to postpone the presidential primary election which scheduled (by legislative mandate) just 48 hours away. And although the Governor exhibited a sense of urgency and called the legislature back for a special session Saturday, that Republican controlled body refused to even consider the request - it adjourned within minutes of opening the session.
With the pandemic threatening lives in every state, and in the face of the continuing warnings of the most reputable and experienced scientists and medical experts, and even though Wisconsin already allows for absentee ballots for some voters, the legislature is apparently intent on using the dangerous health crisis to suppress the vote by daring voters to risk their health and that of their families to go to the polls. To increase its chances to continue to hold power, these servants of the people would put lives at risk. Apparently if you want to vote in Wisconsin you need to be willing to sign up for a kamikaze mission - chance your life to vote.
But this conduct simply follows a well established pattern of attempting to suppress votes of minorities and low income voters through the pretend attack on fraud that is the voter ID campaign. A scam republicans have used in tandem with gerrymandering and such election day tactics as closing and downsizing voting venues and last minute moves of voting sites.
Trump agrees with the “less voting is better” strategy of his party…“The things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again,” Trump said in a recent interview reported by Politico.
The demonstrated immorality around voting is matched by the efforts to stack the courts with ideologically pure, but otherwise unqualified jurists, like Trumps latest nominee to the DC Circuit Appeals Court, or the morally challenged approval of the last appointed Supreme Court Justice, or the recent termination of the Captain of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, as well as that of the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community. The former for trying to protect the people whom he commanded and the latter for following the law requiring him to transmit valid whistle blower complaints to the Congress.
This partial list is, of course, only the tip of the iceberg of Republican tactics in recent years. But not to be left out are the actions of the Republican Senators who agreed that the President violated the law when attempting to coerce the President of the Ukraine into smearing his anticipate political opponent to aid in his reelection efforts, but who voted not to impeach him - because although it was wrong, it wasn’t that wrong.
If it were only morality at stake that would be bad enough, but the Republicans are busy rigging the economy with vast tax cuts and regulatory breaks for the rich and big corporations, at the expense of other vital national needs (remember infrastructure week?). Trying to rig the health system for private insurance companies, by tearing apart the only system yet instituted to provide most Americans with health insurance, by attempting to have it declared unconstitutional after multiple failed attempts to repeal “Obamacare” (remember “repeal and replace?’) Throw in climate change - the Paris accords, the Muller report findings of encouraging Russian involvement in our last presidential election, as well as the hollowing out of the agencies of government whenever they attempt to report science-based factual findings that are ideologically disfavored by the members of the administration or his big political donors.
The game is rigged! But not against Trump or the Republicans… it is rigged against governmental accountability, democracy, morality and equity and the Republicans are the ones who’ve rigged it and keep on rigging it.