While most eyes have been trained on Donald Trump’s criminal hush-money trial in New York, we are looking at America’s other major political corruption trial: that of the New Jersey senator Robert Menendez.
The 70-year-old senator faces 16 counts of federal bribery charges for allegedly conspiring with his wife, Nadine, to accept bribes from wealthy businessmen in exchange for political favors to help the governments of Qatar and Egypt. The prosecution’s evidence recovered from Menendez’s house includes boots stuffed with cash, gold bars, a Mercedes-Benz convertible, furniture, exercise equipment and cash found in the lining of the senator’s embroidered congressional jacket.
Upon returning from a trip to Egypt, Menendez also Googled “how much is one kilo of gold worth?” Menendez has proclaimed innocence. According to the New York Times, he said his cash habit was the result of “traumatic” family history. [As Menendez] “They are simply my emotional support gold bars? Whenever I’m not with them, I get anxious. We respond to trauma in different ways.”
But perhaps the dumbest thing about this entire, not-quite-believable Real Housewives episode is how unnecessary it all is. You, sir, are an elected official in America’s most respected legislative body. It’s like a license to print money. You don’t need to break the law so cartoonishly when the legal corruption in the Senate is so fucking lucrative. The trial occasioned a new Daily Show segment: “Senator Robert Menendez, how dumb is you?”
As Stewart explained: “Promising favors to foreign entities for a little chump change on the side? It’s bush league when as a US senator you can enrich yourself in so many different, let’s call them ‘legal’, ways.” The host let Menendez in on the workings of insider trading, writing laws that benefit a side business, “like the way Senator Chuck Grassley netted $370,000 in farm subsidies” and leadership PACs that essentially operate as lobbyist slush funds. “A pharma lobbyist cannot buy a senator a panini and some NyQuil,” he said, “but through the Pac, they can pay for five-star hotels for Senator Kristen Gillibrand, luxury resorts for Ted Cruz and even golf lessons for Rand Paul.
“At every turn, our Congress and our courts have been given a choice: be less corrupt, or redefine what constitutes corruption and get on with your bad selves,” Stewart added. “Robert Menendez’s gold bars in exchange for favorable legislation is obviously cartoonishly corrupt, but for anyone out there who thinks the status quo of government patronage and influence is of an entirely different species than Menendez … how dumb is you?” —Jon Stewart
https://idiocracy23.blogspot.com/2021/02/a-magisterial-collection.html
“A magisterial collection. An emotional roller coaster. Soon to be a cult classic.
A combination of Bukowski’s Last Night of the Earth and Orwell’s 1984.”
