Picking up where we left off in Part II, we find that
the president is still nuts.
I’m pretty sure that’s not going to change.
THE TRUMP ARCHIVE
June 1,
2018:
The month starts off badly for Trump and the GOP and spirals downward from
there. Former Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner accuses many in his party of abandoning their principles to get along with the president.
“There is no Republican Party,” he says. “There’s a Trump party. The Republican
Party is kinda taking a nap somewhere.”
In other news, former campaign manager Paul Manafort has his bail revoked and gets sent to jail until trial.
Investigators
recover 731 pages of encrypted phone messages from Trump’s personal lawyer,
Michael Cohen.
And
campaign adviser Roger Stone suddenly remembers he did meet with a Russian offering dirt on Hillary
Clinton—but the guy wanted $2 million to share it.
Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani gets nailed in divorce proceedings, from his third wife, because at age 74, he’s having an affair.
*
ANYWAY, TODAY’S MAIN TOPIC is
jobs! After sixteen full months in office, it’s not too early to check out
the job-creating magic of Donald J. Trump. First, let all of us on the liberal
side of the math fence admit that numbers for May 2018 were good. A total of
223,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy. Unemployment dropped to 3.8%,
the lowest level in
eighteen years.
Naturally, Trump took 137% of the credit.
(Yes, he sucks at math.) Right-wing pundits pouted because the “mainstream
media” refused to praise the president enough. (They also suck at math.) If
Trump “created” nearly three million jobs in his first sixteen full months in
office, why wouldn’t The New York Times splash the story
across its front page with headlines six inches high, in letters of gold?
Alas, part of the reason we of a liberal
persuasion so often laugh at Trump and Fox News is that we do not possess the
memories of weasels. We remember how Trump reacted when job numbers—the
official numbers of the Bureau of Labor Statistics—under Obama were good.
In those days all the good numbers were
“rigged.” You can refresh your memory if you
like and read a story in the “Fake News” Washington Post. In this
story the Post quotes unnamed sources….
No, wait.
The Post quotes Trump.
They quote all the times Trump said Obama’s job numbers were “phony,” “the
biggest joke there is in this country.”
When unemployment dropped below 5% in
early 2016, Trump wasn’t buying the math. He insisted
the number of people looking for jobs was much higher, possibly higher than at any
point during the Great Depression. “Don’t believe those phony numbers when you
hear 4.9 and 5 percent unemployment,” he said. They were much higher, “As
high as 35 — as in fact, I heard recently, 42 percent.”
(As usual, he “heard” it somewhere.)
Facts remain facts.
This is not a difficult math problem to
solve. One need only consult Bureau of Labor Statistics charts to ascertain the
truth. In the last sixteen full months Obama was in office 3,281,000 jobs
were added to the
U.S. economy (September 2015-December 2016). Even Press Secretary Pinocchio
Sanders, if handed a calculator and shown which buttons to push could divide by
16.
That would mean Obama had been adding 205,062
jobs per month when he left office. That is what liberals call “division.”
Then Trump took over.
Now you were going to see the economy
boom! He was going to clean up the “mess” he inherited! Looking at his first
sixteen full months in office we see Trump has added 2,966,000 jobs.
Trump fans can look at those numbers with
googly eyes. They can close their left eye. They can close their right. They
can squint. Facts remain facts.
Math remains math. The 3,281,000 jobs added by Obama in his last sixteen full
months are more than the 2,966,000 added in the first sixteen full months by
Trump.
So far, Donald J. is adding 185,375 jobs per month.
So far, Donald J. is adding 185,375 jobs per month.
 |
| Just the facts, ma'm. |
In the meantime, we liberals cannot help
but feel sad for the 88 million Americans still without jobs.
Wait, Mr. Liberal! Did you just claim
that nearly 88 million Americans are currently unemployed?
No!
No!
I am quoting
Trump. If
we take his claim of 93 million unemployed, made during
an interview with Sarah Palin in February 2016, and subtract jobs added since
he took over (and don’t even count young people graduating from school and
entering the work force), what do we see?
93,000,000
unemployed under Obama
-2,250,000 jobs added (March 2016-January 2017
under Obama)
91,750,000
unemployed when Obama left office
91,750,000
-2,966,000 jobs
added under Trump
87,784,000
Americans—based on Trump math—still desperately seeking work!!!
As a patriotic American, I think we can
all agree this plague of joblessness must be cured. I hope President Trump will
stop dawdling and pick up the pace and get these tens of millions back to work.
6/2/18: No
president has ever talked more about the need to be “tough on crime” than
President Trump. (Members of his administration excepted.) But did you know
last year DNA evidence applied to old criminal cases led to exonerations for
139 convicted “criminals.” Those men and women who weren’t actually
criminals had served a total of 1,478 years behind bars (10.6 years
on average) for crimes we now know they did not commit.
Ledura Watkins, freed last year, had been accused of killing a teacher and
convicted based on hair found at the scene.
After “only” 41 years, DNA now proves the hair was not his.
6/3/18: Rudy
Giuliani, Trump’s newest lawyer and
contortionist-able-to-talk-with-both-feet-in-his-mouth, explains in a series of interviews that Trump can’t get
in trouble, no matter what evidence the Russian investigation turns up. Under
the Constitution, he says, the president can pardon himself!
Trump
could pardon himself.
Still, let’s offer up a few hypotheticals. Could Trump invite
Special Counsel Mueller to the White House, shoot him dead, and issue his own
pardon? Rudy would say yes. Could he jump behind the wheel of a White House
limousine and purposely run over CNN reporter Jim Acosta and get out of legal
jeopardy with a pardon? Yes. Could he get a Playboy Bunny pregnant, and when
she was eight months along, order her arrested, brought to the White House, and
have his personal doctor perform an abortion? Yes. Could he consort with ISIS
members to attack Fort Knox? Could he pardon the terrorists and himself for his
role in the plot? Yes.
According to Rudy, the Founding Fathers designed the
Constitution so that one man would be above the law.
6/4/18: The
Justice Department decides to spend good taxpayer money to appeal a court decision that says President Trump cannot ban people
who disagree with him from his Twitter feed. (See: 5/24/18.)
A judge has ruled that in endlessly tweeting about public
policy, Trump’s account has become a public forum.
First Amendment rights therefore apply.
The president is not a fan of First Amendment rights (see: 6/5/18). So, he will use taxpayer
dollars to keep taxpayers who disagree with how he spends taxpayer dollars from
having a say.
*
TRUMP WEIGHS IN on Rudy’s bizarre claim from the day before.
Naturally, the president concurs:
As has been stated by numerous
legal scholars I have the absolute right to PARDON myself, but why would I
do that when I have done nothing wrong? In the meantime, the never ending Witch
Hunt, led by 13 very Angry and Conflicted Democrats (& others) continues
into the mid-terms!
One wonders who these “numerous legal scholars are.” We’ve
got Rudy…and Rudy’s imaginary friend.
I decide to do a little checking. There are scholars who
think the pardon power might include self-pardons.
But most who subscribe to that theory add that it would be suicidal for Trump
to so act, almost the same as self-impeaching himself.
They argue that the American people would be outraged and
their representatives in Congress would act.
(Those scholars have apparently not accounted for the epic
cowardice Senate Leader McConnell brings to the table.)
*
E.P.A. ADMINISTRATOR SCOTT PRUITT is a busy man, what with
talking to lobbyists from the coal industry about how we can burn all the coal
they can mine. It turns out Pruitt is so busy he needs an aide to run errands.
Millan Hupp, that aide, is told to hunt for a good apartment for Pruitt and
book his travel. Hupp makes headlines when it is revealed she contacted the
Trump International Hotel in D.C. and asked about getting Pruitt an “old”
mattress for his new Washington digs—once Hupp helped him locate those digs.
Hupp, 26, was more than happy to do errands and provide services because Pruitt
made sure she got a good cost-of-living increase in her pay. She started off a year ago making $48,000 and ended up at
$114,590.
“You’re
a piece of trash.”
Alas, all the scandals now cost Pruitt his job….
Also out on her ear is a second aide, Sarah Greenwalt. Like
Hupp, she got a good raise for her work in 2017, “earning” a bump of $66,000, to finish
her abbreviated E.P.A. career at $164,200.
When a reporter calls to ask about the pair of resignations,
a spokesperson for the E.P.A. responds, “You have a nice day. You’re a piece of
trash.”
6/5/18: The
NFL champion Philadelphia Eagles are disinvited to the White House after it
becomes clear only a handful of players wish to come.
The president tries to bend facts to fit a false narrative. “The Philadelphia Eagles
are unable to come to the White House with their full team to be celebrated
tomorrow,” he says in a statement.
They disagree with their
President because he insists that they proudly stand for the National Anthem,
hand on heart, in honor of the great men and women of our military and
the people of our country.
The Eagles wanted to send a
smaller delegation, but the 1,000 fans planning to attend the event deserve
better. These fans are still invited to the White House to be part of a
different type of ceremony - one that will honor our great country, pay tribute
to the heroes who fight to protect it, and loudly and proudly play the National
Anthem. I will be there at 3 p.m. with the United States Marine Band and the
United States Army Chorus to celebrate America.
This is news to Eagles players because they don’t disagree
with Trump about wanting to “honor the great men and women of our military.”
They disagree because he’s a charlatan who wraps himself in the flag and tries to pretend
he never called players who were protesting against police brutality “sons of
bitches.” NFL players don’t want to hang out with the man who says if they take
a knee maybe they should get out of the country.
More to the point, no player on the Eagles knelt during the NFL season. They
weren’t protesting before. Now they are. They don’t like Trump’s stomp-on-the-First
Amendment stand.
 |
| Eagles players did kneel in prayer during the season. Fox News had to apologize for using this photo to attack the team for "protesting." |
Sure, you can stand for the Anthem.
You can also stand on principle.
Postscript: Lebron James of the Cleveland
Cavaliers and Steph Curry of the Golden State Warriors make plain. No matter which team wins the 2018 NBA
championship, “no one wants an invite” to the White House. Nobody on either
team ever knelt before a game. They just don’t care to kneel to Trump.
6/6/18: Mrs.
Trump makes her first public appearance in weeks. Her devoted husband tells
reporters she’s doing fine. The First Lady smiles but does not speak.
Earlier, the president tweeted angrily—his forte—about how
the press was treating her. Really, most of his anger had to do with what the
press was saying about the First Lady’s relationship with him.
The
Fake News Media has been so unfair, and vicious, to my wife and our great First
Lady, Melania. During her recovery from surgery they reported everything from
near death, to facelift, to left the W.H. (and me) for N.Y. or Virginia, to
abuse. All Fake, she is doing really well!
Yes, the president is suddenly interested in “fairness.” I
suspect that is one quality no one has ever associated with Donald J. Trump.
In faraway Israel, Rudy Giuliani gives a speech. A member of the audience asks a question
about Stormy Daniels. Rudy says when it comes to the president’s word vs. a
porn queen’s, that the First Lady takes Donald’s word every time. There was no
sex between the future president and the porn queen in 2006!
“She believes her husband,” Rudy says of Melania. “She knows
it’s not true.”
I don’t know. The fact that Rudy is getting divorced by his third
wife (who was his mistress when he was married to his second), because at 74, he’s
been gallivanting around with another mistress? I don’t think he or his boy Don
should really be saying anything about who we can trust in such situations.
6/7/18: Trump
has not given a formal press conference in 476 days. If he does reporters will
ask pointed questions and he will have to explain his positions in more words
than fill a simplistic tweet.
What kind of questions might the president want to dodge, besides
the obvious ones about all the cheating he used to do while married to the
current First Lady?
Well, there’s the Russia investigation—and his brand-new
claims that he can indeed pardon himself.
A new report in the Washington
Post says Pruitt had his security detail drive him around D.C., from one
Ritz Carlton Hotel to another, so he could score some of his favorite scented
hand moisturizer.
He also thought it might be a good idea to send members of
the detail out to pick up his dry cleaning.
(Blogger’s note, 2/5/20: Whenever I find errors in what I
wrote, I correct them. For example, in several earlier posts I referred to “Director
Pruitt” of the E.P.A. His official title was “Administrator Pruitt.” He was
still a terrible head of the E.P.A.; and he eventually got the boot in the face
of multiple investigations.)
6/8/18: This
is how the Russia investigation goes. Rudy Giuliani makes stupid comments on
television: “The president has the power to pardon himself! He can pardon a
head of lettuce!”
Gates
knows where the coven meets.
Next, the president posts a stupid tweet, something like this:
“I can pardon anyone I want. Even witches! I am totally innocent. But even if
Special Counsel Mueller has pictures of me in bed with five Russian hookers, a
pair of mallard ducks, and Vladimir Putin, I still have the power to pardon
myself!!!”
Special Counsel Mueller and his investigators just keep on
digging for evidence. They keep building cases (we don’t know how many there
will be) and keep their mouths clamped shut.
On this fine day Mueller and his team issue two fresh
indictments. Paul Manafort gets hit with another, this time for witness tampering.
If you’re having trouble keeping track, don’t feel bad.
Manafort has been charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, money laundering,
tax evasion, bank fraud and being, generally, a scumbag.
Also indicted for the first time is Konstantin Kilimnik,
Manafort’s business partner and man with ties (of course) to Russian
intelligence. Manafort once referred to him as “my Russian brain.”
Rick Gates, Manafort’s right-hand man, and a cooperating
witness in the investigation, has admitted that he knew Kilimnik was linked
with Russian intelligence agents. Manafort left the campaign under a cloud in
August 2016; but Gates remained a member of Team Trump through Inauguration Day
and beyond.
That means if there are real witches in the White House Gates
knows where the coven meets.
*
AT THE G-7 MEETING in Canada, President Trump, who all the
other leaders there can’t stand, suggests Russia should be allowed to rejoin
the group. That way he’d have at least one friend.
Trump also appears to be confused. After all, he suggests
Canada was responsible for burning the White House in 1814. As for
Russia invading the Crimea in 2014, that doesn’t bother him one bit.
Trump does ♥Putin.
Russia was kicked out of the G-8
because of its invasion and annexation of Crimea. Since that time, Moscow has
encouraged and directed a separatist insurgency in Eastern Ukraine, intervened
in support Syria’s murderous dictator and the war crimes that he has
perpetrated, interfered in the U.S. presidential election, waged an information
war to undermine Western democracies, attempted to assassinate opponents on the
sovereign territory of our allies, and made common cause with China to
undermine the post-WWII international security system and the democratic values
embedded in it.
…President Trump’s idea of
renewing Russian membership in the G-7/G-8 does not protect or defend the
national security interests of the United States or our allies.
Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, also a Republican, says in a statement
of his own, “Russia shouldn’t be let back into the G-8 until it changes the behavior
that caused it to be expelled in the first place.”
*
BACK IN WASHINGTON D.C., Sierra Club leaders file a Freedom
of Information Act request. Then they start digging in E.P.A. records. It doesn’t take long to learn
that E.P.A. Administrator Pruitt allowed a Dallas businessman to select the
head of the E.P.A.’s influential Science Advisory Board.
That businessman, Doug Deason, and his dad, Darwin, donated
$900,000 to Trump’s 2016 election and other GOP candidates. Now the head of the
Science Advisory Board will review regulations that can impact Deason’s
business.
Pruitt has also removed pesky scientists, with their
ridiculous focus on clean air and water, from several advisory boards. To fill
their seats, he allowed coal and gas industry executives to suggest
replacements. Now the people who bring you giant oil spills, blow up towns like
West, Texas and cause hundreds of fracking-related earthquakes in Oklahoma will be advising the E.P.A. on
clean water and clean air and how to make sure dangerous chemicals don’t end
up…
Oh, forget it. This is Scott Pruitt.
He doesn’t care any more about clean air and water than Trump
cares about eating healthy and regular exercise.
6/9/18: Trump
flees the G-7 summit early, because he knows none of the other leaders like
him. He probably realizes they mock his hair behind his back. “Really,”
President Macron of France is rumored to have said, “it looks as if two
peroxided gerbils are mating atop his head.”
Before leaving for a separate summit in Singapore, with
murderous North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, Trump is asked by reporters about
his relationship with the other leaders at the G-7. Naturally, he takes offense
when a reporter asks if the other leaders are “angry” with the positions he’s
taking.
Trump: Who are you with, out of
curiosity?
Reporter: CNN.
Trump: I figured. Fake News CNN. The worst. But I could tell by the question. I had no idea you were CNN. After the question, I was just curious as to who you were with. You were CNN.
I would say that the level of relationship is a 10. We have a great relationship. Angela and Emmanuel and Justin. I would say the relationship is a 10. And I don’t blame them. I blame—as I said, I blame our past leaders for allowing this to happen. There was no reason this should happen. There’s no reason that we should have big trade deficits with virtually every country in the world. I’m going long beyond the G-7. There’s no reason for this. It’s the fault of the people that preceded me. And I’m not just saying President Obama. I’m going back a long way. You can go back 50 years, frankly. It just got worse and worse and worse.
You know, we used to be a nation that was unbelievably cash-flow-oriented. Had no debt of any consequence, and that built the highway system. We built the interstate system out of — virtually out of cash flow. And it was a lot different.
No, we have a very good relationship, and I don’t blame these people [the other G-7 leaders], but I will blame them if they don’t act smart and do what they have to do—because they have no choice. I’ll be honest with you, they have no choice.
They’re either going to make the trades fair, because our farmers have been hurt. You look at our farmers. For 15 years, the graph is going just like this—down. Our farmers have been hurt, our workers have been hurt. Our companies have moved out and moved to Mexico and other countries, including Canada.
Now, we are going to fix that situation. And if it’s not fixed, we’re not going to deal with these countries. But the relationship that I’ve had is great. So you can tell that to your fake friends at CNN.
Reporter: CNN.
Trump: I figured. Fake News CNN. The worst. But I could tell by the question. I had no idea you were CNN. After the question, I was just curious as to who you were with. You were CNN.
I would say that the level of relationship is a 10. We have a great relationship. Angela and Emmanuel and Justin. I would say the relationship is a 10. And I don’t blame them. I blame—as I said, I blame our past leaders for allowing this to happen. There was no reason this should happen. There’s no reason that we should have big trade deficits with virtually every country in the world. I’m going long beyond the G-7. There’s no reason for this. It’s the fault of the people that preceded me. And I’m not just saying President Obama. I’m going back a long way. You can go back 50 years, frankly. It just got worse and worse and worse.
You know, we used to be a nation that was unbelievably cash-flow-oriented. Had no debt of any consequence, and that built the highway system. We built the interstate system out of — virtually out of cash flow. And it was a lot different.
No, we have a very good relationship, and I don’t blame these people [the other G-7 leaders], but I will blame them if they don’t act smart and do what they have to do—because they have no choice. I’ll be honest with you, they have no choice.
They’re either going to make the trades fair, because our farmers have been hurt. You look at our farmers. For 15 years, the graph is going just like this—down. Our farmers have been hurt, our workers have been hurt. Our companies have moved out and moved to Mexico and other countries, including Canada.
Now, we are going to fix that situation. And if it’s not fixed, we’re not going to deal with these countries. But the relationship that I’ve had is great. So you can tell that to your fake friends at CNN.
Trump ♥♥♥♥♥♥’s all
the other leaders of the G-7 nations. Everything is great. “Fuck CNN,” I think
he wants to add.
In the meantime, the president has gone from calling Kim
Jong-un “Little Rocket Man” to saying Kim “has really been very open and I
think very honorable based on what we are seeing.”
Trump now ♥’s
Little Rocket Man.
And he still ♥’s
Putin.
Alas, love can be fleeting. Trump’s plane has hardly taken
off for Singapore before he and his minions begin attacking Canadian Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau.
A
“10” relationship doesn’t last.
What exactly did Trudeau do to bring the wrath of Donald J. down
upon his head? He pointed out that Canadians had stood “shoulder to shoulder”
with Americans, fighting “in far off lands,” ever since World War I. He described
Trump’s position on tariffs—that Canadian steel and aluminum imports
represented a security threat—as “insulting.” He said he would “move forward
with retaliatory measures on July 1. I have made it very clear to the
president,” he continued, “that it is not something we relish doing, but it is
something we absolutely will do. Canadians, we’re polite, we’re reasonable, but
we also will not be pushed around.”
And with that, here came the tweets—and there went the
“10”—and it looked like the CNN reporter had a point.
Trump Twitter-exploded:
PM
Justin Trudeau of Canada acted so meek and mild during our @G7 meetings only to
give a news conference after I left saying that, “US Tariffs were kind of
insulting” and he “will not be pushed around.” Very dishonest & weak.
Our Tariffs are in response to his of 270% on dairy!
Invective aimed at the leader of a U.S. ally simply poured
out of the dysfunctional Trump administration.
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow couldn’t believe
Trudeau had “stabbed us in the back.” None of the leaders at the summit had any
reason to be mad. Kudlow claimed Trump was “charming” during discussions. He
was there. He saw the charm with his very own Kudlow eyes.
John Bolton, Trump’s National Security Adviser, also decided
to lash out at the leaders of our closest allies.
Naturally, like his charming boss, he did it in a tweet:
6/10/18: If you
want to know how a relationship with President Trump, which he rates at a “10,”
looks from the other side, international reaction to his conduct at the G-7
summit is swift. A leading British newspaper, The Guardian, sums it up:
Donald Trump has left the G7
network of global cooperation in disarray after he pulled the US out of a
previously agreed summit communique, blaming the Canadian prime minister Justin
Trudeau whom he derided as “dishonest and weak”.
The US president, who arrived at
the summit in Canada late and left early to fly to Singapore to prepare for his
summit with Kim Jong-un, shocked fellow leaders with a bellicose press
conference on Saturday in which he attacked the trade policies of other
countries.
The US had nevertheless appeared
to agree [to] a form of words on contentious issues thanks to an all-night
negotiating session by officials from all sides.
But after leaving for Singapore,
Trump tweeted personal attacks on Trudeau and said that he had told his
representatives not to sign the summit communique, turning what had already been a tense meeting of the world’s leading
industrialised democracies into a fiasco.
