Think Trump is a Menace? The Generals Concur.

I felt this post was important enough to publish separately. You are not alone if you consider Donald J. Trump a threat to the rule of law, to peaceful protesters, and the U.S. Constitution. 

After Trump ordered troops to attack peaceful protesters outside the White House, top U.S. military leaders grew concerned. 

The president later marched a few hundred yards, over to a nearby church and posed, trying to look imposing, with a bible in his hand.

Trump and the Bible he never reads. 

June 4, 2020: You could tell today that Donald was having a tough stretch, but not because the death toll from the coronavirus passed 100,000. 

Nor because protests continued to spread across the nation in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.

 

_____________________ 

“Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens.” 

Former Secretary of Defense and Ret. Gen. James Mattis

_____________________ 

 

What shook Trump was a White House announcement that there had been a schedule change. The president was canceling a weekend trip to what he calls his “summer White House.” Trump would not be going to his resort in Bedminster, New Jersey, even though he had a hankering to play golf. 

Suddenly, “tragedy” hit the president hard. He’d have to stick around the White House and pretend to do his job. 

 

* 

SINCE TRUMP suggested he might use active duty military forces to clear the streets of America, many retired U.S. military leaders, and even a few GOP politicians with scruples, have felt honor bound to speak out against a president with pronounced dictatorial inclinations. 

First, of course, you had to wade through the cowards. 

On Wednesday, June 3, NBC’s Kristen Welker tried to get Republican senators to respond to the question, “Do you support the president’s decision to clear out peaceful protestors near the White House?” 

“Didn’t really see it,” said Trump pal, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. Give that man a white cane! 

“I’m late for lunch,” a famished Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio explained. Then he buzzed past like a man on a mission to order fries, with some ketchup. 

Asked about the president’s actions, Senate Leader Mitch McConnell dodged the chance to stand up for the rights of all Americans. He said he was “not going to critique other’s performances.” If he had been dressed in a giant chicken costume, it could not have been more appropriate. 

Sen. Tim Scott, the only African American GOP senator, was both correct in what he said and cowardly. Asked that same question, during a morning gathering – was Trump right to do what he did – Scott said, he wasn’t. “But obviously, if your question is should you use tear gas to clear a path so the president can go have a photo op, the answer is no.”  When NBC News asked him to elaborate on his answer, Sen. Scott said he had already “said too much.” 

When in fact, he had said too little. 

 

* 

IF COURAGE was absent in the ranks of Republican politicians, a chorus of criticism was heard from a welcome direction. First to raise the battle cry, was Trump’s former Secretary of Defense and former Marine commandant, Gen. James Mattis. Writing in The Atlantic, he offered stark warning. “I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled,” he began. “The words ‘Equal Justice Under Law’ are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court,” he noted. “This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand – one that all of us should be able to get behind.” 

U.S. Supreme Court Building, Washington D.C.

 

Mattis continued: 

When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens – much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief [emphasis added, unless otherwise noted], with military leadership standing alongside.

 

Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people – does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children. 

 

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski admitted what many Republicans had to be thinking but lacked fortitude to express. “I thought General Mattis’ words were true and honest and necessary and overdue,” she said. “Perhaps we’re getting to the point where we can be more honest with the concerns that we might hold internally, and have the courage of our own convictions to speak up.” 

Asked by a reporter if she could still support Trump, she replied, “I am struggling with it. I have struggled with it for a long time.”  

Trump responded exactly as you might expect. He attacked Murkowski on Twitter, vowing revenge. “Few people know where they’ll be in two years from now, but I do, in the Great State of Alaska (which I love) campaigning against Senator Lisa Murkowski.” In fact, he made it clear that when he retaliated, he wouldn’t care who ran against Murkowski. “Get any candidate ready, good or bad, I don’t care, I’m endorsing. If you have a pulse, I’m with you!” 

So, for example, he’d endorse a cannibal? Or a man accused of  molesting teenage girls, so long as either of them had a pulse? 

(See: Judge Roy Moore.)

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE (3/6/23): We know what happened in 2022, when Murkowski ran again. She defeated Trump’s favored choice, and gained a new six-year term in the U.S. Senate. 

 

* 

“No president ever is a dictator or a king.” 

TRUMP WASTED no time before bragging, again on Twitter, about “firing” Mattis. He tweeted about how much pleasure that gave him. 

(An orgasm, maybe?)

 

This time the criticism did not abate. A second retired Marine general joined the fight, Trump’s former White House Chief of Staff, Gen. John Kelly. Mattis, he told reporters, resigned. “The president did not fire him. He did not ask for his resignation,” Kelly said. “The president has clearly forgotten how it actually happened or is confused.” 

(A nice way of saying: Trump is a liar.)

 

Later, Kelly elaborated in an interview, making clear on whose side he came down: 

He’s quite a man, General Jim Mattis, and for him to do that tells you where he is relative to the concern he has for our country. 

 

I agree with him. I think we need to step back from the politics. I think we need to reestablish, and I’m not a constitutional scholar but boy do I read a lot and I’ve re-read an awful lot in the last three weeks about the thinking that made our Constitution what it is, the men who made that Constitution, who developed that Constitution. And the separation of powers is very, very, very important. No president ever is a dictator or a king. 

 

Trump erupted once more. He insisted that Kelly was never part of his White House “inner circle.” The job was too tough for him. Kelly “slinked away into obscurity,” the president sneered. As for that elite inner circle, we assume it includes Jared and Ivanka, Kellyanne Conway and maybe a pecan pie. 

In the week that followed, more and more former U.S. military and leaders in defense circles added their criticism. Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, was equally appalled by Trump’s threat to call in active duty troops. “The idea that the military would be called in to dominate and to suppress what, for the most part, were peaceful protests – admittedly, where some had opportunistically turned them violent – and that the military would somehow come in and calm that situation,” he said, “was very dangerous to me.” 

A second former chair of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mike Mullen, expressed similar fears. He cautioned that the country was at an “inflection point.” He said it was “impossible to remain silent.” The president’s decision to clear peaceful protesters from Lafayette Park was “sickening.” 

He added: 

Whatever Trump’s goal in conducting his visit [his stunt stroll to St. John’s Episcopal Church], he laid bare his disdain for the rights of peaceful protest in this country, gave succor to the leaders of other countries who take comfort in our domestic strife, and risked further politicizing the men and women of our armed forces. 

 

Admiral Mullin had confidence in current leaders of the U.S. military to obey lawful orders. He was “less confident in the soundness of the orders they will be given by this commander in chief.” 

A third former chair of the Joint Chiefs, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, registered equal disgust. He described his reaction as he watched what happened in Lafayette Park: 

The first thing was just absolute sadness that people aren’t allowed to protest and that, as I understand it, that was a peaceful protest that was disturbed by force, and that’s not right. That should not happen in America. And so I was sad. I mean, we should all shed tears over that, that particular act. ...I’m glad I don’t have to advise this President. I’m sure the senior military leadership is finding it really difficult these days to provide good, sound military advice. 

 

* 

“At the White House, there is no one home.” 

IF YOU ARE a member of the Trump cult, perhaps you found comfort in believing this was all “Fake News.” 

It wasn’t. It was the free press doing the primary job of the free press, gathering and disseminating information. Ret. Major General Paul D. Eaton called the decision of Gen. Milley to join Trump on his stroll “an egregious display of bad judgment, at best.” A veteran of the Iraq war, Eaton added, “At worst, Milley appears confused about the oath he took to support and defend the Constitution – not a president. I suggest the general get quickly unconfused, or resign.”  

Former Marine four-star Gen. John Allen offered up biting criticism in an interview and in an essay in Foreign Policy magazine. On CNN, he described Trump as “assaulting” the First Amendment rights of peaceful demonstrators. “I’ve fought in overseas wars,” he told Jake Tapper, “and I never believed that the Constitution was under threat until recently.” 

That threat was Trump. All Americans, Gen. Allen told Tapper, should be concerned about “the rule of law.” 

“The slide of the United States into illiberalism may well have begun on June 1, 2020,” Gen. Allen wrote. “Remember the date. It may well signal the beginning of the end of the American experiment.” 

The president of the United States stood in the Rose Garden of the White House on Monday, railed against weak governors and mayors who were not doing enough, in his mind, to control the unrest and the rioters in their cities, and threatened to deploy the U.S. military against American citizens. 

 

Even more horrifying, “Trump was clear he views those engaged in the unrest and criminal acts in these riots as terrorists, an enemy.” 

He continued: 

There is no precedent in modern U.S. history for a president to wield federal troops in a state or municipality over the objections of the respective governor. Right now, the last thing the country needs – and, frankly, the U.S. military needs – is the appearance of U.S. soldiers carrying out the president’s intent by descending on American citizens. 

 

The assault on “peaceful demonstrators,” with police, “manhandling and beating many of them, employing flash-bangs, riot-control agents, and pepper spray throughout,” was unacceptable. 

Trump had “failed to show sympathy, empathy, compassion, or understanding – some of the traits the nation now needs from its highest office.” 

Allen called the events of June 1 “awful for the United States and its democracy.” Then he posed the question, “What is to be done?” 

At nearly the same moment that Americans were being beaten near the White House on behalf of their president, George Floyd’s brother Terrence Floyd visited the site of George’s murder. Overcome with grief and anger, he loudly upbraided the crowd for tarnishing his brother’s memory with violence and looting. And then he told Americans what to do: vote. “Educate yourselves,” he said, “there’s a lot of us.” So, while June 1 could easily be confused with a day of shame and peril if we listen to Donald Trump, if instead we listen to Terrence Floyd, it is a day of hope. So mark your calendars – this could be the beginning of the change of American democracy not to illiberalism, but to enlightenment. But it will have to come from the bottom up. For at the White House, there is no one home. 

 

Again, this was not “Fake News.” Ret. Admiral James Stavridis sounded similar alarm in Time magazine: 

[It] hurt to watch U.S. military personnel used against peaceful protestors in Washington D.C. early this week. The sweeping use of a combined civil-military force – D.C. police, Park Police, National Guard, and active duty military police – against the protesters to clear the way for a Presidential photo-op was beyond the pale of American norms. 

 

The U.S. military, he noted, had 1.2 million members on active duty, all sworn to “protect and defend the constitution of the United States.” The “vast majority” would “lay down their lives to do so. But they are not meant to be turned against their fellow citizens.” 

Stavridis called on “senior active duty military leaders” to stand up to Trump, even “at the risk of their career[s].” 

If they failed, he cautioned, “I fear for the soul of our military and all of the attendant consequences. We cannot afford to have a future Lafayette Square end up looking like Tiananmen Square.” 

A brave man stopped a line of tanks,
days before Chinese authorities decided to crush the protest.

*

“That shows you the power of strength.” 

IT WAS THEN, while putting this post together, that this blogger stumbled upon what was said to be a Trump quote from March 1990. It was reported to have come from a Playboy interview. 

I’m not a fan of this president. Still, I had a hard time believing even someone so callous could have said what Trump purportedly said. This was nine months after Chinese troops slaughtered thousands of pro-democracy protesters, mostly young students, and their supporters. 

“When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it,” Trump was quoted as saying. “Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak.” 

I had to go to the source to be sure. It required wading through half of a lengthy article to find that quote. Finally: there it was, with an additional clause. It came in the middle of a series of questions about the need of leaders to take a forceful hand. Trump expressed disdain for Mikhail Gorbachev, who was trying to create a more democratic society and break the power of the Communist Party in Russia. Trump’s problem with Gorbachev? “Not a firm enough hand,” he said. 

“You mean firm hand as in China?” the interviewer wondered.

Here we saw hints of the authoritarian president many of us have rightly come to distrust. “When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it,” Citizen Trump did say. “Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak … as being spit on by the rest of the world…” 

Better then, in Trump’s mind, to spill the blood of thousands of protesters than to appear weak. 

Not once did the future president evince interest in human rights during his Playboy interview, the same absence we have noted since he took office. 

For example: Trump claiming Vladimir Putin “isn’t such a killer” and adding that the U.S. “isn’t so innocent” either. 

And Trump congratulating Xi Jinping for becoming “president for life.” Because who cares about elections. 

And Trump saying that he fell “in love” with Kim Jong-un, the proprietor of the worst gulag on earth. 

And Trump calling Prince Mohammed bin Salman “a friend,” despite the fact the Prince had just ordered a journalist cut up in pieces. 

Finally, Trump, at the G7 summit in 2019, jokingly calling President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, a man infamous for ordering the massacre of more than 800 protesters in 2013, his “favorite dictator.” 

Trump being Trump.

 

* 

“It has to be moral, legal and ethical.” 

IF YOU DON’T PAY close attention, you may not realize that active duty U.S. military are reluctant to criticize civilian leadership. We, in this country, have traditionally cherished civilian control of the troops. We don’t want the military arresting elected officials, as in Nazi Germany in the 1930s. We don’t want “death squads” roaming the streets, as in Argentina in the 80s, when generals ruled. We don’t want journalists being assassinated, as in Russia or Saudi Arabia in 2020. 

Yet, on June 6, Ret. Vice Admiral Joseph Maguire told The New York Times, “Jim Mattis, Mike Mullen and Marty Dempsey are all good friends, and I respect them tremendously. I am in alignment with their views.”  

So, too, we had Ret. Army Gen. Tony Thomas questioning the use of the word “battlespace” by the Secretary of Defense, to describe scenes of protest in scores of U.S. cities. “Not what American needs to hear...ever, unless we are invaded by an adversary or experience a constitutional failure...ie [sic] a Civil War...” 

Even Defense Secretary Esper realized that he had made a mistake in using the word. He apologized and rolled it back. He made it clear, in opposition to what the president had been saying, that we had not reached a point where active duty military personnel were needed to quell protests. 

This angered the thin-skinned president. When Press Secretary McEnany was asked whether Trump still had confidence in Esper, she refused to say. Sources told the Wall Street Journal that the president had to be talked out of firing him. Esper had to be talked out of resigning, himself. 

The free press continued to give voice to the concerns of top military and defense leaders. “There is a thin line between the military’s tolerance for questionable partisan moves over the past three years and the point where these become intolerable for an apolitical military,” retired three-star Army general Douglas E. Lute told The New York Times. Lute, who worked under both Bush 43 and Obama, was clear. “Relatively minor episodes have accumulated imperceptibly, but we are now at a point of where real damage is being done.” 

The Military Times chose to highlight the comments of Ret. Adm. William McRaven. “Trust me, every man and woman in uniform recognizes that we are all Americans and that the last thing they want to do as military men and women is to stand in the way of a peaceful protest.”  

“When you are in the military, there are three criteria for every decision we make: it has to be moral, legal and ethical,” McRaven continued. “Ethical, you have to follow the rules, legal you have to follow the law, and then moral you have to follow what you know to be right. And either way, that’s just not right.” 

As a serious blogger, I was suddenly curious. If I did a word search of Trump’s nearly 50,000 tweets, how many times would he use the word “ethical” in a way that showed ethics guided his conduct. 

As expected, it turned out to be none. 

 

* 

IT WASN’T “Enemies of the People” at work when the media continued gathering voices of protest. It was the free press, holding the powerful to account. “We have a military to fight our enemies, not our own people,” Admiral Mullen said on Fox News Sunday last week. 

Mullen also noted that 43 percent of active duty soldiers, sailors, Marines, and air crews were men and women of color.

 

_____________________ 

“We have a Constitution. We have to follow that Constitution. And the president’s drifted away from it.” 

Former Sec. of State Colin Powell

_____________________ 

 

Former Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell also made headlines, telling CNN that the president’s actions were “dangerous for our democracy” and “dangerous for our country.” 

“We have a Constitution,” Gen. Powell continued. “We have to follow that Constitution. And the president’s drifted away from it.” 

On ABC, Gen. Dempsey called the president’s rhetoric “inflammatory.” 

On NBC, Admiral Stavridis said Trump’s threat to use the military “rang echoes” of 1776, when George III sent troops to Boston to crush unrest. 

 

Meanwhile, the Washington Post published a letter signed by 89 former admirals, generals and defense leaders. Like so many others, they expressed growing concern as they watched the president unravel. 

They noted that while, 

several past presidents have called on our armed services to provide additional aid to law enforcement in times of national crisis – among them Ulysses S. Grant, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson – these presidents used the military to protect the rights of Americans, not to violate them. 

 

All those who serve in the military and government take an oath to support the U.S. Constitution. By contrast, they warned, “We are alarmed at how the president is betraying this oath by threatening to order members of the U.S. military to violate the rights of their fellow Americans.”

 

* 

“All enemies, foreign and domestic.” 

EVENTUALLY, another group of military men and women joined in warning against the use of U.S. troops to suppress dissent. At last check, more than 1,000 members of a group called “Concerned Members of the Long Gray Line,” representing every West Point class from 1966 to 2019, had signed an open letter to the Class of 2020. 

(The responses from dozens of other former grads and military men and women are also worth the time to read.) 

Their letter read, in part: 

[Your class, like others before you, represents] the country’s diversity of race, ethnicity, identity and beliefs. Your West Point journey has led you to this moment when, with right hands raised, you take an oath “to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” This oath has no expiration date.

 

…The oath taken by those who choose to serve in America’s military is aspirational. We pledge service to no monarch; no government; no political party; no tyrant. Your oath is to a set of principles and an ideal expressed in the Constitution and its amendments. Our Constitution establishes freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of religion, of equal protection under the law regardless of race, color, or creed – we cannot take for granted these freedoms that are but dreams in too many nations around the world.

 

…The abhorrent murder of George Floyd has inspired millions to protest police brutality and the persistence of racism. Sadly, the government has threatened to use the Army in which you serve as a weapon against fellow Americans engaging in these legitimate protests….

 

On the eve of your graduation and joining the Long Gray Line and the Army officer corps, we, the undersigned…pledge to stand for the sacred democratic principle that all are treated equally, and each person has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness….

 

…As your lifetime journey of service begins, we pray that your class motto, “With Vision We Lead,” will prove prophetic. America needs your leadership. 

 

* 

“Trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.” 

IN OTHER WORDS, if you have concluded that the President of the United States is a menace, you are not alone. 

You are not someone who hates America, hates the flag, or disrespects veterans. You are right. Trump is a threat. 

So, on Flag Day 2020, remember the words of I.F. Stone, who once wrote, “The fight for liberty is not waged on the battlefields alone, nor does it consist only in war against a foreign foe. It is also a war against ignorance and prejudice and troublemakers in high office.” 

Remember, too, the words of President John Adams. “There is danger from all men,” he once wrote. “The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.”   

Trump likes to hide behind the flag.

He does not own it, nor are his supporters more patriotic than his foes.

   

POSTSCRIPT: On the same day that the letter quoted above was released, Gen. Milley apologized for accompanying Trump on his stunt hike. 

“I should not have been there. My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics,” he said. “As a commissioned uniformed officer, it was a mistake that I have learned from, and I sincerely hope we all can learn from it.” 

The “senseless and brutal killing of George Floyd” was an outrage, he added. He supported the demonstrators: 

His death amplified the pain, the frustration, and the fear that so many of our fellow Americans live with day in, day out.

 

The protests that have ensued not only speak to his killing, but also to the centuries of injustice toward African Americans…[and] we should all be proud that the vast majority of protests have been peaceful. 

 

Retired Rear Admiral John Kirby, a military analyst for CNN, added another voice of warning to discussion. “Gen. Milley’s comments about the need to keep the military out of politics were timely and – all too sadly these days – appropriate to the pressures under which our troops labor.” 

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE: The president later insisted that Gen. Milley and Acting Secretary of Defense Mark Esper should have been “proud” to be there. “I think they should be proud to walk alongside of their president for purposes of safety,” he grumbled. 

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE #2: In the wake of Trump’s 2020 defeat in the 2020 election, Milley’s concerns only grew. There was wild talk, in the president’s circle, of using the military to take over the counting of the votes – at least in states Trump lost. Milley and the Joint Chiefs discussed a plan to defeat any takeover by resigning in order of rank if Trump insisted the military interfere. Gen. Mark Milley, as chairman, would refuse to carry out such orders and resign. Then the other members would resign in protest, by order of rank. 

Or as Gen. Milley reportedly put it bluntly during one conversation with top officers, referring to Trump and his minions and any plan for a coup. “They may try, but they’re not going to f****** succeed,” he said. “You can’t do this without the military. You can’t do this without the CIA and the FBI. We’re the guys with the guns.” 

In the face of Trump’s litany of stolen election claims, Milley warned other top military leaders, “This is a Reichstag moment,” In the days leading up to the attack on Capitol Hill, he believed the president was preaching, “the gospel of the Führer.” 

And, in the end, you could add former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper to the list of people who worked with Trump, and came away horrified by what they had seen. In the spring of 2022, he calls Trump “a threat to democracy.”

The mayor of Washington D.C. painted this message for President Trump to see.

 

Donald J. Trump's Season of Discontent

THE TRUMP ARCHIVE

Trump’s “Selma March,” in reverse.

June 1, 2020: This may go down in history as the day Donald Trump destroyed his presidency.

Black Lives Protests already convulsed the nation. Hundreds of thousands were marching in the streets. There was looting, too, an unfortunate offshoot of legitimate grievance throughout history. On Friday, May 29, protesters rattled barriers around the White House. A breach seemed imminent. Secret Service agents decided to move Trump, the First Lady, and son Barron, to a safe room beneath the Presidential Mansion. Someone tried to start a fire to St. John’s Episcopal Church, within view of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Protesters in Lafayette Square, directly across from the White House, had thrown bricks and rocks at police. Chants of, “Fuck Trump,” filled the air.

