Note: This column first appeared on Cashill’s substack.
Early Friday morning, FBI agents searched the Maryland home of former national security adviser John Bolton. Said the New York Times, they were “conducting court-authorized activity in the area.” Specifically, the FBI had reopened an investigation launched under the Biden DoJ to determine whether Bolton “illegally shared or possessed classified information.”
Two weeks prior Bolton was cheerfully spouting off on CNN that Trump’s Alaska meeting to hash out a Ukraine deal was “a great victory for Putin.” Promptly after the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago three years ago, Bolton went on MSNBC to share the the Biden-era bromide that “no one was above the law.” Bolton was that kind of Republican.
“RINO” does not do his class justice. RINO implies ideological fakery, passing oneself off as a conservative to win elections in Republican areas. No, the phrase “Banana Republican” better captures the essence of a plantation denizen like Bolton, whose treachery apparently was not limited to appearances on CNN. Ideology is not the relevant variable here.
Loyalty is. BRs are the kind of intriguers, schemers, back-stabbers you would find in any “developing nation.” They would rather watch the nation devolve into the chaotic ooze of a banana republic than stand up and fight the obvious injustice around them.
An encyclopedia entry on “Banana Republican” might profitably show the picture of Bill Barr. He fits the profile perfectly. A native of Manhattan, he has been feeding out of the public trough for the last half century, including a six-year stint with the CIA while still in law school.
Photos show the young Bill Barr, trim and handsome, shaking hands with Ronald Reagan. Over time, of course, Barr developed the classic tell of a Banana Republican, the excess chin or two lapping over a too-tight shirt collar that should have been given to the blind a decade ago.
Barr proved his mettle as a Banana Republican (BR) when he told the AP on Dec. 1, 2020, “To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.” Barr added that when “people don’t like something they want the Department of Justice to come in and ‘investigate.’” Barr was not about to do that. By publicly letting Trump drown, he kept himself afloat in the swamp. As the French say, “sauve qui peut.”
If self-preservation is the primary motivator for a BR, profit comes in a close second. A year into Biden’s presidency, with a book to peddle, Barr told NBC’s Lester Holt, “I told [Trump] that all this stuff was bulls–t … about election fraud. And, you know, it was wrong to be shoveling it out the way his team was.”
I knew Trump was going to win in 2024 when Barr halfheartedly endorsed him in April of that year. “The real danger to the country – the real danger to democracy, as I say, is the progressive agenda,” said the former attorney general. Barr’s turn around represented not so much a change of heart on his part as a cold-hearted calculation.
Most prominent Banana Republicans keep their fingers in the air. None have more bananas to protect than those that bear the much too appropriate last name “Bush.” By sitting out the 2020 election, George W. and Jeb “low energy” Bush gave permission for other Banana Republicans to do the same. This quiet subversion got Joe Biden “elected.”
The high water mark for Banana Republicans came on Jan. 6, 2021. Following the lead of the Democrats and the media – as they often do – the BRs rushed to the mics to denounce the man they had back stabbed. Said U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney, “What happened here today was an insurrection, incited by the president of the United States.”
On that same Jan. 6, before the OC gas had yet to settle at the Capitol, George Bush used the imprimatur of the “George W. Bush Presidential Center” to affirm his and wife Laura’s membership in Club Banana.
“The violent assault on the Capitol – and disruption of a constitutionally-mandated meeting of Congress – was undertaken by people whose passions have been inflamed by falsehoods and false hopes,” said Bush mindlessly.
On that day at least, Jan. 6 would seem to have vindicated the Banana Republican’s passivity in the face of evil. The last four-plus years, however, have been rough on the BRs’ sense of self, former Congress members Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger most notably.
As the evidence has shown, Jan. 6 represented the first fully unarmed insurrection in world history. No officers were killed, none seriously injured. Those were all lies. The damage done to the Capitol was negligible. The only people killed that day were protesters.
The truth did not stop Biden from treating J6 protesters to the greatest mass injustice against American citizens since Japanese internment. More than 1,600 were rounded up, nearly half of those incarcerated, including at least one great grandma.
This injustice was apparently not evil enough for the BRs to notice, let alone protest. Nor was Biden’s Hydra-headed lawfare attack on his leading political opponent. If any one of them protested the flagrant weaponization of justice, the protest was not loud enough to make the news.
“The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality,” so said either Dante or Yogi Berra or some other wise soul. John Bolton will not be the last of the Banana Republicans to feel the heat.
Note: This column first appeared on Cashill’s substack. Please subscribe.