“There’s
a special place in hell.”
Peter Navarro, Trump’s trade adviser, decides to go all
hellfire and damnation, and see if he can’t make the situation worse. “There’s
a special place in hell,” he says, “for any foreign leader that engages in
bad-faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump and then tries to stab him
in the back on the way out the door.”
At this point, I am sensing a new Trump election strategy in
2020. We’re going to need another wall, a wall to keep Canadians out! First,
Trump will describe them as “moose loving killers” and “psychos with hockey
sticks.” Second, he will bark at every rally, “Who’s going to pay for that
wall?”
“Canada!” the crowd will shout.
6/11/18: I
think we can all agree that the G-7 summit in Canada did not end particularly
well.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Robert D. Hormats,
a veteran of both Republican and Democratic administrations, who served as an
adviser at a dozen G-7 gatherings in years past. “The irony is this institution
that was designed largely by the United States was really designed to shore up
alliances and political relationships and resolve economic issues. This just
served to do the opposite of that.”
Prime Minister Trudeau has made it clear he does not appreciate
the U.S. instituting tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum on the pretext that
such imports represent a “security threat.”
It is true. The U.S. would want a healthy steel and aluminum
industry in case of war. This blogger is a former history teacher.
He can see that point.
“A
pathetic little man-child.”
Nevertheless, you can see—if you’re not a Trump-loving dope—why
this position might irk the Canadians:
2.
Canada was the first NATO signatory to invoke Article 5, and come to our aid after the attacks on 9/11.
4.
Canadian soldiers, sailors and airmen joined us
in the First Gulf War.
6.
Canadians were on the same side in World War I
7.
Canadians were on the same side in World War II.
And:
8.
The President of the United States is a giant
asshole.
The reaction of our closest allies after being slapped with
tariffs is negative in the extreme. Roland Paris, a former adviser to Trudeau,
drops all diplomatic niceties and mocks Trump. “Big tough guy once he’s back on
his airplane,” Paris tweets. “Can’t do it [insult Trudeau] in person, and knows
it, which makes him feel weak. So he projects these feelings onto Trudeau and
then lashes out at him. You don’t need to be Freud. He’s a pathetic little
man-child.”
It’s not just Canadians who are disgusted. “International
cooperation can’t depend on anger and small words,” a statement from the French
reads. “Let’s be serious and worthy of our people.”
The German foreign minister describes the results of the G-7
in blunt language. “It’s actually not a real surprise. We have seen this with
[Trump on] the climate agreement or the Iran deal. In a matter of seconds, you
can destroy trust with 280 twitter characters. To build that up again will
take much longer.”
Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor is clearly unhappy. “We
won’t allow ourselves to be had again and again,” she says of trying to work
with the mercurial U.S. leader. “The withdrawal, so to speak, via tweet,” from
a carefully-crafted agreement on principle was “sobering and a bit depressing.”
A picture from the summit, showing Merkel and Trump in a less-than-friendly
pose, quickly goes viral. This leads to further mockery of Trump. The Evening-Standard, a British paper, posts
some of the best humor:
…and this…
An editorial titled “A Group of Seven Fiasco in Canada”
quickly appears in the Japan
Times. Here are some of the main points:
If U.S. President Donald Trump’s
objective is to make himself the center of attention at every international
event, he is succeeding. If he aims to undermine the legitimacy of international
institutions, he is making progress. If, however, he seeks to make America
great again, his actions are working at cross purposes to his goal….
Trump…held a solo news
conference when he departed at which he charged that his country was “the piggy
bank that everyone was robbing. And that ends.”
It goes without saying that accusing your friends of
“robbing” you for years isn’t a winning strategy in the eyes of the British, French,
Germans, Italians, Japanese or Canadians.
The editorial continues:
Picking fights with friends is
not making America great again. Rather, it is weakening the foundation of American power, a
development that none of its allies and partners wish to see. It is also helping governments that prefer a
world that is ruled by raw power and indifference to the aspirations to
democracy and the dignity of its inhabitants.
As for letting Russia rejoin the G-7, our allies are aghast. Peter
Westmacott, former British ambassador to the U.S., openly questions the
president’s approach. “Trump is readier to give a pass to countries that pose a real threat to Western values and security than to America’s traditional
allies. If there is a ‘method to the madness’…it is currently well hidden.”
Not even Dan Coats, Trump’s pick for Director of National
Intelligence, is onboard. At a conference in France, Coats lists a series of
recent actions inimical to Western nations, taken by Russia:
These Russian actions are
purposeful and premeditated and they represent an all-out assault by Vladimir
Putin on the rule of law, Western
ideals and democratic norms.
His actions demonstrate that he
seeks to sow divisions within and between those in the West who adhere to
democratic norms. The Russians are actively
seeking to divide our alliance
and we must not allow that to
happen.
So—if Putin is following news out of Canada—he will surely be
satisfied with his decision to help Trump win election.
Putin ♥’s Trump.
 |
| Love at first sight. Also, second and third. |
*
IN OTHER NEWS we learn the president has a habit of ripping
up documents after he reads them. This is a legal problem because the
Presidential Records Act requires that all papers read or touched by the Chief
Executive must be preserved. Naturally, aides have tried to break the president
of his habit.
Just as naturally, he refuses to listen.
Solomon Lartley, a nearly 30-year veteran in the records
management office, tells reporters that he spends most days, earning his $65,969, taping shredded
paper back together.
Reginald Young Jr., “a senior records management analyst” tells reporters for Politico
that in more than two decades of government service, he has never been asked to
do anything like this. “I’m looking at my director, and saying, ‘Are you guys
serious?’ We’re making more than $60,000 a year,” Young explains. “We need to
be doing far more important things than this. It felt like the lowest form of
work you can take on without having to empty the trash cans.”
And that’s how Donald Trump wastes almost $130,000 in
taxpayer money annually, if not more.
6/12/18: President Trump and Kim Jong-un wrap up their summit and head
home. Here, for once, I will give Trump credit. He didn’t threaten to blow
anyone up. Not even Justin Trudeau.
All options are terrible.
The situation with North Korea remains
precarious. The threat of a missile attack from that quarter is no joke. It is
no fault of President Trump that the question of “denuclearization” is complex.
I will point out, again, that Trump is
about to find out what all presidents dealing with nuclear threats have found
out. When it comes to unleashing “fire and fury” there are no good options. All
options are terrible. The devil in working toward avoiding terrible options is
always in the details.
6/13/18: The
president returns home from his historic meeting with Kim Jong-un. As anyone
could have predicted, he proclaims
his trip a total success. You can pretty much close the voting for
the Nobel Prize. President Twitter Thumbs offers us this historic announcement
at 4:56 a.m.:
Just landed - a long trip, but
everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office. There is no
longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea. Meeting with Kim Jong Un was an
interesting and very positive experience. North Korea has great potential for
the future!
Next, he blasts the free press for not crediting his success.
Naturally, he does his blasting in a tweet:
So funny to watch the Fake News,
especially NBC and CNN. They are fighting hard to downplay the deal with North
Korea. 500 days ago they would have “begged” for this deal—looked like war
would break out. Our Country’s biggest enemy is the Fake News so easily
promulgated by fools!
As you could also guess, Fox News picks up the story and misses the salient point. Fox opens with exactly the
kind of quality reporting we’ve come to expect. That is to say, propaganda:
Having apparently defanged the
nuclear threat posed by North Korea, President Trump on Wednesday identified
the biggest remaining threat to the Republic: The “fake news media.”
Trump, just back in Washington
after his historic sitdown in Singapore with Kim Jong Un, blasted the press—and
two TV news organizations in particular—for failing to grasp the
enormity of the event.
Yes, those poor reporters at CNN and NBC! They are too obtuse
to “grasp the enormity” of what Donald the Great has done!
First, let’s say this: Kim Jong-un is a far bigger threat to
this country than the “Fake News” folks.
Unless Wolf Blitzer is threatening to nuke an American city,
and I missed it.
Secondly, none of us—and not all of the talking heads on
cable news combined—can know where the path President Trump and Kim Jong-un
appear to be taking ends. It may end with total denuclearization. It may end in
renewed threats and possibility of war. Even the president cannot be sure and
he admitted as much. Kim has sent signals that he may be
willing to move toward total denuclearization; but so far not one North Korean
grenade has been surrendered, let alone his stockpile of nukes. Kim may give up
his missile program in the future. Kim may stop adding to his stockpile. Kim
may turn over the nuclear weapons he already has. Kim may allow inspectors into
his country to verify all these steps. And Mr. Kim may renege.
“I
may be wrong…I don’t know that I’ll ever admit that.”
“Honestly, I think he’s going to do these things,” Trump says
during a press conference before returning home. “I may be wrong; I mean, I may
stand before you in six months and say, ‘Hey, I was wrong,’” “I don’t know that
I’ll ever admit that,” he laughs, “but I’ll find some kind of an excuse.”
Fox News might not want to admit it; but CNN, NBC, The New York Time and even the Wapakoneta Daily News have a duty to question the wisdom of Trump saying Kim
Jong-un “loves his people.” Kim heads up one of the most repressive regimes on
the face of the earth. An estimated 18 million people in North Korea suffer
from malnutrition, although Kim clearly eats well. The number of political
prisoners held by the government stands at 120,000. That number would
be higher, but Kim’s jailors have no compunction when it comes to torturing,
starving to death or executing prisoners who represent the gravest threats to
the regime.
Unfortunately, Fox can’t get even the simplest points right. When
Trump brags because he got Otto Warmbier released from the gulag, whereas Obama “failed,” Fox News
lets him brag. The president brags about bringing back three other prisoners, taken during Obama’s
time in office, when Obama could not. Fox doesn’t note that Kim, whose police brutalized Warmbier, released him only in time to return
home and die. Fox can’t even call the president out on his lies.
Of the three hostages released together recently, only one
was taken while Obama was in office.
Was it good that Trump brought those three hostages and poor
Warmbier home? Yes, of course. But Fox won’t note that four hostages held by North Korea were
freed while Obama was in office.
That would require viewers to think.
NBC journalists aren’t the “greatest enemy” of this country
if they ask if Trump is willing to turn his back on our nation’s best values.
If the president is going to talk about Kim in the glowing fashion he has, it’s
worth asking if U.S. foreign policy is about to be fundamentally altered. “He’s
got a great personality,” Trump says of Kim in one interview. “He’s a funny guy,
he’s very smart, he’s a great negotiator. He loves his people, not that I’m
surprised by that. I think that we have the start of an amazing deal.”
You don’t need to look at Kim Jong-un twice to see a brutal
dictator at work. Yet Trump looks twice and sees prime real estate. “They have
great beaches,” he says of North Korea during a press conference. “You see that
whenever they’re exploding their cannons into the ocean. I said, ‘Boy, look at
that view. Wouldn’t that make a great condo?’ You could have the best hotels in
the world right there. Think of it from a real-estate perspective.”
Yes, I’m sure those 18 million malnourished North Korean
citizens s and those 120,000 political prisoners do.
Executed
with flamethrowers and anti-aircraft guns
If Fox News had any doubt about why journalists from rival
networks were skeptical of Trump’s new fondness for Kim, they had only to
consider a news report from last October. Once again, journalists outlined the
horrific methods favored by the psychopath now charming Trump.
Here’s the way a real news outlet describes Kim’s
regime:
Whether it be his penchant for
heavy drinking or the horrors he inflicts on the women he keeps as sex
slaves, the strongman has long held his nation in fear as he rules over the
Hermit Kingdom with unchecked powers. Kim, however, seems to save his most
gruesome indulgences for the way he deals with people he considers enemies,
traitors or subordinates….
Reporters then compiled a list of his favorite methods for
executing those who crossed him:
Anti-aircraft Guns – While
these weapons were designed to take down enemy fighter jets, they have become a
favorite method of execution for Kim. In 2015, reports surfaced from South
Korean intelligence that the dictator’s Defense Minister Hyong Yong Choi was pulverized to death by an anti-aircraft gun after
the young despot ordered his execution for falling asleep during an
event and not carrying out instructions.
Hee Yeon Lim, a 26-year-old
defector, recently told western media that
she was part of a crowd of 10,000 ordered to watch the execution by
anti-aircraft guns of 11 musicians who allegedly made a pornographic
video.
“What I saw that day made me
sick in my stomach. They were lashed to the end of anti-aircraft guns,” she
said. “A gun was fired, the noise was deafening, absolutely terrifying. And the
guns were fired one after the other.”
She added: “The musicians just
disappeared each time the guns were fired into them. Their bodies were blown to
bits, totally destroyed, blood and bits flying everywhere…and then, after that,
military tanks moved in and they ran over the bits on the ground where the
remains lay.”
Mortar Fire…In 2011, a vice
minister of the army was sentenced to death for allegedly drinking and partying
during the official mourning period after Kim Jong Il’s death. The younger Kim apparently ordered “no
trace of him left behind, down to his hair” before the vice minister was placed
on a spot that had been targeted for a mortar round and “obliterated”.
Flamethrower – Multiple
news sources reported in 2014 that, as part of Kim’s purge of high-ranking
officials, O Sang Hon, the deputy public security minister, was “executed by
flamethrower.”
...Poisoning – Seemingly
too subtle of a method for Kim, who obviously prefers over-the-top theatrics
when it comes to killing, the North Korean strongman isn’t above
treachery…especially when it comes to family.
After killing her husband Kim Kyong Hui—the dictator’s
own aunt—was allegedly poisoned to death after he grew tired of her complaints.
And to make sure that nobody else would bother him, Kim ordered the rest of his
aunt’s family—around seven members—killed.
By the way, who compiled that horrific list of crimes above? Who made it
clear that Kim might be mad? Who made it clear he might not be someone who
would ever live by his word? It was Fox News, pursuing the truth for once. It
was not Fox News parroting praise for Orange Leader.
6/14/18: It’s a
momentous day for Orange Leader. It’s his birthday! The F.B.I. Inspector
General is going to issue a report on the agency’s handling of the Hillary
Clinton email investigation. Orange Leader knows it’s going to be great!
Bam!
The 500-page report lands on desks all around Washington.
This is Orange Leader’s best birthday
present ever!
Former F.B.I. Director James Comey gets faulted for
“insubordination.” That “slimeball!” And…huh?
If you believe in the “Criminal Deep State,” as Trump and many
of his fans do, the report is a thudding dud. What the report makes abundantly
clear is that Comey’s actions were damaging
to Hillary Clinton’s chances of being elected. No Trumps were harmed
during the 2016 campaign.
The F.B.I. was not out to get Trump. (See: 6/18/18.)
*
CNN reports that a policy adviser for two pro-Trump groups
has been fired. Juan Pablo Andrade, who bills himself as executive advisor for
the National Diversity Coalition for Trump, gets his ass canned after a video
surfaces of him shouting, “The only thing the Nazis didn’t get right is they
didn’t keep f***ing going!”
Andrade’s removal from another pro-Trump group, America First
Priorities, follows the removal of Carl Higbie from the same group. CNN reported that Higbie had previously “served
as the public face of the Corporation for National and Community Service, the
agency that runs AmeriCorps.”
Who appointed him to that post?
Trump.
Why was he fired not once, but twice, in less than a year?
Higbie was first canned after a series of his racist, sexist, anti-Muslim and
anti-gay comments were uncovered.
*
THE NEW YORK STATE COURT OF APPEALS dismisses a motion by the president’s lawyers to halt
Summer Zervos’ defamation lawsuit. She’s suing because he called her a liar
after she accused him of sexual misconduct during the 2016 campaign.
Naturally, Zervos’ lawyer is pleased. “We look forward to
continuing the discovery process and exposing the truth,” she says. Trump now moves
one step closer to being deposed in the case. (See: 4/2/18.)
Meanwhile, New York Attorney General Barbara
Underwood sues the president and all his adult children, except
Tiffany, for “persistently illegal conduct” related to the Donald J. Trump
Foundation, a purportedly charitable fund. Questionable “charitable” actions
taken by the Foundation include disbursing $10,000 to purchase a large portrait
of Donald J. Trump—now hanging over a bar at one of his golf resorts. There’s a
“charitable” contribution of $158,000 to Martin Greenberg, after Mr. Greenberg sued
Trump National Golf Club for failing to pay a promised $1 million reward for
making a hole-in-one at a charity outing.
There’s even $100,000 in “charitable” spending to settle a
lawsuit with the city of Palm Beach, Florida.
*
ONE LEGAL EXPERT—namely Donald Trump Jr.—senses trends going against his father. On Fox & Friends he explains why Dad,
who has nothing to hide, should never sit down with Mueller’s investigators.
I wouldn't do it. I think it
would be stupid. I don’t think any proper lawyer would say, “Hey, you should go
do it,” because it’s not about collusion anymore. It’s about, “Can we get him
to say something that may be interpreted as somewhat off or inaccurate,” and
after 50,000 questions, maybe you make a mistake, and that’s how we get you,
and that’s ridiculous.
“Listen, I don’t trust these people as far as I can throw
them,” Don Jr. says in reference to federal prosecutors. The Fox & Friends hosts nod their heads
in unison, like Bobble Heads set in motion.
Don Jr. continues:
You know, you can sit there and
ask questions for 50 hours, for 100 hours, ask the same thing 1,000 times, and
they’ll say, “Oh, the comma is different here. Now we got you.” You know, the
reality is the greatest investigative bodies in the world have been looking for
two years—two years—and they have come up with nothing.
Once again, the Bobble Heads nod. That’s their job when any
member of the Trump clan appears or calls to chat.
Jailed
without a trial.
In any case, every right-wing “thinker” is obsessing over an
email exchange between F.B.I. agent Peter Strzok and another F.B.I. agent with
whom he was having an affair. Strzok was saying what at least half of all Americans were thinking two years ago. Basically, Strzok was saying Trump
was a terrible human being.
This email traffic, according to Rudy Giuliani—who shows up
on Sean Hannity’s show once again—proves that anyone indicted by Robert
Mueller, even those who have already pled guilty, should immediately be pardoned.
“Tomorrow,”
Rudy slobbers, “Mueller should be suspended and honest people should be brought
in, impartial people to investigate these people like Strzok. Strzok should be
in jail by the end of next week.”
Yes,
impartial people! People like Rudy! Or the first president in history to claim
he can pardon himself. People like Rudy who insist an F.B.I. agent should go
to jail, mainly for expressing political opinions.
No
trial necessary.
*
SPEAKING
OF GRATUITOUS LYING, several media outlets point out something odd about Trump’s claims of
success since returning from his summit meeting. The North Koreans have agreed
to allow the U.S. to start bringing back the remains of servicemen killed in
the Korean War.
That’s
good news; and credit to Trump.
Trump,
of course, wants it to sound even better. He tells reporters how hard he worked
to get that pledge and why it meant so much to him to get it. Now the “fallen
heroes” would be coming home:
And we have thousands of people
that have asked for that, thousands and thousands of people. So many people
asked when I was on the campaign, I’d say “Wait a minute, I don’t have any
relationship,” but they said, “When you can President, we’d love our son to be
brought back home.”
Yes, thousands and thousands asked. The war ended 65 years
ago. If the average soldier was 18 and his parents were 18 at the time of his
birth, his parents would now be at minimum 101 years old.
With that, the sun sets over the nation’s capital on Flag
Day. (See: 6/15/18.)
 |
| Yes, this flag. |
 |
| No, Donald, not this one. |
 |
| A lot of Trump fans like this flag for some reason. |
 |
| And people who like this flag seem to like Trump. |
6/15/18: The
sun rises again over Washington D.C. Rudy sleeps in late after a hard night
ranting.
Paul Manafort puts on a clean shirt, tie and expensive suit
(he’s known to have spent at least $500,000 on suits) and heads for court.
He’s facing fresh accusations of witness tampering. When proceedings open, his
lawyers tell the judge Old Paul didn’t realize that what he was doing was wrong
when he contacted two potential witnesses in his case. Prosecutors disagree.
Manafort, they insist, engaged in a sustained effort to suborn perjury,
including sending encrypted messages, while out on $10 million bail.
The judge orders Manafort to jail, where he will be wearing a
much less expensive suit until trial.
The president has prepared for this development by laying out
the “coffee boy” defense. This defense was first used after campaign adviser
George Papadopoulos copped a plea. No big deal, Trump said at the time. George
was merely a “coffee boy.” Trump now tells reporters he feels bad for Manafort, who “worked for me for a very
short period of time…for what, 49 days, or something?”
Or something.
Manafort worked for the Trump campaign for 144 days. He led
the campaign for three months.
6/16/18:
Federal investigators have pieced together 16 pages of shredded documents seized in a
raid on the office of Michael Cohen. They also recovered 731 pages of encrypted
text messages, because what lawyer doesn’t encrypt text messages?
Meanwhile, Cohen’s lawyers have suffered a string of legal
defeats. Arguing that all of his records are shielded by attorney-client privilege, they convince a
special judge to review 12,543 pages of paper records, comprising 639
documents. The judge examines them all before they are seen by prosecutors—and
rules that only 13 are protected. Another 291,700 items on two phones and an
iPad are reviewed. Only 148 are privileged or partially privileged. Seven are
of a personal nature and can be shielded. The rest are available to build a case
against Mr. Cohen.
6/17/18: The Washington Post reports—and Roger Stone
and Michael Caputo suddenly admit—that Stone met during the 2016 campaign with
a Russian individual who was offering dirt on Hillary Clinton.
Amnesia
afflicted everyone associated with the 2016 campaign.
Caputo now remembers arranging the meeting after a man going
by the name of “Henry Greenberg” approached Caputo’s Russian-immigrant business
partner, at an art showing in Miami in the spring of 2016.
The meeting may not have borne fruit, save to alert Russian intelligence that the Trump team was willing
to play ball. Greenberg asked for $2 million for his pile of dirt. Stone
claims he turned him down, telling the Russian, “You don’t understand Donald
Trump. He doesn’t pay for anything.”
Stone wasn’t saying no because it would be wrong to allow a foreign adversary to
tilt a U.S. election.