Donald Trump was rattled.

The story leaked in the press about the First Family retreating to the bunker. The president fumed. He felt it made him sound weak. After stewing all weekend, on this Monday in June, he decides to act.

That afternoon he takes a call with governors and mayors around the country. The New York Times quickly acquires audio. At a time when a calming voice is needed, President Trump is agitated. What he wants to do is target and silence protesters. “You can’t do the deal where they get one week in jail,” he tells the others. “These are terrorists. These are terrorists…it shouldn’t be hard to take care of, and we’re going to take care of it.” It sounds like a promise—or a threat.

“Terrorists.” Make note.

Trump tells everyone that Gen. Mark A. Miley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is listening to the call on the White House end. Milley is “a fighter, a warrior, had a lot of victories, and no losses. And he hates to see the way it’s being handled, and the various things, and I just put him in charge.”

This comes as a surprise to everyone. That includes Gen. Milley. In times of unrest, governors have the power to call out the National Guard. If they need additional help, they can ask for federal assistance. None of the governors have.

“We’re strongly looking for arrests, we do have to get much tougher,” Trump reminds everyone. “You have to dominate, if you don’t dominate, you’re wasting your time. They’re going to run over you, and you’ll look like a bunch of jerks. You have to dominate. You have to arrest people and try people, and they have to go to jail for long periods of time.”

If the President of the United States has ever heard of “due process,” it doesn’t show. Or he may have. He just doesn’t care.

The president seems to be watching TV during the call. He expresses shock at what happened in Dallas—where he says a man was kicked to death. Then he admits he’s not sure the man died. His contempt for the protesters is clear. And he knows just what’s going on. “It’s coming from the radical left,” he insists. “You know it. Everybody knows it.” He sees film of a black kid who grabs a bunch of stuff, a new TV, and puts it in the back of a new car. “The harder you are, the tougher you are, the less likely it is you’re going to be hit,” the president explains.

He blames all the trouble on Antifa. He says it’s “like a movement. If you don’t put it down, it will get worse and worse. This is like Occupy Wall Street. It was a disaster, until one day somebody said, ‘That’s enough,’ and they just went in and wiped them out.” Trump’s anger has taken over. He wants American citizens wiped out. He says the Occupy folks weren’t worried about the law. They were camped out, “ordering pizzas.” Finally, the police cleared out the protesters. It was “bedlam for an hour. And after that it was beautiful,” he says. “But these are the same people. They’re anarchists.” 

He ignores the fact that protests have spread to hundreds of cities, towns and neighborhoods across the nation.

He tells the mayors and governors, “I’m for everybody, I’m representing everybody. I’m not representing radical right, radical left, I’m representing everybody.” You can’t be weak, he says again, “but most of you are weak.”

Mr. Trump makes clear his admiration for tactics deployed by the National Guard, offering a play-by-play commentary. He’s excited to see protesters on TV, being knocked down “like bowling pins.” He sees a rioter throw a brick, winding up like a baseball player. Apparently, he watches a slow motion replay. These people have to get “five years, ten years”  in jail, he growls. There has to be “retribution.” He promises, in D.C. “we’re going to do something that people haven’t seen before.”

He’s hatching a plan.

*

Not long after, the President marches out to the Rose Garden and addresses the nation. At this point, on Monday, the protesters in Lafayette Square are peaceful. The crowd is no more friendly to the president. But these are ordinary citizens exercising their First Amendment rights. Trump? Trump wants to sound tough. He promises to be the “law and order” president. More ominously, he threatens to use active duty troops to clear the nation’s streets, if state governors and mayors “refuse” to do so. He says he will do it quickly, too, and might invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807. Trump is later rumored to have asked about bringing in 10,000 U.S. soldiers to drive away the protesters from in front of the White House.

Meanwhile a plan has been hatched. Someone (supposedly Ivanka Trump) convinces the president to take a stroll. The president—or someone in his administration—orders law enforcement officers from an alphabet soup of federal agencies, bolstered by active duty military police, to drive the peaceful protesters from Lafayette Park. Shortly after 6:30 p.m., authorities begin firing tear gas, and using flash-bang devices and bludgeons to clear the area.

Once the air clears, Trump and an entourage of top White House aides, emerge from the White House. Ivanka is there, sporting a protective black COVID-19 mask, and carrying a $1,500 designer handbag. Inside is a Bible. White House aide and son-in-law Jared Kushner is by her side. The usual assortment of sycophants, including Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, flank the president. Unfortunately, Gen. Milley accompanies the president. So does Secretary of Defense Mark Esper. Both men seem to give a military stamp of approval to the attack on protesters.

Trump bravely walks the thousand feet—out the front door of the White House—across Pennsylvania Avenue—cutting through Lafayette Park—and crossing another wide boulevard—to stand in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church. There, he takes the Bible handed to him by Ivanka, hoists it over his head, glowers, and intones, “Greatest country in the world. And we’re going to keep it safe.”

Having offered a dozen words of “inspiration,” he pivots on his heels (ignoring the pain he feels from his old bone spurs) and hoofs it back—another thousand feet—to his West Wing bunker. Then the president gets back to the business of dividing the country. Soon after completing his pathetic “Selma March” in reverse, he tweets out fresh insult. He calls the African American mayor of Washington D.C. “incompetent.” She is not fit, he says, to lead a great city.

Like most Americans, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser is aghast. The fact that Esper and Milley accompanied Trump, strikes her and many others as having watched the seeds of a future dictatorship planted. “I imposed a curfew at 7 pm.,” Mayor Bowser explains. “A full 25 minutes before the curfew & w/o provocation, federal police used munitions on peaceful protestors in front of the White House.”

This, she warns, will only antagonize demonstrators. It will make the job of D.C. police “more difficult.” “Shameful!” she calls the decision. “DC residents—Go home. Be safe,” she suggests.

MAGA fans, of course, applaud the president’s stunt.

In days to follow, however, more than two dozen important former U.S. military leaders pillory the man in the White House. They make their concern clear. They label Donald Trump a threat to the U.S. Constitution.

(Due to their importance, their comments are collected in a separate post.)

Postscript: Press Secretary McEnany later calls Trump’s appearance before St. Johns a great moment for the American people.

She compares Trump to Winston Churchill bucking up the spirits of his people during the London Blitz. But as Maureen Dowd writes , this comparison is too much for most Americans to swallow. 

“We shall fight them on the golf courses,” she writes, quoting a friend. “We shall fight them on Twitter. We shall fight them at Mar-a-Lago.”

___

The President is a hater. We need a healer

6/2/20: The deaths of 106,000 Americans from the coronavirus are bad enough. The toll on jobs, as our economy grinds to a halt, with more than 40 million Americans suddenly out of work, is bad enough.

Now, on top of that we see scores of American cities riven by angry protests and even rioting.

____________________

This is a president who has no more moral authority than the cop who knelt on George Floyd’s neck until he was dead.

____________________

And who do we look to in vain for a calming voice in a time of growing fury? Donald J. Trump?

This is a president who has no more moral authority than the cop who knelt on George Floyd’s neck until he was dead.

Trump is what Trump is. He’s an adept hater. That makes him the wrong man, in the wrong job, at the wrong time. We all remember how he got a start in politics. He rose to the pinnacle of the right-wing pantheon on the strength of birtherism. Racism with a new name. Trump claimed that Barack Obama wasn’t an American. He said he could prove it. He never did.

Nor should his attacks on Obama have been a surprise. Donald had made race-baiting headlines before. In 1989 he came out with a full-page ad in the papers, demanding that the “Central Park Five” be executed for the crimes he had no doubt they committed. He never apologized when the five young African American men, who had spent years in jail, were exonerated. More recently, he gave a birther radio personality the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He employs a birther press secretary today.

Trump is who he is. He can’t help heal a nation because his power rests on division. He kicked off his run for the highest office by vilifying all Mexicans. As president, he kept his base in terror, painting all immigrants as recruits for the MS-13 gang. He’s the leader who wanted to ban all Muslims from entering this country. That included those who had served alongside U.S. forces Afghanistan and Iraq. During his run for the White House, Trump appealed to fans like the West Virginia woman who called Michelle Obama “an ape in heels.” He employed a campaign co-chair in New York who joked that Mrs. Obama should go back to Africa, “live in a cave,” and maybe have sex with gorillas.

Trump is a toxic communicator. Since entering politics he’s managed to pluck the heartstrings of neo-Nazi luminaries like Richard Spencer, David Duke and Rocky Suhayda. It was Suhayda who pointed out that Trump’s victory represented “a real opportunity for people like white nationalists.” As a candidate, Trump said he might pay the legal fees for a white fan who sucker punched a black protester, who was being led out of one of his rallies. Matthew Heimbach, an avowed white supremacist, assaulted an African American woman at another rally in March 2016. His lawyer later claimed that Heimbach could not be held to account, because his client had “acted pursuant to the directives and requests of Donald J. Trump and Donald J. Trump for President.” If his client was found liable for damages, the attorney told the court, “any liability must be shifted to one or both of them.”

The man who sits in the White House gives haters cover to say what they think. Trump gave the Holocaust denier, Arthur Jones, hope enough to run for Congress. He hired Carl Higbie, who joked about having people bring guns to the border and perform target practice on illegals. Higbie suggested that black women think “breeding is a form of government employment.” Later, while visiting Great Britain, the president retweeted posts from Katie Hopkins. Hopkins, a racist with a British accent, once compared dark-skinned immigrants coming into Europe to “cockroaches.”

____________________

Trump’s true skill set includes his ability to stir anger and fear and fuel hate.

____________________

Twisted individuals often band together. It’s no surprise to find that one of Trump’s top aides is Stephen Miller. Miller is a soulless fellow who subscribes to the “Great Replacement” myth. That is: Dark people are plotting to replace the white race in Europe and America.

Miller was the diabolical genius behind the decision to lock up children in cages after they and their families tried to sneak cross our border. And Trump was in sympathy, all the way.

Trump, the Great Divider, himself, referred to Haiti and a variety of African countries as “shitholes.” We didn’t want people from those coming here to live. Trump said we’d be better off—wink, wink—if we had more immigrants from Norway.

Then he denied having said it.

He’s a liar, too.

Trump’s true skill set includes his ability to stir anger and fear, and fuel hate. In the fall of 2016, the man who wished to be president fired up his base by attacking NFL players who knelt in peaceful protest against police brutality. After he was elected, he claimed that protesting players, predominantly African American, were disrespecting our military, and our flag, and should lose their jobs. He suggested that if they didn’t like it, they should leave this country. When Jemele Hill, an African American sportscaster, labeled him a racist, Trump said she should be fired. He called kneeling players like Colin Kaepernick, sons-of-bitches. So police kept kneeling on the necks of others.

Trump has had almost a full term to learn to unite rather than divide. Instead, he has regressed. Last summer he suggested that four female members of Congress, all individuals of color who had criticized his policies, should go back to countries where they came from if they didn’t like it here. One of the four, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, was born in the Bronx. Another, Ayanna Presley, was born in Cincinnati. Presley’s ancestors arrived in America, via slave ship, long before the first Trump set foot on free soil in 1885.

Now, with the nation torn by protest, we need a leader who can display empathy. But the Great Divider can’t do it. When he gazes admiringly in the mirror, he is looking at all the people he cares about most.

Trump has never governed with all Americans in mind. His default setting is to appeal to the base instincts of his base. It’s them against the rest of us—and if he can stir anger against “treasonous” Democrats, “flag-hating” liberals, “Enemies of the People” in the free press, and his dark-skinned predecessor, he’s not only ready to do so, he’s in his element. If you care to look, the word “hate” litters the president’s Twitter feed, like bodies during a plague. The Democrats “hate” our military, he says. His critics “hate” our country. His political opponents “hate” the Second Amendment. Trump hates anyone who criticizes or doubts him and works hard to get his base to hate them, too.

We know Trump might claim to care about George Floyd. We know he doesn’t. We know he won’t. He won’t be concerned, no matter how many African Americans are killed by police, because most would never vote for him in the first place. Trump might tweet a hundred times a day. He won’t tweet sympathy for Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old ER-tech, shot eight times by police. And shot by mistake. Or Botham Jean, shot and killed by mistake, while in his apartment. Or Greg Gunn, shot in the back by a police officer, while Gunn was walking home from a card game. Or Sean Reed, a 21-year-old veteran, shot while live-streaming the incident on Facebook, so that you could hear the cops (who didn’t know his camera was on) laughing over his corpse. He’s going to need a “closed casket” funeral, one joked. You won’t hear the Great Divider speak with feeling about Ahmaud Arbery, the black jogger, gunned down by neighbors (watch the video), at any of his rallies. Because many who attend those rallies love their AR-15’s more than they love their neighbors with darker skins.

If you were to ask President Trump, after three-and-a-half years in office, who these people are—Frederick Douglass, Trayvon Martin, or Eric Garner, who died because he was selling cigarettes illegally (more video)—he wouldn’t know. He wouldn’t know about Philando Castile (watch even more video if you’d like to see another senseless killing), Jordan Davis, William Green, Tamir Rice, killed at age 12, while wielding a toy pistol, Atatiana Jefferson (shot and killed by police in her own home) or Heather Heyer, a young white woman (run down and killed in 20127, by a white supremacist at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va.).

Trump has continued, even to this day, to stoke the anger, as cities he is supposed to care about explode. When protesters gathered outside the White House on a night in late May, Trump boasted that if they had breached the main fence, they would have been met with “vicious dogs” and the “most ominous weapons” he had ever seen.

He intimated that his critics, in this case the protesters, were fake. Their anger was a hoax. They had no grievances worthy of respect. Trump, of course, was one of many right-wing nuts who gave credence to the idea that survivors of the Parkland High School massacre were “crisis actors,” not real kids shocked by the carnage they had witnessed. We had seen this before. The president said the crowd at the White House gate was “professionally organized,” not comprised of Americans expressing heartfelt outrage and dismay. He commended the Secret Service in a series of tweets, saying agents “let the ‘protesters’ scream & rant as much as they wanted, but whenever someone.... ....got too frisky or out of line, they would quickly come down on them, hard - didn’t know what hit them.” 

George Floyd never knew what hit him, either, but for Trump, the simpler the message, the better it is when it comes to riling up his fans.

Postscript: Reporters asked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau what he thought of President . Trump’s threat to use the military to stamp out protests.

For 21 long seconds he paused. “We all watch in horror and consternation what’s going on in the United States,” he finally managed to say.

Even Canada’s leading conservative newspapers are concerned with what’s happening to the south. “There couldn’t be a scarier person inhabiting the White House at this very moment,” Gary Mason, a writer for The Globe and Mail writes.

“My view is one of profound sadness—sadness at watching communities we respect being so torn apart, and sadness at watching the loss of life in the pandemic,” said Frank McKenna, former Canadian ambassador to the United States. “The United States is so polarized, the question of wearing a mask or not is fraught with political overtones. It’s excruciating to watch.”

___

Crooks and a Congressman meet their doom.

6/3/20: A few positive notes in a bleak time: Despite all the protests, and the unfortunate looting, these aren’t like the riots we saw in 1992. Those eruptions, after the Rodney King jury found police officers innocent in his brutal beating, often involved black vs. white violence. Nor are these current explosions in any respect as bad as those in 1967 and 1968. As one African American commented on Twitter last week (I forgot to note his exact wording), the issue this time isn’t, “White vs. black people. It’s everybody else against racists.”

It’s encouraging today to see all kinds of people protesting.

Also, kind of cool: Prime Minister Boris Johnson has offered to allow three million Hong Kong residents, all those holding British passports, and all others eligible, to immigrate to the United Kingdom. You can tell it’s an excellent idea because Chinese communist authorities hate it.

*

We also have good news on the legal front. And I’m not even counting the indictment of the four officers involved in the death of George Floyd.

We’re talking Gary Jones—former head of the United Auto Workers. Jones has plead guilty to stealing from his union, and working out sweetheart deals with top executives of Fiat-Chrysler. In return for cooperation, prosecutors have recommended a sentence of 57 months in prison. Jones is expected to name a number of co-conspirators, both top union men and company executives.

As the Detroit News noted, the union boss spent $750,000 in union money on “private villas, cigars, golf equipment and apparel, meals and liquor, including $400 bottles of Louis Roederer Cristal Champagne and Canadian vodka served in a crystal skull.” To be more precise, prosecutors charged Jones with spending $60,000 in union money on cigars, over a five year period.

That man did love to smoke.

And eat. Jones and a few pals also charged the union for a $6,500 steak dinner at a high-class restaurant.

*

One crook down. Several more to go. Federal prosecutors have indicted Jayson Penn, CEO of Pilgrim’s Pride, America’s second largest chicken producer. Also indicted were three top executives, including former Pilgrim’s Pride vice president Roger Austin. Mikell Fries, the president of Claxton Poultry Farms, and Scott Brady, a vice president, were also hauled before the judge. 

Charge: price fixing. Maximum penalty possible: 10 years in prison and a fine of $1 million. But you figure no cop will be kneeling of Penn’s neck until he’s dead.

After all, priorities.

George Floyd? He passed a counterfeit $20. These guys allegedly cheated customers out of millions.

Plus, Mr. Penn made $4.42 million in 2019. He’ll be able to afford a really, really good lawyer.

(If you missed it, as I did, Chris Lischewski, the former CEO of Bumble Bee Foods, was convicted last December in a case involving price fixing of tuna. He also faces up to ten years in prison.)

*

There’s even more good news, this time involving idiots, rather than crooks. It’s official. We can report that Congressman Steven King of Iowa was defeated in the Republican Party yesterday.

King is gone at the end of his current term. Besides being a racist, King once said he was against allowing exceptions for rape in laws banning abortion. Here’s his explanation, as reported by the Des Moines Register:

What if we went back through all the family trees and just pulled those people out that were products of rape and incest? Would there be any population of the world left if we did that?

Considering all the wars and all the rapes and pillages taken place and whatever happened to culture after society? I know I can’t certify that I’m not a part of a product of that.

Yeah, that guy. He served multiple terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. People voted for him.

___

  

Trump and Obama: Nothing in common.

6/4/20: Out of some twisted sense of duty, I feel compelled to follow Donald J. Trump on Twitter.

This morning, I logged on and found this post from the president:

First, let me apologize for my grammatical error, which I assume you’ll notice. I will not insult your intelligence by pointing it out.

Second, Trump’s tweet got me thinking. What other differences were there, related to Trump and Obama?

I made a quick list:

A former member of Trump’s cabinet, Gen. James Mattis accused him of being a threat to the U.S. Constitution. No one in Obama’s cabinet ever said that.

Obama won the popular vote. Trump didn’t.

Obama inherited a mess when he took office. The U.S. economy had shed 3.6 million jobs in 2008. Trump inherited an economy which had added jobs for 76 consecutive months.

Obama didn’t whine about inheriting a mess—although he did. Trump did whine about inheriting a mess—and didn’t.

Obama believed in science. Trump says windmills cause cancer.

Obama believed climate change was a real threat to humanity. Trump? He doesn’t get science.

No one in the KKK ever said they approved of statements by President Obama. President Trump has many fans in that organization.

Trump slept with a porn star. Obama never.

Trump paid off the porn star, to keep her quiet. Obama didn’t have to.

Other former presidents like Obama. None of the surviving former presidents has any love for Trump. (George H. W. Bush didn’t either.)

Trump’s son, Don Jr., and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, met with Russians offering dirt on Hillary Clinton, during the 2016 election. President Obama’s daughters are sweet young ladies who don’t make headlines.

Don Jr. and those other two kept the meeting secret for 13 months. Obama’s daughters never met with any Russians.

Trump got impeached. Obama didn’t.

Obama worked out a deal to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons. Trump tore it up. Now he can’t get a replacement.

Trump called Kim Jong-un (a homicidal maniac thought to have murdered critics with anti-aircraft guns) his friend. Obama didn’t.

Trump said Obama played too much golf while he was president. Obama hasn’t pointed out Trump’s hypocrisy.

Trump once claimed that when Obama left office 93 million Americans were looking for jobs. Okay, that one was just stupid.

No member of Obama’s cabinet had to leave office in the face of multiple investigations into ethics violations. Scott Pruitt, Trump’s pick to lead the EPA, did.

No member of Obama’s cabinet had to leave office after racking up $1 million in unnecessary expenses for personal travel. Tom Price, Trump’s first choice to head up Health and Human Services, did.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson once called Trump a “fucking moron.” No member of his cabinet ever called Obama a moron, let alone a “fucking moron.”

Mr. Trump bragged about grabbing women by the pussy. Obama wouldn’t do it; and wouldn’t brag about it.

Trump has been accused by multiple women of sexual harassment. Obama wasn’t accused by any.

Obama passed the Affordable Care Act, which protected millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions. Trump tried to repeal it.

Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, went to jail. In Cohen’s indictment, Trump was named as “Individual 1,” i.e., a co-conspirator. By comparison, Fox News commentators were outraged when Obama wore a tan suit.

Obama left office with a 57.2 percent average approval rating. Trump hasn’t broken 50 percent yet.

Mr. Trump suffers from a Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Mr. Obama doesn’t.

___

  

The generals agree. Trump is a menace.

6/4/20: You could tell today that Donald Trump was having a tough stretch—but not because the death toll from the coronavirus had just passed 100,000.

And not because protests continued to spread across the nation in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.

