It is not exactly correct to say that the United States has become a banana republic. More accurately, it’s become a federal democratic banana republic where the politically powerful treat the country as their personal fruit orchard.
Take Rudy Giuliani, the former mob buster now charged in Georgia like a mobster under the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act.
Hizzoner’s life has come full circle. Rudy, who used RICO to break the rackets, is now accused of racketeering in his role as a MAGA flunky. Giuliani was once known as the tenacious, incorruptible United States attorney in New York during the 1980s. His investigation into public corruption there drove the Queens Borough president to suicide by plunging a steak knife into his own heart. Giuliani famously took down the Gambino and Bonanno crime families. He perp-walked a phalanx of Wall Street grifters for insider trading.
As the mayor of New York City, you may recall, “America’s Mayor” reminded the country in the aftermath of 9/11 not to hate. All this as George Bush cowered in a bunker.
But that was another life, another role, another time in America. Giuliani is now known as the guy whose hair dye runs like melting candle wax. The creep-o caught with his hands in his pants in the “Borat” movie. Rudy now charged as the besotted consigliere of the Trump family; the frothing meathead who called for a “trial by combat” on Jan. 6.
Trump has big problems to be sure, but Rudy’s look worse. The Don has millions of supporters who send him tens of millions of crumpled dollars to help fight his 91 felony charges in four different jurisdictions.
Rudy, not so much. Reports have it that Giuliani went hat-in-hand to Mar-a-Lago begging the boss for a handout to help defray his mounting legal bills, only to be sent home empty-hatted.
After serving as an adviser to Trump during his 2016 campaign and his early administration, Giuliani joined the president’s personal legal team in 2018. When wild claims of collusion with Putin’s security apparatus were leveled against Trump, I held my tongue and my pen. If the Big Orange was in fact a Manchurian candidate for the Russian pinkos, I wanted it rooted out. We all did.
As it turns out, Hillary Clinton meddled more with the election than Vladimir Putin could ever hope. It’s beyond me why the Brooklyn district attorney has not charged her with falsified billing and campaign felonies in connection with the Steele Dossier as the Manhattan district attorney has done with Trump in connection with hush payments to a porn star.
The fake collusion story drove Trump and Giuliani mad. As if to return the favor, the duo abused the public with cockamamie stories about a stolen election.
Which brings me to the Bidens. With all the smoke — the laptop, photographs, burner phones, dummy email addresses, text messages, the web of bank accounts, the suspicious action banking reports, dinners with oligarchs and business associates, father-son trips on Air Force 2, phone calls to discuss the weather, the testimony from Hunter Biden’s business associates — all this deserves a thorough and vigorous investigation. Not only of Hunter, but of Joe.
The Biden clan was working business deals with American adversaries in China, Kazakhstan and Russia. We’re not talking about Canada, France or Japan here.
I doubt the stoneless Special Counsel David Weiss will get to the bottom of things. Remember, Weiss was not going to charge Hunter with any crimes until the IRS whistleblowers showed themselves.
Then there’s the nexus of Big Media, Big Tech and the Intelligence Agencies colluding to squelch the laptop story as Russian disinformation. We now know former CIA boss Michael Morrell concocted that phony letter signed by 50 other spy bosses because he wanted Joe Biden “to win the election.”
Think of it. Josef Stalin could do no better. America has become a country of cabbages and kings.