He was saying no because Trump was cheap.
Afterward, Caputo texted Stone to ask: “How crazy is the
Russian?” There’s no doubt Caputo realized who Greenberg meant to represent.
Stone explained that the Russian had asked for big money and labeled
the meeting “a waste of time.”
Caputo responded: “The Russian way. Anything interesting?”
Stone replied, “No.”
Here’s what seems odd. Stone has long denied meeting with any Russians during the
campaign. Both Stone and Caputo could have brought this meeting up during
testimony before Congress. Both forgot they helped arrange or had the meeting.
Even the pattern is odd. The meeting with Greenberg was set up a few weeks
after George Papadopoulos met in secret with what he believed were people with direct
links to Vladimir Putin and had dirt on Clinton. Papadopoulos forgot about his
meeting—and for lying about it, he got indicted and pled guilty.
Stone’s meeting with Greenberg came two weeks before Don Jr.,
Jared Kushner, and the now-incarcerated Paul Manafort agreed to take a meeting
specifically arranged with the understanding that agents of the Russian
government would provide dirt on…Hillary Clinton! Typical of the amnesia that
afflicted everyone associated with the 2016 campaign, Don Jr. quickly forgot
about the meeting.
Jared forgot.
Manafort forgot.
When Greenberg was contacted by the Post for the story, he denied that he and Stone had met. Not long
after, he texted the Post and
admitted, okay, they did. Now that he thought about it, he could remember what
Stone said two years ago. Greenberg didn’t understand Trump. He wouldn’t give
him $2 million. “He doesn’t pay for anything,” Greenberg said Stone said.
In other words, no dirt was passed—no harm done—and no
campaign laws were broken or even slightly bruised.
Caught
with their Conspiracy Pants at least half down.
Stone told the Post
he met with Greenberg alone. Greenberg said he was accompanied by a Ukrainian
friend named Alexei, who had previously worked for the Clinton Foundation and had
dirt he wanted to share.
Caught, as it were, with their Conspiracy Pants at least half
down, both Stone and Caputo now claimed that when they talked to Congressional
investigators sometime back, they forgot all about this unimportant meeting
where someone with Russian connections asked for $2 million.
In fact, Caputo now claims the meeting was an F.B.I. setup
and so he’s the victim in all of this.
As for Mr. Stone, he insisted in a videotaped interview given to the Post last year: “I’ve never been to
Russia. I didn’t talk to anybody who was identifiably Russian during the
two-year run-up to this campaign. I very definitely can’t think of anybody who
might have been a Russian without my knowledge. It’s a canard.”
See any pattern here?
6/18/18: What
would a Monday be without a stupid presidential tweet? Not content with
separating parents and children on the border, Trump decides to dive into the
immigration controversy in Europe.
I’m sure our allies in countries like Germany, France and
Great Britain appreciate all his help:
The people
of Germany are turning against their leadership as migration is
rocking the already tenuous Berlin coalition. Crime in Germany is way
up. Big mistake made all over Europe in allowing millions of people in who have
so strongly and violently changed their culture!
Sadly, those pesky “Fake News” folks at CNN do some “fake”
checking of the “fake statistics” available from the “fake” German Federal
Ministry of the Interior. According to the German police—who are probably just
people dressed up in Halloween costumes and using “fake” German accents—crime was
the lowest in Germany last year since 1992. The drop from
2016 to 2017 was 5.1%.
Meanwhile, you had to wonder why Trump wasn’t focused on
crime at home. Hate crimes against Muslims in America rose 15% last
year. Anti-Semitic incidents reached all-time highs. The total number of
school shootings, since 2009, reached 288 by May 21. This compares with two school shootings in Canada, two in
France, one in Germany and zero in Japan, Italy and the United Kingdom during
that time.
I can’t find current murder rates for
Germany—but the numbers for 2015 will suffice. In 2015 Germany had a murder
rate of less than 0.9 per 100,000 people, down by almost a third in fifteen years.
By comparison the murder rate in the United States was 5.3 per 100,000 in
2016, which was roughly half the rate during a stretch that began in the late
60s and continued into the early 90s.
(I try to cite
reputable sources; but even reputable sources don’t always agree on exact
numbers; they do agree the U.S. murder rate is extremely high. See: 5/18/18.)
*
IN TERMS of the current tumult regarding separation of
children from parents along the border, it’s safe to say the Trump
administration says, “tomato,” and everyone with a heart says, “tomatho.” But
it’s clear who came up with the new policy even if the president won’t admit it’s a new policy. In an interview with The New York Times last March, White
House aide Stephen Miller was clear about the decision to start separating
children from parents when families tried to enter the United States, illegally
or even when claiming asylum. “No nation,” he insisted,
…can have the policy that whole
classes of people are immune from immigration law or enforcement. It was a simple decision by the administration
to have a zero tolerance policy for illegal entry, period. The message is that
no one is exempt from immigration law.
So: There it was. It was a simple decision—especially, if
like Miller, you have no more morals than a weasel.
You had to wonder if what Miller really wanted to say wasn’t
something like: “All you brown and black people fleeing dangerous conditions
and coming to America’s doorstep should turn around and go back. Because
frankly, the Statue of Liberty is a pile of green copper junk and we don’t want
your kind.”
Your tired, your poor, your huddled masses—the kind of
people, including Russian Jews fleeing persecution, who first planted Miller’s family on our shores,
and brought us Friedrich Trump in 1885—you can kiss off.
“It’s
very biblical to enforce the law.”
A month later, Miller’s statement was followed by defense of
the new policy of breaking up families from the lips of Attorney General
Sessions. “If you don’t like that,” he said, “then don’t smuggle children over
our border.”
Sessions, of course, famously quoted the Bible to justify this policy, which the
Department of Justice announced and labeled as a “new zero-tolerance policy” on
its website on April 6.
As for the Bible, backing him up, Mr. Sessions claimed:
Persons who violate the law of
our nation are subject to prosecution...I would cite you to the Apostle Paul
and his clear and wise command in Romans 13 to obey the laws of the government
because God has ordained the government for his purposes. Orderly and
lawful processes are good in themselves...and protect the weak and it protects
the lawful.
Naturally, when asked about the Attorney General’s comments,
on June 14, White House Press Secretary Pinocchio doubled down. “I can say that
it’s very biblical to enforce the law. It’s repeated many times throughout the
Bible,” she pointed out. Barraged by questions from reporters, who apparently
wanted to express “fake outrage” at the separation of “fake little children”
from “fake parents,” Sanders first insulted a CNN reporter for failing to understand
short sentences. Then she clenched her jaw and asserted, “It’s a moral policy
to enforce the law.”
Clearly, neither Sessions nor Sanders dared offer context for
their “hey-it’s-in-the-Bible” defense. For example, the Roman government itself
was rather hard on early Christians, often setting them on fire, legally,
for fun. There was a time when “the divine right of kings” was accepted by all
the crowned heads in Christendom because it was established in biblical text,
including Romans 13:1. In the same way, our colonial forebearers cited
Leviticus 20:27 when they hanged witches in Salem, Massachusetts. The Bible also
supports the right to own slaves, including Exodus 21 and Leviticus 25:44-46. That
was always a big hit with slave owners.
It might be fun if Sanders, who considers herself an honest-to-gosh
Christian, would cite Leviticus 20:10 from the podium someday. That verse makes
adultery punishable by death—and subsequent verses make it clear that a cool
method of dispatching sinners involves pounding them with stones.
Next time Sanders cites the Bible to make a point, she might
just as readily call on reporters to gather on the South Lawn, pockets filled
with rocks, to await the next appearance of President Donald J. Trump.
As for this terrible separation of children and parents—which
even President Trump says he hates—there seems to be some confusion about who
should get the blame. For some odd reason, probably moral cowardice, Trump
continues to insist this policy is really the fault of Democrats. This he
insists despite the fact that Democrats don’t control the White House, either
house of Congress, and did not appoint any of the agency heads carrying out
this draconian policy.
You can argue that the policy is necessary, if you want. But
you can’t eat your cake and then deny you ate it when you have frosting smeared
on your cheeks and crumbs down the front of your shirt.
Own it, President Trump. Don’t blame Democrats if you look
cruel and heartless. Because…you are.
*
ON CAPITOL HILL, F.B.I. Director Christopher Wray and
Inspector General Michael Horowitz testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Republicans are miffed because they demanded an Inspector General’s
investigation into F.B.I. handling of the Clinton email affair—and it lands
with a thud.
While both Wray and Horowitz admit errors in judgment were
made during the Clinton investigation, they say there is no evidence of political bias influencing the
outcome. What about F.B.I. bias against Trump—possibly shaping the
investigation into the Trump campaign? A Democratic senator wonders, “Is there
a ‘witch hunt?’” Wray says again, there is no “witch hunt.”
Horowitz says there was no plot to harm the Trump campaign.
Hearing this, Trump can’t help himself. He’s like a man
possessed by Twitter demons. He has to grab his iPhone and tweet: “Comey gave Strzok his marching orders. Mueller is
Comey’s best friend. Witch Hunt!”
Trump has witches on his mind more than Cotton Mather.
6/19/18: The heat intensifies as protest against the
policy of separating children from parents at the southern border grows.
The president and his defenders keep insisting they hate
having to do it. But what choice does Trump have? He’s only president! The only
powers he has under the Constitution are to enforce the laws as he sees fit and
direct the executive branch to carry out whatever policies he’s pushing on any
given day. It’s very sad, he grumbles, this “Democratic law,” which no one can
find on the books, which he is forced to carry out. It’s not his fault, he
insists!
It’s not hard to rebut the president’s position and you can
do it using the words of Republican lawmakers. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine tells reporters that separation of children is not
necessary—and it does not require
congressional action to end the practice. “The fact is the administration
has the authority to fix this immediately without legislation,” she says.
Collins scoffs when asked about Homeland Security Secretary
Kristjen Nielsen’s claim that the administration has no choice but to enforce
the law exactly as written. “That is not the case,” Collins adds. “Otherwise,
how could the two previous administrations have rejected this approach? That’s amazing that she said that.”
Sen. Lindsay Graham isn’t mincing words. “President Trump could stop this policy with a phone call,”
he says. “I’ll go tell him: If you don’t like families being separated, you can
tell DHS, ‘Stop doing it.’”
If you watch Fox News you hear all about what a great policy
this is—which I think is proof that watching Fox News will make you measurably
stupider. Laura Ingraham tells viewers the holding facilities the children are being sent to
are just like “summer camps” and “boarding school.”
One liberal pundit, in a rare moment of levity, calls this
the moment Ingraham’s soul left her body.
Tucker Carlson says the kids in these camps are better off
with air conditioning and comfy beds than they were in their impoverished,
war-torn, crime-ridden homelands. He, for one, can’t imagine why anyone would
let these people enter the U.S. for a chance at a better life.
As for Trump’s critics, Carlson wipes them out (in his mind
and the increasingly damaged minds of his viewers), saying, “You think any of
these people really care about family separation? ... No matter what they tell
you, this is not about helping children. Their goal is to change your country forever—and
they are succeeding, by the way.”
(I think he wants to say, as one Republican lawmaker did earlier this month, that too many brown and
black people are crossing our southern border and soon there won’t be enough
white people left to go around. But even Fox News might balk at such right-wing
honesty, if he did.)
Moments later, logic flies off the rails. The people who
criticize Trump don’t care about the collapse of the American family, Carlson
shouts. “They welcome that collapse, because strong families are an impediment
to their political power.” The liberals, he fumes, don’t care about single parent
families in this country or fixing the foster care system. They should focus on
that, Carlson snarls. This claim seems odd since liberals often argue for
raising taxes to improve foster care and bolster children’s services and people
like Carlson rant and rave about Big Government and killing billionaires with
more taxes. Carlson wraps up his defense of a shitty policy by claiming Trump’s
critics are hypocrites. “They care far more about foreigners than about their
own people.”
A
crippling model shortage.
So, I say, let’s look at who doesn’t like this policy. And it
is policy. It’s not law. The First Lady, who managed to gain entry to the
United States some years back, because the country was experiencing a crippling
shortage of models, is opposed. Her spokeswoman issues a statement: “Mrs. Trump hates to
see children separated from their families and hopes both sides of the
aisle can finally come together to achieve successful immigration reform. She
believes we need to be a country that follows all laws, but also a country that
governs with heart.”
None of the four former First Ladies supports the president.
Okay, Hillary, you figure is a given. Rosalynn Carter remembers Cambodians
fleeing a murderous communist regime in the 70s. Those refugees included many
individuals who helped U.S. forces during the Vietnam War. She’s blunt:
When I was first lady, I worked
to call attention to the plight of refugees fleeing Cambodia for Thailand. I
visited Thailand and witnessed firsthand the trauma of parents and children separated
by circumstance beyond their control. The practice and policy today of removing
children from their parents’ care at our border with Mexico is disgraceful and a shame to our country.
And you have to credit Mrs. Clinton, a little, for using the
Bible to blast Attorney General Sessions’ claim that the Bible somehow justified
his policy. She calls what’s happening along the border a “humanitarian
crisis.”
“Those who selectively use the Bible to justify this cruelty
are ignoring a central tenet of Christianity. Jesus said ‘Suffer the little
children unto me.’ He did not say ‘let the children suffer.’”
Laura Bush compares the policy to the treatment of Japanese
Americans who were locked up in 1942, despite having taken no part in the
attacks on Pearl Harbor. “I live in a border state. I appreciate the
need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this
zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It
is immoral. And it breaks
my heart.”
Mrs. Obama avoids any direct attack on President
Trump—because unlike President Trump she has class. She re-tweets Laura Bush’s
statement (above) with the comment, “Sometimes truth transcends party.”
The
choice does not have to be between “wicked versus foolish.”
As more and more people weigh in on events along the border,
the Trump defenses totally crumble. CBS News—which must now be part of the
giant “Fake News” conspiracy aligned against the president—has the gall to quote a bunch of Republicans who think this policy is
an abomination.
“The way it’s being handled right now isn’t acceptable,” says
Senator Orrin Hatch. “It’s not American.”
Hatch is then joined by a dozen Republican senators in firing off a
letter to Mr. Sessions. They believe the separations can be halted because they
have read the U.S. Constitution: “We support the administration’s efforts to
enforce our immigration laws, but we cannot support implementation of a policy that results in the categorical
forced separation of minor children from their parents.”
The Salt Lake City
Tribune—the leading newspaper in a deep red state, editorializes: “But what is clear is that the lack of
compassion toward these kids at the Texas/Mexico border is central to President
Donald Trump’s political strategy:
playing to his base and getting funding for his promised border
wall.”
“All of us who are seeing images of children being pulled
away from moms and dads in tears were horrified,” Sen. Ted Cruz tells
reporters. “This has to stop.” Cruz then proposes adding 375 new immigration judges to speed up
the processing of immigrants filing for asylum.
President Paranoia shoots that proposal down at once.
Speaking to a gathering of small business owners, Trump says he doesn’t like
the idea because some of the lawyers who would represent the immigrants would
be “bad people.” Besides, all those judges might be corrupt. “They said, ‘Sir,
we’d like to hire about five or six thousand more judges,’” Mr. Trump says in a
rambling speech to the National Federation of Independent Business. “Five or
six thousand? Now, can you imagine the graft that must take place? You’re all
small-business owners, so I know you can’t imagine a thing like that would
happen.”
As a liberal, I’m having trouble imagining how Trump takes
375 and turns it into 5,000-6,000.
Anyway—and with only rare exceptions, we are not quoting
Democrats—the chorus of condemnation builds:
“I firmly detest the heartless and inhumane practice of
separating children from their parents at the border,” Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick,
R-Pennsylvania, says in a statement. “This extreme measure must end. It is an
ineffective deterrent against illegal immigration, and children should not have to face traumatic
ordeals given the actions of their parents.”
In a Facebook post, Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse defended
administration efforts to tighten immigration enforcement. Still, separating
families was “wrong” and “the choice before the American people does not have
to be ‘wicked versus foolish.’ This is wrong. Americans do not take children
hostage, period,’” he wrote.
Florida Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart issued a statement
calling the separations “unconscionable.”
“It is totally unacceptable, for any reason, to purposely
separate minor children from their parents,” he said. “Any and every other
option should be implemented in order to not separate minors from their
parents…We cannot allow for this to continue happening, and it must stop.”
Ohio Rep. Steve Stivers, chairman of the National
Republican Congressional Committee, also addressed the situation on the border.
“As a father, I know firsthand that there is nothing more important than family, and I
understand why kids need to be with their parents,” he wrote. “That’s why I
have publicly come out against separating children from their parents at the
border.”
“I am writing a letter to understand the current policies and
to ask the Administration to stop needlessly separating children from their parents,”
Stivers added. “If the policy is not changed, I will support other means to
stop unnecessary separation of children from their parents.”
The United Nations Office of Human Rights had already called the policy “a serious violation of the rights of
the child.”
The Trump administration took care of that Wednesday by withdrawing from the United Nations Human Rights
Council.
6/20/18: The
list of organizations and individuals offering blistering criticism of Trump
administration policy regarding the breaking up of families along the border
grows. That list includes:
The U.S.
Conference of Catholic Bishops: Cardinal Daniel DiNardo,
president of the Conference said in a statement,
“Separating babies from their mothers is not the answer and is immoral.”
Pope
Francis
Sen.
John McCain
Ivanka
Trump (the president said as much)
Michael
Cohen: “As the son of a Polish Holocaust survivor, the images and
sounds of this family separation policy [are] heart-wrenching. While I strongly
support measures that will secure our porous borders, children should never be
used as bargaining chips.”
The
Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (this group advocates
for children with disabilities)
Ana Mari Cauce,
president of the University of Washington
“These children deserve our protection and should remain with
their families as they seek asylum.”
The American Psychiatric
Association
Jennifer Silvers,
assistant professor of developmental neuroscience at UCLA: Silvers and co-author
Jaana Juvonen penned an editorial calling for a change in policy to protect the
children. Silvers notes:
I’ve been tweeted at and been called
un-American….It wasn’t our intention to create something highly political.
We just felt compelled, as scientists and mothers, by what we know from the
data and from our own personal experiences, which is that parents and their
children belong together, period.
Jaana
Juvonen, a professor of developmental psychology at UCLA:
Juvonen, an immigrant from Finland who earned American citizenship a few years
ago, explained in their joint editorial, “It is our duty to speak up. If we, as
scientists or even as students, are privy to this knowledge and science, if we
don’t convey what is known, who’s in the position then to challenge the new
policies? What’s the weight of science?”
Rev.
John I. Jenkins, president of Notre Dame University
The head
of the University of California
The
superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools
The
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME): This
union represents 1.6 million government workers. An AFSCME statement reads in part:
[Our] members make caring for
families and communities their life’s work. From social workers to nurses to
school bus drivers to first responders, public service workers do not choose
their profession just to support their own families, but to keep all children
and families healthy and safe.
…This inhumane policy is a cruel
choice that does not make us safer, and it does not make us great. There is no
law that mandates traumatizing children, only the prerogative of this
president.
The
American Nurses Association: A letter from the nurses’ organization
offered adamant opposition to
…the Administration’s policy and
practices toward migrants and asylum seekers that result in the forcible
separation of children from their families. These actions put the welfare
of immigrant children at risk and are causing
irreparable harm…
The Code of Ethics for Nurses with Interpretive
Statements (ANA, 2015) calls on all nurses to always act to
preserve the human rights of vulnerable groups such as children, women and
refugees. The United States of America is better than
this. We cannot continue with a policy that is so immoral and cruel to
children and families.
National
Nurses Organizing Committee-Texas, an affiliate of National Nurses United, which represents 1,700 RNs in four El Paso hospitals
15,000 mental
health professionals who signed a letter addressed to leading members of the Trump
administration:
We would like you to remember
what it feels like to be a child. To take a moment and remember how big and
sometimes scary the world felt and how, if you were lucky, the adults in your
life represented security and safety. We want you to remember what little say
you had over what you did and what happened to you and that even though this
was frustrating, some part of you trusted that your parents knew what was best
for you. And that your physical and psychological survival depended on them.
[Starting in October
2017…children four years of age and under were being separated at the border]
These children are thrust into detention centers often without an advocate or
an attorney and possibly even without the presence of any adult who can speak
their language. We want you to imagine for a moment what this might be like for
a child: to flee the place you have called home because it is not safe to stay
and then embark on a dangerous journey to an unknown destination, only to be
ripped apart from your sole sense of security with no understanding of what
just happened or if you will ever see your family again. And that the only
thing you have done to deserve this, is to do what children do: stay close to
the adults in their lives for security.
Government-sanctioned
child abuse.
3,000 academics
(signatories to a letter calling for the administration to end the separation
policy
As physician experts in mental
health, the American Psychiatric Association opposes any policy that separates
children from their parents at the United States border. Children depend on
their parents for safety and support…. These children deserve our protection
and should remain with their families as they seek asylum. The APA recommends
an immediate halt to the policy of separating children from their parents.
Also criticizing Trump policy:
The
Council of Great City Schools
The
American Medical Association
Dr.
Colleen Kraft, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics: Craft
expresses her horror after visiting one of the holding centers at the
border and seeing a weeping little girl. “This is something that was inflicted
on this child by the government, and really is nothing less than
government-sanctioned child abuse.”
Franklin
Graham: “It’s disgraceful, and it’s terrible to see families ripped
apart and I don’t support that one bit.”
Tony
Suarez, a Latino pastor who has informally advised Trump, tweeted, “God have mercy on those who seem so nonchalant to the plight of children
being separated from their parents.”
A
coalition of 26 Jewish groups: The Times of Israel noted that these Jewish groups—made up of those who
remember well the dangers of sending families to camps—joined the calls
for an end to the policy.
This policy undermines the values of our
nation and jeopardizes the safety and well-being of thousands of people. As
Jews, we understand the plight of being an immigrant fleeing violence and
oppression. We believe that the United States is a nation of immigrants and how we treat the stranger reflects on the
moral values and ideals of
this nation.