What really shook Trump was a White House announcement that there had been a schedule change. The president was canceling a weekend trip to what he calls his “summer White House.” Trump would not be going to his resort in Bedminster, New Jersey, even though he had a hankering to play golf.

Suddenly, “tragedy” hit the president hard. He’d have to stick around the White House and try to do his job.

*

First you had to wade through the cowards.

Since Trump suggested he might use active duty military forces to clear the streets of America, even of peaceful protesters, many retired U.S. military leaders, and even a few GOP politicians with scruples, have felt honor bound to speak out against a president with pronounced dictatorial inclinations.

First, of course, you had to wade through the cowards.

On Wednesday, June 3, NBC’s Kristen Welker tried to get Republican senators to respond to the question, “Do you support the president’s decision to clear out peaceful protestors near the White House?”

“Didn’t really see it,” said Trump pal, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. Give that man a white cane!

“I’m late for lunch,” a famished Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio explained. Then he buzzed past like a man on a mission to purchase an order of French fries.

Asked about the president’s actions, Senate Leader Mitch McConnell dodged the chance to stand up for the rights of all Americans. He said he was “not going to critique other’s performances.” If he had been dressed in a giant chicken costume, it could not have been more appropriate.

Sen. Tim Scott, the only African American GOP senator, was both correct in what he said and cowardly. Asked that same question, during a morning gathering—was Trump right to do what he did—Scott said, he wasn’t. “But obviously, if your question is should you use tear gas to clear a path so the president can go have a photo op, the answer is no.”  But when NBC News asked him about the president’s response that afternoon, Sen. Scott said he had already “said too much.”

When in fact, he had said too little.

*

_____________________

“Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens.”

Former Secretary of Defense and Ret. Gen. James Mattis

_____________________

If courage was missing among the politicians, a chorus of criticism was quickly heard from a welcome direction. First to raise the battle cry, was Trump’s former Secretary of Defense and former Marine commandant, Gen. James Mattis. Writing in The Atlantic, he offered stark warning. “I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled,” he began. “The words ‘Equal Justice Under Law’ are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court,” he noted. “This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind.”

Mattis continued:

When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.

Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski admitted what many Republicans had to be thinking but lacked the fortitude to say. “I thought General Mattis’ words were true and honest and necessary and overdue,” she said. “Perhaps we’re getting to the point where we can be more honest with the concerns that we might hold internally, and have the courage of our own convictions to speak up.”

Asked by a reporter is she could still support Trump, she replied, “I am struggling with it. I have struggled with it for a long time.” 

Trump responded exactly as you might imagine. He attacked Murkowski on Twitter, vowing revenge. “Few people know where they’ll be in two years from now, but I do, in the Great State of Alaska (which I love) campaigning against Senator Lisa Murkowski.” In fact, he made it clear that when he retaliated, he wouldn’t care who ran against Murkowski. “Get any candidate ready, good or bad, I don’t care, I’m endorsing. If you have a pulse, I’m with you!”

So, for example, he’d endorse a cannibal? Or a man accused of  molesting teenage girls, so long as either had a pulse?

(See: Judge Roy Moore.)

*

“No president ever is a dictator or a king.”

Trump wasted no time before bragging, again on Twitter, about “firing” Mattis. He even talked about how much pleasure that gave him.

But this time, the criticism did not abate. A second retired Marine general joined the fight. This time it was Trump’s former White House Chief of Staff, Gen. John Kelly. Mattis, he told reporters, resigned. “The president did not fire him. He did not ask for his resignation,” Kelly said. “The president has clearly forgotten how it actually happened or is confused.”

A nice way of saying Trump was lying.

Later, Kelly elaborated in an interview, making it clear on whose side he came down:

He’s quite a man, General Jim Mattis, and for him to do that tells you where he is relative to the concern he has for our country. 

I agree with him. I think we need to step back from the politics. I think we need to reestablish, and I’m not a constitutional scholar but boy do I read a lot and I’ve re-read an awful lot in the last three weeks about the thinking that made our Constitution what it is, the men who made that Constitution, who developed that Constitution. And the separation of powers is very, very, very important. No president ever is a dictator or a king.

Trump erupted once more. He insisted that Kelly was never part of his White House “inner circle.” The job was too tough for him. Kelly “slinked away into obscurity,” the president sneered. As for that elite inner circle, we can assume it included Jared and Ivanka, Kellyanne Conway, and maybe a pecan pie.

In the week that followed more and more former U.S. military men and women and leaders in defense circles added their criticisms. Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, was equally appalled by Trump’s threat to call in active duty troops. “The idea that the military would be called in to dominate and to suppress what, for the most part, were peaceful protests—admittedly, where some had opportunistically turned them violent—and that the military would somehow come in and calm that situation,” he said, “was very dangerous to me.”

A second former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mike Mullen, expressed similar fears. He cautioned that the country was at an “inflection point.” He said it was “impossible to remain silent.” The president’s decision to clear peaceful protesters from Lafayette Park was “sickening.”

Whatever Trump’s goal in conducting his visit, he laid bare his disdain for the rights of peaceful protest in this country, gave succor to the leaders of other countries who take comfort in our domestic strife, and risked further politicizing the men and women of our armed forces. 

Admiral Mullin had confidence in current leaders of the U.S. military to obey lawful orders. He was “less confident in the soundness of the orders they will be given by this commander in chief.”

“I’m glad I don’t have to advise this President.”

Dire warnings were accumulating. A third former Joint Chiefs chairman, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, registering his disgust. He described his reaction as he watched what happened in Lafayette Park:

The first thing was just absolute sadness that people aren’t allowed to protest and that, as I understand it, that was a peaceful protest that was disturbed by force, and that’s not right. That should not happen in America. And so I was sad. I mean, we should all shed tears over that, that particular act. ...I’m glad I don’t have to advise this President. I’m sure the senior military leadership is finding it really difficult these days to provide good, sound military advice.

*

If you’re a member of the Trump cult, perhaps you found comfort in believing this was all “Fake News.”

It wasn’t. It was the free press doing the primary job of the free press, gathering and disseminating important information. Ret. Major General Paul D. Eaton called the decision of Gen. Milley to join Trump on his stroll “an egregious display of bad judgment, at best.” A veteran of the Iraq war, Eaton continued, “At worst, Milley appears confused about the oath he took to support and defend the Constitution—not a president. I suggest the general get quickly unconfused, or resign.”

Former Marine four-star Gen. John Allen offered up biting criticism in an interview and in an essay in Foreign Policy magazine. On CNN, he described Trump as “assaulting” the First Amendment rights of peaceful demonstrators. “I’ve fought in overseas wars,” he told Jake Tapper, “and I never believed that the Constitution was under threat until recently.”

That threat was Trump. All Americans, Gen. Allen added, should be concerned about “the rule of law.”

“The slide of the United States into illiberalism may well have begun on June 1, 2020,” Gen. Allen also wrote. “Remember the date. It may well signal the beginning of the end of the American experiment.”

The president of the United States stood in the Rose Garden of the White House on Monday, railed against weak governors and mayors who were not doing enough, in his mind, to control the unrest and the rioters in their cities, and threatened to deploy the U.S. military against American citizens.

Even more horrifying, “Trump was clear he views those engaged in the unrest and criminal acts in these riots as terrorists, an enemy.”

He continued:

There is no precedent in modern U.S. history for a president to wield federal troops in a state or municipality over the objections of the respective governor. Right now, the last thing the country needs—and, frankly, the U.S. military needs—is the appearance of U.S. soldiers carrying out the president’s intent by descending on American citizens.

The assault on “peaceful demonstrators,” with police, “manhandling and beating many of them, employing flash-bangs, riot-control agents, and pepper spray throughout,” was unacceptable.

Trump had “failed to show sympathy, empathy, compassion, or understanding—some of the traits the nation now needs from its highest office.”

Allen called the events of June 1 “awful for the United States and its democracy.” Then he posed the question, “What is to be done?”

At nearly the same moment that Americans were being beaten near the White House on behalf of their president, George Floyd’s brother Terrence Floyd visited the site of George’s murder. Overcome with grief and anger, he loudly upbraided the crowd for tarnishing his brother’s memory with violence and looting. And then he told Americans what to do: vote. “Educate yourselves,” he said, “there’s a lot of us.” So, while June 1 could easily be confused with a day of shame and peril if we listen to Donald Trump, if instead we listen to Terrence Floyd, it is a day of hope. So mark your calendars—this could be the beginning of the change of American democracy not to illiberalism, but to enlightenment. But it will have to come from the bottom up. For at the White House, there is no one home.

Again, this was not “Fake News.” Ret. Admiral James Stavridis sounded a similar alarm in Time magazine:

[It] hurt to watch U.S. military personnel used against peaceful protestors in Washington D.C. early this week. The sweeping use of a combined civil-military force—D.C. police, Park Police, National Guard, and active duty military police—against the protesters to clear the way for a Presidential photo-op was beyond the pale of American norms.

The U.S. military, he noted, had 1.2 million members on active duty, all sworn to “protect and defend the constitution of the United States.” The “vast majority” would “lay down their lives to do so. But they are not meant to be turned against their fellow citizens.”

Stavridis called on “senior active duty military leaders” to stand up to Trump, even “at the risk of their career[s].”

If they failed, he cautioned, “I fear for the soul of our military and all of the attendant consequences. We cannot afford to have a future Lafayette Square end up looking like Tiananmen Square.”

*

It was then, while putting this post together, that this blogger stumbled upon what was said to be a Trump quote from March 1990. It was reported to have come from a Playboy interview.

I’m not fan of this president. Still, I had a hard time believing even someone so callous as he has proven to be could have said what Trump purportedly said. And this was only nine months after Chinese troops slaughtered thousands of peaceful pro-democracy protesters, mostly young students and their supporters.

“When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it,” Trump was quoted as saying. “Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak.”

I had to go to the source to be sure. It required wading through half of a lengthy article to find that quote. And there it was, with an additional clause. It came in the middle of a series of questions about the need of leaders to take a forceful hand. Trump expressed disdain for Mikhail Gorbachev, who was trying to create a more democratic society and break the power of the Communist Party in Russia. Trump’s problem with Gorbachev? “Not a firm enough hand,” he said.

“You mean firm hand as in China?” the interviewer wondered.

And here we saw hints of the authoritarian president many of us have rightly come to distrust. “When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it,” Citizen Trump did indeed say. “Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak … as being spit on by the rest of the world…”

Better then, in Trump’s mind, to spill the blood of thousands of protesters than to appear weak.

An absence of interest in human rights.

Not once, did the future president evince interest in human rights during that interview, the same absence we have seen since he took office. For example: Trump claiming Vladimir Putin “isn’t such a killer” and adding that the U.S. “isn’t so innocent,” either. And Trump congratulating Xi Jinping for becoming “president for life.” Because who cares about elections!

Trump saying that he fell “in love” with Kim Jong-un, the homicidal maniac and proprietor of the worst gulag on earth.

Trump calling Prince Mohammed bin Salman “a friend,” despite the fact the Prince had just ordered a journalist cut up into pieces.

Finally, Trump, at the G7 summit in 2019, jokingly calling President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, a man infamous for ordering the massacre of more than 800 protesters in 2013, his “favorite dictator.”

Trump being Trump.

A lone protester stops a line of Chinese tanks, near Tiananmen Square.

*

If you don’t pay close attention, U.S. military are historically reluctant to criticize civilian leadership. We have traditionally cherished civilian control of the troops. We don’t want the military arresting elected officials, as in Nazi Germany in the 1930s. We don’t want “death squads” roaming the streets, as in Argentina in the 80s, when generals ruled. We don’t want journalists being assassinated, as in Russia or Saudi Arabia in 2020. We don’t want Trump or any other president defiling the U.S. Constitution.

So, on June 6, Ret. Vice Admiral Joseph Maguire told The New York Times, “Jim Mattis, Mike Mullen and Marty Dempsey are all good friends, and I respect them tremendously. I am in alignment with their views.”

“Questionable partisan moves” may “become intolerable.”

So, too, we had Ret. Army Gen. Tony Thomas questioning the use of the word “battlespace” by the Secretary of Defense, to describe scenes of protest in scores of U.S. cities. “Not what American needs to hear...ever, unless we are invaded by an adversary or experience a constitutional failure...ie [sic] a Civil War...”

Even Defense Secretary Esper realized that he had made a mistake in using that word. He apologized and rolled it back. He also made it clear—in opposition to what President Trump had been saying—that we had not reached a point where active duty military personnel were needed to quell protests.

Not even close.

Naturally, this angered the thin-skinned president. When Press Secretary McEnany was asked if Trump still had confidence in Esper, she refused to say. Sources told the Wall Street Journal that the president had to be talked out of firing Esper. Esper had to be talked out of resigning, himself.

The free press continued to give voice to the concerns of top military and defense leaders. “There is a thin line between the military’s tolerance for questionable partisan moves over the past three years and the point where these become intolerable for an apolitical military,” retired three-star Army general Douglas E. Lute told The New York Times. Lute, who worked under both Bush 43 and Obama, was clear. “Relatively minor episodes have accumulated imperceptibly, but we are now at a point of where real damage is being done.”

The Military Times chose to highlight the comments of Ret. Adm. William McRaven. “Trust me, every man and woman in uniform recognizes that we are all Americans and that the last thing they want to do as military men and women is to stand in the way of a peaceful protest.” 

“When you are in the military, there are three criteria for every decision we make: it has to be moral, legal and ethical,” McRaven continued. “Ethical, you have to follow the rules, legal you have to follow the law, and then moral you have to follow what you know to be right. And either way, that’s just not right.”

As a serious blogger, I was suddenly curious. If I did a word search of Trump’s nearly 50,000 tweets, how many times would he use the word “ethical” in a way that showed ethics guided his conduct.

As expected, it turned out to be never.

*

It wasn’t “Enemies of the People” at work when the media continued gathering voices of protest. It was the free press, holding powerful people to account. “We have a military to fight our enemies, not our own people,” Admiral Mullen said on Fox News Sunday last week.

Mullen also noted that 43 percent of active duty soldiers, sailors, Marines, and air crews were men and women of color.

(And let’s not forget: No one in President Donald J. Trump’s direct family line has ever served in the U.S. military.)

_____________________

“We have a Constitution. We have to follow that Constitution. And the president’s drifted away from it.”

Former Sec. of State Colin Powell

_____________________

Former Secretary of State and Gen. Colin Powell also made headlines, telling CNN that the president’s actions were “dangerous for our democracy” and “dangerous for our country.”

“We have a Constitution,” Gen. Powell continued. “We have to follow that Constitution. And the president’s drifted away from it.”

On ABC, Gen. Dempsey called the president’s rhetoric “inflammatory.”

On NBC, Admiral Stavridis said Trump’s threat to use the military “rang echoes” of 1776, when George III sent troops to Boston to crush unrest.

“To protect the rights of Americans, not to violate them.”

Meanwhile, the Washington Post published a letter signed by 89 former admirals, generals and defense leaders. Like so many others, they expressed growing concern as they watched President Trump unravel.

They noted that while

several past presidents have called on our armed services to provide additional aid to law enforcement in times of national crisis—among them Ulysses S. Grant, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson—these presidents used the military to protect the rights of Americans, not to violate them.

All those who serve in the military and government take an oath to support the U.S. Constitution. By contrast, they warned, “We are alarmed at how the president is betraying this oath by threatening to order members of the U.S. military to violate the rights of their fellow Americans.”

A quick check of signatories turned up the following Republicans and/or American military leaders:

Former Republican senator, Secretary of Defense, and decorated combat veteran, Chuck Hagel.

William S. Cohen, former Secretary of Defense.

Donna Barbisch, retired major general in the U.S. Army.

Dan Christman, retired lieutenant general in the U.S. Army, former assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Peter S. Cooke, retired major general of the U.S. Army Reserve.

Michael B. Donley, former secretary of the U.S. Air Force.

John W. Douglass, retired brigadier general in the U.S. Air Force and former assistant secretary of the U.S. Navy.

Michael V. Hayden, retired U.S. Air Force general; former director of the National Security Agency and CIA.

Mark Hertling, retired three-star general in the U.S. Army, former commanding general of U.S. Army Europe.

John P. Jumper, retired general of the U.S. Air Force and former chief of staff of the Air Force.

Steven J. Lepper, retired major general of the U.S. Air Force.

Former secretary of the U.S. Navy Sean O’Keefe.

Paula Thornhill, retired brigadier general of the Air Force.

Daniel P. Woodward, retired brigadier general of the U.S. Air Force.

Margaret H. Woodward, retired major general of the U.S. Air Force.

*

Eventually, another group of American military men and women joined in warning against the use of the U.S. military to suppress peaceful dissent. At last check, more than 1,000 members of a group called “Concerned Members of the Long Gray Line,” representing every class from 1966 to 2019, had signed an open letter to the Class of 2020.

(The responses from dozens of other former West Point grads and other military men and women are also worth the time to read.)

Their letter read, in part:

[Your class, like others before you, represents] the country’s diversity of race, ethnicity, identity and beliefs. Your West Point journey has led you to this moment when, with right hands raised, you take an oath “to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” This oath has no expiration date.

…The oath taken by those who choose to serve in America’s military is aspirational. We pledge service to no monarch; no government; no political party; no tyrant. Your oath is to a set of principles and an ideal expressed in the Constitution and its amendments. Our Constitution establishes freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of religion, of equal protection under the law regardless of race, color, or creed—we cannot take for granted these freedoms that are but dreams in too many nations around the world.

…The abhorrent murder of George Floyd has inspired millions to protest police brutality and the persistence of racism. Sadly, the government has threatened to use the Army in which you serve as a weapon against fellow Americans engaging in these legitimate protests….

On the eve of your graduation and joining the Long Gray Line and the Army officer corps, we, the undersigned…pledge to stand for the sacred democratic principle that all are treated equally, and each person has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness….

…As your lifetime journey of service begins, we pray that your class motto, “With Vision We Lead,” will prove prophetic. America needs your leadership.

*

In other words, if you have concluded that the President of the United States is a menace, you are not alone.

You are not someone who hates America, hates the flag, or disrespects veterans. You are right. Trump is a threat.

So, on Flag Day 2020, remember the words of I.F. Stone, who once wrote, “The fight for liberty is not waged on the battlefields alone, nor does it consist only in war against a foreign foe. It is also a war against ignorance and prejudice and trouble-makers in high office.”

Remember, too, the words of President John Adams. “There is danger from all men,” he once wrote. “The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.”  

Trump doesn't own the flag. Neither do his supporters.

  

Postscript: On the same day the letter quoted above was released, Gen. Milley apologized for accompanying Trump on his stunt hike.

“I should not have been there. My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics,” he said. “As a commissioned uniformed officer, it was a mistake that I have learned from, and I sincerely hope we all can learn from it.”

The “senseless and brutal killing of George Floyd” was an outrage, he added. He supported the demonstrators:

His death amplified the pain, the frustration, and the fear that so many of our fellow Americans live with day in, day out.

The protests that have ensued not only speak to his killing, but also to the centuries of injustice toward African Americans…[and] we should all be proud that the vast majority of protests have been peaceful.

Retired Rear Admiral John Kirby, a military analyst for CNN, added another voice of warning to the discussion. Kirby applauded Gen. Milley’s admission of a mistake. That admission, he said, “will serve as a powerful example to junior officers and troops that no one is immune from screwing up and that no one’s credibility is enhanced by refusing to admit it.”

Finally, Kirby said, “Gen. Milley’s comments about the need to keep the military out of politics were timely and—all too sadly these days—appropriate to the pressures under which our troops labor.”

___

Trump spends an entire day tweeting.

6/5/20: At 12:21 a.m. President Trump gets a busy day as leader of the Free World off to a rousing but odd start. He notes his happiness that Iran has released Mike White, a Navy veteran, held hostage for two years. “So great to have Michael home. Just arrived. Very exciting. Thank you to Iran. Don’t wait until after U.S. Election to make the Big deal. I’m going to win. You’ll make a better deal now!”

Why a good deal before the next election?

So, good news to have Mr. White back.

But why was Trump offering a country he considers a sworn enemy a good deal before the next election? Kind of like asking Ukraine for help? Or listening to Russian offers in 2016? Trump should be trying to get the best deal with Iran possible, before the election, or after. Timing wouldn’t matter.

*

It was off to bed soon after. And then Trump rose again and began tweeting like a man who couldn’t stop watching porno. There were 55 retweets during the six a.m. hour, almost one per minute.

That included Trump quoting Sen. Deb Fischer announcing: “I cannot think of a better way to celebrate Beef Month than by eating a burger today for #NationalBeefBurgerDay and sending a thank you to all our NE cattle producers who are working hard to put beef on our tables.”

You could perhaps commend the president for his stamina and lightning quick thumbs, because in the seven a.m. hour he posted 74 times. He was, for example, excited to learn that the U.S. recovered 2.5 million jobs in May. So, he retweeted the White House, which reported, “With 2.5 MILLION jobs added in May, we’re on the way to an incredible period of growth!” 

Trump laid off at 8:01 and didn’t log back on to Twitter until 10:43. The onslaught recommenced. Naturally, Trump went with the utter simplicity of retweeting a rabid Fox News host and Trump fan:

  

The president tweeted in the eleven a.m. hour, the twelve p.m., the one p.m., the two p.m. and the three p.m. hours. At 3:08 p.m., with a nation still torn by protests, Trump spent his time as leader of a great nation, critiquing NFL quarterback Drew Brees. Brees had first said he did not believe players should kneel in protest when the 2020 season begins. Then he thought it over and apologized for being insensitive. In Trump’s world you never apologize and sensitivity is weakness.

