Senate vote on Patel will determine the fate of the FBI
Trump wants his own personal federal law enforcement agency
By Mike Sorrell
The FBI as we know it will no longer exist if Republican senators confirm Kash Patel as the federal law enforcement agency’s new director.
Patel will transform the FBI into an investigatory federal law enforcement agency that serves President Donald Trump, who obsessively intends to go after his perceived political enemies from the past and in the future.
That could happen this week. The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a confirmation hearing for Patel on Thursday. The committee will decide whether to send his nomination to the full Senate for a vote.
Few Democrats will vote for Patel, so saving the FBI from him will take a handful of Republican senators to say “no” to the emasculation of an American institution.
Trump nominated Patel because Patel is an unabashed lackey who will do whatever Trump tells him to do.
The Senate vote will be a litmus test that will indicate how far Republican senators will go before they are willing to stand up and reject the incompetent lapdogs Trump has nominated for FBI director and other government agencies.
Sad to say, Patel has a good chance of becoming FBI director because Republican senators who, even though they might know he is a bad choice for the job, will vote for him because when Trump says “Jump!” Republicans ask, “How high?" Figuratively speaking, that is. It’s comical to visualize some of the old white guys in the Senate getting their wingtips more than a couple of inches off the floor, although most could jump higher than the cheeseburger king.
When Trump announced his nomination of Patel, David Frum of The Atlantic, wrote, “Trump is declaring his intention to reinvent the FBI as something it has never been before: an instrument of personal presidential power, which will investigate (or refrain from investigating) and lay charges (or refrain from laying charges) as the president wishes.”
Trump’s push for an authoritarian government will prevail if the Republican majority in the Senate and House just go along to get along with Trump, who uses fear to keep them in line. If a senator or member of the House disobeys the ever-angry bully in the White House, Trump and his rich friends say they will find someone to run against that maverick in the next primary election.
Is trembling in fear and doing what Trump says worth the personal psychic damage from failing to fight back against authoritarianism?