Presbyterian
Church (USA)
Evangelical
Lutheran Church of America
Islamic
Society of North America
United
Methodist Church
The
Business Roundtable: This lobbying group includes the CEOs of General Motors,
Boeing, Mastercard and Walmart. Their statement lines up with those of
countless other groups: “This practice is cruel and contrary to American
values.”
Like a majority of Americans, we
are appalled that your Zero Tolerance policy has resulted in the unnecessary
trauma and suffering of innocent children. But as former United States
Attorneys, we also emphasize that the Zero Tolerance policy is a radical
departure from previous Justice Department policy, and that it is dangerous,
expensive, and inconsistent with the values of the institution in which we
served.
Russell
Moore, President of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern
Baptist Convention
National
Association of Evangelicals
Council
for Christian Colleges and Universities
National
Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference
The letter these and other religious groups send to the
president reads in part: “As evangelical Christians guided by the Bible, one of
our core convictions is that God has established the family as the fundamental
building block of society. The state should separate families only in the
rarest of instances.”
The letter goes on to warn of the “traumatic effects” of
separation, potentially “devastating,” “long-lasting,” and “of utmost concern.”
*
SO, LET’S SUMMARIZE: First, President Trump insisted for days
that he could not do anything about the law. His administration had to separate
children and parents.
Second, you couldn’t blame him. This was the Democrats’
fault.
Third, his top aide, Stephen Miller and his Attorney General
and his Homeland Security Secretary all said the policy was necessary
and the children were being treated great, and so, what’s the big deal.
Trump
does what Trump said he could not do.
Then the heat grew too hot in the kitchen. Suddenly, the
President of the United States, who had been lying all week about what he could
and could not do, did what critics had been insisting he had the power to do
all along.
“We’re going to keep families together, but we still have to
maintain toughness or our country will be overrun by people, by crime, by all
of the things that we don’t stand for and that we don’t want,” he grumbled.
“If you’re weak, you’re pathetically weak, your country’s
going to be overrun with people,” he added. He scoffed at the idea that some
were saying he confused being strong with having no heart.
“Perhaps, I’d rather be strong,” he said.
Then he reached for his trusty presidential crayon box,
grabbed his favorite color (white) and signed an executive order to end the
practice he had been insisting all along he alone could not end.
6/21/18: The
president wakes up in a sour mood, having been forced to sign an executive
order to end a policy his
administration invented.
You might think Trump felt bad for the kids, as he claimed
yesterday. “I didn’t like the sight or the feeling of families being
separated,” he said.
But he didn’t care about saving the kids—he only cared about
saving his big orange political ass.
Meeting with GOP lawmakers Tuesday, to figure out how to
clean up the mess he and his aides made, Trump wasn’t thinking about children.
First, he talked about how popular he was. His approval rating as of today: 43.7 percent. Finally, he got
down to business. He wanted Congress to pass legislation that would make it
look like he wasn’t backing down on his zero-tolerance policy. According to one
Republican lawmaker who was there, Trump grumbled that “the crying babies
doesn’t look good politically.”
In fact: they don’t look good, humanly.
*
MEANWHILE, ORANGE DON was doing his best to spin retreat into
victory. At one point he insisted, it had taken “great courage” to end a policy
that had been a problem for “sixty years.” (More like sixty days—since the policy was implemented on April 6,
under order from Attorney General Jeff Sessions.)
Again, you can find the order on the Department of Justice
website.
It’s kind of like an arsonist who sets fire to a house. The
family nearly dies in the flames. But the arsonist relents at the last moment
and turns a garden hose on the blaze and coughing family members stumble to
safety. In that sense, yes, Trump had the courage to try to douse the fire he
set.
Then, Trump did what he does best. He blamed everyone else
for his mistakes. First, Mexico wasn’t helping guard the border. They were
letting all kinds of bad people come across. “We’re getting some real
beauties,” he grumbled. Then he said Obama’s policy in 2014 was terrible and
quoted someone who said it was “inhumane,” which means if he, Trump, locked up
toddlers, Obama was worse. He insisted Democrats were the problem. All they did
in Congress was “obstruct.”
“They have no ideas,” he said.
Ironically, the House of Representatives was scheduled to
vote on two immigration bills crafted entirely by Republicans. They put up the
first, which the extreme conservative wing of the party preferred. It failed.
The Republicans hold 246 seats, need 218 votes on the bill they wrote, and
can’t get them.
The conservative bill sought
funding for Trump’s long-promised border wall, backed the President’s calls for
curbs on legal immigration and increased spending on border security. It also
denied a path to citizenship for young undocumented immigrants brought to the
U.S. as children.
The failure of his party to pass
an immigration bill is an embarrassing loss for a President who touts his deal making
prowess and has painted Democrats as obstructionists holding up the process.
If that wasn’t embarrassing enough, a compromise bill was
pulled without a vote, even though—again—Republicans have enough votes to pass
it themselves. House leaders promised to put it up for a vote tomorrow. On
second thought, House leaders said an hour later, no, they wouldn’t.
In a snippet of good news, however, Rep. Mike Conway (R-Co.)
does come up with one good idea and one excellent idea regarding immigration.
In a pair of tweets, he makes his disgust clear:
I’m glad the President ended the
border separation policy, but there’s more work to do. I’m going to the border
in TX myself this weekend to see the situation firsthand and learn more about
what needs to get done. The President should put a General, a respected retired
CEO.
..or some other senior
leadership figure on the job of making sure each and every child is returned to
their parents. And the President
should fire Stephen Miller now. This is a human rights mess. It is
on the President to clean it up and fire the people responsible for making it.
(See: 6/18/18.)
Indeed.
*
MEANWHILE, ORANGE DON was doing his best to spin retreat into
victory. At one point he insisted, it had taken “great courage” to end a policy
that had been a problem for “sixty years.” (More like sixty days—since the policy was implemented on April 6,
under order from Attorney General Jeff Sessions.)
Again, you can find the order on the Department of Justice
website.
It’s kind of like an arsonist who sets fire to a house. The
family nearly dies in the flames. But the arsonist relents at the last moment
and turns a garden hose on the blaze and coughing family members stumble to
safety. In that sense, yes, Trump had the courage to try to douse the fire he
set.
Then, Trump did what he does best. He blamed everyone else
for his mistakes. First, Mexico wasn’t helping guard the border. They were
letting all kinds of bad people come across. “We’re getting some real
beauties,” he grumbled. Then he said Obama’s policy in 2014 was terrible and
quoted someone who said it was “inhumane,” which means if he, Trump, locked up
toddlers, Obama was worse. He insisted Democrats were the problem. All they did
in Congress was “obstruct.”
“They have no ideas,” he said.
Ironically, the House of Representatives was scheduled to
vote on two immigration bills crafted entirely by Republicans. They put up the
first, which the extreme conservative wing of the party preferred. It failed.
The Republicans hold 246 seats, need 218 votes on the bill they wrote, and
can’t get them.
The conservative bill sought
funding for Trump’s long-promised border wall, backed the President’s calls for
curbs on legal immigration and increased spending on border security. It also
denied a path to citizenship for young undocumented immigrants brought to the
U.S. as children.
The failure of his party to pass
an immigration bill is an embarrassing loss for a President who touts his deal making
prowess and has painted Democrats as obstructionists holding up the process.
If that wasn’t embarrassing enough, a compromise bill was
pulled without a vote, even though—again—Republicans have enough votes to pass
it themselves. House leaders promised to put it up for a vote tomorrow. On
second thought, House leaders said an hour later, no, they wouldn’t.
In a snippet of good news, however, Rep. Mike Conway (R-Co.)
does come up with one good idea and one excellent idea regarding immigration.
In a pair of tweets, he makes his disgust clear:
I’m glad the President ended the
border separation policy, but there’s more work to do. I’m going to the border
in TX myself this weekend to see the situation firsthand and learn more about
what needs to get done. The President should put a General, a respected retired
CEO.
..or some other senior
leadership figure on the job of making sure each and every child is returned to
their parents. And the President
should fire Stephen Miller now. This is a human rights mess. It is
on the President to clean it up and fire the people responsible for making it.
(See: 6/18/18.)
Indeed.
6/22/18: The
President of the United States starts his morning, as he almost always does,
with a tweet. You can tell he really cares about those poor kids being locked
up down on the border.
His tweet reads:
We must maintain a Strong
Southern Border. We cannot allow our Country to be overrun by illegal
immigrants as the Democrats tell their phony stories of sadness and grief, hoping it will help them
in the elections. Obama and others had the same pictures, and did nothing about
it!
It’s more gratuitous lying by Trump; and his fans swallow it
down like Oliver Twist swilling seconds of gruel.
Maybe
the criminals already reside here in the United States.
Indeed, contrary to what the president likes to claim, we
liberals and Democrats and people with hearts don’t want to let criminals come
pouring across the border. Your blogging liberal friend often feels the
criminals in the story of immigration already reside here in the United States.
If you missed the story, ICE recently carried out one of its largest immigration raids in
years. Agents descended on the Fresh Mark meat-packing plant in Salem, Ohio, and
led away 146 employees in handcuffs. Fresh Mark is alleged to have hired
undocumented workers for years.
Why would Fresh Mark do it? Simple. The undocumented work
cheap and don’t expect healthcare.
So, this blogger—who thinks that immigration helps the
country—has a suggestion. If the Trump administration wants to enforce all
immigration laws, they can stop detaining toddlers and focus on
businesses that hire the undocumented. We know that business folk love
Trump. They love Trump because he cuts regulations and taxes.
Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi don’t hire the undocumented. Business
folks do.
If you could stop the money-grubbing corporate types from
hiring undocumented workers you wouldn’t need a big, beautiful border wall.
Companies like Fresh Mark—which has three other factories in Ohio—wouldn’t hire
the undocumented if company executives and owners weren’t greedy.
The Democrat Party isn’t killing American jobs. Avaricious
bosses are.
Exhibit A: Neil Genshaft, CEO of Fresh Mark. Genshaft has a long history of donations to Republican politicians. Between
2000 and 2012 he donated to 21 Republican candidates. In 2012, Genshaft wrote a check to the Republican candidate for the U.S. House
of Representatives from his district. So did a host of Ohio business leaders,
because the Republican Party is business friendly.
In 2016 he gave $2,500 to “Team Josh,” in support of Josh
Mandel, a Republican running for the U.S. Senate.
At no time has Genshaft—the main lawbreaker in this tale—ever
donated to Democratic candidates.
So, imagine you wanted to address the matter of undocumented
workers being hired by businesspersons out for the fastest possible buck. Why
not ask Congress to pass a law fining any business caught hiring the
undocumented $25,000 per worker? Then enforce it with rigor. That might give
you enough in fines to pay for your wall, although you wouldn’t need a wall if
Congress passed such a law.
*
REMEMBER THE “GOOD OLD DAYS,” when the Republican Party
claimed to stand for family values?
“The
Christopher Columbus of honest politics.”
Dennis Hof, 71, the Republican choice for an assembly seat in
the Nevada legislature in November shows just how far the party has veered from
that message. Hof campaigned as the “Trump of Pahrump,” to win the primary. Hof
tells reporters he is part of the “Trump movement.” He
hopes voters will choose him in the regular election in the fall. “People will
set aside for a moment their moral beliefs, their religious beliefs, to get
somebody that is honest in office,” he adds. “Trump is the trailblazer. He is
the Christopher Columbus of honest politics.”
Leaving aside Hof’s clear failure to follow the news—leading
him to believe Trump is honest—how else does he stand out? He’s been divorced
three times, which does seem like he fits in with the “Trump movement.”
Hof also bills himself as America’s “most famous pimp.” He
owns a strip club and five legal brothels around the state.
*
LIFELONG CONSERVATIVE COLUMNIST George Will suggests in an
editorial that everyone with a conscience or spine, or even a functioning
spleen, should vote against Republican candidates for Congress in
November.
The existing Republican majorities, Will warns, have been no
better than the “president’s poodles.”
6/23/18: The
Great Deal Maker throws up his hands and tells Republicans who control Congress
not to bother with an immigration deal. They could compromise among themselves,
freeze out the Democrats, and get a bill to clean up the border mess on Trump’s
desk Monday morning if they wished. Trump tells them to punt till after the
midterms.
Trump
wanted a “bill of love.”
This means the Great Deal Maker has failed again. He failed
to make a deal on immigration, even after he said he wanted a “bill of love”
and would sign whatever Congress put on his desk. Trump failed to make a deal
on healthcare. Trump failed to make a deal to lower drug prices. Trump still can’t
get Mexico to pay for his wall. Trump can’t get Congress to pay, either. He
said he’d get a deal on gun control, promised he’d stand up to the N.R.A. and
wimped out. He promised a deal on spending cuts. The federal deficit ballooned.
He failed to get a deal on NAFTA, on Pacific trade, on trade with China, or on
steel and aluminum imports from our allies. Like every president since 1948 he
failed to cut a deal with Israel and the Palestinians.
He can certainly be forgiven for the last.
The president does have a possible deal in the works with
North Korea, which would be great. Otherwise, he’s dealing in reverse. He
killed the Iran deal on nuclear weapons and has nothing to put in its place. He
killed U.S. involvement in the Paris climate accord, too. Currently, 194
nations remain signatories to the accord.
*
SPEAKING OF THE CLIMATE ACCORD, as ocean temperatures continue
to rise around the globe, scientists predict the Great Barrier Reef, which runs for hundreds
of miles along the Australian coast, may be dead by 2100. All 29 reefs listed
as World Heritage Sites by UNESCO will likely die. Twenty-five percent of all fish species that
make reefs their homes could become extinct. As reefs die, coastal cities may see the cost of damage from flooding
double, from $4 billion to $8 billion annually.
Forget
the long-term health of the oceans.
How does Trump address the growing
threats to the health of the world’s oceans? He rolls back
regulations put in place to protect their health. Trump says he wants to cut
excessive regulations and focus on “growing the ocean economy.” “From sea to
shining sea,” he says, “Americans benefit from the ocean’s bounty—from the
industries it supports and the jobs it creates.”
In
other words, forget the long-term health of the oceans. Forget giant oil
spills. Ignore the chemical run-off that creates a dead zone
the size of New Jersey at the mouth of the Mississippi. Forget dying reefs.
Pretend you never heard of overfishing and problems that threaten fish stocks
round the globe. According to scientists who studied 7,800 species of fish a
decade ago, if current trends continued, seafood resources
would be nearly gone by 2050.
It’s
not just scientists who notice. In the early 1990s overfishing for cod off the
east coast of Canada caused a total collapse.
For twenty years the annual take for fishermen never fell below 400,000 metric
tons of cod. By 1995, boats were bringing back something like 25,000 tons. The
Canadian government had no choice but to set quotas to protect the fish that
remained and allow the stock to recover.
The return of the once mighty
northern cod stock may be a boon for the natural world and, eventually, for the
humans who haul them from the sea, process them and eat them.
After all, their disappearance
25 years ago almost killed the east coast fishing industry and seriously maimed
the Atlantic provinces.
Similar
stories are playing out around the world. President Trump doesn’t realize the
danger because he doesn’t read.
He
rarely thinks.
He
tweets.
6/24/18: In a
Gallup poll 75% of Americans say they believe immigration is good for the country, a record high.
Just 19% feel it is bad for our nation.
One American who opposes immigration (and I am guessing she
is a big Trump fan) would be Lori McAllen, who works for the Oregon
Department of Motor Vehicles. McAllen causes a firestorm by offering up her
solution to the problem of families showing up at the southern border and
posting her ideas on Facebook. “I think they should shoot them all at the
border and call it good,” she writes, “it’ll save us hard-working AMERICANS
billions of dollars on our taxes!!”
Another man who wanted to save tax dollars—and we know donated
to Trump during his campaign—was New York City lawyer Aaron Schlossberg. He’s
the gentleman who went bananas after stopping for lunch at a restaurant
near his office. There he overheard several people speaking Spanish. He shouted
that they should be “kicked out of the country.” “Every person I listen to—he
spoke [Spanish], he spoke it, she’s speaking it,” the lawyer wailed, pointing
at one employee and two customers, “It’s America!”
“If they have the balls to come here and live off of my
money—I pay for their welfare, I pay for their ability to be here—the least
they can do is speak English,” Schlossberg continued. “If you intend on running
a place in Midtown Manhattan the staff should be speaking English, not
Spanish!”
Noticing that one of the Spanish-speaking customers was
filming his tirade, the hungry racist added, “Honey, I’m calling ICE.”
A week later, having been identified as a giant asshole on
various social media platforms, he apologized and assured everyone he was not
really a racist, even though he sounded exactly like he was.
A third Trump supporter learned an even harder lesson on immigration last year. Helen Beristain,
an Indiana woman who, with her husband, ran a successful restaurant, Eddie’s
Steak Shed, in Granger, Indiana, voted for Trump in 2016. Sadly, Mrs. Beristain
failed to consider the fact her
husband Roberto was an undocumented immigrant, having come to this
country from Mexico in 1998. ICE nabbed him at work and deported him not long
after, leaving Mrs. Beristain to take care of their three children and run
Eddie’s Steak House all by herself.
And that’s how you make America great again.
6/25/18: If
there is one lead thread that runs through the Trump presidency, it is the fact
that the president is a giant dick.
Trump
likes being a dick.
Last week, Trump proved his dickishness again, this time
during a meeting with GOP lawmakers on immigration.
I don’t mean Trump was a dick because he wanted to lock up
little children, although, of course, he was. In this setting he was a dick
because he likes being a dick. And you can’t call this “Fake News.”
President Trump’s meeting with
House Republicans to discuss immigration legislation briefly went awry Tuesday
after the president mocked Rep. Mark Sanford over a primary election loss.
Two sources in the meeting room
told the Associated Press that Trump
joked: “I want to congratulate Mark on a great race.”
A senior House Republican who is
a Trump supporter told Fox News that the president’s comment was “unnecessary”
and “poor form.” Another senior GOP lawmaker called it a “low blow.”
Another GOP member told Fox News
the room got “pretty quiet” after the remark and some attendees booed in a low tone
of voice.
Sanford had a scheduling issue and was unable to attend. His
absence brought out Trump’s bullying instincts. Fox continued:
Sanford, a former South Carolina
governor and frequent Trump critic, was defeated by state Rep. Katie Arrington
in the June 12 primary. Hours before the polls closed, Trump endorsed Arrington
on Twitter and joked that Sanford was “better off in Argentina”—a reference to
a sex scandal that overshadowed Sanford’s tenure as governor.
Let’s stop a moment and consider the hypocrisy of Trump
commenting on any other man’s sex scandals. (Sanford once claimed he went
missing as governor because he was hiking the Appalachian Trail. Actually, he
had jetted off to Argentina to be with his mistress.) Trump’s hypocrisy is emblematic
of his dickishness.
Then Trump doubled down on being a dick and did what he does
almost as well as being a dick. Several news outlets reported on the
negative reaction of GOP lawmakers to his comments. CBS added this detail.
After his petty joke fell flat the president continued down the same no-class
path, adding, “What, nobody gets it?” Sanford, he continued, was a “nasty guy.”
Confronted with evidence that he was indeed a giant dick, Trump took to Twitter and tried lying
to make himself sound good. “Had a great meeting with the House GOP last night
at the Capitol,” he claimed. “They applauded and laughed loudly when
I mentioned my experience with Mark Sanford. I have never been a fan of his!”
Or: a fan of telling the truth.
Such blatant lying stirred several lawmakers who witnessed
Trump being Trump, a dick being a dick, to respond:
Rep. Justin Amash, from Michigan, tweeted: “House Republicans had front row seats to
@POTUS’s dazzling display of
pettiness and insecurity. Nobody applauded or laughed. People were
disgusted.”
Ryan Costello, from Pennsylvania, was also seated in the
meeting. He called Trump’s Twitter claim “categorically false.”
Scott DesJarlais, a Tennessee Republican, offered similar
assessment. After Trump’s cheap shots, he said, there were “crickets” in the
meeting.
In other words, three Republican members of Congress were on
record, saying in so many words that:
A)
Trump is a dick.
B)
Trump enjoys being a dick.
C)
Trump lies to cover up A and B.
I would say the comment goes to
the core of why I have at times agreed with policies of the administration but
at the same time found the
president’s personal style so caustic and counterproductive. The
tragedy of the Trump presidency is that he thinks it’s about him. The president
has taken those earnest beliefs by so many people across the country and has
unfortunately fallen prey to thinking it’s about him.
Sanford was being polite.
6/26/18: If you
study Donald J. Trump’s Twitter feed you can see he’s increasingly worried
about the Russia probe. Trump’s first tweet yesterday came at 6:28 a.m., and
seemed to hint that the F.B.I. and Obama and Cotton Mather were all out to get
him—that the witch hunt was strong all along. “Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey said that President Trump is
probably correct that there was surveillance on Trump Tower,” he
claimed. “Actually, far greater than would ever have been believed!”
There would be seventeen more tweets before the day ended.
But I thought this one was a surprise. Had Mukasey just weighed in on Trump’s
“witch hunt” theory and supported him, too?
The
story doesn’t bolster Trump’s position at all.
I decided to check. Apparently, Trump was dredging up any
argument he could, in this case citing a story from March 2017. If you read the
story, it doesn’t bolster his position at all. If there was F.B.I. surveillance
of Trump Tower, Mukasey told ABC News (sixteen months ago), “It means there must
have been a basis to believe that
somebody in Trump Tower may have been acting as an agent of the Russians,
for whatever purpose—not necessarily the election—but for some purpose.”
In fact, Mukasey said, the F.B.I. would have been doing what
it always did in these kinds of situations: “They keep track of people who act
as agents of the Chinese, the Russians, the Israelis, everybody.”
In other words, Trump is trying to build support for the idea
that he is the victim of a witch hunt, using the testimony of a former Attorney
General who says, quite clearly, that there is no witch hunt.
*
TAMPA BAY Buccaneers QB Jameis Winston is suspended for three
games for grabbing the crotch of a female UBER driver.