He tap-tapped:

I am a big fan of Drew Brees. I think he’s truly one of the greatest quarterbacks, but he should not have taken back his original stance on honoring our magnificent American Flag. OLD GLORY is to be revered, cherished, and flown high...

...We should be standing up straight and tall, ideally with a salute, or a hand on heart. There are other things you can protest, but not our Great American Flag - NO KNEELING!

The job of being president distracted him until after dinner. But in the six p.m. hour he was doing what he does best—lashing out at other Americans, who, in theory he represents. He called the mayor of Washington D.C. “grossly incompetent,” which is a great way to help keep order in any city.

In the next hour he retweeted the founder and co-chair of TrumpStudents, Ryan Fournier, who offered up another quick burst of simplicity: “Barack Obama put a target on the back of every cop in this country.” Because, sure. Criticizing what the only African American president we’ve ever had supposedly did four years ago, will help sooth frayed nerves at a time like this.

Then we had Trump talking about Gov. John Hickenlooper, “who got caught big time with his hand in the cookie jar.” And Trump outraged to find Portland, Oregon had paid a “violent Antifa leader for getting hit with a rubber bullet.” And the president retweeting some dude, retweeting some other dude, who was criticizing The New York Times, with the basic message: “Can we stop pretending they’re a serious newspaper now?” 

In the eight p.m. hour, an apparently rejuvenated President of the United States began tweeting vehemently again: another 36 posts, including a revisit to his first tweet of the day,

welcoming Michael White home. Not long before bedtime, Trump got in a formulaic shot at the free press: “The Lamestream Media is out of control. It would be impossible to fully explain how dishonest they are!”

At 10:19, Trump signed off with a plug for a book you figure he’s never going to read (and, no, I don’t mean the Bible). Then after a busy day of tweeting—more than 200 times—he tucked himself into bed.

___

Siberia baking. “Game changer” not working.

6/6/20:  Today, with the economy stumbling, with the coronavirus rampant, with protests against police brutality and systemic racism crowding the news, let’s not forget another massive failing on the part of this president. When it comes to addressing the threat of climate change, Trump hasn’t.

He’s in denial.

According to scientists, this past May was the hottest on record. Making it even worse, the vast Siberian region was 10° Celsius hotter, on average, or 18° Fahrenheit. Sea ice retreated in dramatic fashion. Permafrost, ground frozen in places for thousands of years, thawed.

The region has been experiencing unusually warm temperatures since January. “It’s undoubtedly an alarming sign,” said Freja Vamborg, a scientist with the Copernicus Climate Change Service.

*

This week the results of a randomized study done by the University of Minnesota were released. The study enrolled 821 non-hospitalized persons who had been exposed to someone with COVID-19, either in their own homes, or as healthcare workers. Half received placebos. The other half received hydroxychloroquine, Trump’s favorite “game changer” drug.

Results were dismal. Researchers determined

that hydroxychloroquine was not able to prevent the development of COVID-19 any better than a placebo. Further, 40% of trial participants taking hydroxychloroquine developed non-serious side effects—predominantly nausea, upset stomach or diarrhea. 

The image of Trump on hydroxychloroquine, which he tried out himself, suffering from diarrhea.

Priceless.

___

Merkel makes Trump mad. Trump feeling sad.

6/7/20: President Trump is mad because German Chancellor Angela Merkel made it clear recently she isn’t coming to a G-7 summit in the U.S. during a pandemic. Other world leaders quickly; and Trump, who had hoped to include pal Vladimir Putin in an expanded summit, had his feelings hurt.

Trump then postponed the meeting until September. But his feelings still hurt. So he decided to announce he would reduce U.S. troop levels in Germany by a third, because he was tired of paying to protect other countries, such as our allies. This announcement did not sit well, even with many Republicans. Rep. Liz Cheney, the number three GOP leader in the House of Representatives, promptly labeled Trump’s decision “dangerously misguided.”

“If the United States abandons allies, withdraws our forces, and retreats within our borders,” Cheney warned, “the cause of freedom—on which our nation was founded & our security depends—will be in peril.”

We rarely quote Democrats on this blog, but Sen. Jack Reed, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was equally appalled. “This order is petty and preposterous,” he said.

*

Donald Trump loves to tweet about his record-setting support with Republicans. He first tweeted a variation of this phrase on April 10: “Wow, Approval Rating in the Republican Party - 96%. Thank you!”

Perhaps it made him feel warm inside, to know so many in his party loved him, since not once during his time in office has he managed an average approval rating of 50%. So he tweeted a similar message twice more in April. He couldn’t resist reminding his Twitter fans, he was still loved by 96% three times in May. He seemed so happy with the fact that almost all Republicans loved him, he tweeted it again, yesterday, and today.

(Since this is an edited post, I can also tell you he tweeted it on June 8, June 16, and June 19.)

But I am not a guppy. I do not fall for Trump’s many, varied, and transparent tricks. I go to the Gallup poll to check. In April, they have him at 93%. Quite good. In May: 92%. Still fine. In June: 85%.

Not so good, if you want to win reelection. His approval rate with independents has fallen to 39%, with Democrats to 5%, and his overall approval rate is a miserable 39% in a Gallup poll ending on June 4.

It won’t help poor Donald, if he picks up a copy of The New York Times from Saturday. According to a report by Jonathan Martin, there’s increasing rumbling at the top of the party.

Martin says he has been told that former President George W. Bush won’t support Trump’s re-election. Jeb Bush isn’t sure how he’ll vote. Senator Mitt Romney won’t back Trump and is deliberating whether to write in his wife, Ann, or cast another ballot in November. Cindy McCain, the widow of Senator John McCain, “is almost certain to support Mr. Biden but is unsure how public to be about it because one of her sons is eying a run for office.” Two former GOP Speakers of the House, Paul Ryan and John Boehner, “won’t say how they will vote”

You can pencil in the names of former Secretary of State and Gen. Colin Powell and former  Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: “No,” on Trump 2020. (I think we can assume Rex Tillerson, Trump’s own former Secretary of State, and James Mattis, his former Secretary of Defense, will also vote for an egg and cheese omelet before they vote for their old boss.)

Rep. Francis Rooney is retiring from Congress at the end of this term. He told Martin he hasn’t voted for a Democrat in decades, “But Mr. Rooney said he is considering supporting Mr. Biden in part because Mr. Trump is ‘driving us all crazy’ and his handling of the virus led to a death toll that ‘didn’t have to happen.’”

I don’t quote Democrats often, but Sen. Chris Coons told Martin that he had “had five conversations with senators who tell me they are really struggling with supporting Trump.” Sen. Coons declined to name them.

Martin couldn’t get one Republican senator on the record. He did report, however, that while the senator was  “publicly supporting the president,” he admitted in an interview

that he might prefer a Biden victory if the G.O.P. managed to preserve its Senate majority. This lawmaker, like a number of Republicans, is uneasy with Mr. Trump’s behavior and weary from the near-weekly barrage of questions from reporters about the latest presidential eruption.

“There is an organized effort about how to make our voices useful in 2020,” said Kori Schake, another “No Thanks, Donald” Republican.

___

COVID-19 toll still rising. Trump still loves police.

6/8/20: Protests continue to roil the land and the toll from the coronavirus rises steadily. According to Johns Hopkins University’s latest tally, 111,751 Americans have died.

Switching to CDC, which posts daily case numbers, we have:

June 1:            14,790           

June 2:            24,955           

June 3:            14,676

June 4:            20,555

June 5:            29,034

June 6:            29,214

June 7:            17,919

June 8:            17,598

______________________________________________________

Total:           168,741 new cases

As it stands, the United States is likely to pass the two million mark tomorrow or Thursday.

By comparison, countries whose leaders actually faced up to a difficult situation have come much closer to taming the spread. Germany had only 311 new cases and 48 deaths yesterday. Italy had 283 and 79, France 403 and 87. Across the border, in Canada, another 372 persons were confirmed to have the disease. Sixty died. Japan stopped the spread early, and tallies only 17,174 cases. South Korea, which had its first confirmed case on the same day as the U.S., moved swiftly. Donald J. Trump kept tweeting. Total cases in South Korea: 11,852. Total dead: 274.

New cases yesterday: 38.

New deaths: 1.

*

Trump did make time to talk with law enforcement officials  Monday. As one might have expected—because this is Trump—in the wake of nationwide protests, he was 99.9 percent in favor of the police.

Okay, sure, he admitted. Once in a while, a cop isn’t so nice.

“We want to make sure we don’t have any bad actors in there and sometimes you’ll see some horrible things, like we witnessed recently,” he told the gathering. “But 99, I say 99.9, but let’s go with 99 percent of them are great, great people and they’ve done jobs that are record setting—record setting—so our crime statistics are at a level that they haven’t been at.”

Total crimes in this country have been falling steadily since 1990, a trend unrelated to anything Donald J. Trump has ever done. Murders, rapes, and aggravated assaults are up in recent years.

And need we point out? You can cut crime without kneeling on people’s necks until they’re dead?

___

  

Trump says protester faked skull-fracturing fall.

6/9/20: Yesterday, the president floated another one of his nutty theories. If you don’t have the stomach to check, trust me. The man’s Twitter feed, now approaching 50,000 tweets and retweets, is a cornucopia of idiocy.

Look, being a cop—a good one—must be really hard. We saw what happened to George Floyd, however. That was an outrage.

You don’t have to be a liberal or a conservative to figure out most of these cases. In a similar, but less fatal way, when Charlie Chase, an 82-year-old Trump supporter from Fall River, Massachusetts, was attacked by a 27-year-old man, you can’t justify that. Donald Trump Jr., himself, heard about the attack, called the victim, and then tweeted righteous indignation.

For once, the smarmy scion of the president got it right.

Yet, with a nation convulsed by protests over what millions see as a police murder, with Mr. Chase nursing his bruises, Don Sr. continued to shrivel as a leader and as a human being. Yesterday, the president binged on too much right-wing news. Then he floated a bizarre conspiracy theory. If you missed the tape of another egregious incident in Buffalo, New York, two police officers were seen knocking Martin Gugino, a 75-year-old protester, over backwards.

I’m a rational kind of person. I doubt their intent was to injure the man. Still, Gugino stumbled badly, tripped on his own feet, and toppled like a Jefferson Davis statue knocked from its pedestal, striking his head on the sidewalk. He lay there, blood pooling on the sidewalk. He twitched a little. His phone, which he may have been using to film officers, slid from his hand.

The President of the United States watched that tape. He tuned in to listen to the explanation offered by the nuttiest of nutty right-wing news outlets, and decided it was all a “hoax.” Naturally, if a stupid idea formed in his head, Trump was going to let it come spilling out in a tweet. “Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an ANTIFA provocateur,” he theorized. “75 year old Martin Gugino was pushed away after appearing to scan police communications in order to black out the equipment. @OANN I watched, he fell harder than was pushed. Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up?”

Yes! A “set up!” Gugino ended up in intensive care. As of yesterday, he remained hospitalized.

That faker.

Press Secretary McEnany tries to cover for her boss.

He is an idiot.

She is, too.

___

Red ink tsunami!

6/10/20: Several states, including Georgia, held primary elections yesterday. Let’s just say in Georgia, voting did not go smoothly.

Or maybe you could say, if you still wanted to test new ways to suppress minority voting, it went great! In Fulton and DeKalb counties, where half the population is black, some people waited in line five hours to cast ballots.

If this were to happen in November, and a good percentage of the 1.8 million Georgians in those two counties decided to stay home—well—that would be great for Donald J. Trump & Crew.

On the topic of voting, White House Banshee Kellyanne Conway was asked recently why the president opposed mail-in balloting. She said, if people wanted to vote, it was like waiting in line for cupcakes. You wait for what you want.

The only difference? Cupcakes are delicious. Voting is arguably your most important right. And no one waits in line five hours for cupcakes.

*

In other news, sometime Wednesday, the U.S. passed the

2,000,000  mark

on confirmed cases of COVID-19. Trump was just a little off when he predicted in February that we would soon be headed for zero cases.

*

How about Trump’s promise that he would bring fiscal sanity to Washington D.C. and the federal deficit would shrink to nothingness once he took charge. He said if he had eight years (god help us) he would bring his business magic to government. Presto. There would be NO DEFICIT LEFT! He promised he would clean up all the trillions run up by all the other 44 presidents.

And, the envelope please:

The winner is……………not Donald J. Trump! It has been announced the federal deficit, in just the first eight months of this fiscal year, hit:

$1.88 trillion

The red ink tsunami for FY 2021 is the largest ever recorded. Trump has four more months to rack up a colossal debt.

___

Economy in for slow recovery.

6/11/20: There’s more bad news for President Trump, and more importantly, for the nation. Jay Powell, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, announced yesterday he expects a slow economic recovery, with unemployment likely to remain at 9.3% by the end of the year.

This exciting news caused the stock market to take a dive today. The Dow dropped 1,862 points.

You know we could be in for a long climb back to economic health when coffee juggernaut Starbucks announces it will close 400 retail locations in the U.S. and Canada. Sales losses this quarter are expected to reach $3.2 billion. Hertz laid off 16,000 employees, made sure to pay the CEO $9 million, and then filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. J. Crew is now defunct. So is J.C. Penny. Workouts at Gold’s Gym are over forever. In fact, the idea that we are going to come out of this recession quickly seems increasingly unlikely. The National Bureau of Economic Research says 3.3 million businesses, mostly smaller operations, have been wiped out since the coronavirus took hold, more than were lost during the entire Great Recession. During that bleak two-year stretch a total of 730,000 U.S. businesses were snuffed out. This past April, one in four U.S. renters, hit by job losses or loss of revenue, failed to pay rent. In May that figure rose to 31%. Those bills don’t disappear. They accumulate.

*

Still, Trump has plenty of fans! (See: June 7 and the 96%.) Two, one waving a Trump flag, showed up recently at a peaceful Black Lives Matter rally in Fallon, Nevada. Finally, people from different places on the political spectrum coming together…

Um…the Trump fans were wearing KKK hoods. If you watch the video, one has a regulation KKK hood. The other poor sap appears to have crafted his own. It looks like a racist dunce cap.

*

Think COVID-19 is no more dangerous than ordinary flu? If you’re a Trump fan, possibly you do. (Did we mention dunce caps?) Doctors at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago announced that they had performed a double lung transplant on a woman who contracted the disease. The patient, in her 20s, spent six weeks in intensive care. A life support machine did the work of heart and lungs. “By early June, the patient’s lungs showed irreversible damage,” doctors explained.

“A lung transplant was her only chance for survival,” says Ankit Bharat, MD, chief of thoracic surgery and surgical director of the Northwestern Medicine Lung Transplant Program.

*

And the coronavirus isn’t going away! It was announced Thursday that 287 workers at the JBS beef packing plant in Hyrum, Utah, have tested positive for COVID-19. “It’s not safe to work right now,” an employee told the Salt Lake Tribune. He or she asked to remain anonymous.

Ironically, two days earlier, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue issued the following statement.

I want to thank the patriotic and heroic meatpacking facility workers [around the nation], the companies, and the local authorities for quickly getting their operations back up and running, and for providing a great meat selection once again to the millions of Americans who depend on them for food.”

By the way, the nation’s 75,000 “patriotic and heroic meatpacking facility workers” earn an average of $13.68 per hour. That works out to $28,450 annually. Plus, they get the chance to contract a disease, spread it to loved ones and local communities, and maybe get double lung transplants.

*

Less likely to catch the disease? Three top African American law enforcement officials in Dallas, Texas. The president was in town to give a speech on police and race this week, but they went uninvited. Trump gave his little talk, then headed over to billionaire Kelcy Warner’s place for a $10 million fund-raising dinner.

During his speech, Mr. Trump refused to address the elephant with the badge in the room. “You always have a bad apple,” he said of police officers who kneel on people’s necks until they die. “No matter where you go you have bad apples, and there are not too many of them...in the police department,” he argued.

Yeah, “bad apples.” Bad plumbers. Bad bus drivers. Bad furnace repairmen. Bad presidents. But what can you do!

Trump explained that what he was advocating was “force with compassion.” Such as: Send in the U.S. military to quash protests. Then he went with his recipe for authoritarian success: We “have to dominate the streets.”

Trump finished his little talk and headed over to Mr. Warner’s. Couples of all races were welcome, assuming they could afford to pay $580,600 to attend dinner. For that price, they got all the alcohol they could drink. And desert! Even seconds!! Best of all, you and your significant other got a photo taken with Donald J. Trump. Standing next to him, at least you’d probably look thinner.

*

Since we’re talking “bad apples,” lets include the New Jersey corrections officer who participated in a stunt as Black Lives Protesters marched through his neighborhood. It isn’t clear from news stories yet, which role the officer performed, as he and a buddy reenacted the death of George Floyd. With a Trump campaign sign and an American flag as backdrop, one of two white men knelt on the neck of the other, shook his fist, and shouted at passing marchers.

The corrections officer was quickly suspended. The other actor, a FedEx employee, has been fired.

Also representing the “bad apples” of humanity: Harry H. Rogers, 36, an “admitted leader of the Ku Klux Klan and a propagandist for Confederate ideology.” Rogers is accused of driving his pickup truck into a crowd of peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters.

___

Boogaloo bois and other racists.

6/12/20: With the nation convulsed by protests, the U.S. military expressed willingness to consider the renaming of ten bases. Those bases are named for heroes of the Confederacy. For example: Fort Bragg in North Carolina, named for the totally inept General Braxton Bragg, who lost almost every battle in which he became involved.

You also have Fort Hood in Texas, named after John Bell Hood, who gave up a leg in the fight to defend slavery.

And Fort Gordon, named for John Brown Gordon, one of Robert E. Lee’s most capable lieutenants, rumored after the Civil War to be the Grand Dragon of the Georgia Ku Klux Klan.

Naturally, Trump who never served, whose father never served, whose grandfather never served, and whose four oldest children have all, so far, resisted the urge to don the uniform of the United States, reacted angrily. In an appeal to the racist portion of his base, whatever fraction that might be, he tweeted, “Our history as the Greatest Nation in the World will not be tampered with. Respect our Military!” This would make sense, of course, if Bragg and Hood and Gordon hadn’t been leading forces actively involved in trying to kill and maim members of “our Military.”

(In Louisiana, some wit started a petition, suggesting one of the bases in question be named after Britney Spears, “the TRUE hero of the South.” At last count 14,000 people had signed.)

No Confederate flag needed.

In fact, more than a few Trump fans are having trouble dealing with the fact that Robert E. Lee had to surrender at Appomattox, signaling the death knell of slavery in this country. For example, Mercedes Schlapp, a senior Trump campaign adviser, recently boosted a tweet that “lauded a man in Texas in a viral video as he yelled a racial slur and wielded a chainsaw to chase away anti-racism demonstrators.”

When Politico reached out, she retweeted a version of the video, but with the n-word muted.

Then she realized she still looked like a racist. She deleted both tweets and apologized, one would assume, for being an idiot.

As Politico noted, however, other GOP leaders in Texas were under fire. One county chair posted a Martin Luther King Jr. quote, next to a banana. Another commented on a third’s post, “pandemic isn’t working. Start the racial wars.”

*

As a liberal in good standing, I don’t have much trouble deciding in most cases what is right, and what is not. Kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, till he was dead.

Not.

Ambushing two California sheriff’s deputies, killing one, and seriously wounding another?

Not.

Blue lives matter.

Ironically, while the president has been trading insults with Seattle’s mayor, and railing about Antifa, that ambush was carried out by an Air Force veteran, and a white man, Steven Carrillo. Carrillo subscribes to the “Boogaloo bois” doctrine, which holds that freedom-loving white Americans must foment civil war. You start first by taking out civil authorities, and then launch a race war. Carrillo was armed with—of course—an AR-15, the preferred weapon of mass murderers and nutjobs in this country. He is also a suspect in an attack in Oakland, California, during a Black Lives Matter protest, that left one federal protective services agent dead, another wounded.

Other Boogaloo enthusiasts have been arrested in Ohio, Texas, and Colorado, after posting plans on social media to assassinate government agents and/or blow up members of current crowds of protesters.

___

Staying safe, kind of, in America.

6/13/20: Two years ago, exactly, President Trump returned home from an historic visit to North Korea.

The North, he tweeted grandly, “was no longer a Nuclear Threat.” “Meeting with Kim Jong Un,” he said, “was an interesting and very positive experience.” The two were pals, Donald said, and the American people could sleep better in nights to come. Trump had worked his deal-making diplomatic magic.

Two years later, Kim still has all the nukes he had in the summer of 2018. Some believe he has enough new material to build an estimated twenty additional new atomic bombs. And the North has been working hard to get a missile-carrying submarine constructed and put to sea.

*

Of course, if we listen to President Trump, we know, if we want to be safe, we can never carry enough guns.

Friday night an inebriated gentleman in Houston got angry after he was denied entry to a popular bar. It struck him that a fine way to assert his Second Amendment rights would be to return to his car and retrieve a long gun. He then headed back to the bar and opened fire. Eight were wounded, including five women.

No word yet on the suspect, who fled. But proof again, ladies, that if you want to be safe, you should wear body armor when you go out for an evening of fun. Also, carry your own rifles.

Or bring a chainsaw (see: 6/12/20).

