Over the cliff into the lavatory- "Harding could not manage his corrupt appointees, who became known as the “Ohio Gang,” and spent much of his time drinking and playing poker upstairs at the White House. In the absence of a strong president, the power of the government could have flowed to Congress. But congressional Republicans had spent twenty years obstructing the progressive presidents who had been in the White House since 1901: first Republicans Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, and then Democrat Woodrow Wilson. The Republicans in Congress had become skilled at obstruction, but once in power, they split into factions and quarreled among themselves.
Into the vacuum stepped administration officers, notably Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover and Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon. With them at the helm, the government implemented pro-business policies that would turn the government over to businessmen. Eight years later, the conflagration of the Great Crash and the ensuing Great Depression illustrated just how misguided the abdication of elected lawmakers from their duties had been.
In the second Trump administration, the president does not seem especially interested in governance. He seems to want to use the government to persecute those he considers his enemies and to protect and enrich himself.
Attorney General Pam Bondi encapsulated that approach to the government when she appeared today before the Senate Judiciary Committee. She refused to answer questions, instead attacking Democratic senators. Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) pointed out that Bondi refused to answer whether she consulted with career ethics lawyers before approving the gift of a $400 million airplane for Trump from Qatar, who asked that Trump’s name be flagged in the Epstein files, whether “border czar” Tom Homan kept the $50,000 bribe he took for promising to steer contracts toward the men who offered the money, whether career prosecutors found insufficient evidence to charge former FBI director James Comey with lying to Congress, how military strikes on boats in the Caribbean are legal, and so on.
Many observers noticed something else, though: Bondi refused to answer a specific question about Trump and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) asked: “There has been public reporting that Jeffrey Epstein showed people photos of President Trump with half-naked young women. Do you know if the FBI found those photographs in their search of Jeffrey Epstein’s safe or premises or otherwise. Have you seen any such thing?”
Bondi, who says she has seen the files, would not answer “no.” Instead, she accused Whitehouse of “trying to slander President Trump.”"
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