Finally, an NFL player Trump can respect.
6/27/18: After
only seventeen months in office, President Trump has discovered a human rights
issue he cares to address.
A
simple decision by this administration.
You are probably asking yourself, “Well, Mr. Blogger, what
issue could that be? Does the Tin Man now admit it is cruel to tear young
children away from parents at the southern border?”
No.
“Aha!” you are thinking. “It must be that the Trump
administration is going to stand up for victims of repressive regimes around
the world. Good job, Mr. Trump, this has always been what America—in its finest
moments—is about!”
No.
“Okay,” you are thinking, “perhaps Trump realizes he should
have been tougher on Kim Jong-un, when it came to human rights! Yes. That must
be it!” The president must have spent some time studying the horrors
perpetrated by Kim’s regime. He must realize now he must do what he can to help the 120,000 political prisoners
currently held in the North Korea gulag! And he thought about what he had said.
He told reporters Kim had a “great personality,” and he was “funny,” and he
“loves his people.” Now Trump is ready to admit he sounded like a fool!
Not even close.
The Trump administration finally had its “Greensboro lunch
counter” moment last week when the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia,
kicked Sarah Huckabee Sanders to the curb. She and her family did enjoy a free
cheese plate before the owner bounced them out. With
that, the president took a stand. If Stephanie Wilkinson, the restaurant owner,
wanted to protest the policies of the Trump administration, suddenly the
president realized he wanted to be counted among those who stood up in the
cause of humanity. The cause of civil rights would have a mighty champion in
the White House. It was time for a return to “civility,” Trump said.
Consider the hypocrisy of this call for “civility” from Trump
and his crew. They don’t care if children get locked up on the border. They
don’t care if African Americans get gunned down wrongly by police. They do care
if the White House Press Secretary can’t finish her glass of wine in peace.
 |
| Trump supporters defending Sarah Sanders by vilifying gays. |
Trump’s
enemies are never human.
The most cursory study of
Trump’s Twitter feed reveals how regularly he employs uncivil language in the attack.
Hiding behind the seal of the President of the United States, he uses the
“bully pulpit” to bully all foes. Worse, like all good haters, he’s a master of
dehumanization. He vilifies groups. Immigrants are always criminals of some
type, “murders,” “rapists” or “members of MS-13.” They want to “invade” our
country. They “infest” our land. These aren’t human beings. These are bugs,
worthy of being stepped on, crushed or shot.
Trump has the vast power of the federal government behind him
and like any bully, loves to punch down. His foes never disagree with him on
principle. Sen. John Tester of Montana is not dishonest. He’s “sick.” Peter
Strzok, the F.B.I. agent so much in the news, is in Trump’s mind a “sick
loser.” Former F.B.I. Director James Comey is “very sick or very dumb.” The
“Fake News” people have a “sick” agenda. President Obama was a “Bad (or sick)
guy” when he tapped the phones at Trump Tower.
No evidence of tapping was ever found.
The crude insults pollute Trump’s dialogue and stink up his
Twitter feed. The instincts of the bully are consistently on display. Mary
Kissel, a columnist for the Wall Street
Journal is “a major loser.” Sometimes, Trump employs a demeaning descriptor,
“Liddle,” as in “Liddle Bob Corker,” applied to a Republican senator and
frequent critic. Mort Zuckerman, owner of the New York Daily News, is “little Morty,” and a “loser.” Like the
meanest kid in your seventh-grade class, Trump will insult the physical
appearance of others or their intellectual gifts. He called a Miss Universe
contestant who gained fifteen pounds a “pig.” Reporters who don’t fawn are
subject to attack. You have “really dumb” Cheri Jacobs and Don Lemon, “the
dumbest man on television.” S. E. Cupp is “one of the dumber pundits on TV.
Hard to watch, no talent.” In one tweet, Trump nails two critics at once,
“Crazy Joe Scarborough and dumb as a rock Mika.”
He probably can’t spell Mika’s last name—Brzezinski—and he’s
too slothful intellectually to look it up.
The more you examine Trump’s uncivil attacks, the more you
realize how dangerous they are. When this petty bully is angry—and he’s angry a
lot—he employs the worst kind of language to dehumanize his foes. Trump isn’t
just uncivil. There’s a whiff of Hitler in what he tweets and says. For that
reason, the reporter, Mary Kissel, gets hammered when Trump re-tweets a
supporter who refers to Kissel as that “POS WSJ LIAR FANTASY PUNDIT.” Think
about that. Kissel isn’t a reporter doing a job. The President of the United
States isn’t interested in the First Amendment. He’s not a champion of a free
press. He’s calling a critic a piece of shit.
Trump’s enemies are never human. And the worst dictators have
all understood this drill. Reporters for Politico,
Trump insists, are “pure scum.” Journalists who criticize him
in any way are “basic scum” and “enemies of the American people.” During a
campaign rally in South Carolina on Monday the president referred to Stephen
Colbert, a late-night comedian, as a “lowlife.”
You can’t compare Trump or any other politician to Hitler until
they turn on the gas; but Trump has the instincts. He’s a hater, just as
the German dictator was. And when it comes to the accused in court, not
generally the most sympathetic lot, we see how low Trump is ready to go. Trump
never doubts that those accused are guilty and always howls for the harshest possible
punishment. In 2013 he reacted angrily to news reports of teens randomly
attacking people on the streets: “The scum that gets high on badly
hurting old ladies and others through knockout assaults wouldn’t feel that way
with a gun at their head!” But we’ve seen too much evidence that the “scum” on
the streets often turn out to be innocent young African American men who get
gunned down by police and armed citizens too quick to shoot.
When it comes to those accused of crimes, Trump carries
dehumanization to an extreme. “Did you hear they caught
those animals who killed that lawyer in the mall parking lot? That is
great news!” he tweeted in 2013.
Animals, scum, lowlifes, it’s the language of hate. Nazi
leaders referred to Jews as “vermin,” and by dehumanizing them, helped make the
unthinkable possible. In 1942, the governor of Idaho called Japanese
Americans—all of them—“rats.” That kind of rhetoric allowed the U.S. government
to get away with detaining 110,000 human beings, including 77,000 U.S. citizens,
because their humanity had been lost.
Trump is always ready to play up the hate. Knowing many of
his supporters are offended by Black Lives Matter, Candidate Trump, and later
President Trump made no effort to bridge the gap. He knows that more than a few
members of his base have hoods and sheets. Trump appealed to the worst that was
in their hearts. “How come there are no protests in favor of the two young
police officers gunned down in Mississippi by two deranged animals,” he
asked during his campaign.
What did Candidate Trump demand? “DEATH PENALTY!” he shouted
on Twitter, in all caps.
The problem with referring to criminals as animals, is not
just that it makes inhuman behavior toward them acceptable. The second issue is
that not all “criminals” are guilty.
6/28/18: I think President Trump had
better hope he gets to appoint about a thousand federal judges, not just
another ideologue from the right to fill Justice Anthony Kennedy’s place on the
U.S. Supreme Court.
He may need a sympathetic judge sooner than he thinks.
I say this advisedly, as the legal problems of Paul Manafort
continue to multiply and the clear logic behind the F.B.I.’s original interest
in investigating the Trump campaign grows more pronounced. An application for a
search warrant unsealed by the courts Wednesday reveals that the F.B.I. had
evidence Manafort and his wife received a $10 million loan from a
Russian oligarch with close ties to Vladimir Putin.
More ominously, from the point of view of Manafort and the
president’s whole crew, Reuters explains:
The search warrant application
also confirmed that Mueller has been investigating Manafort’s role in a June 9,
2016, meeting that he attended at the Trump Tower in New York between Donald
Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer and self-professed Kremlin informant who
purportedly was carrying damaging information on Hillary Clinton, the
Democratic nominee for president.
The FBI sought “communications,
records, documents and other files involving any of the attendees of the June
9, 2016, meeting at Trump tower, as well as Aras and Amin Agalarov,” said the
application, which misspelled the first name of Emin Agalarov.
Aras Agalarov is a Russian
oligarch close to Putin who joined the elder Trump in staging the 2013 Miss
Universe contest in Moscow. His son, Emin, is a popular singer.
Considering all the lies that surround this meeting, you wonder.
Why have so many people involved lied—and lied as often as they have?
Lies
of all sorts—including moronic lies.
Of course, we all realize there are different kinds of lies
the President of the United States employs to get through a typical day. There
are political lies: Mexico will pay for the wall. He will repeal and replace
Obamacare with ease.
There are the lies that bolster his ego: I would have won the
popular vote if all those illegal voters hadn’t stormed the polls.
There are the lies he tells loved ones. I did not boink the
porn star. I did not boink that Playboy Bunny. Nor did I boink the housekeeper.
Then there are the lies involving the Russian investigation—that
is, lies to save his orange hide.
Sometimes there are gratuitous lies and on slow days Trump
may even bust out a moronic lie. Trump tells another today at a rally in
Wisconsin. To the applause of his history-impaired fans, he revisits his great
2016 election victory. It’s the greatest ever! The crowd roars. He reminds
everyone, Wisconsin “hadn’t been won by a Republican since Dwight D.
Eisenhower, in 1952.”
Trump beams with that announcement. He’s contemplating his
own greatness. The crowd cheers.
Trump continues: “And I won Wisconsin. And I like Wisconsin a
lot, but we won Wisconsin. And Ronald Reagan, remember, Wisconsin was the state
that Ronald Reagan did not win.”
This is a moronic lie and one Trump could easily have
avoided—except that he likes to make shit up as he goes. The one state Reagan
did not win in 1984, for the sake of accuracy, was Minnesota.
So, Trump is wrong about Reagan and wrong about Minnesota.
If we check the map for 1980, we see Trump is wrong again and
Reagan won Wisconsin then too. You can throw in Eisenhower, winning Wisconsin
in 1956. And you can see Trump reaches the “moron level” when you realize
Richard Nixon won Wisconsin three times. He won Wisconsin in 1960, but lost the
general election, then won again in 1968 and 1972.
Politifact, which checks statements presidents and other politicians
make, awards Trump a “Pants on Fire” rating. This rating is reserved for the
biggest, boldest, most ridiculous lies our leaders tell. This marks the eightieth time Trump has been cited for a “Pants on Fire”
lie since announcing he would run for office.
6/29/18: Aaron
Banks, a person you’ve never heard of, may turn out to be an important link in
the Mueller investigation.
To understand why, think Russians, lots of Russians; think
lots of gold, lots of diamonds, and the Isle of Man.
“Two
lunches and a cup of tea.”
Banks is not your typical “person of interest” in the Mueller
probe. He never worked to get Donald J. Trump elected. He’s not even American.
Nevertheless, if you want a template for what the Russians were up to during
the 2016 campaign, you have it with Banks. By the time Britons voted to
leave the European Union that same summer, he was already a well-known
financier. Banks was a leading backer of the Brexit strategy, a position
favored by Putin and his Forty Thieves. In that cause, Banks spent eight
million pounds out of his own pocket. That’s $12 million American.
You might have imagined that here was a patriot who
envisioned a better day for his country. If only the United Kingdom would
chart a different course in matters of trade and border policies!
Emails leaked from one of Mr. Banks’s accounts paint a darker
picture. Behind the scenes, agents of the Russian government were cozying up to
the Brexit-loving tycoon. We know Mueller and his investigators are pouring
through Banks’s emails, looking for clues. No smoking gun has been found—but as
with most characters in the Trump campaign, there are plenty of spent shell
casings lying about.
Earlier this month, The
New York Times noted, Banks was called in front of Parliament for
questioning. British lawmakers, knowing Russia had wished to see their country
leave the European Union and weaken the Western alliance, wanted to ask Banks
about ties to Putin and his pals.
Like almost every member of the Trump team under
investigation, Banks’s memory proved fuzzy under questioning. He admitted he
had “two lunches and a cup of tea” with Alexander V. Yakovenko, the Russian
ambassador to Great Britain, during the run-up to the Brexit vote (June 23,
2016). Oh, Banks added as an afterthought, the ambassador did inquire. Would he
be interested in investing in a deal involving half-a-dozen Russian gold
mines?
Why, no, Banks says he told Yakovenko. He did not wish to be bothered.
Now that his emails have surfaced, it becomes clear there was
much that Mr. Banks “forgot” to mention during testimony. He wasn’t offered
just one chance to invest. He was offered three. The second involved Alrosa, a
state-controlled Russian diamond mine. The third involved a rich Russian,
described to Banks in an email from an investment adviser as “a mini oligarch,”
and a gold mine in Guinea, Africa. British reporters began sniffing about.
Friday, reporters from The New York Times
joined the hunt. Banks said in an interview with the Times that he did recall being offered those deals. But wasn’t it
mean, he grumbled—this “wholesale theft” of his emails!
Why, who would stoop so low as to steal a man’s emails!
On this side of the Atlantic, where Republicans control
Congress, lawmakers were not exactly working overtime to pursue these sorts of leads.
Across the pond, Damian Collins, chairman of the parliamentary committee
looking into Russian interference in the Brexit vote, sounded quite suspicious
after perusing Banks’s email trail. “The question is,” Collins wondered, “Why
would the Russians do this for Banks? What it looks like is that Russia decided
he was someone they wanted to do
business with and they
wanted to see prosper and succeed—and Banks, alongside that, wanted to hide the extent of his contacts with
the Russians.”
In the face of freshly uncovered email evidence, Banks found
himself in a bit of a toast and jam. He was forced to admit that there had been a fourth meeting
with the Russian ambassador. Banks was quick to say that his testimony previously,
about “two lunches and a cup of tea” was “relatively accurate.”
If that sounds to you like Trump and his campaign staff
describing meetings with Russians, it should.
It turns out Banks and his media adviser Andrew Wigmore had
yet another friendly meeting with a Russian diplomat named Alexander Udod.
That would be five.
Udod was recently listed as one of 23 suspected Russian spies
and expelled from Great Britain in the wake of the attempted poisoning of Putin
critic and former Russian spy, Sergei Skripal. That poisoning on British soil
left Skripal and Skripal’s daughter in critical condition.
For Banks, the meeting with Udod was good. This led to his
first meeting with the Russian ambassador—which led to a meeting with a Russian
businessman—who offered Banks a chance to invest in Russian gold mines. “I am
very bullish on gold so keen to have a look,” Banks later emailed the
businessman. He was interested enough to contact a banker familiar with Russian
gold and diamond mines to say he was pondering a possible role in what he
called “the gold play.”
“I intend to pop in and see the ambassador as well,” Banks
said in an email. He copied that email to Udod.
Greed
before God and Country.
Banks swears on his bank book that he never engaged in any
deal. But he failed to mention in testimony that he had been offered a second investment
opportunity by the same Russian tycoon, Siman Povarenkin. Povarenkin told Banks
that the Russians were about to sell a 10 percent stake in Alrosa, a giant
diamond mining operation. Would Banks prefer to invest in diamonds? In an email
on January 16, 2016, another investment adviser working for Banks wrote to
Povarenkin to assure him that his client had “not forgotten about your Alrosa
project.”
You might think Banks’s memory would have been jogged a bit
in September 2017 when an Alrosa mine in Russia turned up a 27.85 carat pink diamond estimated to be worth
roughly $10 million.
But no.
In interviews this week, Banks first said he knew nothing
about the Alrosa project. Then email evidence forced him to admit he had heard
about it. But he insisted he did not pursue it. Then it turned out his business
partner and friend James Mellon, also a major backer of the Brexit strategy, did get in on the deal.
In case you’ve forgotten, some of the most serious
allegations in the Steele dossier involve lucrative deals in Russian gas and oil offered to leading
figures in the Trump campaign.
Greed before God and Country.
Mellon, The New York
Times reported, is “a prominent investor based in the Isle of Man,” and “a
partner with Mr. Banks in a financial institution on the island. Mr. Mellon has
made hundreds of millions of dollars investing in Russia since the fall of the
Soviet Union, often alongside businessmen close to President Vladimir M. Putin.”
The Times
continued:
Three weeks after the 2016
Brexit vote, the Russian government sold the Alrosa stake in a private offering
to a restricted group of investors. The shares were sold at a discount to the market price at a time when the
value of both the stock and diamonds were rising.
Mr. Mellon’s fund management
company, Charlemagne Capital, was among a restricted number of investors who
were allowed to participate.
A third Russian investment deal surfaced in April 2016, two
months before the Brexit vote. Yet another investment banker—with connections
in Russia—emailed Banks. Would he like to invest in a gold mine in Guinea, with
a Russian businessman who “shares your passion for the yellow metal?”
Banks first told reporters he had no memory of such a
discussion. I mean, who would remember talking about a gold mine in Africa and
a Russian oligarch who owned it?
Oops.
Banks had to call reporters back and admit there had been a meeting
on May 10, 2016, that possibly involved a discussion about that mine.
Banks
and Russian ambassador discussed Trump campaign.
In August 2016, Banks met with the Russian ambassador for
lunch again. Banks’s emails reveal that the two men discussed the Trump
campaign. They met again on November 12, after Trump won. This time discussion
turned to Jeff Sessions and the role he might play in the Trump cabinet.
In the end, Banks professed complete innocence, telling The New York Times, “The idea that things
were dangled as some sort of carrots for me to be involved with the Russians is
very far-fetched. I wonder what the Russians wanted from me?”
I think I can answer that—but, first, I’d like to answer the
question Banks didn’t pose. What did Banks want?
Banks wanted what all these shady crooks want—great
wealth—more money than any human being legitimately needs. Banks was driven by
greed. Think guys like Banks and those Russian oligarchs pillaging their
homeland and members of the Trump campaign wouldn’t be happy to cheat their own
people? Think again. Consider, the Isle of Man, where Banks and Mellon do
business. It’s a notorious tax haven where the superrich from around the globe
gather, financially speaking, to avoid paying taxes. Meanwhile, ordinary
taxi drivers, truckers and teachers, the butcher, the baker and the candlestick
maker all cough up their hard-earned dollars.
Those with accounts on the Isle of Man, where the tax rate is
virtually zero, normally enjoy total secrecy. Hackers broke into bank
records in in 2015 and revealed all kinds of sleazy operations. Those with
hidden accounts on the Isle include John Whittaker, a Briton, sitting atop a
fortune estimated to be 2.3 billion pounds, or $3.4 billion American. Trevor
Baines, a man who amassed a fortune of 130 million pounds—and then went to jail
for money laundering—also banks on the Isle of Man. Nigel Farage, leader of the Brexit movement, had an
account on the island. Meanwhile, he was campaigning against leaders of the
European Union who he insisted were dodging
their share of taxes.
How greedy are these people and how low are they willing to
go to sell out their own homelands? In another recent leak of secret tax
records, involving a Panamanian law firm and multiple offshore tax shelters,
several interesting names popped up. First among thieves,
you might say, were Wilbur Ross, President Trump’s Secretary of Commerce
and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. In other words, you had Secretary
Mnuchin weaseling out of paying taxes to the Treasury Department he runs. Gary
Cohn, Trump’s former chief economic adviser, set up 22 separate companies
in Bermuda, another tax haven. Trump’s former Secretary of State, Rex
Tillerson, also set up fake companies on the island. Ben Carson,
head of Housing and Urban Department, sheltered part of his wealth in Bermuda.
Who else appears to be evading their taxes? Tom Barrack,
the billionaire businessman who organized the Trump inauguration ceremonies,
favors the Cayman Islands, one of the more famous tax havens. Jay Clayton,
Trump’s SEC chairman, also has a stash of cash in the Caymans.
20,000
corporations at the same address.
How absurd is this system? How greedy are these folks? And
why might we suspect a guy like Trump—whose tax returns are eternally hidden? More
than 100,000 corporations claim their headquarters are
located in the Cayman Islands. This means they avoid paying most taxes they would
owe the United States and other governments round the world. That includes
20,000 corporations with addresses in the same five-story office tower, the
Ugland House.
If you are still wondering how far these SOB’s will go to
pile up more and more wealth, consider the population of the Cayman Islands, where all these
corporations claim they’ve located headquarters. As a public service, we can
provide you with that number. It would be 62,347.
Or to put it simply, every man, woman and baby in diapers on
the islands must be running 1½ corporations.
6/30/18: While
the Trump administration tries to figure out how to get the more than 2,000
children they locked up in camps back to their parents, who they locked up in
other camps, hundreds of thousands of protesters gather across the nation
calling for an end to such cruel policies.
Trump decides this would be a perfect time to head for his
Bedminster, N.J. golf club for the weekend.
Before he goes, he takes time out of his busy day to tweet
another whopper. Knowing that a Republican compromise bill on immigration—drafted
without input from Democrats—went down in flames Friday, he claims he was
always against it. “I never pushed the
Republicans in the House to vote for the Immigration Bill, either GOODLATTE 1
or 2,” he tweets, “because it could never have gotten enough Democrats as long
as there is the 60 vote threshold. I released many prior to the vote knowing we
need more Republicans to win in Nov.”
That “compromise” bill, which Trump
said he didn’t want Republicans to pass, even though Republicans wrote it, and
even though Republicans control both houses of Congress, and even though he has
a crayon he can use to sign any bill that reaches his office—Goodlatte 2—failed
miserably. The vote in the House of Representatives was 121-301. More than a
hundred Republicans voted no, along with every Democrat in attendance.
As for telling Republicans to vote for
it, Mr. President, you did. In fact, you told them in capital letters in a
tweet three days before:
HOUSE REPUBLICANS SHOULD PASS
THE STRONG BUT FAIR IMMIGRATION BILL, KNOWN AS GOODLATTE II, IN THEIR AFTERNOON
VOTE TODAY, EVEN THOUGH THE DEMS WON’T LET IT PASS IN THE SENATE. PASSAGE WILL
SHOW THAT WE WANT STRONG BORDERS & SECURITY WHILE THE DEMS WANT OPEN BORDERS
= CRIME. WIN!
*
THE PRESIDENT is telling everyone who cares to listen he’s
thinking seriously about how to be sure he picks a great candidate for the U.S.