*

President Trump is looking forward to holding his first big campaign rally next week, with a crowd of up to 19,000 in attendance.

This could spread the disease; but Trump is keeping himself safe, legally, at least. If you do choose to attend, you have to sign a disclaimer:

By attending the Rally, you and any guests voluntarily assume all risks related to exposure to COVID-19 and agree not to hold Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.; BOK Center; ASM Global; or any of their affiliates, directors, officers, employees, agents, contractors, or volunteers liable for any illness or injury.

___

Don’t be a dolt. Wear a mask.

6/14/20: No sign the spread of the coronavirus is abating. As of today the U.S. has 2.1 million confirmed cases and nearly 116,000 dead.

New cases since we checked last:

June 9:            17,376           

June 10:          20,486

June 11:          21,744

June 12:          22,317

June 13:          25,468

June 14:          21,957

This brings the total for the month to 298,089. That averages out to 21,292 per day, not much better than what we suffered in May.

*

We also know that the decision to wear a mask or go naked is now a partisan issue. Trump fans tend to be anti-mask. Trump foes believe masks will help stop the spread of the virus. Now a review of 172 studies done in 16 countries and published in The Lancet, a respected medical journal, finds that…okay, we could have guessed…Trump’s anti-mask fans don’t get science.

People who have been infected and don’t wear masks have a 1 in 6 chance (17%) of infecting someone. For people with masks, the chance of spread falls to 1 in 33 (3%). Social distancing, keeping three to six feet apart, also reduces the chance of spread from 1 in 8 (13%) to 1 in 33 (3%).

That’s the science.

So, get a mask, wear it around others, and keep your distance wherever possible. This isn’t politics. We will all be better off if we slow the spread and can get our country back to normal.

See, for example, the advice from Yale Medicine.

Yes, wear a mask.

___

Trump clobbered by book, U.S. Supreme Court.

6/15/20: The big news for the day: The Supreme Court, ruling 6-3, decides employers cannot discriminate against gays, lesbians, and transgender individuals, on account of sexual orientation. The opinion is written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, President Trump’s first pick to fill a seat on the high court.

Naturally, right-wingers are outraged. This comment from pundit Michael Knowles is typical:

Neil Gorsuch has redefined the most fundamental aspect of our nature from the bench of the highest court in the land. No ruling he might make in the future could counteract that radicalism. Conservatives will count him among the worst jurists in the history of the United States

My god, “the most fundamental aspect of our nature” has been redefined!!! People in the L.G.B.T.Q. community can now have…jobs.

*

Meanwhile, the Narcissist-in-Chief is threatening former National Security Adviser John Bolton if he publishes his book, due out June 23. Bolton, his old boss warned, would have a “very strong criminal problem” if he goes ahead with the release of The Room Where It Happened.

“I will consider every conversation with me as president to be highly classified,” a nervous Trump has made clear. For example, did Trump say he was holding up aid to Ukraine until they dug up dirt on Joe Biden? Classified.

Did Trump tell Bolton he had Rice Krispies for breakfast? Classified.

In fact, conversations about anything would be classified. Golf? Trump’s weight? Did Trump say Kim Jong-un looked like a Munchkin? Or say he’d like to bang another porn star? Or he didn’t care if the Saudis cut up Jamaal Khashoggi in little pieces, so long as he got reelected in November?

All classified.

“If he wrote a book and if the book gets out,” Trump said, “he’s broken the law and I would think you would have criminal problems. I hope so. If this guy is writing things about conversations or about anything—and maybe he is not telling the truth. He’s been known not to tell the truth, a lot….”

Trump trailed off.

So, add Bolton to the list of people Trump hired, who, according to Trump, turned out to be liars.

According to early reports, Bolton will claim that nothing mattered to this president, except “getting reelected.”

“I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure,” Bolton will say, “that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations.”

Bolton will describe “chaos in the White House” and focus on Trump’s “inconsistent, scattershot decision-making process.” In fact, he will argue that Democrats botched the impeachment hearings by focusing only on Trump’s questionable dealings regarding Ukraine.

He is prepared to argue that Trump’s foreign policy decisions were always driven by questionable motivations.

*

If you missed this story, your U.S. government—which is now recording piling up massive deficits—is now the proud owner of 63 million doses of a drug normally used to fight malaria. (See: 6/10/20.)

Do we need to fight malaria in this country?

We do not.

Anyone need some hydroxychloroquine? We’ve got some!

This drug, hydroxychloroquine, was touted by the president as a “game changer” in the battle against Covid-19. (See: 6/5/20). Trump started taking the drug, himself, touted its virtues, said he felt like a champ, and federal agencies to start stockpiling it as part of his half-baked plans to address a national health crisis he said was never coming. Taxpayer dollars were flushed down the toilet.

The FDA has now revoked its emergency approval of the use of hydroxychloroquine and a related variation, chloroquine, for treatment of the coronavirus. Not only did Food and Drug Agency scientists determine that the drug was ineffective. They warned, “Additionally, in light of ongoing serious cardiac adverse events and other serious side effects, the known and potential benefits of CQ and HCQ no longer outweigh the known and potential risks for the authorized use.”

France, Germany and Belgium had already halted use in May. Many U.S. hospitals had excess supplies on hand, and doctors had no desire to prescribe them. British scientists, earlier this month, ended a trial, calling the drugs “useless” in treating the coronavirus. The Infectious Diseases Society of America (who knew) also announced support for the FDA decision.

But Trump still believes in the magic properties of the drug. Because he took it, and look at him.

If he needs another dose, he’s got 63 million close at hand.

___

A soulless beast.

6/16/20: Proof that capitalism has no soul. You can now buy “George Floyd” running shoes. For $18, you can also purchase three pairs of “George Floyd R.I.P.” underwear.

This is not meant as a knock on capitalism in totality. But we need to remember that capitalism is a soulless beast. That’s why the slave trade was legal for centuries. That’s why child labor was acceptable in this country until 1908. That’s why coal miners used to die in accidents by the thousands every year. It’s why thousands of U.S. companies claim their headquarters are in the Cayman Islands, so they can dodge taxes.

Take, for example, the decision of Thermo Fisher, an American tech company, to work with the Chinese communist government.

(I know. Communism is a fatally flawed economic model.)

In the last three years, Chinese authorities have been gathering DNA samples from all males in that country. Thermo Fisher has supplied testing kits, to Chinese specifications, to make creating a data base possible.

Could you catch criminals more surely, if you had blood, saliva, hair, or other genetic materials? Yes.

Could you catch protesters and anonymous critics of the government if you had the same? You could.

Communist leaders will abuse the system, without doubt.

___

Bogged down in the coronavirus battle.

6/17/20: I’m not just a small-time blogger. I’m also a fan of NFL football, especially the Cincinnati Bengals. So, if for no other reason, I’m hoping we get a grip on the coronavirus and my son and I can use our season tickets.

I don’t like President Trump one bit. But I’m not crazy. I do hope the U.S. economy rebounds quickly. So, when I see a day where new cases of the coronavirus seem to be declining, I’m hopeful. For example, 18,577 cases on June 15. Not great; but lower than most days lately.

Then I check today. “Holy f---ing s---,” I exclaim. We have another 28,392. Add those numbers to the total for the first fourteen days this month and we now have 345,058 new cases.

That’s 21,566 per day.

It’s starting to look like we’re bogged down in the fight against the coronavirus, like we got bogged down in Vietnam.

On Monday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott chastised young people, in their 20s, for not following guidelines to combat the spread of disease. “People of that age group, they’re not following these appropriate, best health safety practices,” he said. “They are not wearing face masks, they’re not sanitizing their hands, they’re not maintaining social distancing. As a result, young Texans “are contracting COVID-19 at a record pace.”

Abbott’s state has moved up to sixth place, for most infections. More than 2,000 Texans have died. An additional 2,300 are currently hospitalized.

___

Bolton torches Trump, jobless claims jump.

6/18/20: Unemployment claims for the last reporting period totaled 1.5 million. That means the economy is still suffering, despite the end of coronavirus lockdowns across most of the nation.

This brings the total who have filed for unemployment in thirteen weeks to 46 million, a staggering toll. It also makes Trump’s brag about adding 2.5 million jobs in May seem ludicrous.

I’m hoping that we’ll find at least ten million Americans headed back to work when June numbers are reported.

But, holy shit! We’re in a deep hole, with an idiot as our leader.

*

Meanwhile, Team Trump is desperately trying to block release of former National Security Adviser John Bolton’s new book. The cover story they’re floating is that Bolton has included “classified information.”

Since advance copies have already gone out to news organizations it may be too late to avoid the real damage. That is, damage to the image of Donald J. Trump. According to The New York Times, Bolton is said to have torched the president in his book. Start with the small idiocies. Bolton said his boss had to ask if Finland was part of Russia. (Dear MAGA fans: It’s not.) Trump also had to ask if Great Britain, one of our closest allies, had nukes. (It has since 1952).

Then you have the serious issues—the threats to the rule of law—and diplomacy shaped in service to the president’s personal interests, not the nation. Bolton says he heard Trump offer “personal favors to dictators he liked,” including the leaders of Turkey and China. It wasn’t just Trump asking Ukraine to get the dirt on Joe and Hunter Biden, and Hillary Clinton, if they wanted military aid. Trump did do that, Bolton says. It was worse than that, though. “The pattern,” Bolton writes, in regard to Trump’s foreign policy-making decisions, “looked like obstruction of justice as a way of life,” It was the president promising to “intervene in investigations into companies like Turkey’s Halkbank to curry favor with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey or China’s ZTE to favor Mr. Xi.”

According to Bolton, during negotiations with North Korea even Sec. of State Mike Pompeo had had more of Trump than he could stand. Bolton says Pompeo passed him a note, saying of their boss, “He is so full of shit.”

Expect Pompeo to kiss Trump’s ass and deny he passed said note. Expect Bolton to still have it?

One can only hope.

____________________

“John Bolton is a patriot and may know that I held back the money from Ukraine because it is considered a corrupt country…”

President Donald J. Trump

____________________

On the topic of ass-smooching, you may forget the sequence of events revolving around Bolton, the Trump impeachment hearings, and, later, the no-witnesses-trial put on in the U.S. Senate. First, the Democratic House committees investigating Trump’s dealings with Ukraine subpoenaed Bolton. Next, the White House blocked his testimony and Team Trump ignored all House subpoenas. When it was their turn to examine the matter, Senate Republicans puckered up and decided not to invite Bolton to testify, even though he said he was willing.

It’s kind of fun now to remind Trump fans what their orange-tinted hero tweeted during the early stages of the impeachment investigation:

The D.C. Wolves and Fake News Media are reading far too much into people being forced by Courts to testify before Congress. I am fighting for future presidents and the Office of the President. Other than that, I would actually like people to testify. Don McGahn’s respected lawyer has already stated that I did nothing wrong.

John Bolton is a patriot and may know that I held back the money from Ukraine because it is considered a corrupt country, & I wanted to know why nearby European countries weren’t putting up money also.

Bolton now writes that he suspected ulterior motives all along, in President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. As related by the Times:

On Aug. 20, Mr. Bolton writes, Mr. Trump “said he wasn’t in favor of sending them anything until all the Russia-investigation materials related to Clinton and Biden had been turned over.” Mr. Bolton writes that he, Mr. Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper tried eight to 10 times to get Mr. Trump to release the aid.

That, according to Bolton, is the famous “quid pro quo,” which Republicans in both the House and Senate swore at great length never existed.

On another occasion, an angry president suggested that “these people,” his critics in the free press, “should be executed.”

Think about that.

MAGA fans will surely ignore this blast from a man who worked in the White House. But we’ve seen this exact kind of thinking revealed in public by this president. Trump has shown repeatedly that violations of human rights—by Putin, Erdogan, Kim Jong-un, Roderigo Duterte and Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to name a few—don’t bother him. At one point, Bolton says, Trump decided to read a letter publicly, in support of bin Salman, who had ordered a journalist cut up with a bone saw. Aides advised against it. Trump told his National Security Adviser he going to do it to take the heat off his daughter, Ivanka. At the time, the press was bearing down on a story about her use of a private email server to conduct government business. You know—pulling a Hillary.

Bolton also writes that his boss told President Xi of China that if he wanted to lock up millions of citizens (in this case Muslims) in concentration camps, “Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which he thought was exactly the right thing to do.”

On another occasion, Bolton says Trump talked to Xi on the sidelines at a Group of 20 summit. Xi mentioned that certain political figures in the United States were trying to stir up trouble between the countries.

According to the Times:

“Trump immediately assumed Xi meant the Democrats,” Mr. Bolton writes. “Trump said approvingly that there was great hostility among the Democrats. He then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win.” (Mr. Bolton says he would have printed Mr. Trump’s exact words, “but the government’s prepublication review process has decided otherwise.”)

*

You could tell, early reports about what Bolton was saying were getting to the president. He was up late tweeting Wednesday, firing off this classic of Trumpian philosophy:

Wacko John Bolton’s “exceedingly tedious” (New York Times) book is made up of lies & fake stories. Said all good about me, in print, until the day I fired him. A disgruntled boring fool who only wanted to go to war. Never had a clue, was ostracized & happily dumped. What a dope! 

Trump also noted that Bush 43 had fired Bolton—failing to mention that he didn’t fire Bolton. Bolton resigned.

Secondly, are we noticing a trend?  According to Trump, he hired terrible people and he suspected they were terrible all along. (See also: Mattis, Tillerson, Kelly, Omarosa, Cohen, Sessions, et. al.)

Thursday morning, Trump was right back at it, attacking Bolton, before he could even finish his first bowl of Sugar Pops. For starters, he retweeted someone named Max Blumenthal:

John Bolton, a notoriously mendacious enemy of all living beings on the planet, is discovering what every other great Republican hope of the Resistance has: liberals will eagerly lap up any piece of hysterical Cold War propaganda if they think it can be leveraged against Trump.

Trump then tweeted his own assessment:

Bolton’s book, which is getting terrible reviews, is a compilation of lies and made up stories, all intended to make me look bad. Many of the ridiculous statements he attributes to me were never made, pure fiction. Just trying to get even for firing him like the sick puppy he is! 

If you follow this delusional president on Twitter, as, for some unfathomable reason, I do, you know he has referred to a rather large number of human beings as “sick,” “sick puppies,” or some variation of that theme.

For example, you have: CNN anchors: “sick losers.” Lamestream media, “corrupt & sick.” Rep. Adam Schiff, “a very sick man,” “sick puppy,” “he is sick.” Nancy Pelosi, “a very sick person.” Crooked Hillary, “sick.” The New York Times, “a very sick joke,” “sick journalism.” Bette Midler, “a sick scammer.”

And the list keeps growing: Democrats: “sick and disgusting.” Chris Cuomo, “dumb and sick.” Sleepy Joe and Democrats, “sick & demented ideas.” Reporters he doesn’t like: “very dangerous and sick.” Mueller and his investigators, “very sick and dangerous.” Peter Strzok, “sick loser.” Sen. Jon Tester, “very dishonest and sick.” James Comey, “very sick or very dumb.” Megyn Kelly, “sick & the most overrated person on tv.” Karl Rove, “sick.”

My favorite, because Trump really loads up on some of his favorite insults, would be his attack on Rosie O’Donnell, “a mentally sick woman, a bully, a dummy and, above all, a loser.”

___

DACA safe for now. Biden builds a lead. Trump depressed.

6/19/20: We had some much-needed welcome news Thursday. In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court said that the Trump administration could not overturn the DACA program. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, called the reasons given for a proposed end to the program “arbitrary and capricious.”

(Arbitrary and Capricious would be excellent names for twin strippers.)

For now, 700,000 young people, brought to the United States illegally, when they were children, having grown up here, cannot be tossed into the ocean, just so Trump can spite President Obama.

That’s it for good news.

*

We do have one “good news, bad news” story. A recent CNN poll showed Trump trailing Joe Biden, 55%-41%, if the election were today.

That’s the good news.

____________________

Trump has every intention of muzzling the free press if he can get away with it, and might in a second term.

____________________

Here’s the bad. Team Trump, always creeping in the direction of authoritarianism, sent CNN a cease and desist order. They demanded that CNN stop doing polls, unless they could show Trump leading 100%-0%

I might have made up that figure. But Team Trump had to make up the legal basis for their order. It was signed by Jenna Ellis and Michael Glassner, top officials with the Trump campaign. Neither appears to have heard of the First Amendment. “It’s a stunt and a phony poll to cause voter suppression,” they complained to CNN, “stifle momentum and enthusiasm for the President, and present a false view generally of the actual support across America for the President.”

The Trump campaign insisted CNN should publish a “full, fair, and conspicuous retraction, apology, and clarification to correct its misleading conclusions.” I think Ellis and Glassner might have been happy to see CNN go with a story headlined something like this: TRUMP, LOVED BY ALL. NOVEMBER ELECTION CANCELED, AS UNNECESSARY. CNN POLSTERS EXECUTED.

(Go back to 6/19/20, for Trump’s thoughts on executing journalists.)

Say what you like about CNN’s coverage, whether you believe it’s biased or not. If you don’t consider threats to the free press a danger, you should read more about Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Chairman Mao.

Fortunately, the First Amendment still applies. CNN executive vice president and general counsel, David Vigilante, informed the Trump campaign that its “allegations and demands are rejected in their entirety.”

“To my knowledge, this is the first time in its 40-year history that CNN had been threatened with legal action because an American politician or campaign did not like CNN’s polling results,” Vigilante wrote in his response. “To the extent we have received legal threats from political leaders in the past, they have typically come from countries like Venezuela or other regimes where there is little or no respect for a free and independent media.”

So, the bad news?

Trump has every intention of muzzling the free press if he can get away with it, and might in a second term.

Then, more good news. The CNN poll isn’t an outlier. If the election were held today, Trump’s orange ass would be smoked. Here are the most recent polls. It’s still too early to say the Trump family should schedule a moving van. But we seem headed in the right direction.

*

After that, it’s just more bad news, including the fact that our president is a moron. With the number of confirmed cases of coronavirus rising once more, Trump told the Wall Street Journal he thinks testing for the virus is “overrated,” even though he boasted about having “created the greatest testing machine in history.” “I created,” he said. Not: “American scientists created.”

If we stopped testing, though, he added, we’d be better off. “In many ways, it makes us look bad.”

If we kept testing, and the number of confirmed cases in this country (2.2 million as of Friday evening kept rising, and the number of dead (more than 119,000) kept rising, yes. According to the president, it would make “us look bad.”

In reality (a place the president rarely visits), Trump is the man who looks bad. Not “us.” Because Trump said we were going to zero cases back in February. Not “us.” We didn’t say that.

Trump also suggested in his Journal interview that he believed some Americans wore masks, “not as a preventative measure but as a way to signal disapproval of him.” I think he might be onto something there:

___

Trump rally a dud. Attorney General’s Trickery.

6/21/20: President Trump had his first big 2020 campaign rally last night in Tulsa. If you’re a healthcare official or, especially, the Narcissist-in-Chief, it turned out to be a bummer.

First, there were a lot of empty seats, even though, watching the feed and offering fair and balanced commentary for Fox News, Trunmp-suck-up Jesse Watters reported that the BOK Arena was “packed.”

Trump had spent the week bragging about how a million people requested tickets to the event. He and VP Mike “Stuffed Suit Jesus” were so excited they scheduled outdoor speeches to thrill the overflow crowd. The arena, which holds 19,000, turned out to be more than spacious enough for the 6,200 fans the Tulsa fire marshal reported showed up. Outside, that meant there was no overflow to address and Trump and Stuffed Suit Jesus canceled their talks.

Trump blamed protesters outside, and the mean news media for scaring away fans. On the streets outside, Black Lives Matter protesters and Trump fans did argue. There were no significant incidents, although at least one Boogaloo boi showed up armed with an assault rifle. For the president, who cares about crowd size like insecure men care about penises, it had to be a downer.

This is not to say that a future campaign rally won’t be clogged with fans in MAGA uniform. The president has a loyal following. But the problem of sparse attendance might not have to do so much with the “Fake News” people, as the president’s botched handling of the COVID-19 crisis. From a healthcare standpoint, the Tulsa rally was a colossal mess. For starters, six members of the advance team from the campaign tested positive for the coronavirus, meaning they brought not only the President of the United States to Tulsa, but also some germs.

If you were at the rally (which means you are the type who wouldn’t be reading this blog), or watched on television, you know almost none of the people attending wore masks. Social distancing was impossible, at least in sections closes to the podium. Before the event kicked off, CNN did what I thought was a fair interview with several Trump supporters waiting to gain admission to the arena. One young woman, with pink-highlights in her hair, spoke eloquently about why she loved this country and all its freedoms. “They can’t make you wear a mask,” she noted, and it was “her choice” if she chose not to. She was a grown woman, she said, and knew what she was doing. Freedom of choice. She thought that was good.

This blogger generally agrees.

The problem was more complex. If she was already infected, or if she gets infected at the rally, she is likely to infect others. People she might infect didn’t have a “choice.” She just took a chance—and now she’s coughing or sneezing around them. If she’s one of many Americans covered by the Affordable Care Act (plenty of Trump fans are), any medical bills she might rack up will cost taxpayers who do wear masks.

Also, “choice” is a good word, when talking about abortion and gay marriage rights. But I digress.

____________________

“I have done FAR more than any President in first 3 1/2 years!”

