“What you gonna do? Arrest me?”
Attribute that to (a) a president who since birth has thought himself above accountability; (b) a revenge-driven killer who has a lawman in his deadly grip.
The answer should be (a) because it’s exactly how our president thinks. Factually, however, it is (b) from a scene in “Cape Fear,” when an uber-scary man named Max Cady, having been sprung from prison, sets out on a revenge tour.
One wonders why — with versions in 1962 and 1991 and now a third streaming as a series — we need this much “Cape Fear.” Especially because we see a fourth version in the actions of our president.
He is a real-life Max Cady, just not with the muscles. Out of commission four long years after an election he says he won, he returns to inflict bloody retribution. Instead of prison time pumping iron, his out-of-power time is spent scheming and steaming at his Taco Torch seaside bide-away.
You might think the proper movie parallel for what we see from him is “All the President’s Men,” about Richard Nixon’s felonious presidency.
The comparison is way beyond inadequate.
Ask Bill Kristol. As founder of conservative journal The Weekly Standard, he once was the Republican’s Republican. Now he is sickened by the party leader.
“Watergate was one hundredth of the stuff that’s happening now,” he says.
We see it in the criminal actions that led to impeachment proceedings after the Jan. 6 riot. Senate cowards gave the Ketchup King a pass after what he caused with a blizzard of lies.
He should have been removed and disqualified from public office.
The singular difference with Watergate was that mostly it was the work of a small cadre of insiders.
By horrifying contrast, in 2026 every man and woman enlisted by this administration carries out a blood oath to serve him — his personal and political vendettas, his non-stop fabrications (see, “reflecting pool”) — even to evade the law and otherwise to abuse and trivialize the legal system.
Tally up how illegality and corruption have infested our government under this man, and “100 times worse than Watergate” undercounts by multiples AI could not calculate.
“Retribution prosecution” against political foes has become this administration’s calling card.
Rick Wilson, a longtime GOP strategist who now reviles the party, says this: From this vindictive White House, “every accusation of ‘weaponization’ is a projection.”
Purge after purge — from the Justice Department, from the FBI, from the intelligence infrastructure — has replaced those of honed expertise and skills with Big Lie shills.
What in the world is a surge of FBI agents doing right now probing a vote of six years’ vintage in Georgia that was certified, counted and recounted? If there were irregularities there, why did the “steal” not take down Republicans who maintained their grip on the Legislature, won nine of 14 congressional races and held onto the governor’s office?
One reason only: the FBI director acts under the orders of the Big Liar, who seeks to undermine American confidence in our elections.
It was inspiring to see independent counsel Jack Smith, the prosecutor who had the goods on this man’s crimes, talking on MSNOW about what public service means to him and to so many of his colleagues in the Justice Department — people fired by this president because their allegiance is to the Constitution, not him.
As a federal prosecutor, Smith served Republican and Democratic presidents, including this one. He headed the DOJ’s Public Integrity Unit. None could be more convincing about his political neutrality, and about career prosecutors and investigators whose party allegiances he’ll never know.
Smith, says Rick Wilson, is “a type of public servant who is almost entirely lacking inside the Republican universe” today.
“Our country is built on values,” Smith told MSNOW’s Nicolle Wallace. (Watch it: tinyurl.com/9x8uk9mm). “Values are what bind us all together.
“My view is that those values have nothing to do with political parties.”
Easy to see why this president calls him a dangerous man.
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.