Supreme Court. Leonard Leo, on leave from the Federalist Society, is helping
him come up with the right person, picking from a list of 25 names submitted
by…the Federalist Society.
Leo tells the Washington
Post, how impressed he is with Trump’s grasp of the issues. He’s
asking a lot of questions, Leo says. “I have been really impressed with how he
conducted this process. He’s in control of it.”
The Post explains:
Trump has told advisers he is
looking for three overarching attributes in a replacement for Kennedy. First,
one adviser said, Trump insists upon an “extraordinarily well qualified”
nominee with a superlative résumé. The president is especially drawn to contenders
with name-brand degrees, such as from Ivy League universities such as Harvard
or Yale.
Trump
doesn’t want to read.
In addition, the adviser explained, Trump “wants to see a
portfolio of solid academic writing.”
Well, I’ll be hornswoggled!
If I didn’t know better, I’d say Trump sounded like a real president.
But that same adviser dashed any hope with a bucket of ice
water. Trump wouldn’t really want to read any of that “solid academic writing.”
The president simply “wants to know it exists.”
July 1,
2018:
Trump spends a quite Sunday at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster. He says
he’s using his time wisely, interviewing candidates for the opening on the U.S.
Supreme Court.
Rumor has it, his first question to every candidate is: “Do
you agree, I can pardon myself—even if I push Sarah Huckabee Sanders off a
cliff—or not?”
After hanging out with all his loyal working class
supporters—who can afford the estimated $350,000 membership fee at Bedminster—Trump is
feeling better. True, he’s still miffed with several giant corporations. Harley
Davidson has said if the tariffs Trump is pushing go into effect, and other
countries retaliate, it will have no choice but to shift manufacturing to
Europe.
General Motors also announces grave concerns. New tariffs, the company warns,
will add significantly to the cost of vehicles sold in the U.S. Tariffs will
essentially serve as a hefty tax on buyers. This will “dent demand,
which could lead to job losses at auto makers and parts suppliers.”
7/2/18: That
engine you hear revving up is the bus getting ready to run over Trump. The man
at the wheel is Michael Cohen, Trump’s former self-described “fixer” and “pit
bull” lawyer. Cohen once claimed he’d “take a bullet” for the president. Now he
says he’d rather not.
Cohen
decides to dodge the bullet, not take it.
In a 45-minute interview Saturday with George Stephanopoulos,
Cohen was asked if he was ready to cooperate with investigators if indicted—not
that we are saying he will be indicted. I mean, what kind of crimes could he
have committed to keep Donald J. Trump out of legal jeopardy?
You know what the president says. There’s “NO COLLUSION.” This
is a “WITCH HUNT.”
So, what can Cohen have to offer prosecutors? Unless you’re
an obsessed blogger you may not be paying attention to what’s been happening
with the Mueller investigation. No one in Mueller’s office ever leaks. We get
only the briefest glimpses of what might be going on behind the scenes.
 |
| If you find a witch then it is a witch hunt. |
On June 28 we got a quick look behind the curtain. Andrew Miller, an aide to
Roger Stone, Trump’s longtime confidant—the latter being a man known to have
dressed up as a witch and talked to Russians—was served with a subpoena to
provide documents and testify before a grand jury.
We know (because court records are usually public) that
Miller is fighting the subpoena. Miller worked for Stone throughout the 2016
campaign and may know about the meeting Stone had with the Russian guy offering
dirt on Hillary—but asking to be paid $2 million to hand it to Stone. (See: 6/17/18.)
Interestingly, while the president keeps hinting that he can
pardon himself, and all his cronies, and fire plugs if necessary, General Flynn,
first member of Team Trump to plead guilty says nothing publicly. Signs
indicate that trouble for Trump may be brewing. The Mueller team has delayed
sentencing on Flynn, who faces one felony charge, but could face several should
he decline to cooperate.
Trump apologists will swear that Flynn told only one little
white lie. Why is Mueller picking on the guy? If you study the matter, you find
Flynn told several whoppers, each whopper = a felony.
The delay suggests that Flynn is
still actively cooperating with Mueller’s office, that prosecutors believe his
testimony could be useful at some future trial, or that the sentencing process
might disclose some aspect of the investigation that Mueller still wishes to
keep secret.
…At a hearing last December
before another federal judge, Rudolph Contreras, Flynn admitted under oath that
he’d lied to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the
U.S., about his lobbying during the presidential transition on a United Nations
resolution critical of Israel and about his lobbying work favorable to the
Turkish government.
That would be three felonies if you’re keeping score. Each
could carry a sentence of five years in jail and a fine of $250,000.
As for Cohen—whose felonies could easily reach double
digits—he’s not ready to go to jail yet. Recently, he hired a new lawyer, Guy
Petrillo, “a highly regarded former federal prosecutor who once led the
criminal division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan—the very same
office currently conducting the criminal investigation of Cohen.” Once Petrillo
takes charge, Cohen is expected to withdraw from a joint defense agreement with
President Trump. That agreement allows witches to share information and
documents with each other.
Not
even willing to take a shot from a Nerf gun.
From that point forward, the bus is warmed up and ready to
roll. In his interview with Stephanopoulos, Cohen made it clear he’s no longer
willing to take a bullet for the president. He’s not even going to take a point-blank
shot from a Nerf gun. “My wife, my daughter and my son have my first loyalty
and always will,” Cohen explained. “I put family and country first.”
If that’s true, Trump is in peril.
On several key points, Cohen made it clear he was distancing
himself from the president. For example, Stephanopoulos asked, did Trump
know about the $130,000 payment to Stephanie Clifford, a.k.a. Stormy
Daniels, less than two weeks before Election Day in 2016?
Trump has sworn he did not.
Cohen originally said he made the payment on his own.
Stephanopoulos wanted to know if that was true.
“I want to answer. One day I will answer,” Cohen replied.
“But for now, I can’t comment further on advice of my counsel.”
What about the idea that the F.B.I. raid on Cohen’s New York
offices and properties was a break-in, an “attack on our country, in a true
sense,” as the president angrily claimed? Was it really “an attack on what we
all stand for?”
“I don’t agree with those who demonize or vilify the F.B.I.,”
Cohen responded.
What about the Mueller investigation, Stephanopoulos asked:
Was it legit?
“I don’t like the term witch hunt,” Cohen said. Cohen
condemned Russia for interfering in the 2016 election. “As an American, I
repudiate Russia’s or any other foreign government’s attempt to interfere or
meddle in our democratic process, and I would call on all Americans to do the
same.”
How about all the Trump campaign clowns who did participate
in that infamous Trump Tower meeting in June of 2016 with several Russians
after being promised dirt on Hillary Clinton?
Did Trump know about the meeting before it happened? Trump
has said a thousand times that he did not—and that’s not counting all the times
the people who attended the meeting said no meeting occurred.
“I can’t comment under advice of my counsel due to the
ongoing investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of
New York,” Cohen said.
With that, he revved the engine again.
The bus was ready to roll.
7/3/18: E.P.A.
Administrator Scott Pruitt continues to lead in the race to be declared the worst
cabinet member since Albert B. Fall, Secretary of the Interior and brains
behind the Teapot Dome Scandal.
Leaked information from congressional investigations shows
Pruitt routinely used aides paid for by “We, the People,” to schedule personal
travel and run errands. He continued to spend lavishly on travel even after
E.P.A. officials warned against it. He asked an aide to violate federal law and
call around to political groups that might like knowing they had a friend at
the E.P.A. And, hey, could they find a job for his lovely wife, Marilyn?
He thought a starting salary of $200,000 sounded about
right.
For some odd reason, Pruitt also routinely asked aides to put
charges for his hotel rooms on their credit cards when they traveled.
7/4/18: At a
Fourth of July rally in Montana the president celebrates American freedom
by lashing out at the free press.
“These
are really bad people.”
Here’s what he tells the crowd:
I see the way they write.
They’re so damn dishonest. And I don’t mean all of them, because some of the
finest people I know are journalists really. Hard to believe when I say that. I
hate to say it, but I have to say it. But 75 percent of those people are
downright dishonest. Downright dishonest. They’re fake. They’re fake.
They make the sources up. They
don’t exist in many cases. These are really bad people.
That’s right. A U.S. president just told a crowd that 75% of
all the reporters in this country are dishonest.
We’ve heard this kind of attack before. See if you can place
this one: “It is the press, above all,
which wages a positively fanatical and slanderous struggle, tearing down
everything which can be regarded as a support of national independence,
cultural elevation, and the economic independence of the nation.”
Who said that in his autobiography?
7/5/18: Speaking of Nazis, the
California GOP wakes up to discover it has endorsed a Holocaust denier in a race for a seat in
Congress.
Flying under the radar, John Fitzgerald captured a quarter of
the vote in the state’s open primary in June. What does Fitzgerald stand
for—besides the rise of a hateful GOP fringe element under Trump? “Everything
we have been told about the Holocaust is a lie,” he said during a recent radio
interview. “My entire campaign, for the most part, is about exposing this lie.”
If elected, Fitzgerald has a lot of twisted ideas to share.
Both major parties, he insists, are controlled by “Jewish elites.” Jews,
Fitzgerald insists, played a “prominent role” in the Atlantic slave trade.
That isn’t correct.
He claims Israel was behind the 9/11 attacks.
That isn’t, either.
According to Fitzgerald, Jewish elites are behind the push
for “multiculturalism, diversity and inclusiveness” here and abroad, in “once
predominantly white nations.”
7/6/18: The
U.S. economy adds 213,000 jobs in June. The unemployment rate ticks up to 4
percent; but this has to do with people who have not been looking for work
coming off the sidelines.
Average weekly earnings have risen 2.7 percent in the last
year.
This good news is reported in The New
York Times. Also, by President Trump! “JOBS, JOBS, JOBS!” he tweets.
Sadly, unemployment claims do rise by one when Scott Pruitt
gets the axe as head of the E.P.A.
Considering the fact that Trump’s man in charge of protecting
the environment was the subject of thirteen investigations into unethical and possibly
criminal behavior, you can see why the June jobs report was good.
Pruitt kept a lot of investigators busy.
*
Trump
hires 480 foreign workers.
TRUMP’S CLUB at Mar-a-Lago is seeking permission under a special visa program to
hire 61 foreign waiters and cooks for the winter season. This brings the
total of foreign workers hired by Trump or his organizations since he started
running for president to 480, half at Mar-a-Lago.
Because, let’s face it. Trump is a cheap bastard.
Why not hire Americans? It’s not like Americans don’t know
how to wait tables and fry burgers. Oh! You’d have to offer them higher pay!!
“It’s very, very hard to get people,” Trump explained during a 2016 debate, arguing that “other hotels do the exact
same thing.” It’s legal. Why not? “I take advantage of that. There’s nothing
wrong with it. We have no choice.”
You have no choice?
There’s no way you could pay more to attract American workers?
It might help if you were ready to dip deeper into your own bank account and make sure
you paid workers a fair wage.
7/7/18: Trump
continues to learn that diplomacy is a bitch. Having announced that North Korea
was no longer a nuclear threat, and that all Americans could slumber in peace,
he sends Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to North Korea so Kim Jong-un can hand
over all his nuclear weapons.
Apparently, it comes as a surprise to the North Koreans that
they are no longer a threat to the U.S. Pompeo assures reporters after the meetings
end that talks were “productive.” “These are complicated issues,” he admits,
“but we made progress on almost all of the central issues.”
The North Korean Foreign Ministry releases a different assessment: “The attitude and demands from the
U.S. side during the high-level talks were nothing short of deeply
regrettable….The issues the U.S. side insisted on during the talks were the
same cancerous ones that the past U.S. administrations had insisted on.” For good measure, the North Koreans described the U.S.
negotiating position as a “unilateral and gangster-like demand for
denuclearization.”
*
BACK HOME, the president spends another “productive” day
tweeting. Eventually, his attention turns to the Russian investigation. It’s a
“Rigged Witch Hunt,” he says. He rambles on about “the missing DNC Server, Crooked
Hillary’s illegally deleted Emails, the Pakistani Fraudster, Uranium One,
Podesta & so much more.”
Why weren’t they investigated!
All
the following statements are true.
At this point you begin to wonder what other extraneous issues
Trump will dump in the mix. Who the hell is “the Pakistani Fraudster?” What does
he or she have to do with the fact that all the following statements are true:
1.
Trump’s first National Security Adviser, General
Flynn, lied to Vice President Jesus about a meeting with Russians. He has pled guilty to one felony and continues to cooperate
with the investigation.
2.
Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos lied about
contacts with Russians. He pled guilty and continues to cooperate.
3.
Roger Stone now admits he met with a Russian offering
dirt on Clinton; but the Russian wanted $2 million to share it.
4.
Michael Cohen admits negotiations to build a
Trump Tower Moscow continued until at least June 2016.
5.
Felix Sater, working for Trump in Moscow,
suggested giving Putin a $50 million penthouse apartment in the proposed tower,
to sweeten the deal.
6.
In June 2016 Don Jr., Jared Kushner and Trump
campaign manager Paul Manafort took a secret meeting with representatives of the Russian
government offering dirt on Mrs. Clinton.
7.
All three men “forgot” they had the meeting.
When The New York Times
revealed the meeting, all three men suddenly remembered: Oh, that meeting!
8.
Don Jr. appeared on Fox News to set the record
straight. He assured Sean Hannity that the meeting was a harmless affair and
everyone talked mostly about adoption policy.
9.
The president helped draft a letter that made a
similar claim—that the meeting was “primarily” about adoption policy.
The New
York
Times notified Don Jr. it had in its
possession emails proving the meeting had been set up primarily for the purpose
of receiving from agents of the Russian government, dirt on Hillary Clinton.
10. Press
Secretary Pinocchio denied that the president had drafted the letter claiming the meeting was
primarily about adoption.
13. Manafort
has been indicted on a long list of crimes.
14. Manafort’s
top aide, Rick Gates, was indicted for most of the same crimes. He pled guilty and decided to cooperate with
investigators.
15. Trump’s
lawyers eventually admit that the president did draft the misleading
letter (#10 above) about the purpose of the meeting at Trump Tower.
16. Manafort
gets hauled into court a second time. His $10 million bail is revoked and he gets sent to jail.
17. Now he’s
charged with witness tampering.
18. Michael
Caputo and Roger Stone, who denied for two years having had anything to do with
any Russians during the 2016 campaign, suddenly remember they did set up a meeting
(Caputo) and meet (Stone) with a Russian offering to sell dirt on Hillary.
19. Last,
but not least—and remember, this is but a sampling—the Senate Judiciary
Committee releases its bipartisan report. Among its key findings: The
Russians did interfere in the 2016 election. The Russians did work to damage
Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning. The Russians did hope Donald J. Trump
would be the next president.
U.S. intelligence agencies had plenty of reasons to
start an investigation into contacts between members of the Trump campaign and
various Russians with links to Vladimir Putin.
7/8/18:
Considering all of the above (see: 7/7/18),
and much, much more, Horndog Rudy, the president’s lawyer, claims his client
has nothing to hide.
And Trump is never
going to talk to investigators because all they want to do is get
him in a perjury trap!
“Republicans
must stand up for the sanctity of our democracy.”
Making the Sunday morning talk show rounds, Giuliani shows up
on ABC’s This Week. Host George
Stephanopoulos asks about an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, written by Bill Frist, former Republican U.S.
Senate majority leader.
The Senate I served in was not
devoid of partisanship, nor should it be, but my hope was that patriotism would
always take priority over party.
It is with some trepidation that
I offer thoughts on how the good people still serving in the Senate should
address a current crisis, but staying silent is no longer an option. Special
counsel Robert S. Mueller III is under assault, and that is wrong. No matter
who is in the White House, we Republicans must stand up for the sanctity of our
democracy and the rule of law.
In terms of policies, Frist says, “President Trump is a great
partner at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.”
Still, he adds:
It isn’t easy to tell a
president of your own party that he is wrong. But the assault on Mueller’s
investigation does not help the president or his party. When Trump talks about
firing the special counsel or his power to pardon himself, he makes it seem as
though he has something to hide. The president must remember that only Mueller’s exoneration can lift the cloud hanging
over the White House.
…The special counsel’s
investigation is not about Trump. It is about our national security. Every
American should be rooting for Mueller’s success in determining precisely how
Russia interfered in our fundamental democratic process.
If you can read that and not be worried about Trump, it’s
probably because consuming too much Fox News has made you numb and dumb.
7/9/18:
Diplomacy is still a bitch (see: 7/7/18).
North Korea appears to be playing the Trump team for fools.
Having declared last month that North Korea was no longer a threat, Trump must now explain why
they won’t just hand over their nukes. Naturally, when Trump gets in a logical
jam, he tries to fight his way out in a tweet:
I have confidence that Kim Jong Un will honor the contract we
signed &, even more importantly, our handshake. We agreed to the
denuclearization of North Korea. China, on the other hand, may be exerting
negative pressure on a deal because of our posture on Chinese Trade-Hope Not!
Who could have guessed? North Korea might not honor a
“contract” or a handshake! China might act against U.S. interests! Who knew!
Well, besides every U.S. president since 1950, except Donald J. Trump.
7/10/18: The
president prepares to leave for Europe, if you can say the president “prepares”
for anything.
Before his trip to Singapore to meet Kim Jong-un in June,
Trump insisted he was always prepared.
Mr.
Born-Prepared will meet with Putin.
Comb that weird hair, lock it down with a full can of
hairspray, and you’re good to go. “I think I’m very well prepared,” he tells reporters
before boarding Air Force One. “I don’t think I have to prepare very much. It’s
about attitude, it’s about willingness to get things done.”
On his trip to Europe, Mr. Born-Prepared will meet NATO
leaders, visit the United Kingdom, go golfing in Scotland for two days (because
he’s already prepared) and sit down with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki.
Oddly enough—and even Fox News can’t avoid reporting this—before embarking, Trump says, “I have NATO,
I have the UK, which is in somewhat in turmoil, and I have Putin. Frankly,
Putin might be the easiest of them all. Who would think? Who would
think?”
Yes, who would think.
7/11/18: The
president’s great attitude and preparedness are on display at breakfast with
NATO officials. Someone has hammered a fact through his helmet of hair
and right into his skull. That means Trump knows Germany buys a liquefied gas
from Russia and he’s pissed.
That means time to vent.
“Germany is totally controlled by Russia,” he grumbles for the world to see. Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo, sitting to his left, wears a tight smile frozen on his face. Kate
Bailey Hutchinson, U.S. ambassador to NATO, seated to his right, looks stunned,
as if someone has hit her upside the head with a frozen trout. Chief of Staff
General John Kelly, one seat down, stares at his plate. He dares not make eye
contact with any of our allies seated across the table. Kelly spends a few moments
silently counting his bacon strips. One. Two. Three. Four.
Yep. There are four.
Trump is off on one of his patented riffs. Whatever random
thoughts are floating in his head are flying from his lips. It’s like he’s at a
campaign rally, only now these are allies and he’s calling them Lyin’ Canada
and Crooked Germany.
I think it’s very sad when
Germany makes a massive oil and gas deal with Russia where—we’re supposed to be
guarding against Russia and Germany goes out and pays billions and billions of
dollars a year to Russia.
So we’re protecting Germany,
we’re protecting France, we’re protecting all of these countries and then
numerous of these countries go out and make a pipeline deal with Russia where
they’re paying billions of dollars into the coffers of Russia. So we’re
supposed to protect you against Russia, but they’re paying billions of dollars
to Russia. I think that’s very inappropriate.
The
Trump Doctrine: Can we score some cash?
Attitude, see. Trump prepares for appearances on the world
stage by bringing attitude and that attitude never changes. He believes
everyone is screwing the United States. In the history books we have the Monroe
Doctrine. We will now have the Truman Doctrine. The Trump Doctrine will
be: “If America can score some serious cash, we might be interested in helping.”
With that display of pique, you can hear the foundation of
what one expert has called “the most successful military alliance in history”
cracking. So, let’s recap. For seventy years the U.S. has helped defend NATO
allies. We have carried a heavy burden. But NATO was our idea. For the first
four decades our allies were part of an essential bulwark against Soviet expansion.
Trump apparently forgets this—or doesn’t know—or doesn’t care. When Ronald Reagan
told Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down that wall,” it was a victory for the West,
for freedom, for capitalism itself. In recent years NATO allies poured troops
into Afghanistan and fought by our side. Even now, NATO warplanes help bomb
ISIS targets in Syria.
In the meetings which follow his breakfast outburst, Trump
insists that NATO allies don’t spend enough on defense. The president claims the
United States is stuck picking up the tab. He says our long-time allies “owe us massive amounts of
money.” But that’s not even close to the truth. NATO has helped ensure peace
and prosperity across Europe and avoid costly wars in the region for seventy
years. Our allies spend heavily on defense, just not as heavily as us. Since
they’re our allies any spending they do can be viewed as combining with ours to make the entire alliance stronger.
These would be the allies that sent a total of
130,000 troops to aid us in Afghanistan. On September 11, 2001, none were
attacked. Yet they sent precious sons and precious daughters to fight in distant
lands, just as we did. Casualties were high. Canada
had 158 killed. Denmark lost 43, France 86, Germany 54, Italy 48, Spain 34, the
United Kingdom 455. Some NATO allies lost a handful, but each was tragedy for a
family back home. Belgium lost 1, Latvia 3, Hungary 7, Poland 10. Several
thousand NATO soldiers were wounded or maimed.
The U.S. dead in Afghanistan total, as of today, 2,412.
The allied dead number 1,148.
The president might not understand how much help our friends
provided in Afghanistan and provide in the fight against ISIS today. ISIS, however, has
noticed. The terrorists unleashed horrific attacks on civilian targets in Paris
and Nice, in London and Manchester, in Toronto, Brussels and Berlin.
Our allies paid a price in blood.
Trump insults the memory of their dead.
$$$$$$$$$$$
7/12/18: F.B.I.
agent Peter Strzok testifies for ten hours in front of a joint panel of
the House Oversight and House Judiciary Committees. Republicans spend the day
shouting about Strzok’s bias against President Trump.