Donald J. Trump

____________________

Beyond the friendly, if mostly-empty, confines of the BOK Arena, the bad news for Donald J. Trump continues to build. The economy is still being battered. The coronavirus isn’t abating. Nor are the Black Lives Matter protests. John Bolton’s new book comes out on Tuesday and Trump’s poll numbers are tanking.

We know the polls are starting to get to Trump, even though he insists he’s the best president this country has ever had. Friday, the neediest man ever to sit in the Oval Office tweeted, “Why are the Democrats allowed to make fake and fraudulent ads. They should be called out. They did nothing when they had the chance. I have done FAR more than any President in first 3 1/2 years!”

Yes, FAR more. Like ten Obamas! Better than Lincoln, Washington and those other guys on Mt. Rushmore, whoever they are.

You know Trump doesn’t know.

Sadly, for the president, even a delusional leader can’t run from bad news forever. A poll in Iowa, a state Trump won by nine points in 2016, shows him leading Joe Biden by a single point, 44% to 43%. Currently, a majority of Iowans, 52%, disapprove of the job the best president in history is doing.

Even more worrisome for Republicans, those polled favor Democratic candidates in three of the state’s four congressional districts. Challenger Theresa Greenfield also has a 46% to 43% lead in the race against incumbent U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst. Ernst was not thought to have to worry. Now she does. Both women have farm roots, which is good in a state like Iowa. Since they’re politicians, don’t be surprised if they show up for campaign debates, dressed in bib overalls and brandishing pitchforks.

*

Anything else we should be thinking about on this fine Father’s Day? Indeed, there is. In the dark of night, so to speak, Friday, Attorney General Bill Barr announced that the top federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York was “resigning.” That prosecutor, Geoffrey S. Berman, a Trump choice for the job, a donor to the Trump 2016 campaign, and a solid Republican, announced soon after that he was not resigning. Mr. Barr explained next that the president was planning to fill the empty seat, which wasn’t empty—so maybe the new guy would sit on Berman’s lap—with Jay Clayton, current chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Clayton, you will be happy to know, if you are a Trump fan, has never served as a prosecutor.

Now, let’s see if we can guess why Barr and his boss might want Berman gone. First, Berman’s office has been investigating two pals of Rudy Giuliani, and Rudy himself.

Second, the move to oust Berman comes just days after allegations lodged by former National Security Adviser John Bolton. Bolton says in his new book—which the Trump administration absolutely tried to ban and burn and have tossed into the deepest trench in the Pacific Ocean—that President Trump promised to do the president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a favor. In 2018, Bolton writes, Trump told Erdogan he would interfere in an investigation into a Turkish company that may have violated trade sanctions against Iran.

Okay, guess which U.S. Attorney’s Office was investigating that Turkish company. Yes! The Southern District of New York.

Third, it was Berman’s office that brought the case against former Trump personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. You remember Cohen. Sent to jail for three years, based on several felony convictions. If you recall, a certain person was named as a “co-conspirator” involved in those felonies, identified only as “Individual 1.”

Who was this unnamed person? Here is a helpful hint from the indictment in United States v. Michael Cohen:

From in or around 2007 through in or around January 2017, MICHAEL COHEN, the defendant, was an attorney and employee of a Manhattan-based real estate company (the “Company”). COHEN held the title of “Executive Vice President” and “Special Counsel” to the owner of the Company (“Individual 1”).

A federal prosecutor cut Epstein a sweetheart deal.

Last, but not least, Berman’s office moved to bring sex-trafficking charges against Jeffrey Epstein, as reprehensible an individual as ever managed to avoid a lengthy term in prison, such as life + 499 years. Even after Epstein’s suicide in jail, where he was awaiting trial, Berman insisted the case be pursued, out of respect for the “brave young women” who had testified against Epstein during grand jury proceedings.

Again, you couldn’t make this up if you were writing a script for a cheap Hollywood movie. Epstein had avoided serious jail time in 2008, when a federal prosecutor named Alex Acosta cut him a sweetheart deal. I doubt you remember, but Acosta was appointed to be Secretary of Labor in President Trump’s first cabinet. Eventually, a federal judge accused Acosta of violating the rights of Epstein’s young victims by cutting the great deal. And Acosta had to resign.

On Fox News, this was described as "packed."

At least one Trump fan in Tulsa wore a mask and practiced social distancing.

Postscript: Your favorite blogger is reluctant to use dehumanizing terminology. (He taught history for decades and knows how such language can be used, to the detriment of humanity. See, for example, General Chivington, who justified the massacre of Native American children at Sand Creek in 1864, saying simply, “Nits make lice.” Or, the governor of Idaho, in 1942, defending the decision to lock up 110,000 Japanese Americans, 7 of every ten U.S. citizens, in relocation camps, but explaining why he didn’t want any of the camps in his state.

“The Japs live like rats,” he sneered, “breed like rats and act like rats.

“These animals taking over our cities…”

So, it was sad to see, during the Tulsa rally, that Eric Trump has turned out to be just a less-jowly version of his dehumanizing dad.

With his lovely wife, Lara, standing by his side, Eric promised the crowd (sparse as it was) that his fine family would “keep the moral fabric of this country” from being torn to shreds. What did Eric think about the Black Lives Matters protesters?

He did not mince his words. “When you watch the nonsense on TV, when you see these animals literally taking over our cities, burning down churches, this isn’t America. That’s not what Americans do,” he said.

“Our” cities? Interesting choice of wording. Protecting what is “ours” from animals? We know Eric likes to go hunting.

At least three racist cops in North Carolina, would be happy to go along on any expedition with Eric.

______

  

Revenge of the Moustache.

6/22/20: If you missed John Bolton’s interview on TV Sunday night, and don’t have plans to buy the book, I can do you a favor and give you the highlights of what he told Martha Raddatz of ABC News.

I can also save you the $32.50 it would cost to buy and the many hours of tedious reading, since critics have been less than glowing in their praise of Mr. Bolton’s writing style.

We do know that more than six million Americans tuned in to watch, making the interview the highest rated program for the night. But that means more than 320 million Americans were busy playing with their cats, watching Korean baseball on EPSN, or wondering when in god’s name the coronavirus crisis will end.

Bolton wondering why he ever took the job.

*

You should know that Bolton’s portrayal of the president is truly unnerving. And these are comments coming from a man who worked closely with the president for 18 months and saw what he was like. (We know at least two former cabinet members came away with similarly stark and negative views of the man who hired them to help “drain the swamp.”) We’ve already highlighted some of Bolton’s claims. (See: 6/15/20; 6/18/20.) My duty, as a blogger, is to shine a light into all the darkest corners of Trump’s dishonest, dangerous administration.

Martha Raddatz is a veteran journalist for ABC News. During the hour-long show she elicits a number of startling responses from Mr. Bolton. “I don’t think he’s fit for office,” Bolton says of President Trump, near the start. “I don’t think he has the competence to carry out the job.” As National Security Adviser, John Bolton’s job was to offer advice on foreign policy and issues from around the world of importance to the nation. Trump’s whole approach to such matters, Bolton said, was that there was no “guiding principle” that he could discern. Trump’s only real focus: “What’s good for Donald Trump’s reelection.”

What was Trump like, when it came to intelligence briefings, Raddatz asked at one point? Most presidents take briefings almost every day. Under this president, Bolton said, “The intelligence briefings took place perhaps once or twice a week.”

Raddatz: Is that unusual?

Bolton: It’s very unusual. They should take place every day. The president should read extensively the material he’s given. It’s not clear to me that he read much of anything.

Bolton added that briefings with Trump were different for another reason, one that shouldn’t surprise anyone who has seen this president in action. Most presidents, Bolton says, listen to the experts. During intelligence briefings with Trump, Donald talked half the time.

(I am guessing here. But I am guessing Trump’s favorite topic was the greatness and wisdom of Donald J. Trump.)

Bolton adds that he saw “an unwillingness on the part of the president, I think, to do systematic learning so that he could make the most informed decisions.” In terms of the day-to-day stuff” a president deals with, it might be okay “to be erratic and impulsive and episodic and anecdotal,” which he says Trump was. In times of crisis “it becomes not only important but potentially dangerous if the president doesn’t maintain the focus on what’s in front of him.”

Raddatz: You say that you were astonished by what you saw. [A] president for whom getting reelected was the only thing that mattered, even if it meant endangering or weakening the nation?

Bolton: Well, I think he was so focused on the reelection that longer term considerations fell by the wayside. So if he thought he could get a photo opportunity with Kim Jong Un at the demilitarized zone in Korea, or he thought he could get a meeting with the ayatollahs from Iran at the United Nations, that there was considerable emphasis on the photo opportunity and the press reaction to it and little or no focus on what such meetings did for the bargaining position of the United States, the strength that our allies saw or didn't see in our position, their confidence that we knew what we were doing. And I think it became very clear to foreign leaders—that they were dealing with a president who just wasn’t serious about many of these issues, to our detriment as a country.

Bolton brings up Trump’s focus on getting a trade deal done with China. He wanted to be able to brag about the deal, but didn’t understand all of the complexities. For Trump, it was all about getting reelected. And for that to happen, he needed the continued support of American farmers. So, a deal with China, for Trump, meant “how many more soybeans” were they willing to purchase.

Trump seemed not to care about, nor understand the global nature of the threat China posed to U.S. interests. “There’s the Chinese advance in nuclear weapons; their weapons designed to counteract American presence in space, their effort to push us out of the South China Sea, and make it a Chinese province,” Bolton tells Raddatz, “which are issues that were very hard to get the president to focus on.”

If you’re a Republican, there’s almost no reason to smile if you are watching the interview.  Mr. Bolton does say, however, that there were some successes for the Trump administration. He was happy, for example, to see that “the Defense Department budget was significantly increased over wholly inadequate defense spending levels in the Obama administration.”

(As a liberal, I keep checking the math on this matter. You can find, for example, charts showing that the U.S. spends more for defense than the next seven, or eight, or even ten next biggest spenders, combined. For Fiscal Year 2016, President Obama sent a request to Congress, asking for $585.3 billion. which you would think would buy a lot of planes and tanks and bombs. Then Trump came in and requested an “historic” increase, to $603 billion for FY 2017. As is so often true, when Trump is juggling numbers, truth was no part of his reckoning. He said he was calling on Congress to agree to a $54 billion dollar increase, or an increase of 10 percent. His own budget director, Mick Mulvaney, demurred, saying, the increase was only 3%.)

Now, back to the interview:

Raddatz: Describe to me, sum up Donald Trump’s foreign policy.

Bolton: Well, I don’t think you can do that. I don’t think there is a policy….

Bolton describes the way policy was made in the Trump White House: “There’s a decision, there’s a decision, there’s another decision.”  There was no “coherence.”

Trump is a cook without a clue.

Or, as this blogger might put it, Trump operates as a cook with no recipe, a cook without a clue. You don’t know—and neither does he—if you’re going to end up with cake or pie a loaf of bread. But none of them will taste particularly good. The result in reality? “I think we’re in a weaker position around the world. I think we have given up leadership in a wide variety of areas,” Mr. Bolton says.

He does say he’s happy Trump got us out of the Iran deal, crafted by President Obama and several other big powers. So there are fig leaves for Republicans to grab onto to cover their policy privates.

Raddatz asks about the end results of such a scattershot approach. Bolton responds: “So I think whether it’s after four years or eight years, whoever succeeds the Trump administration is gonna have an enormous amount of repair work to do. To me, as a lifelong conservative, this is extraordinarily disappointing. It’s a huge missed opportunity.”

Again, he offers a fig leaf, faulting Mr. Obama for “eight years, I think, of very poorly designed foreign and defense policy.”

Then Bolton snatches the leaf away. He describes Trump’s decision to curtail military training exercises (what Trump called “war games”) involving U.S. and South Korean forces, all in an effort to placate Kim Jong-un, as “an act of folly.”

___________________

To be clear, I don’t think North Korea is ever gonna voluntarily give up its nuclear weapons program. 

Former National Security Adviser John Bolton

___________________

Again, Bolton saw the president as a man in pursuit of a “big deal,” even if the details of what that deal involved might not be good for the country. Raddatz asked about Trump’s efforts to cut a deal with Kim Jong-un and the North Koreans.

Raddatz: Why is this diplomatic initiative so important to President Trump, approaching it this way?

Bolton: When we were in Singapore for the first summit, one of the things he said over and over again—was to ask how many press people were gonna be present for his final press conference. And I think the final number, it was a very large number—as it should have been, 400, 500.

By the time we left Singapore, he was at 2,000. And I think that number went up from there. That’s what he was focused on [emphasis added]. That he had had this enormous photo opportunity—first time an American president has met with the leader of North Korea.

And he got enormous attention from it. I thought it was a strategic mistake. The U.S. itself got nothing from that. Donald Trump got a lot. The United States gave much more legitimacy to this dictator. And didn’t accomplish anything toward any meaningful discussion on the elimination of their nuclear weapons program.

To be clear, I don’t think North Korea is ever gonna voluntarily give up its nuclear weapons program. 

Bolton was also surprised by the way Trump dealt with autocratic world leaders. With Kim Jong-un, he lathered on compliments. “Every president has a style,” Bolton told Raddatz. “But the idea that—just this oleaginous—layer of compliments to this brutal dictator would convince him that you could make a deal with Donald Trump, I thought, was both strikingly naïve and dangerous.”

(Word for the day: oleaginous: oily, greasy, obsequious.)

Raddatz: And when President Trump talks about Kim Jong Un, he talks about these love letters, and these bromance. And—we love each other. Do you think he really believes that Kim Jong Un loves him?

Bolton: I don’t know any other explanation. I think Kim Jong Un gets a huge laugh out of this.

Raddatz asks Bolton about a story from his book. Did President Trump ask Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to be sure to get a copy of an Elton John CD, “Rocket Man,” to the North Korean dictator?

(Available at Walmart for $13.28.)

Bolton: Well, he gave him an Elton John CD, I think. And he tried to explain that calling him Rocketman was actually a compliment. And I don’t think we’ve heard from Kim Jong Un what he thought of Elton John’s song. But that would—that’ll be an interesting tidbit in history. But this is the kind of focus that leads you to wonder whether there’s an ability to discern what’s cosmetic here from what’s truly serious.

Raddatz: And you think what he did there is dangerous?

Bolton: I think when you’re dealing with the power of nuclear weapons in the hands of an irrational regime, not taking that as seriously as he should have was a big mistake.

(This blogger might suggest that since Kim’s regime is working hard to float a submarine capable of carrying nuclear-armed missiles, that Music Critic Don next send his pal a copy of the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine.”)

This guy still has all his nukes; and he's building more.

  

“I think Putin thinks he can play him like a fiddle.”

Bolton tells Raddatz he wrote the 500-page book because you can’t get a complete picture of the issues from tweets, op-ed pieces in the newspapers, or even TV interviews like this. He says that our worst enemies, China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, have all taken the measure of the man in the Oval Office: “But they see him as somebody who’s fundamentally not aware of the trade-offs he’s making.”

Raddatz: So on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate Trump’s ability to make a deal on North Korea?

Bolton: Well, I think it turned out, clearly at this point, to be zero. 

It’s possible that Bolton would rate Trump’s handling of threats from Russia by assigning the president a negative number. Raddatz doesn’t pose the question that way. She does ask about Trump’s relationship with Putin.

“I think Putin thinks he can play him like a fiddle,” Bolton says. “And I think he sees that he’s not faced with a serious adversary here. And he works on him, and he works on him, and he works on him.” 

Bolton adds that Putin “didn’t get everything he wanted….But I don’t think he’s worried about Donald Trump.”

Raddatz asks, specifically, about Trump’s disastrous performance at the Helsinki summit in 2018. Even most Republicans were appalled, as was this blogger, who had to rub his eyes in disbelief. I mean, I wasn’t surprised that Trump sounded like a fool.

But when he stood next to Vladimir Putin, and said he believed the Russian dictator when he said Russian didn’t interfere in the 2016 election, even though U.S. intelligence absolutely said he did…

I mean, holy shit! For once, I agree with John Bolton completely. He called it a “stunning moment.”

Raddatz: You said you were frozen in your seat watching that.

Bolton: I…I…I…I….I thought I wouldn’t get up. I didn’t know what to do. And it was…I describe in the book, we went through a lot of gyrations. And I say…to try and explain it…I thought Dan Coats, then the director of national intelligence, was close to resignation.

Ultimately, he didn’t resign. And the president…found a way of…of tryin’ to get out of it. But the fact is that the Russian threat to our elections and the threat from China, Iran and North Korea in different forms of cyber-attacks is very, very real.

And I viewed this before I joined the administration. I viewed it while I was there, and I view it today. These are attacks on the Constitution itself. These are acts of war against the United States. 

All Trump cared about was winning again in 2020.

In response to another question, Mr. Bolton said he thought the Russians were still doing everything they could “to stir mistrust, to undercut the legitimacy of our democratic institutions.” This, he explained, “helps to paralyze America. And a weaker, more paralyzed, more divided America is in Russia’s interests. They’re having great success at it.”

It might be nice to hear the president give similar warning.

He won’t of course. It serves his political interest to divide his own citizens. Attack half, or a little more than half.

Win office again, with 46% of the vote.

Raddatz asks Bolton about something he wrote in his book, about how other world leaders had “marked” the president.

Bolton: Yeah. I think—I think many of these foreign leaders—mastered the art of ringing his bells. And some were better at it than others. Chancellor Merkel of Germany had no success. I don’t think she tried. I think she just tried to say what her position was, like a normal leader would do, and expect a response. Didn’t get it. But the dictators seem to be better at it than the leaders of the democracy. And I just hope that pattern is not gonna persist if he’s reelected.

(Translation: Trump was easily duped. Our enemies, in particular, were able to flatter the Orange Fool, and bend him in the direction they wanted.)

Using national security to advance his own political position.

Raddatz: You wrote that Ukraine was a perfect example of Trump working for his own best personal interests. Explain.

Bolton: [Trump believed the previous government in Ukraine had been] part of a conspiracy to take him down….

But he wanted a probe of Joe Biden in exchange for delivering the security assistance that was part of the congressional legislation that had been passed several years before. So that in his mind, he was bargaining to get the investigation, using the resources of the federal government, which I found very disturbing.

And I found it using national security to advance his own political position. Now, in the course of the impeachment affair, the defense of the president was he cares about the general corruption in the Ukraine. And that was on his mind. That’s utter nonsense.

There’s corruption all over the world. The corruption he was concerned about in Ukraine was that they tried to take him down. And that, to me, was something that I found very disturbing. So did a lot of other people in very senior levels in the government. I describe that in the book. And our objective was to find a way to get the president to approve the security assistance, the military aid, and get it delivered, and not tie it to an investigation of his political opponents.

Bolton tells Ms. Raddatz that he “believes it was widely understood at top levels of the U.S. government that a quid pro quo was in the works.” If you remember the impeachment hearings in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the sham “trial” in the U.S. Senate, you might remember that Republican lawmakers like Sen. Lindsey Graham, Sen. Ron Johnson, Rep. Devin Nunes, and Rep. Jim Jordan were all on record. They all agreed there was no quid pro quo. And Democrats were dastards for saying there was. But here was Bolton, making it clear. There was.

Raddatz: Can you tell us who else understood that?

Bolton: Well, I think Secretary Pompeo understood. I think the Pentagon understood. I think the intelligence community understood. I think people in the White House understood. He wasn’t—president wasn’t shy in voicing the view of the Ukraine—that, that’s what he wanted.

“And it’s not the first time, either.”

Raddatz: I want to go to some specifics on Ukraine. August 20 comes a key conversation you had with President Trump about the security assistance. What exactly did the president say to you?

Bolton: Well, he directly linked the provision of that assistance with the investigation. My objective here, people in the aftermath, in light of the impeachment investigation thought that those of us like Pompeo and [Mark] Esper and myself should have been sort of junior woodchuck FBI agents looking for evidence of impeachable offenses.

What we were all tryin’ to do was get the assistance released to the Ukraine. Because it was in America’s interests to do so. We’d worry about the Biden thing later. And I told the White House counsel, I told the Justice Department about these conversations. That’s what I thought I should do. Because I was very concerned about them. But my objective as national security advisor was to carry out the president’s own policy since he had agreed to the legislation to get this assistance sent.

Raddatz: Back to the August 20 conversation. What exactly do you remember him saying?

Bolton: Well, I lay out in the book my recollection of the sentence. But the linkage, the specificity of the linkage, I think, was unmistakable.

Raddatz: He said in the book, he said he wasn’t in favor of sending them anything until all the Russia investigation materials related to Clinton and Biden had been turned over.

Bolton: Right.

Raddatz: So this was not the first time you heard the president himself directly link the investigation and the Ukraine aid? Or was it?

Bolton: No. There were other conversations, some of which involved Rudy Giuliani, or references to Rudy Giuliani or others—where this connection was becoming clear. The conversation in August was the crispest indication of the linkage. But indirectly, and by clear implication, it had been growing for quite some time.

Raddatz: The New York Times reported on that August conversation. And the president denied it, tweeting, “I never told John Bolton that the aid to Ukraine was tied to investigations into Democrats, including the Bidens.” Is the president lying?

Bolton: Yes, he is. And it’s not the first time, either. This is why I think it’s important to get these kinds of facts out on the table. 

…There was no doubt this was political. And what he was able to do during impeachment was convince people that somehow he only had the issue of corruption in the Ukraine in mind. And that was the least of his concerns.

