President Trump’s catchphrase “drain the swamp” is spinning on a different connotation to what everyone must have understood in the first place, as another close ally, Republican U.S. Rep. Christopher Collins of western New York state, has been charged for feeding inside information he gleaned from sitting on the board of a biotechnology company to his son, helping themselves and others dodge hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses when bad news came out.
Maybe he was clear all alone that his “drain the swamp” means ‘anyone’ or ‘anything’ he objects to instead of anything ethically and morally incorrect.
The truth is that he and most people around him are draining this phrase out of its meaning day by day. Congressman Christopher Collins ads his name to a long list of personalities around the Trump circle that have lost their jobs, been forced to resign, or been charged in Mueller’s Russia probe, setting an unprecedented lack of moral leadership in the Republican party.
Paul Manafort, former chairman of the Trump campaign, is appearing in court now as part of the first trial in the special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election. He surrendered to federal authorities on October 30, 2017, after he was indicted, along with his business associate Rick Gates, on 12 counts, including conspiracy against the US and money laundering.
Though Manafort has pleaded not guilty, he was forced to step down as Trump’s campaign chairman in May 2016 after coming under fire for his connections to Russian oligarchs and his past lobbying efforts abroad. He is a key figure in Mueller’s investigation who has charged him with 18 counts related to tax fraud, bank fraud, money laundering, failure to register as a foreign agent, and obstruction of justice.
Rick Gates, Paul Manafort’s former business partner whose duties for the Trump campaign included wrangling GOP convention delegates and arranging the inaugural ceremony, was charged with 23 counts of the total 32 counts in the February 2018 superseding indictment, including five counts of assisting in the preparation of false U.S. income tax returns from 2010 to 2014, five counts of subscribing to false U.S. income tax returns from 2010 to 2014, one count of subscribing to false amended U.S. income tax returns in 2013, three counts of failing to file reports of foreign accounts from 2011 to 2013, five counts of bank fraud conspiracy, and four counts of bank fraud.
George Papadopoulos was the foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign during 11 months and was charged with one count of making false statements and omissions to the FBI, allegedly for making untruthful claims about a time he met with an unnamed overseas professor with substantial ties to the Russian government.
Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, was charged by Special counsel Robert Mueller with one count of making false statements for “willfully and knowingly” making “false, fictitious and fraudulent statements” to the FBI regarding conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Scandal-plagued EPA administrator Scott Pruitt, who was the subject of several ethics investigations into his conduct while he ran the agency resigned in early July.
White House communications director Hope Hicks, one of Trump’s closest confidants who’s been with him since the beginning had to resign a day after she testified before the House Intelligence Committee, where she reportedly said that she told white lies for the president.
Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, resigned on January after Politico reported that Fitzgerald purchased stock in Japan Tobacco while serving as CDC director. She had also bought shares of the pharmaceutical companies Merck and Bayer and of the health insurer Humana.
Tom Price, the secretary of health and human services had elicited bipartisan condemnation over the cost of his air travel that cost taxpayers more than $1 million between his use of private planes for domestic travel and military jets for recent trips to Africa, Europe, and Asia. He offered his resignation on September, 2017.
The administration has been rocked by high-profile departures since Trump took office in January 2017. Since he tweeted for the first time: “I will Make Our Government Honest Again — believe me. But first, I’m going to have to #DrainTheSwamp” the phrase has caused curiosity among people, voters and political commentators around the world. Though Trump and his supporters have been punctuated tweet after tweet with the hashtag, the long list of problems above mentioned, plus the substantially false statements President Trump himself makes almost every day, the “Drain the Swamp” metaphor to describe his plan to fix problems in the federal government is totally undervalued now.
But the scariest thing is that “Drain the Swamp” is a phrase first popularized by the fascist leader Benito Mussolini who in 1925 dropped the pretense of democracy in Italy and established a dictatorship.
We may have a good laugh now at the end of the day, but let’s reflect on what’s going on with our politics today for the better of our nation.
We’re not OK.