Strzok, who served as an officer in the U.S. Army
(1991-1996), admits he had, in 2016—and still has—a bias against Trump. He says
that he could not imagine that any man who trashed a Gold Star family, said
John McCain was not a hero, and bragged about grabbing women by the pussy would
ever become President of the United States.
Republicans lawmakers take an Evel Knievel-like leap from
there to land a wild claim that since Strzok was biased he had to have been
working against Candidate Trump in 2016 and against President Trump to this
day. He could not have conducted himself in a professional manner when helping
investigate the Trump campaign and links to Russia. That proves, GOP lawmakers
insist, that the entire Mueller investigation is a witch hunt.
And, I suppose, it “proves” that none of the Republicans
shouting all day have any biases of their own.
He
could have sunk Trump’s golden boat.
Strzok keeps pointing out that the F.B.I. Inspector General’s
500-page report (which these lawmakers demanded should be compiled) found that
bias did not affect either his professional conduct or the
conduct of former F.B.I. Director James Comey or other top agency officials.
Strzok also points out that had he wanted to stop Trump from being elected he had the tools at hand. He was one
of a handful of top officials who knew in the summer of 2016 that the Trump
campaign had had an array of suspicious contacts with Russians. He knew an
investigation had been opened. He could have leaked that to the press before
the election. He could have sunk Trump’s golden boat.
Irrefutably, neither Strzok nor anyone else at the F.B.I. did.
Highlights of the hearing include Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ)
attacking Strzok on the basis of body language. At one point, in answer to a
question by Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-TX), Strzok made it clear he was appalled when
Candidate Trump attacked the Gold Star family of a slain Muslim American
soldier. Gosar pounced near the close of the hearings, like a
three-legged cat with one eye.
Angrily, he posed this question for Strzok:
You talk about bias. This morning
I watched—and by the way, I am a dentist, OK, so I read body language very,
very well. And I watched you comment on actions with Mr. Gowdy. You got very
angry in regards to the gold star father. That shows me that it is innately a
part of you and a bias.
Yeah. You could call it a “bias” if you liked. By that
standard, I guess you could say most people are “biased” against child
molesters.
Democratic lawmakers kept spoiling the fun. They pointed out that
the two Republican-controlled House committees had failed to subpoena a single
witness in over a year of “investigation.” They noted that the Senate Judiciary
Committee had reported in bipartisan fashion that the Russians did interfere in
the election. They did want Trump to win. They did try to derail Hillary
Clinton.
Not a single Republican member of the House committees, in
ten hours, asked Strzok a question about Russian meddling.
One Democratic lawmaker offered the assessment that his
Republican colleagues were part of a “Cover-up Caucus.”
“You
need your medication!”
The nadir was reached when Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-Tx.) attacked Strzok for smirking during a long day of
testimony. Gohmert asked if Strzok had the same smirk on his face when he lied
to his wife about having an affair with another F.B.I. agent. (Strzok has long
admitted the affair.)
Oh! Snap! You could almost hear Gohmert
thinking. But as a good liberal, I had to wonder: Did Rep. Gohmert ever wonder
in the same way about that sappy smirk Trump wears on his face? You know: The
look on his orange mug when he lies and tells three wives in a row that he’s
not cheating?
At any rate, one Democratic lawmaker could be heard shouting
at Gohmert, “You need your medication!”
It was that kind of a day.
7/13/18: Having
thoroughly trashed NATO, Trump has plunked down in Great Britain to see what
kind of mess he can make. He has already insulted the mayor of London. Now he
faces massive protests. Speaking at a press conference, with British Prime
Minister Theresa May by his side, the president is forced to deny he has just blasted her in an interview the day before.
Next, he takes questions from reporters about the Russian
investigation, which gets on his nerves.
“I think that we’re being hurt very badly by the—I would call
it the witch hunt,” he tells the British press. He brings up the hearing the
day before, involving F.B.I. agent Peter Strzok and all the body-language-interpreting
GOP lawmakers. “I would call it the rigged witch hunt, after watching some of
the little clips.… I think that really hurts our country, and it really hurts
our relationship with Russia.”
Yes, it’s very sad, hurting our relationship with Russia…
*
ON THE OTHER SIDE of the Atlantic, the Department of Justice
and the Mueller team fire three shots across the bow of the idiots who have
been insisting the Russian investigation is a witch hunt. That would include:
Donald J. Trump, Idiot-in-Chief
Rep. Paul Gosar, Body Language
Dentist
Rep. Louis Gohmert, Smirk Buster
An even dozen Russian military officers are indicted for interfering in the 2016 election. It wasn’t
some 400-lb. fat guy sitting on his bed doing
the hacking, as Candidate Trump once hinted. It wasn’t China or some other
country. It wasn’t chipmunks or squirrels chewing through computer wires. It
was Russian military—which means they had to have the go-ahead from Putin
himself.
The White House responds to the new set of indictments by
noting that no Americans were named.
Apparently, the White House is hoping we won’t notice the fine print in the
29-page court filing.
If you do read the indictment, and reach page 15, you notice
something odd. The Russians clearly had suspicious contacts with Americans
during the 2016 campaign. In Paragraph 43 we learn that a candidate for Congress requested dirt
on his opponent from Guccifer 2.0, a hacking site set up by the Russian
military. The Russians “sent the candidate stolen documents.”
Also, on page 16, we learn that 2.5 gigabytes of stolen information were sent to a “then
state-registered lobbyist and online source of political news.” That same day
the hackers sent information related to Black Lives Matter to a reporter, so
the reporter could attack that group.
In Paragraph 44, investigators note that the Russians
communicated with “U.S. persons about the release of stolen documents” including at least one American
“in regular contact with senior members of the presidential campaign of Donald
J. Trump.”
In Paragraph 57, we learn that the hackers are accused of money-laundering
in furtherance of their scheme.
In Paragraph 69, on page 25, we learn that the Russians are
charged with conspiracy,
…to hack into the computers of
U.S. persons and entities responsible for the administration of the 2016 U.S.
elections, such as state boards of election, secretaries of state, and U.S.
companies that supplied software and other technology related to the
administration of U.S. elections.
Of course, if you had been listening to President Trump for
more than a year and listened again when he spoke in Helsinki (see: 7/16/18), you would have thought
none of this illicit activity had transpired.
*
AT THIS POINT all good Americans might be wise to remember a
May 2017 report from the Washington
Post.
“There’s
two people I think Putin pays.”
In a leaked recording of a meeting of top Republican
lawmakers, in June 2016, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy can be heard
joking, “There’s two people I think Putin pays: [Rep. Dana] Rohrabacher and
Trump.”
The Post explained:
Some of the lawmakers laughed at
McCarthy’s comment. Then McCarthy quickly added: “Swear to God.”
“This is an off the record,”
[Speaker Paul] Ryan said.
Some lawmakers laughed at that.
“No leaks, all right?” Ryan
said, adding: “This is how we know we’re a real family here.”
“That’s how you know that we’re
tight,” [Rep. Steve] Scalise said.
“What’s said in the family stays
in the family,” Ryan added.
The remarks remained secret for
nearly a year….
Evan McMullin, who in his role
as policy director to the House Republican Conference participated in the
June 15 conversation, said: “It’s true that Majority Leader McCarthy said
that he thought candidate Trump was
on the Kremlin’s payroll. Speaker Ryan was concerned about that
leaking.”
McMullin ran for president last
year as an independent and has been a vocal critic of Trump.
When initially asked to comment
on the exchange, Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Ryan, said: “That never
happened,” and Matt Sparks, a spokesman for McCarthy, said: “The idea that
McCarthy would assert this is absurd and false.”
After being told that The Post would cite a recording of the
exchange, Buck, speaking for the GOP House leadership, said: “This entire
year-old exchange was clearly an attempt at humor. No one believed the majority
leader was seriously asserting that Donald Trump or any of our members were
being paid by the Russians. What’s more, the speaker and leadership team have
repeatedly spoken out against Russia’s interference in our election, and the
House continues to investigate that activity.”
“This was a failed attempt at
humor,” Sparks said.
And there you have it. As has so often been true where
Russians and investigations are concerned, first you get lies from Republicans.
Then the free press confronts the liars with evidence.
Then the liars back-pedal furiously.
Postscript: We now know that Rep.
Rohrabacher traveled to Moscow during the 2016 campaign. We know
he received documents from Yuri Y. Chaika, Russia’s prosecutor general, a post equivalent
to the U.S. Attorney General.
Rohrabacher denies using anything he received from Chaika to
damage Hillary or the Democrats. (See:
7/18/18.)
7/14/18: Time runs a cover story titled “Democracy Will Prevail.” The writer is retired
Admiral James Stavridis, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO and not
what you might call a fan of President Trump. Round the world, he warns,
democracy is under attack. Trump has done nothing to blunt the assault.
America’s President, Donald
Trump, has just met in Brussels with the leaders of the countries of NATO,
arguably the most successful military alliance in human history, and
Washington’s prized partner in democracy’s 20th century victory. Throughout his
campaign and his presidency, Trump has attacked NATO and America’s allies in
it. From Brussels, he travels to Helsinki, where he will talk privately with
Russia’s Vladimir Putin, a strongman he has flattered and suggested is to be
emulated.
Trump himself has shunned
traditional norms…and his rhetoric seeks to chill freedom of the press and undermine the nation’s institutions of
democracy.
If the former NATO commander has little use for the president
he does see hope elsewhere, in the leadership of Germany, France, Canada, Japan
and Great Britain. As for Trump, he concludes: “Under this U.S. Administration,
there is little leadership on global human rights or democratic norms.”
7/15/18: Trump
rests after four busy days in Europe. In short order he has managed to insult
our closest NATO allies. Still, he claims to have won a great victory when he says he forced them to agree to
increase defense spending. Leaders of Italy and France both call him—in
diplomatic terms—a liar. The agreement they made in 2014, when Obama
was in office, to raise spending to 2% of GDP by 2024 remains. Trump has
attacked German Chancellor Angela Merkel. He has undercut Prime Minister
Theresa May of Great Britain. Then he denied he undercut her and labeled The Sun, which ran a critical interview
of May given by the president, “fake news.”
The Sun
responded by posting the tape of the interview, proving Trump said
everything they said he said.
Ready or not, Donald is off to meet with Vladimir in
Helsinki.
Once again, the president has “prepared” by locking down his
hair, this time with three cans of hair spray, and by whacking golf balls
around one of his private courses in Scotland.
7/16/18:
Trump starts the new day in Helsinki by tweet-complaining: “Our relationship
with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and
stupidity and now, the Rigged Witch Hunt!”
If you started rubbing your eyes then and there, you’d be
excused. Did our fearless leader just say our poor relationship with Russia was
our fault?
He did!
Did this poor relationship have anything to do with the fact
that Russia invaded the Crimea in 2014? Did it have anything to do with
the fact Russia continues a low-level war, if you can call
10,000 Ukrainian dead a low-level war, along the Ukrainian border? Was it a
problem when Russia shot down a civilian jet liner and killed
everyone aboard? Were the hundreds of billions of rubles Putin and his cronies
laundered through the world’s banks—often investing in U.S. real estate—an issue? Nope.
It was us.
What about Russian agents poisoning a Putin critic on
British soil? What about all the critics of Putin who end up dead? What about Russian military forces
propping up Bashar-al-Assad in Syria while the Syrian people die by the
hundreds of thousands? What about the attack by Russian mercenaries in Syria on a
U.S.-held military base? Perhaps the problems between our countries were
exacerbated by Russia’s extensive meddling in our 2016 election? No, Trump
didn’t care.
The problem was the United States.
The
puppet danced perfectly as Putin jerked the strings.
It only got worse as the day wore on. After sitting down
(oddly, alone) for a two-hour
meeting with Putin—not that President Trump has anything to hide—he and the
Russian strongman came out, read prepared statements, agreed that their
discussions had gone great and took questions. What a proud day it turned out
to be for Vladimir Putin. The puppet President of the United States danced
perfectly as Putin jerked him up and down on the strings.
A reporter asked Trump if there was anything he held the Russians responsible for,
in terms of our poor relations. Did Trump believe the Russians interfered in
the 2016 campaign?
Trump’s answer was stunning. “I hold both countries
responsible. I think that the United States has been foolish. I think we’ve all
been foolish ...we’re all to blame,” he responded.
Asked whether he believed the U.S. intelligence community,
that Putin was responsible for a campaign to undermine the election, the puppet
pirouetted on his strings. Rather than answer directly, he attacked the F.B.I.
for not confiscating the hacked e-mail server of the Democratic National
Committee. Here, in view of the entire world, the President of the United
States was peddling a convoluted conspiracy theory, that the Democrats hacked themselves and ditched
the evidence. He was letting Vladimir Putin and the Russians off the
hook.
“Where is the server?” he asked. “I want to know where is
the server and what is the server saying.”
Yes, he admitted, his Director of National Intelligence, Dan
Coates, “and some others” had told him “they think it is Russia,” they think
Russia hacked the election. He was skeptical. “I don’t see any reason why it would be. But I
really do want to see the server. I have great confidence in my intelligence
people. But I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and
powerful in his denial today.”
His response was so unexpected—so bizarre, really—that
experienced reporters listening were stunned.
*
YOU COULD EXPECT Democrats and probably most patriotic
Americans to hit the roof. Many did.
Let’s ignore Democrats and sample Republican reaction:
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a former Air Force officer: “The American
people deserve the truth, & to disregard the legitimacy of our intelligence
officials is a disservice to the men & women who serve this country. It’s
time to wake up & face reality. #Putin is not our friend; he’s an enemy to
our freedom.”
Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming:
As a member of the House Armed Services
Committee, I am deeply troubled by
President Trump’s defense of Putin against the intelligence agencies
of the U.S. & his suggestion of moral equivalence between the U.S. and
Russia. Russia poses a grave threat to our national security.
Mark Lowenthal, former assistant director at the C.I.A. says
of Trump: “He’s the best president
that Russia’s ever had.”
Chuck Hagel, decorated war hero, former Republican senator
from Nebraska, former defense secretary under President Obama, said it appeared
Trump had no real strategy in meeting with Putin. “This was not a golf outing. This was not a
real estate transactional kind of arrangement.... Engagement must be connected
to a strategic interest, a strategic purpose. I don’t know what that strategic
purpose was. I am now convinced we didn’t have one.”
Sen. Rob Portman: The president “failed to stand up to Vladimir Putin on some of the most
critical security issues facing our country and our allies.”
Sen. Orrin Hatch, a key Trump ally, issued a statement
backing up the intelligence community.
Russia interfered in the 2016 election.
Our nation’s top intelligence agencies all agree on that point. From the
President on down, we must do everything in our power to protect our democracy by securing
future elections from foreign influence and interference, regardless of what
Vladimir Putin or any other Russian operative says.
Mitt Romney: “President Trump’s decision to side with Putin
over American intelligence agencies is disgraceful and detrimental to our democratic principles.”
Even Milksop Mitch mustered up a tidbit of courage. “I’ve
said a number of times and I say it again, the Russians are not our friends and
I entirely believe the assessment of our intelligence community.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham said Trump had handed Putin an easy victory. “This answer…
will be seen by Russia as a sign of weakness and create far more problems than
it solves. Bad day for the U.S.”
In a rare moment of levity, considering the disaster
Americans had just seen unfold, Graham warned the president to leave a soccer
ball, a World Cup souvenir from Putin, outside when he came home. “If it were
me, I’d check the soccer ball for listening devices and never allow it in the
White House.”
In a lengthy statement, Sen. John McCain, chairman of the
Senate Committee on Armed Services, let rip:
Today’s press conference in Helsinki
was one of the most disgraceful
performances by an American president in memory. The damage
inflicted by President Trump’s naiveté, egotism, false equivalence, and
sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate. But it is clear that the
summit in Helsinki was a tragic mistake.
President Trump proved not only unable,
but unwilling to stand up to Putin. He and Putin seemed to be speaking from the
same script as the president made a conscious choice to defend a tyrant against the fair questions of a free press,
and to grant Putin an uncontested platform to spew propaganda and lies to the
world.
Former C.I.A. Chief John O. Brennan, who served both
Republican and Democratic presidents, had had all he could stand. In a scathing
tweet he blasted Trump. Let’s give Brennan, a man who devoted a long career to
serving the United States of America, the last word:
Donald Trump’s press conference
performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of “high crimes
& misdemeanors.” It was nothing
short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is
wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???
At least one member of the Trump administration had seen
enough. Dan Coats, Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, issued a terse statement in response to the president’s comments.
His office took the unusual step of noting that it was
issuing this message without clearing it with the White House:
The role of the Intelligence
Community is to provide the best information and fact-based assessments
possible for the President and policymakers. We have been clear in our assessments of Russian meddling in the 2016
election and their ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy,
and we will continue to provide unvarnished and objective intelligence in
support of our national security.
This is Dan Coats we’re talking about. Coats served for a
quarter century in Congress. He’s a lifelong Republican, not a charter member
of the “Deep State.” He was picked by Trump to be the top intelligence official
in this administration. Hillary didn’t pick him. “Muslim” Obama isn’t lurking
in the shadows. This is the president’s guy, making it clear. Trump is full of
crap.
7/17/18: Trump
leaps from the frying pan of disgrace into the fire of farce. Battered by
criticism of his performance in Helsinki—even by the sycophants at Fox
News—Trump puts out a new story.
That story, despite what you saw with your own two peepers
and heard with your own two eardrums, is that he is the toughest president ever
to take on the Russians.
“I
don’t know why they wouldn’t,” Trump meant to say.
With a script prepared by top aides in his mitts, the
president reads to reporters, adding a few random thoughts as he proceeds. In
the face of near-universal condemnation, he is backtracking for once:
So, I’ll begin by stating that I
have full faith and support for America’s great intelligence agencies, always
have. And I have felt very strongly that while Russia’s actions had no impact
at all on the outcome of the election, let me be totally clear in saying
that—and I’ve said this many times—I accept our intelligence community’s
conclusion that Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election took place. It could be other
people also. There’s a lot of people out there.
Reporters can’t believe it! Who knew there were “a lot of
people out there?” You know: 7.6 billion.
Well, what the president really wants is to clarify one
point—which would make everything else he said seem so much better. When he
said, “I don’t see why they would,” in response to a reporter’s question about
whether the Russians interfered in the election, it was just a slip of the
tongue.
“I don’t know why they wouldn’t,” he says he meant to say.
In other words, if you took that one word out and plugged in the “correct” word, he gave
Putin hell.
So, I say, let’s look at the transcript. Let’s read exactly what Trump said. And to help
your thought processes, if you’re an avid Trump fan, I will annotate the
transcript with comment as required.
First, we should remember that Trump had multiple chances to address Russian
meddling. First, he tweet-blamed America for problems with Russia. He had more
than one chance to stand up for democracy, fair elections and the rule of law.
He stood at the podium, as representative of the United States of America, and
groveled.
The first exchange with a reporter, after his private meeting
with Putin was ended, led to this:
REPORTER, JEFF MASON, REUTERS: Thank you. Mr. President, you tweeted
this morning that it’s U.S. foolishness, stupidity, and the Mueller probe that
is responsible for the decline in U.S. relations with Russia. Do you hold
Russia at all accountable [f]or anything in particular? And if so, what would
you what would you consider them that they are responsible for?
Okay.
Here’s your chance, Mr. President. Tell Putin to stay out of our elections.
You’ve got this! Easy peasy.
TRUMP: Yes, I do. I hold both countries
responsible. I think that the United States has been foolish.
WTF!
TRUMP (continuing): I think we’ve all
been foolish. We should have had this dialogue a long time ago, a long time
frankly before I got to office. And I think we’re all to blame.
Not
me, personally, he’s saying. It was all those stupid presidents who came
before. Trump could offer a better response if he simply stood there and farted.
TRUMP (still babbling): I think that the
United States now has stepped forward, along with Russia, and we’re getting
together and we have a chance to do some great things, whether it’s nuclear
proliferation in terms of stopping, have to do it, ultimately that’s probably
the most important thing that we can be working on.
Mention
the elections. You fool! We can work on nuclear, too; but, the elections…say
something to Putin.
TRUMP: But I do feel that we have both
made some mistakes. I think that the probe is a disaster for our country. I
think it’s kept us apart. It’s kept us separated.
There was no collusion at all. Everybody
knows it. People are being brought out to the fore. So far that I know
virtually none of it related to the campaign. And they’re gonna have to try
really hard to find somebody that did relate to the campaign. That was a clean
campaign. I beat Hillary Clinton easily and frankly we beat her.
We
know this. The election was two years ago. We know you won. That’s why Hillary
isn’t standing at the podium. Do you hold Russia accountable for anything? Do
you, or don’t you? You are blowing it!
TRUMP: And I’m not even saying from the
standpoint...we won that race. And it’s a shame that there can even be a little
bit of a cloud over it. People know that. People understand it. But the main
thing and we discussed this also is zero collusion and it has had a negative
impact upon the relationship of the two largest nuclear powers in the world.
We have 90 percent of nuclear power
between the two countries. It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous what’s going on
with the probe.
Did
Trump just say we’re nuclear rivals, with enough bombs to blow up the world
many times over, and it’s because of the probe?
*
CLEARLY, TRUMP muffed his first chance. A few minutes later,
he had a second opportunity to clean up the mess.
REPORTER, AP: President Trump…Just now, President Putin
denied having anything to do with the election interference in 2016. Every U.S.
intelligence agency has concluded that Russia did. My first question for you sir
is, who do you believe? My second question is would you now, with the whole
world watching, tell President Putin, would you denounce what happened in 2016
and would you warn him to never do it again?
Would
you? Did that reporter mean “wouldn’t?” That would mean his entire question was
nonsense. Election? Did he mean to say “erection?” Maybe he meant to ask about
eels. You can see where one word makes a big difference!
TRUMP: So
let me just say that we have two thoughts. You have groups that are wondering
why the FBI never took the server. Why haven’t they taken the server? Why was
the FBI told to leave the office of the Democratic National Committee?