*

Raddatz asks Mr. Bolton why he decided not to testify before the House or Senate, since he has now made it clear he found the president’s behavior “deeply disturbing, possibly criminal.” Didn’t he have an obligation to “tell the American people about this,” she asks?

Bolton tells her he was “fully prepared” to testify, if he “got a subpoena like everybody else who testified.”

And if you really care, he says he thinks the Democrats in the House of Representatives badly mishandled the impeachment proceedings. “I think it was impeachment malpractice,” Mr. Bolton says.

He says Democrats rushed the process, to fit their political schedule. “Now, I find that conduct almost as bad and somewhat equivalent to Trump,” he tells Raddatz. In his view, they failed in “one of the gravest constitutional responsibilities the House of Representatives has, the power of impeachment.”

That, comment about Democrats being “almost as bad and somewhat equivalent to Trump” makes the Fox News headlines (below).

But it’s by no means Bolton’s main point.

Bolton isn’t pulling any punches. He tells Ms. Raddatz he’s fearful if Trump should manage to secure a second term. Impeachment didn’t sober him. The president, Bolton says, “didn’t learn lessons from it, other than that he could get away with it, which leaves only the last guardrail…the election this November.”

Raddatz: This is what Michael Purpura said during the impeachment hearings, the president’s legal counsel: “Not a single witness testified that the president himself said that there was any connection between any investigations and security assistance, a presidential meeting, or anything else.” You could have been that person providing that testimony.

Bolton: Yeah. And it would not have made any difference. The…

Raddatz: How can you say that? How do you know…

Bolton: Because minds—because minds were made up on Capitol Hill.

Raddatz: You also use the phrase in the book that Trump’s pattern looked like obstruction of justice as a way of life, which we couldn’t accept. Obstruction of justice as a way of life?

Bolton: Look, these were things that I could see some evidence of. And they bothered me greatly. I talked to the attorney general about them. I talked to the counsel to the president about them. I’ve talked to other members of the cabinet about them and relayed my concerns. And they were very much on my mind.

Raddatz: So you were and still are concerned that some of these things were criminal, impeachable, what?

Bolton: I think the potential is there. I think it requires more investigation. It was not my job to be a FBI investigator, or a [Capitol] Hill investigator. I had plenty of other things to do. I referred the matters to the people whose responsibilities they were. And it was their responsibility to go from there.

___________________

“The line here that was crossed was trying to use a foreign government and to use the resources of the United States government to pressure that foreign government to do something to help Donald Trump politically.”

John Bolton

___________________

Mr. Bolton reiterated points he had already made, regarding Vladimir Putin. Unlike Trump, the Russian leader prepares rigorously for meetings. He agreed, when Raddatz asked about the fiddle line, “And I can just see the smirk when [Putin] knows he’s got [Trump] following his line. It’s almost transparent.” 

Raddatz asks about claims in the book, that Trump was stunningly uninformed.

Bolton: Presidents don’t come to the office—no president does, knowing everything. So it’s no rap on anybody to say, “Well, they don’t know about strategic arms limitations talks.” But when you’re dealing with somebody like Putin, who has made his life understanding Russia’s strategic position in the world—against Donald Trump, who doesn’t enjoy reading about these issues or learning about them—it’s a very difficult position for America to be in[.]

Raddatz: And you talk about other adversaries and dictators who looked at Donald Trump in the same way and marked him. Who are they?

Bolton: Well, I think Xi Jinping would be right up there with Putin in his ability to look at Donald Trump and say, “This is somebody that we can move ultimately on our side.” 

Bolton talks again about the Ukraine debacle. He understands that going after political opponents is not abnormal. “Politically, that’s fine. That’s what politicians do,” he says. “The line here that was crossed was trying to use a foreign government and to use the resources of the United States government to pressure that foreign government to do something to help Donald Trump politically.”

He compares what Trump was hoping to pull off—to frame the Bidens in necessary—to prosecutions under Josef Stalin. He mentions, “Lavrentiy Beria [head of the secret police during Soviet times, who] used to say to Stalin, ‘You show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.’”

He talks about Rudy Giuliani in somewhat the same role. He tells Raddatz, “There are more fairytales coming out of Ukraine than I think people can imagine,” many pushed by the Russians.

Rudy believed them all.

Trump believed Rudy.

Bolton says that the United States—or to be more precise, Trump—blew an opportunity. When the people of Ukraine elected a new president, the  “overwhelming feeling of the Ukrainian people” was that they wanted corruption ended. They wanted to be “tied more closely into the West.”

Instead, Trump placed Volodymyr Zelensky, the new Ukrainian president, in an untenable position

Bolton throws out another fig leaf, at least. He says he doesn’t think Vice President Pence knew there was a quid pro quo in the works. He says Mr. Pence worked hard to get Ukraine the assistance. Later, he says he thinks Pence has done “terrific work” in his role in the Trump administration.

Raddatz asks Bolton about other incidents that “raised red flags” for Bolton. Let’s keep it (relatively) short, and simply say there were others. Trump basically promised to do Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan a favor and kill an investigation into Halkbank, a Turkish financial institution.  

“And the president said to Erdogan at one point,” Bolton tells his host, “‘Look, those prosecutors in New York are Obama people. Wait till I get my people in and then we’ll take care of this.’ And I thought to myself—and I’m a Department of Justice alumnus myself—‘I’ve never heard any president say anything like that. Ever.’” Bolton says Erdogan and his family use that bank “like slush fund.” He couldn’t see any way that going easy on Halkbank benefited the United States.

He had the same kind of reaction when Trump told President Xi Jinping he’d do him a favor and “rescind the penalties” the Commerce Department had imposed on ZTE, a Chinese company that was violating American laws regarding Iran sanctions. You might cut the Chinese a deal for strategic reasons, Bolton admitted. “It’s quite another just to do it off the cuff, on the whim, give your buddy Xi Jinping a benefit.” Mr. Bolton said—again—that he found this “very troubling.”

Raddatz: …When you put all that together, how can anyone come away, after reading your book, and make any conclusion other than that you don’t think he is fit for office?

Bolton: I don’t think he’s fit for office. I don’t think he has the competence to carry out the job….I’m not gonna vote for him in November….I don't think he should be president.

“The empty chair behind the resolute desk in the Oval Office.”

Raddatz: I wanna close with where the country is right now and a couple of things….We’re in the middle of a pandemic. How do you think the president has handled that?

Bolton: I think he’s handled it very poorly….The main problem the administration has had with coronavirus is the empty chair behind the resolute desk in the Oval Office. In early January, people, whether on the staff of the National Security Council or the Centers for Disease Control and elsewhere were saying, “This is a potential problem.”

Donald Trump didn’t wanna hear about it. He didn’t wanna hear about it because he didn’t wanna hear bad things about Xi Jinping. He didn’t wanna hear bad things about China covering up what had happened with the outset of the disease. He didn’t wanna hear bad things about the Chinese economy that could affect the fantastic trade deal he was working on, No. 1.

And No. 2, he didn’t wanna hear anything about an exogenous variable that could have a negative effect on the American economy, which he saw as his ticket to reelection….

And I think we lost a lotta time because of that. That is an example of making policy out of your hip pocket, without systematic consideration of what needs to be done, despite being warned by the people charged with making the warnings that it was coming.

Raddatz: And his response to the killing of George Floyd?

Bolton: Well, I think the issue of resolving racial tensions in America is one that’s not gonna be solved overnight. I think the president’s reaction—from his own political point of view, which again, is the only thing he thinks about—was very misguided.

Raddatz: How do you think history will remember Donald Trump?

Bolton: I hope it will remember him as a one-term president who didn’t plunge the country irretrievably into a downward spiral we can’t recover from. We can get over one term. I have absolute confidence—even if it’s not the miracle of a conservative Republican being elected in November.

Two terms, I’m more troubled about…

Raddatz: You say President Trump is unfit for office and you’re talking about the election, do you worry about his commitment to the democratic process?

Bolton: I don’t think he fully understands the democratic process. I don’t think he fully understands the Constitution. I don’t necessarily view that as malevolent. But I view it as very (laughs) concerning that he does not appreciate the proper role of the presidency. 

In other words, you can see why Team Trump did everything they possibly could to delay or hopefully kill the release of John Bolton’s book.

___

6/23/20: The bad news for the country keeps piling up. GNC, the health and wellness retailer, announces it will file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and close between 800 and 1,200 of its stores. There are estimates that as many as 25,000 U.S. stores will close this year. The International Monetary Fund now predicts that the global economy will contract by 4.9% in 2020. The estimated recover in 2021 is also expected to be weaker than predicted as recently as April. If there’s a major new outbreak of the coronavirus, the recovery will shrivel to almost nothing.

Meanwhile, in a speech to a group called “Students for Trump,” at the packed Dream City megachurch in Phoenix, Arizona, the 3,000 young people in attendance were clearly counting on God to protect them from the coronavirus. Masks were conspicuous by their near-total absence. Social distancing was impossible. But Trump was happy because people were cheering him again. He told his listeners that they were the defenders of our culture. He said they would never “kneel to the radical left.” He warned, without actually citing proof, that Democrats wanted to let everyone vote, “even if they’re not citizens.” The way the virus is spreading lately—with Trump getting a large, well-earned share of the blame—and the way the polls are running, the Democrats won’t need help from non-citizen voters, even if they did want it.

And they don’t.

With five months left until the election, you never know what will happen. But GOP leaders have to be sweating. A poll of Montana voters last month showed Trump favored over Biden by five points (45%-40%), but in a state he won by 20 in 2016. Even more ominously—if your name is Milksop Mitch McConnell—former Governor Steve Bullock, a Democrat, had a seven-point lead in the same poll, over incumbent U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, 46%-39%.

 ___

“Knowledge comes from the most unusual places.”

6/24/20: The coronavirus continues to spread to every corner of the land—and President Trump can’t seem to get out of his own way. At his campaign rally in Tulsa, Saturday, he told adoring fans that Covid-19 testing was “a double-edged sword.” If you tested more, you found more evidence that the disease was spreading.

If the disease was spreading, it made us look bad, compared to other countries, “us” meaning: Trump.

“I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down please,’” the president announced. And the MAGA crowd cheered.

But reality is a harsh place to spend your workdays if you’re a delusional fool, like President Trump.

First, he took criticism, even from Republicans, for saying he told his people to slow down testing.

Then multiple White House aides claimed Trump was only joking, or speaking “tongue in cheek.”

Then Trump told a reporter from the Christian Broadcasting Network, that he wasn’t joking, because he doesn’t kid around.

Then the New York City Marathon, the largest in the world, was canceled for this year. The coronavirus, you know.

Then there was talk among leaders of the European Union nations of banning travelers from the United States, until we get our act together. But we can’t get our act together, because our president is more focused on saving the statues of Confederate generals, than saving the lives of his own citizens from the virus.

Today, he tweeted stupidly:

Very sad to see States allowing roving gangs of wise guys, anarchists & looters, many of them having no idea what they are doing, indiscriminately ripping down our statues and monuments to the past. Some are great works of art, but all represent our History & Heritage, both...

....the good and the bad. It is important for us to understand and remember, even in turbulent and difficult times, and learn from them. Knowledge comes from the most unusual of places!

Books for example! Team Trump is now fighting hard to block Mary Trump, the president’s niece, from publishing a tell-all about Clan Narcissism. As People magazine explains, her book, Too Much and Never Enough, will be, “according to her publisher, a ‘revelatory, authoritative portrait of Donald J. Trump and the toxic family that made him.’” The subtitle of the book: “How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.” That gives you a sense of why the president might not want the book to ever reach America’s library shelves. Today, Robert Trump, his brother, filed a motion in court, claiming the book would violate a confidentiality agreement, signed by Mary Trump in 2001. According to her lawyers, however, that agreement covers only matters related to a fight over the president’s father’s will.

You have to imagine that President Trump is wishing his niece would fall into a bed of quicksand along with the original manuscript for her book. Mary Trump has already admitted that she was behind the leak of some of Uncle Donald’s tax documents to The New York Times in May 2019.

It should be interesting to find out what other documents she might want to share. Maybe we’ll finally learn: Does Donald J. Trump pay any federal income taxes? You know—paying his share so that we can all drive on good roads, so our air and water are protected and our military supplied with all the bombs and bullets it needs.

___

God picks Trump! COVID-19 not going away.

6/25/20: With the coronavirus acting as a giant brake on the economy, we continue to inch toward recovery. Today we learned that another 1.5 million Americans filed for unemployment. This marks the fourteenth week in a row marred by more than a million claims for benefits.

To put that in perspective, I’m 71 years old. The worst month for job losses in my lifetime would be 838,000 in October 1949. We’ve topped that fourteen weeks in succession.

Now that the economy is opening back up, hopefully we will learn, once the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports, that as many as 15 million men and women (that’s my guess, though) went back to work in June.

It is estimated that 19.5 million remain unemployed.

Mark Hamrick, a senior economic analyst at Bankrate, explained our national dilemma. “Three months into the unprecedented economic downturn ignited by the COVID-19 outbreak,” he said, “the nation’s job market is mired in uncharted and heartbreaking territory.”

He was hopeful that “the worst of the economic downturn” might already be behind us. “But,” he warned, “the ultimate cure for what ails the economy is linked to medical solutions such as vaccines which are progressing, but still apparently months away from widespread availability.”

*

Well, don’t you fret! Because—according to Fox News—we’re going to be saved! Maybe not the godless liberals, though.

President Trump this week that he was honored to be told that God put him “in office for such a time as this.” He said Ben Carson, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, told him back in 2016, he was going to win the election “because God put you here for this occasion.” Plus, who could forget—as reported by Fox News—that in May, two college professors reported findings of a study they conducted. It turned out “that 49 percent of those frequently attending worship services believed that Trump was anointed by God to be president.”

Unfortunately, God apparently anointed Trump to be president and then do a terrible job.

So how is the battle against the coronavirus going?

____________________

That means the U.S. is averaging 24,442 cases per day in June—which is worse than in May, when we averaged 23,394.

____________________

Not so great. And thanks for asking. A large part of the problem, currently, is that Trump and his fans have decided masks and social distancing are for sissy liberals. But the disease continues to spread—and so long as it spreads, so long does the economy continue to stagger. We learned on June 19, that CDC had registered 32,218 new cases of the virus that day. That was the worst single-day tally since April 25. But the next day was a little worse: 32,411 cases. Then we had 27,616 and 26,657 cases. On June 23, the number rose to 34,313.

June 24: 37,667.

That brought the total of confirmed cases for the month to 586,602, with CDC numbers always posted a day behind.

That means the U.S. is averaging 24,442 cases per day in June—which is worse than in May, when we averaged 23,394.

The death toll is, mercifully, slowing, but as of Thursday evening, 125,796 Americans have died of COVID-19.

*

A large part of the problem relates to the president, himself, who has provided no leadership in terms of reducing the spread. Rather, he has downplayed the threat of death (coronavirus is really like flu), claimed his administration had it under control (it didn’t), said it would go away in April (nope), said when it got warm the virus would be gone like a miracle (no miracle in sight) and, most recently, said testing is overrated and makes us look bad. So, his followers don’t think they need masks, or need to social distance, so long as they have bleach to drink.

Reality, however, can be cruel. COVID-19 has been brutal. Last weekend, WAFB, Channel 9 News, reported that Louisiana health authorities had discovered that three bars in Baton Rouge—JL’s Place, Reggie’s, and Fred’s—all popular hangouts for LSU students, were at the center of a fresh outbreak. More than 100 young patrons and employees had tested positive for the virus. Health authorities explained that anyone who had visited these bars over the weekend should consider themselves exposed and self-quarantine. The spread to girlfriends, boyfriends, roommates, parents, grandparents, and the community at large was all but guaranteed.

The Oxford Eagle reported that the University of Mississippi was banning all fraternity and sorority rush parties after 162 students tested positive for COVID-19. “The director of the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life, Dr. Arthur Doctor, stated in an email that his office has ‘instructed all fraternity chapters to refrain from hosting recruitment or social events in Oxford or any other cities.’”

Last week, South Carolina, health officials warned that young people could contract the disease and end up seriously ill.

As of today, 4,160 of the 22,608 confirmed cases in South Carolina are people ages 21 to 30. This accounts for 18.4% of all confirmed cases in the state. Additionally, people in their teens account for 7.0% of confirmed cases.

 “The increases that we’re seeing serve as a warning that young adults and youth are not immune to COVID-19,” said Dr. Brannon Traxler, DHEC physician consultant. “They also tell us that younger South Carolinians are not taking social distancing seriously.”

According to WYFF, Channel 4, South Carolina set records for infections three days in a row, with 987 new cases last Thursday, 1,081 last Friday, and 1,155 last Saturday. Seven of every ten hospital beds in the state were filled, including 673 patients with COVID-19. The good news is that states are ramping up testing—and identifying more cases. But the bad news is that in South Carolina increasing numbers were coming back positive: 16.2% in the that state. Clemson University, among the favorites to win the NCAA football crown in 2020—if there’s even a season—had to drop back and punt after 28 players and staff tested positive.

In Oregon, we learned again, how packing people into tight spaces can lead to super-spreader events. After the Lighthouse Pentecostal Church ignored warnings and held services for several hundred on May 24, the coronavirus erupted in Union County, in the northeastern part of the state.

Until then, Union had been almost untouched by the virus. A month later, 236 cases had been traced back to that church.

Where did faith leaders at Lighthouse get the idea to go ahead and return to normal worship? In an Instagram post, on May 22, they announced that “in accordance” with President Trump’s demands that churches be allowed to reopen, they would be back in action by Memorial Day.

And…cough, cough…they were.

*

Meanwhile, Florida broke its one-day record for most confirmed infections last Saturday, breaking the old record set last Friday, which broke the old record, set last Thursday. Case numbers, to be exact: 3,207, 3,822, 4,049.

Then, the record was blown to bits, with 5,511 new cases confirmed on June 24. “We have to take this very seriously,” one health expert explained. “We have a much worse problem now than at any point since the outbreak started in Florida.” Today was equally grim, with 5,504 additional infections.

Like many GOP leaders, Gov. Ron DeSantis at first tried to claim his state was doing great. The numbers were going up because the Florida Health Department was doing more testing.

You know: Trumpspeak.

The Orlando Sentinel shot that idea down, noting that the daily positive rate was 12.5% last Thursday, compared to 5.7% for the year.

Since 20.5% of Floridians are 65 or older, you can understand why DeSantis has a growing problem on his hands.

And, if you’re young, you might not die if you get the virus—but you might end up hospitalized and get a nice bill from your doctor. The Miami Herald recently began a story this way,

Sixteen people walked into a Florida bar. And they think they walked out with coronavirus.

It’s no joke.

All sixteen attended a birthday party at a Jacksonville bar. Not only did they enjoy ice cream and cake, they hugged and kissed, and now they’re all infected. At least seven employees of the bar have tested positive.

And that is how you spread the coronavirus.

Erica Crisp, a 40-year-old healthcare worker and one of the partiers, admitted her mistake on Facebook: “Welp, Florida opened back up and my butt should’ve stayed home this past weekend cause I just tested positive for the damn COVID. #IKnowBetter #MyFault #WearYourMasksPeople.”

According to some health projections, Florida now “has all the makings of the next large epicenter.” 

*

Texas offers additional proof—that it’s not just blue states that end up getting hammered. This is especially true when red state citizens decide they’re different and they’ll stay safe if they go ahead and do what they always do.

And can we just say that birthday parties might not be a good idea right about now. Eighteen relatives in one North Texas family attended a surprise party for a daughter-in-law. The real surprise came later, when it turned out one of the attendees brought both a gift and some coronavirus germs. All eighteen persons caught the disease and three ended up in the hospital.

Like Florida, Texas has seen a disastrous rise in cases recently, and even if our president does think testing should be reduced, this headline from Texas might sober even the White House fool:

BUSINESSES FEAR THE WORST AS COVID-19 CASES CONTINUE TO RISE.

From North Texas, where a birthday party went awry, down to the Rio Grande, the disease is spreading.

Health officials [in the Rio Grande Valley] urge people to wear masks and practice social distancing to lower the spread. Some business owners we spoke to fear people have become too comfortable and forgot we are still in a pandemic. Doctors urge people to take this matter seriously.

“Our deaths have doubled in three weeks. We have people that are 40-years-old, 50-years-old, 60-years-old dying. Our average age of a person turning positive is no longer 60 or 70’s now it’s in the 30’s,” said Dr. [Ivan] Melendez.

Governor Greg Abbott warned yesterday that the state was facing a “massive outbreak” of disease. Tuesday, state health officials reported 5,489 new cases, the worst day for Texas to that point. Then, Wednesday, there were 5,511 new cases; and the number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 also reached a new high: 4,389. As with several of the hardest hit states, it wasn’t just increased testing (as Trump claims) that made the numbers look bad.

On June 23, the rate of positive results in Texas was 10.4%, the highest since April, when the state shut down. (See chart, below.)

Texas positivity rates ares rising again and the state has way more cases.

*

Here’s an oddity related to the spread of COVID-19. Whereas President Trump seems to think we shouldn’t bother testing, those entering his august presence are always tested.

Sheriff Mark Lamb, of Pinal County, Arizona, made headlines last month when he said he would not enforce a state-wide stay-at-home order. Last week, he flew to Washington D.C. to take part in a White House ceremony, where the president would sign a toothless “reform bill” on policing. When Lamb arrived at the White House, however, he told reporters “one of the first things” that Trump aides did was test him for COVID-19. White House protocol, he was told. Anyone coming within a football field of the Orange Buffoon has to be tested.

So, here’s how it goes:

1. President Buffoon is safe behind a wall of testing.

2. That man loves walls.

3. Lamb tested positive.

4. Arizona is one of several states currently experiencing an explosive new spread of the disease.

We now know, Arizona health authorities have seen huge increases in reported cases since Republican Gov. Doug Ducey threw open all the doors on May 15, and said the state was back in business. You can understand his dilemma, and the desire of all Arizonans, and all the rest of us, to return to normal. It would be nice, however, if our leaders at least faced facts.

Banner Health, Arizona’s largest hospital system, warned on June 8, that they were seeing a steady rise in COVID-19 cases. “Our ICUs are very busy caring for the sickest of the sick who are battling COVID-19. Since May 15, ventilated COVID-19 patients have quadrupled,” a spokesperson noted. The hospital chain offered up the usual list of suggestions for containing the spread—including “avoid gatherings of more than ten people.” And this was June 8.

Since then, Arizona’s problem has metastasized. On March 21, the state announced its first 41 cases. Only twice, before May 28, did the state record more than 500 in a single day. Since then: 501, 702, 790, 681, 187, 1,127, 973, 530, 1,579, 1,119, 1,438, 789, 618, 1,556, 1,412, 1,654, 1,233, 1,014, 2,392, 1,827, and on June 18, a record-shattering 2,519.

That record lasted for twenty-four hours. On June 19, the state reported 3,246 cases of the virus.

Then three more bad days: 3,109, 2,592, 2,196.

And on June 23 the record tumbled again, with Arizona reporting an additional 3,593 new cases.

June 24 was only slightly better, with 3,056 cases.

Naturally, the governor has been forced to say he’s not worried. The hospitals are ready; the state, he says, is just doing a better job of testing. It’s increased testing that seems to show infections are rising.

Before the stay-at-home order was lifted, we know 5% of Arizonans who were tested turned up positive. According to Johns Hopkins University, the positivity rate in the state is now 23%, “topping the charts,” as it were.

Other states with the worst, current positivity rates:

South Carolina            16.2%

Mississippi                   16.1%

Florida                        14.4%

Utah                            13.2%

Texas                           11.4%

Nevada                        10.2%

Georgia                       10.1%

___

The innumerable crimes, follies and lies of Donald J. Trump.

6/26-30/20: No single individual can track the innumerable crimes, follies and lies of Donald J. Trump and his misfit crew of mediocrities. But it would appear, as June grinds to a sad end, that most Americans have had their fill of Trump’s divisive style of “leadership.” .

His approval ratings are dismal. His disapproval ratings are approaching a high for his presidency:

Typically, on Sunday, we had the president retweeting a video of fans in golf carts parading down a Florida street. Anti-Trump protesters were out in force and the profanity was flying. One Trump loyalist pumped his fist and shouted, “White power! White power!”

It was impossible to miss that howl, if you watched the video provided by CNN. Yet the White House claimed the president didn’t see it.

He just randomly retweeted it?

I wondered. If the clip were longer could it be that Trump missed that shout? Perhaps the anti-Trump forces drowned it out. Maybe the clip on CNN was doctored or the snippet might be taken out of context. I found a longer clip on Snopes, the fact-checking site. It was still impossible to miss. I checked again and found the original tweet. Yeah. Still impossible to miss, even though that one liberal granny is a real potty mouth.

*

Of course, June ended with the president seemingly in need of a visit an optometrist. A report surfaced this week that the Russians offered Taliban fighters a bounty if they killed American and British troops in Afghanistan. The New York Times claimed that Trump had been briefed on the matter weeks ago. Yet nothing had been done to challenge the Russians.

Trump’s current Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe (who earned his job by smooching the president’s fat posterior during the impeachment hearings) came to the president’s defense. He said neither Trump nor VP Pence had been briefed on the matter.

Didn’t see it. Didn’t hear about it. Didn’t read it.

Naturally, Trump attacked The New York Times for publishing the story. White House Press Secretary and taxpayer-funded liar Kayleigh McEnany also backed his play. Trump wasn’t briefed! “This does not speak to the merit of the alleged intelligence,” she admitted, “but to the inaccuracy of the New York Times story erroneously suggesting that President Trump was briefed on this matter.”

In other words, the report of Russian bounties existed. The President of the United States just didn’t see it. The Associated Press reported next that top White House officials were alerted in early 2019 about the plot. Somehow, Trump didn’t hear it. Next, the Times learned that the Brits had been notified of the threat. Trump didn’t know it. It didn’t help Trump’s case when officials said the bounty plot had been included in at least one of the president’s daily briefings “sometime this spring.” It didn’t help when the president’s former National Security Adviser, John Bolton, said, basically, “Yeah, I told him about this, a year ago.”

The president was forced to adopt a new line of defense. Maybe there was a warning in one of his briefings. Well, he didn’t read his briefings! He was always too busy. He liked people to tell him what was in those written briefings. Reading was hard! And no one told him about the Russians, except maybe Bolton, that “washed up Creepster” and “lowlife,” as Trump now described him.

It didn’t matter anyway. The information in the briefing wasn’t “actionable,” the president claimed, and even though he hadn’t heard about it or been told about it, nor had an angel come to him in the night to reveal it, he was convinced the information wasn’t accurate. McEnany told reporters that U.S. intelligence agencies didn’t agree on all the details of the plot. So, they decided not to bother a busy man, like President Trump, with such trivialities.

You know, American troops being killed for money.

Plus, Trump had other matters of import on his mind. Like saving the statues of Confederate generals—who used to work hard to kill U.S. troops—and did so with alarming regularity.

*

If Trump wasn’t briefed, what exactly was he doing with all his free time during the month of June?

The president’s state of mind is “fragile.”

Last Friday, he tweeted that he would be skipping a weekend trip to his private golf resort at Bedminster, New Jersey. He would be busy fighting off statue-breakers, hitting them with his putting iron.

I was going to go…this weekend, but wanted to stay in Washington, D.C. to make sure LAW & ORDER is enforced. The arsonists, anarchists, looters, and agitators have been largely stopped...I am doing what is necessary to keep our communities safe — and these people will be brought to Justice!

Sadly, Mr. Trump’s resolve fizzled within hours. Saturday morning, he headed over to his private resort in Virginia, where he played Round #272 of golf, since taking office. He had so much fun he went golfing again Sunday.

Round #273.

Golf tucker out Trump, and he decided to take it easy on Monday, too, with his only scheduled business: “Lunch with the Vice President.”

The good Lord knows, Trump is in need of R & R lately, because he’s having a miserable time being president. According to Fox News, GOP operatives say the president’s state of mind is “fragile.” He’s been feeling glum lately, as his approval ratings tank. According to Charles Gasparino, Republican insiders believe, if the numbers don’t improve, the president might pull a Sarah Palin. He might just drop out of the race.

Two weeks ago, Trump was talking about suing CNN (see: 6/19/20) because he didn’t like the poll numbers they were putting up, regarding the contest with Joe Biden.

Now, the polls agree. If the election were today, Trump would be ousted from the White House faster than you could say, “Donald J. Trump is a numbskull who should read his briefings.”

Trump could recover by November. Right now, the polls look grim for him.
And he's incapable of admitting it.

  

*

In other news, the Rolling Stones have threatened to sue the president’s campaign, after a cease and desist order to stop using their music at rallies was ignored.

At the rate Trump is going, he’s going to be reduced to piping in polka music. The estate of Tom Petty told Trump Campaign 2020 (Motto: “White Power!”) not to use his songs last week. The Stones join such luminaries as Rihanna, Pharrell Williams, Neil Young, Elton John and surviving members of Queen, who don’t want their songs played at his rallies.

Brendon Urie, frontman for Panic! At The Disco, might not be as famous as Mick Jagger. But he was blunt in opposition to the use of his band’s music. After the president waddled onstage in Phoenix last week, with “High Hopes” playing in the background, Urie tweeted, “Dear Trump Campaign, Fuck you. You’re not invited. Stop playing my song. No thanks, Brendon Urie.”

Like Trump or not, this is a great country, when an ordinary singer is free to tell the president to fuck off. In Putinworld, that singer would be heading for jail, or might just fall off a fifth floor balcony.

Which reminds me, Trump really wants to invite Vladimir to the G7 summit, scheduled for September.

As he told Fox News, earlier this month, he thought Putin had “earned” a seat at the summit because he “helped us with the oil industry,” when prices plummeted in the spring. And, if the Russians had more money from oil sales...Hey, they could raise the bounty on the heads of American soldiers!

*

The big stories continue to be the twin spread of the coronavirus, which Trump refuses to admit, and sustained damage to the U.S. economy, a terrible secondary result.

Last Friday, after two months in the Witness Protection program, Vice President Mike Pence emerged from hiding. It was the first time the White House Coronavirus Task Force had held a public briefing in two months. For some reason, probably because we’re in the midst of a disastrous new wave of infections and the president didn’t want to be associated with that in the public mind, the meeting was not held at the White House. The Task Force met down the street at the headquarters of Health and Human Services. Trump has clearly given up entirely, in terms of leading in a time of crisis. He failed to make appearance.

Averaging 27,356 cases daily.

It was left to VP Pence to do most of the talking. It turned out that that good Christian gentleman had decided not to be hindered by the Ninth Commandment. “As we stand here today,” he told baffled reporters, “all 50 states and territories are opening up safely and responsibly.”

At that same moment, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas was ordering bars to close again, after a surge of infections.

“We flattened the curve,” Mr. Pence continued.

But my lyin’ eyeballs told me, when I looked at actual graphs, that the VP must be hallucinating. If I glanced at the numbers from the Centers for Disease Control, I did not see a flat curve.

I checked for June 25:

40,588 cases.

On June 26, the same day Pence was telling reporters we had flattened that nasty old curve, we had:

44,602 new cases.

That was a dismal new record.

I checked Saturday numbers and we had:

44,703 more cases.

That broke the “old” record.

Then Sunday, June 28:

41,075 additional cases.

Then Monday:

35,664 cases.

Finally, Tuesday, June 30:

43,644 additional infections.

That brought the total for the month to 836,978 cases. That was more than 100,000 cases worse in June than in May, when 23,394 Americans were infected every 24 hours.

June cases averaged 27,899 per day.

In fact, there are countries that have flattened the curve. But one of them is not the United States. You could check a story from National Geographic, if you wanted to see the difference.

  

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It was obvious that Mr. Pence had been tasked with selling the latest line of Trump administration horse manure. He did the best he could. He was excited, he said, to note that fewer people were dying—even though the U.S. remains #1 in terms of an ability to ensure that large numbers of citizens pass to the Great Beyond in rapid order.

As of June 30, we led the world, with 127,332 dead, more than double the number in Brazil.

Ah, Brazil! Led by another virus denier, Jair Bolsonaro. At a time when Trump was insisting the U.S. was headed for “zero cases,” Bolsonaro was tweeting videos of himself visiting shopping districts, and telling everyone to take the unproven drug chloroquine, and they’d be fine.

This coronavirus…it was just a “little flu,” he said.

In fact, the last world leader Trump met with before the virus began spreading unchecked in the U.S., was…Jair Bolsonaro, on March 7, at a lavish party at Mar-a-Lago.

Trump spent the last few days of June tweeting, golfing, and telling everyone that the COVID-19 picture was in fact rosy. In a call to Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News, the president insisted his administration was doing a great job of controlling the spread, especially because of his great border wall with Mexico. If it weren’t for his big beautiful wall (which is mostly incomplete) the coronavirus “would be infecting lives like nobody’s ever seen before.” Trump bragged about the low mortality rate in this country. Like the best mortality rate in the world.

Hannity didn’t question his numbers.

“So, we have more cases, because we do the greatest testing. If we didn’t do testing, we’d have no cases. Other countries they don’t test millions,” the president continued. “If we didn’t do tests, we’d look great.”

That was the new strategy. Don’t test and you won’t know Grandma has the virus. And when she goes to the hospital, tell your kids, “Grandma didn’t die when she went to ICU. She’s living on a farm in upstate New York, with a new family. And they take great care of her there.”

Unfortunately, even if we adjust for population, the United States still looks terrible, coming in at #9, with 394 dead per million.

Here is the list of all the countries (including two postage-stamp size jurisdictions) with higher death tolls, adjusted for population:

Andorra

Belgium

France

Italy

San Marino

Spain

Sweden

United Kingdom

That’s it. That’s the entire list. And thank you, Donald J. Trump, for your fine leadership! We’re in the top ten, and we’re more widely infected than almost all the countries ahead of us on the list. 

I did a little more checking, because I had read that countries like Germany and France, hit much harder at first than the United States, had been doing much better flattening the curve. Germany had 498 new cases on June 30. France had 584. Andorra hasn’t had a new case since June 21, and San Marino not since June 23. Plenty of countries have a handle on this mess. Australia had 86 cases—but a “spike” for them—on June 30. Belgium had 103 on the last day of the month. Canada had 286, Finland 15, Iceland 5, the most on any one day since April 21. Italy had 142; Japan 117; Netherlands 50; New Zealand 0; Spain 301; South Korea 50 and the United Kingdom 814.

Sweden, unlike those countries—and like us—had not yet flattened the curve. Their numbers were rising, with 1,302 cases on the final day in June.

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“You have an individual responsibility to yourself, but you have a societal responsibility because if we want to end this outbreak, really end it and then hopefully when a vaccine comes and puts a nail in the coffin, we’ve got to realize that we are part of the process.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci

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During last Friday’s press conference, Vice President Pence said it was “good news” that more young people, as a percentage of new cases, were being tested and showing up positive. This was good news, he explained, because young people were less likely to keel over dead after contracting the virus.

That is when you knew Mr. Pence was reaching for any “good news” he could find, or making it up.

Pence also echoed the latest Trumpian line: We’re looking bad because the numbers of cases are rising. But, really, we’re just doing a great job of testing. The fact that positivity rates—the percentage of people tested who are infected—are rising is another worrisome sign.

According to Johns Hopkins University, positivity rates are increasing in all but eight states (numbers checked on the evening of June 30), with these states currently being hit hardest:

Arizona                   24.4%

Florida                     15.6%

Alabama                  15.2%

Nevada                    15.1%

Mississippi               14.1%

Texas                       14.1%

South Carolina        13.7%

Georgia                   11.7%

Utah                        10.9%

Dr. Anthony Fauci, who can offer up the unvarnished truth because he’s not running for reelection, was less sanguine. He said we could not take infections in young people for granted, since they then spread the disease. He added that we had to take mask-wearing and social distancing seriously if we hoped to get the nation back up and running. “You have an individual responsibility to yourself,” he explained, “but you have a societal responsibility because if we want to end this outbreak, really end it and then hopefully when a vaccine comes and puts a nail in the coffin, we’ve got to realize that we are part of the process.”

See, for comparison: President Trump addressing a Tulsa rally, or a Phoenix gathering of “Students for Trump,” where masks and social distancing were almost universally ignored.

How many masks do you see?

Meanwhile, President Trump was tweeting out the great news: “Our Economy is roaring back and will NOT be shut down,” he promised. “‘Embers’ or flare ups will be put out, as necessary!”

Got it? We were roaring back!

Trump supporters and Trump foes, alike.

Or not. If Texas were a country, it would have the world’s tenth largest economy. That’s normally impressive, but bad news, currently. The state is getting hammered by a surge of infections. On June 23, Texas surpassed the 5,000 mark for a single day, then totaled more than 5,000 cases again on June 24, June 25, June 26, June 27, and June 28, dipped on June 29 slightly, and then set a record with 6,975 cases on June 30. Bars were ordered to close again. Restaurants were told to limit seating to 50% of capacity. Slowing national and world economies meant dropping oil prices. Drilling across the state was halted. Many wells were shut down. And if Texas is hurting (and as of now it is), the U.S. economy is hurting, and we’re all in a leaking boat together. That goes for Trump supporters and Trump foes, alike.

California would be the fifth largest economy in the world, if it were a sovereign nation.

But that state has also seen a resurgence of the disease; and the California economy is in “free fall.”

Same leaking boat analogy.

Thrown in Florida, which would be the world’s 17^th largest economy, if it were a country. Florida, where tourism fuels the economy, is reeling. Last Friday, health officials in that state announced that 8,942 new cases had been confirmed in just 24 hours.

On Saturday, the state hit a new high, with 9,585 cases; and on Sunday, fell back only slightly, to 8,530.

The economic damage continues to spread in all directions. The Bonnaroo Music Festival, which brings 75,000 fans to a farm near Manchester, Tennessee every year, and pumps millions of dollars into local, state and national economies, has been canceled for this year. Chuck E. Cheese has filed for bankruptcy, putting a serious dent in the bad pizza-for-little-kids’-birthday-parties business. The NFL is operating under the assumption that attendance will be limited in significant ways once the season begins (if it does). The league is telling teams they can plan to sell advertisements, placed on front row seats, since fans will (at best) have to be kept away from players.

Signs we’re in for a long down stretch economically are multiplying. Homeowners protected by the CARES Act passed in March, can postpone mortgage payments for 180 days without penalty. Interest on loans continues to accrue. But they don’t lose their homes. A total of 4.7 million homeowners have now taken advantage of the moratorium. They’ve piled up $1 trillion in unpaid principle that they eventually have to pay.

For those who rent, July payments are now due. Millions won’t be able to come up with the cash. In June, 30% of apartment dwellers didn’t pay on time. That was up from 24% in May, down only slightly from 31% in April; but a wave of evictions is coming.

U.S. airlines and the entire U.S. travel industry are about to suffer a devastating hit with the European Union banning most travelers from the United States. The ban goes into effect July 1. Because…we’re now one of the world’s hot spots for COVID-19 infections.

In other bad news, a record low 23% of teenagers, many hoping to save money for college, or land summer jobs that might become permanent, will be lucky to find employment this year.

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Team Trump finally seems to be waking to the fact that if we don’t control the virus, we’re all in this together and facing economic disaster. On Sunday, VP Pence finally said, during a visit to Dallas, that, yes, all Americans should wear masks when out in public, if social distancing isn’t possible. That message was blunted by the fact he had attended church earlier that day, where a choir of a hundred sang lustily, without masks in evidence.

Even more to the point, Secretary Alex Azar, head of Health and Human Services, warned Sunday that the “window was closing” on our chance to keep the disease under control. Azar did want to make it clear that none of this was Trump’s fault, even if the president does refuse to wear a mask, likes to make idiotic statements about the virus—like drink bleach—and likes to hold rallies where masks are about as rare as members of minorities.

The government has all kinds of weapons now to fight the spread, Azar assured Jake Tapper on “Meet the Press.” The problem was…Americans! It was our fault. Not Trump’s. Not Azar’s. If we “act irresponsibly, if we don’t socially distance, if we don’t use face coverings in settings where we can’t social distance, if we don’t practice appropriate personal hygiene, we’re going to see spread of disease,” Secretary Azar explained.

Monday, Anne Schuchat, CDC principal deputy director, sounded loud warning. She told editors of the Journal of the American Medical Association that the novel coronavirus was now spreading too widely and too quickly to contain.

“This is really the beginning, and what we hope is that we can take it seriously and slow the transmission.”

The president is a science denier and an ill-informed lout.

Without mentioning names, she said there was “a lot of wishful thinking around the country” that the pandemic would soon be over. “We are not even beginning to be over this,” she said. “We’re not in the situation of New Zealand or Singapore or Korea, where a new case is rapidly identified and all the contacts are traced and people are isolated who are sick and people who are exposed are quarantined and they can keep things under control.” No, we’re not. Because Donald J. Trump is a science denier and, generally speaking, an ill-informed lout.

On Tuesday, the four health heads of the White House Coronavirus Task Force testified before a U.S. Senate committee. Dr. Fauci said he found current trends, “very disturbing.” He warned it was possible, if people continued to refuse to follow health guidelines, that we could hit 100,000 new cases per day.

Asked by Sen. Elizabeth Warren if he thought—like Pence and Trump—that we were going in the right direction, he replied,

Well I think the numbers speak for themselves. I’m very concerned and I’m not satisfied with what’s going on because we’re going in the wrong direction if you look at the curves of the new cases, so we really have got to do something about that and we need to do it quickly.

Dr. Fauci, CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield, FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn and Admiral Brett Giroir, M.D. were asked if they thought all Americans should be wearing masks when out in public—should the federal government provide masks at no cost—and would this save thousands of lives?

Fauci: “Yes.”

Redfield: He said he was in favor of “universal masks.”

Hahn agreed.

Giroir: “Yes….When I’m not in uniform,” he said, “I wear them.” He held one up. “They’re white. They work very effective, and I think they’re a great investment for the American people.”

The gloomy predictions of the four experts clearly angered Sen. Rand Paul. He went on a rant about the “fatal conceit” of expert opinion, small groups of highly-educated people, who wanted to tell the rest of us how to live.

At one point he glared at Dr. Fauci and almost asked plaintively, why we couldn’t just have “a little more optimism” at times.

You know—like Vice President Pence.

And Trump.

*

In other health-related news, Team Trump has decided that the middle of a pandemic is a perfect time to push the U.S. Supreme Court to blow Obamacare to smithereens.

If the court rules with Trump, and overturns the entire law as he hopes, an estimated 20 million Americans could lose health insurance. If you have a pre-existing condition, the protections you enjoy under the Affordable Care Act will be eliminated. So, try not to get sick!

Wear that mask.

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