You
are screwing the pooch. He asked if you would denounce Putin. Not the F.B.I.
and the Democratic National Committee!
TRUMP: I’ve been wondering that. I’ve
been asking that for months and months and I’ve been tweeting it out and
calling it out on social media. Where is the server? I want to know where is
the server and what is the server saying?
With that being said, all I can do is ask
the question.
My people came to me, Dan Coates [sic],
came to me and some others they said they think it’s Russia. I have President
Putin. He just said it’s not Russia.
Someone
sedate this fool! Our intelligence agencies don’t “think” it was Russia. They
know it was Russia. Trump isn’t talking about Russian interference. He’s
babbling about some server. He might as well be yodeling.
TRUMP: I will say this: I don’t see any
reason why it would be. But I really do want to see the server but I have, I
have confidence in both parties.
Okay,
there’s the slip of the tongue. Wait? Did he mean to say “constipation,” not
confidence? Who knows what the president meant? I don’t think Trump knows what
Trump meant. I’ve not even sure he’s speaking English.
MORE TRUMP: I really believe that this
will probably go on for a while but I don’t think it can go on without finding
out what happened to the server. What happened to the servers of the Pakistani
gentleman that worked on the DNC?
Where are those servers? They’re missing.
Where are they? What happened to Hillary Clinton’s emails? 33,000 emails gone,
just gone. I think in Russia they wouldn’t be gone so easily.
Does
Trump realize Russia is a police state? Does he realize the K.G.B. gets any
information it wants by tapping reporters’ phones, arrests musicians who
criticize Putin, blocks most candidates from running in fair elections and
secretly records people in compromising situations? Of course, he doesn’t. We
have a moron for president.
TRUMP (droning on): I think it’s a disgrace
that we can’t get Hillary Clinton’s thirty three thousand e-mails.
I have great confidence in my
intelligence people but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely
strong and powerful in his denial today and what he did is an incredible offer.
He offered to have the people working on
the case come and work with their investigators, with respect to the 12 people.
I think that’s an incredible offer. Ok? Thank you.
*
AND THERE you have it, supposedly fixed
by changing one word. First, the President of the United States disgraced
himself on the world stage.
Second, he and his aides concocted a
ridiculous story to help him find his way out of the woods.
Or wood that be the “woulds.”
7/18/18: Who’s
sweating profusely today when it comes to the Russia investigation? If you’ve
been busy shampooing the dog, several shoes dropped this week. On Friday
Special Counsel Robert Mueller dropped combat boots on a dozen Russian military
officers charged with trying to influence the 2016 election.
The White House immediately released a statement saying: Hey,
no Americans were indicted for collusion with said Russians! But the White
House knew plenty and Trump and his team were praying that Americans heading
for the beach or the pool would be too busy slathering on sunscreen to take
note. According to the indictment at
least one unnamed Trump associate had a series of contacts with
Guccifer 2.0, now conclusively shown to be a Russian front. Roger Stone has
admitted that unnamed Trump associate is “probably” him. (See: 6/17/18.)
What other shoes dropped? On Sunday the F.B.I. arrested Maria
Butina, a young Russian. She was charged with working as an unregistered
foreign agent, one step removed from an espionage charge. For at least three
years Butina is alleged to have acted on U.S. soil in the interests of the
Russian Federation. Purportedly a gun-rights activist back home, she wormed her
way into the graces of the N.R.A. here. It may have helped that according to
court records she was willing to trade sex with Americans in return for
political access. We know the N.R.A. paid her way to this country more than
once so she could speak on gun rights. Her public stance was in favor of
private ownership of guns by Russian citizens.
Butina also went to the trouble to speak on at least one
American campus and called Putin “a dictator and a tyrant.”
That at least was true.
“I
don’t think you’d need the sanctions.”
Strangely enough, her criticism never led to arrest whenever
she returned home. We now know that she rubbed shoulders with a variety of top
Republican movers and shakers. She also rubbed other body parts. In one photo,
the attractive redhead from Siberia stands smiling next to Scott Walker,
governor of Wisconsin. In another, she looks fetching in pearls, with N.R.A.
president Wayne LaPierre gaping by her side.
In July 2015 she was in the audience at Freedom Fest in Las
Vegas. By chance or by design she was called on to ask then-candidate-Trump a
question. What would his position toward Russia be, she asked, if he were
elected?
Would the sanctions be lifted?
“I know Putin, and I’ll tell you what, we get along with
Putin…I believe I would get along very nicely with Putin, OK?” Trump told her.
“And I mean, where we have the strength. I don’t think you’d need the
sanctions. I think we would get along very, very well.”
In August she was back home when Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a
California Republican, was visiting. The congressman says he can’t remember
much about the young lady. Yes, he says, Butina did arrange a breakfast with
Alexander Torshin, but all he—your good old congressman—had was tea and toast.
Because…you know…the waistline.
No, seriously, Rohrabacher said the breakfast was of “no
consequence,” which is probably a good way to cover your ass, if you broke
bread with a Russian spy and her Russian spy master.
Interestingly, if you do a little digging, you understand why
Rohrabacher might be feeling the heat. He is said to have met in early 2016
with Natalia Veselnitskaya. She’s the
Russian lawyer who took part in the Trump Tower meeting that June, a
meeting which is of key interest to Mueller’s team.
Well, now, what did Rep. Rohrabacher think about the
indictment of this poor little girl! “It’s ridiculous. It’s stupid,” he fumed.
“She’s the assistant of some guy who is the head of the bank and is a member of
their Parliament. That’s what we call a spy? That shows you how bogus this
whole thing [the Mueller investigation] is.”
Actually, that “some guy who is the head of the bank” is a
seriously shady character. Torshin is one of 24 individuals and 14 Russian
companies sanctioned by the Treasury Department in May.
They ended up on that list because they were individuals and
entities that had benefitted “from [ties with] the Putin regime and play a key
role in advancing Russia’s malign activities.”
So, yes, Mr. Rohrabacher—we’re talking malign Russian
activities. And you’re just slinging bullshit.
Who exactly will be squashed by all the falling shoes we
cannot yet know. But several Americans would be wise to scurry for cover. We
know Torshin is an ally of Putin. This latest indictment (not directly tied to
the Mueller investigation, but of obvious interest) makes clear that Torshin
was giving Butina orders. Both became life members of the N.R.A., which even
the head of the N.R.A. would probably admit is not a great look for the organization.
Rohrabacher may be in trouble. Some say he’s the congressman
in Paragraph 43 of the latest Mueller indictment. (See: 7/13/18.)
Certainly, longtime Republican fixer, Paul Erickson, is
likely to get whacked with a size-22 shoe. For some reason he formed a company
with Butina in South Dakota in 2016. That company is the subject of a fraud
investigation. Erickson is not named in the indictment but is thought to be
the unnamed political operative with whom she was said to be coordinating
activities. Erickson, almost twice her age, and Butina were shacking up and
Erickson had been helping her do homework while she studied (under a student
visa gained by lying on her application) at American University.
 |
| Ms. Butina. |
The
Kremlin approved her efforts.
From the official indictment, we know Torshin was telling
Butina to play the long game during the 2016 campaign. He advised her “not [to]
burn out prematurely.” She admitted she was tired of living with Erickson. (She
was also tired of offering to have sex with other men high up in conservative
ranks in order to gain political access.) She responded via Twitter: “Only incognito!”
That is, she was operating in secret. “Right now everything has to be quiet and
careful.”
“In the F.B.I. affidavit,” The New York Times reports, Ms. Butina assured some unnamed person,
likely Erickson, “that the Kremlin had approved her efforts to connect members of the Trump team with allies or associates of Vladimir Putin.
‘All that we needed was “yes” from Putin’s side.’”
Later she wrote again to her American contact, “My dearest
president [Putin, not Trump] has received ‘the message’ about your group
initiatives.”
That exchange came in March 2016. So, you can understand why
the F.B.I. might have been suspicious. We now know Trump campaign aide George
Papadopoulos met with what he thought were Russian agents
offering dirt on Hillary Clinton that same month. Later he lied about it.
Stone met his Russian in May. Eventually, he denied
meeting with any Russians in testimony before Congress.
Torshin tried to set up a meeting between Trump and Putin
that month.
In in June 2016, Paul Manafort, Don Jr. and Jared Kushner
took a secret meeting with individuals they knew were Russian
agents.
Alleged
money-launderer scheduled to meet with Trump.
We know Torshin scored a short meeting with Don Jr. at an N.R.A. convention in May
2016. We know Butina and Torshin attended President Trump’s inauguration. In
February 2017 she and Torshin organized a delegation of a dozen Russians to
attend the National Prayer Breakfast and hear the Putin Pal President speak. Torshin
scored a meeting at the White House later that year. At the last minute, his
meeting with Trump was canceled when a White House security aide noticed that
Torshin was under investigation for
money laundering in Spain.
*
ON MONDAY, Mueller’s team swatted a big cockroach with a wingtip.
Mueller asked a judge for immunity for up to five witnesses to testify in the
coming trial of former Trump campaign manager Manafort.
That means there are five people who may be compelled to give testimony as
witnesses. They are to be granted “use immunity,” which means nothing they say
can be used against them.
They will not be able to plead the Fifth.
Is it still possible that President Trump will be absolved of
all crimes during his campaign? I taught history for decades. I go only with
facts I think are proven. He could be innocent. He could be nothing more than a
poor dupe. I can’t deny, however, that I think a Nike Mag 2016 basketball shoe
(cost: $26,000) may be hovering over his orange,
hair-spray-helmeted head.
*
“I do not believe special counsel Mueller is on a witch hunt.
I think it’s a professional investigation conducted by a man that I’ve known to
be a straight shooter.”
F.B.I. Director Wray
F.B.I. DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER WRAY sits down in front of an
audience at the Aspen Security Conference in Colorado. He’ll be taking
questions from moderator Lester Holt of NBC. For the third time, over the course of more than a year, including
this past May and in June 2017, Wray makes it clear he does not believe the
Russia investigation is a witch hunt.
In the wake of the president’s recent statements in
Helsinki—that he believes Putin—then he doesn’t—then he kind of does—you sense
exasperation and even a hint of doubt about the innocence of the president in
Director Wray’s response. “I do not believe special counsel Mueller is on a
witch hunt. I think it’s a professional investigation conducted by a man that
I’ve known to be a straight shooter.”
Remember now. Wray was Trump’s pick to head the F.B.I. He
just backed up Mueller 100 percent.
Holt wonders: “There have also been stories that you
threatened to resign. Have you ever hit a point on that issue of sources and
methods or anything else when you said, this is a line?”
Wray replies, “I’m a low-key, understated guy, but that
should not be mistaken for what my spine is made out of. I’ll just leave it at
that.”
Postscript: On August 22, 2019, Patrick
Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com, resigns from the company and admits having an
on-and-off sexual relationship with Ms. Butina for three years. This was at the
same time Ms. Butina was living with longtime Republican fixer, Paul Erickson.
Byrne says he only did it for the sake of the country—that
was the only reason he had sex with the young redhead. He sacrificed his patriotic
semen for us all. Byrne told an interviewer on Fox Business News, where no
story is too stupid to be believed, that the F.B.I. encouraged him to boink the
babe.
It was part of a “soft coup” (no pun intended) to undermine
Donald J. Trump! “There is a Deep State, like a submarine, lurking just beneath
the waves at periscope depth, watching our shipping lanes,” he claimed. “And a
nuclear icebreaker named the USS Bill Barr has snuck up on them and
is about to ram them at midship.”
7/19/18: The
president continues to try to dig his way out of the mess he made in Helsinki.
He decides the best way to do it is to take a shovel and bang
a few reporters on their heads. He fires off this tweet:
The Summit with Russia was a
great success, except with the
real enemy of the people, the Fake News Media. I look
forward to our second meeting so that we can start implementing some of the
many things discussed, including stopping terrorism, security for Israel,
nuclear........
You may recall that Putin offered to allow American
investigators to come to Russia and interview the twelve Russian officers
indicted for interfering in our last election. In return, the Russians would be
allowed to grill 11 Americans, who, Putin insists, committed crimes while in
Russia. This would include former U.S. ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul.
Apparently, Trump has never heard of diplomatic immunity or
U.S. sovereignty. Nor does he realize that Putin prefers to deal with critics
by having them shot, poisoned or clubbed dead.
On Monday, the president responded to the question of whether or not Russia had
interfered in our election like so:
I will tell you that President
Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today [of Russian
interference in 2016] and what he did is an incredible offer. He offered to
have the people working on the case come and work with their investigations
with respect to the 12 people. I think that’s an incredible offer.
Sadly, the “Deep State” once again shot down another muddled proposal that trickled from
Trump’s lips.
On Wednesday, a State Department spokeswoman read the
following statement to reporters:
The overall assertions that have
come out of the Russian government are absolutely absurd: the fact that they
want to question 11 American citizens and the assertions that the Russian
government is making about those American citizens. We do not stand by those
assertions that the Russian government makes.
On Thursday, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution, by a vote
of 98-0, warning Trump not to allow Russians to interrogate American citizens.
*
IN AN EDITORIAL in The
New York Times, Republican congressman Will Hurd writes:
Over the course of my career as
an undercover officer in the C.I.A., I saw Russian intelligence manipulate many
people. I never thought I would see
the day when an American president would be one of them.
The president’s failure to
defend the United States intelligence community’s unanimous conclusions of
Russian meddling in the 2016 election and condemn Russian covert
counterinfluence campaigns and his standing idle on the world stage while a
Russian dictator spouted lies confused many but should concern all
Americans. By playing into Vladimir Putin’s hands, the leader of the free world
actively participated in a Russian
disinformation campaign that legitimized Russian denial and weakened
the credibility of the United States to both our friends and foes abroad.
…Russia is an adversary not just
of the United States but of freedom-loving people everywhere.
Who, then, is the real “enemy of the people?” Putin fits the
description. Donald J. Trump may be another.
7/20/18: F.B.I.
Director Christopher Wray has already undercut Trump at the Aspen Security
Forum (see: 7/18/18). Now Director of
National Intelligence Dan Coats takes a shot.
Coats
is laughing at Trump.
At this point, four days after Trump sat down privately to
chat with his pal Vladimir, the White House still hasn’t briefed top
administration officials or military leaders on any agreements the two men
might have made. Mr. Coats is answering questions from Andrea Mitchell, a
reporter for MSNBC, in front of a large audience, when news breaks. Press
Secretary Pinocchio announces, via Twitter, that Putin will be invited to the
White House this fall. Coats’s reaction is telling, and we learn later that
White House aides feel Coats is laughing at Trump.
That’s because he is—and like Wray, on Wednesday—almost
daring the president to fire him.
COATS CLIP….
Meanwhile, Defense Secretary James Mattis makes it clear in a statement what our country’s
biggest problem is in Europe.
It isn’t NATO.
Russia should suffer
consequences for its aggressive,
destabilizing behavior and its illegal occupation of Ukraine. The
fundamental question we must ask ourselves is do we wish to strengthen our
partners in key regions or leave them with no other option than to turn to
Russia, thereby undermining a once in a generation opportunity to more closely
align nations with the U.S. vision for global security and stability.
No one knows yet what Putin and Trump talked about during
their private meeting in Helsinki. We do know this. They both agree the free
press is a giant pain in the ass for dictators.
(In
January 2019 we learn that
our president has been confiscating translator’s notes from his meetings with
Putin. Other top administration officials still don’t know what has been said.)
*
WE LEARN IN PASSING that Mueller has issued a subpoena for Kristin Davis, 41, formerly
known as the “Manhattan Madam.” Ms. Davis operated a high-priced prostitution
ring and ran an abortive campaign for governor of New York in 2010. Since then
she has worked for Roger Stone.
That is, not counting the twenty-four months she spent behind
bars, starting in 2013, for illegally peddling prescription pills.
These are the kinds of people who clog the Trump orbit.
7/21/18:
Sometimes, you wonder if the president will ever make it through a day without
doing or saying something objectionable.
This is not that day.
Someone
tell Trump: It’s not breaking in if you have a warrant.
Once again, he’s tweeting criticism about the U.S. judicial
system. This time his topic is former personal lawyer Michael Cohen. As most
Americans know, in April, Cohen’s home, office, safety deposit boxes and
electronic devices were searched after authorities convinced a judge to issue a
warrant.
Sadly, the man in charge of our government has no idea how
warrants and U.S. judges work. Trump tweets:
Inconceivable
that the government would break into a lawyer’s office (early in the morning) -
almost unheard of. Even more inconceivable that a lawyer would tape a client -
totally unheard of & perhaps illegal. The good news is that your favorite
President did nothing wrong!
First, if “your favorite President did nothing wrong,” how
come he howls about the Russian probe every day? Second, dawn raids are a
favorite tactic of the F.B.I. and most police departments.
Take, for example, F.B.I. raids in January 2011 that netted 125 mob figures from seven Mafia crime families.
Or the pre-dawn raids carried out by ICE in January, while Trump himself was
slumbering in the White House. More than a hundred 7/11 stores were raided, and
undocumented workers were swept up by the score.
So, yes, Mr. Trump, dawn raids are common. They work against
mob families. They work against street gangs. They work against crooked
business types who hire undocumented workers.
Finally, fearing
Cohen was planning to destroy evidence, law enforcement authorities
showed up at his offices in the wee hours because they wanted to catch him
unawares.
7/22/18: Sunday
turns into a whine-fest when the president starts tweeting about how unfairly
he’s being treated by pretty much everyone in the Department of Justice. He
even puts the word “Justice” in quotes.
In this case, Trump is tweet-moaning about the FISA courts
and how the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. and the Brownies are all out to get him. But
first, they must get Carter Page to get to him.
Let’s go to the tweets. The president’s Twitter Day begins at
5:28 a.m.:
Congratulations to @JudicialWatch
and @TomFitton on being successful in getting the Carter Page FISA documents. As
usual they are ridiculously heavily redacted but confirm with little doubt that
the Department of “Justice” and FBI misled the courts. Witch Hunt Rigged, a
Scam!
A series of Twitter howls punctuate the president’s morning.
According to Trump, the FISA courts are rigged. So is the Mueller
investigation, and the Steele dossier is fake, and Carter Page should never
have been under surveillance.
Then for good measure, he tweets: “I had a GREAT meeting with
Putin and the Fake News used every bit of their energy to try and disparage it.
So bad for our country!”
Even
a babbling idiot should be able to figure this out.
Now let’s go to the evidence and see how Trump’s tweets hold
up. First, the president’ loyal fans should understand that Carter Page was
being surveilled under a FISA warrant in 2014.
That would be before Trump ran for office.
Second, the president keeps calling the Mueller investigation
a “witch hunt.” Apparently, the president never listens to F.B.I. Director
Wray, who insisted a few days ago that the investigation was not a witch hunt. (See:
7/18/18.)
Third, Trump keeps insisting that the F.B.I. and Department
of Justice were working to help Hillary Clinton win the election. Even a
babbling idiot should be able to figure this out. By the summer of 2016, the
F.B.I. was worried because several members of the Trump campaign had had questionable contacts with Russians.
Trump’s worst “enemy” in the F.B.I., Peter Strzok, knew an investigation had
been launched. Still, no one in the “Justice” Department leaked that story
which might have destroyed Trump’s pussy-grabbing campaign for good.
Fourth, we might note that Trump likes to talk about the “13
angry Democrats” who work for the Mueller team. (Sometimes he goes with “13
very angry Democrats” just to mix it up.) Here a sensible observer might note
that the president does not mention the FISA judges’ political backgrounds. All
four involved in granting warrants to surveil Page were Republican appointees.
Mueller is a Republican. So is Rod Rosenstein, the man in charge of the “witch
hunt,” which F.B.I. Director Wray, another Republican, says is a witch hunt
only in Trump’s imagination.
*
TRUMP’S BUSY DAY ends before 11 p.m. He dons his bunny
slippers (Playboy themed), hunkers down in bed and decides to tweet.
Hey, why not threaten some other nation with war! No. Not
Canada! Not another one of our allies. Trump shows rare restraint. Iran! Yes,
Iran! His base will love his bellicose bedtime blather.
He tap-taps:
To Iranian President Rouhani:
NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES
THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO
LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE &
DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!
With visions of Hiroshima-type mass destruction and “fire and
fury” dancing in his head, the President of the United States flicks off the TV
and the bedside lamp and drifts off to a contented sleep.
 |
| When Trump thinks about war, there are no dead in his story. So we get bluster. |
FEEL FREE TO VISIT OUR OTHER LINKS AND RELIVE
EVERY DAY OF PRESIDENT TRUMP’S FIRST TERM IN OFFICE.
So Much Winning: A Hundred Days of Trump (1/20/17
to 4/29/17)
So Much Winning: Days 101-200 of Trump (4/30/17 to
8/7/17)
The Awful, Abysmal, Atrocious Days of Donald J.
Trump (8/8/17 to 11/15/17)
The Horror Show Continues: Days 301-365 of Trump
(11/16/17 to 1/19/18)
Anything New? The Daily, Hourly Craziness of Donald
J. Trump Part II (4/20/18 to 5/31/18)
Anything New? The Daily, Hourly Craziness of Donald
J. Trump Part IV (7/23/18 to 9/11/18)
Anything New? The Daily, Hourly Craziness of Donald
J. Trump Part V (9/12-13/18 to 11/29-30/18)
December Has Been a Cruel Month for President Trump
(December 2018)
January Shaping Up as a really Bad Month for Trump
(January 2019)
Anything New? The Daily Craziness of Donald J.
Trump (February 2019)
Life in Trumpistan (with liars): March and April
2019
Life in Trumpistan (with more liars): May and June
2019
Donald Trump Ruins the World (July, August, to
September 23, 2019)
Hey Ukraine, If You’re Listening: Trump Gets the
Impeachment He Deserves (The days from September 24-30, 2019 are covered
entirely in this post.)
Donald Trump: Still Ruining the World Daily
(February 1, 2020 ….)
No comments:
Post a Comment