__________
“Article II allows me to do whatever I want.”
President
Donald J. Trump, and his theory of checks and balances
__________
For seven long years, I have chronicled the egregious criminal acts, the comical ineptitude, and the gross incompetence of President Trump in more detail than has been good for my health.
What I have discovered is
that no matter how bad you thought he was, the more you delved into details the
worse he looked.
Mockery faded and fear flourished. I came to believe, based on overwhelming evidence, that Donald J. Trump was the greatest threat to America in my lifetime, and likely the greatest domestic threat to our free and fair system of government ever.
I have often been reminded of a great biography of George Washington, called the Indispensable Man. James Thomas Flexner, the author, makes the case that if George Washington is erased from the historical record, this great nation can never become what it is – flaws and all. We likely lose the American Revolution, and if we do win, the government created under the U.S. Constitution will not prosper.
Now comes Donald J. Trump.
If Flexner were still alive, Trump would merit a new volume titled: The Irredeemable Man.
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An Appalling Human Being: Donald J. Trump
Watching the presidential campaign unfold in 2015 and 2016, many Americans feared it might end badly. Bernie supporters were fuming. Hillary had excellent qualifications and plenty of baggage.
The Republican field, some said the greatest array of political talent ever assembled, proved inept in the face of the noxious assaults of Donald J. Trump. And Trump appeared to be nuts.
In a stunning upset on Election Day the nut won.
*
TOO CHEAP to pay for therapy, I decided to assuage my anguish by mocking President Pussy Grabber at every turn. Perhaps, I reasoned, my efforts might offer solace to others who considered Trump unfit to lead this country, or any other, from Zimbabwe to Azerbaijan.
It proved stunningly easy to ridicule the man. As the days piled up like crumpled cars and trucks in a chain-reaction crash on Interstate 75, however, it became clear. Laughter would not suffice. The clown morphed. He proved less a clown and more a threat to American values.
PREAMBLE TO DISASTER
6/9/16: We won’t know this until July 2017; but on this date three leaders of the Trump campaign meet with Russian agents who offer dirt on Hillary Clinton. Those three are: Campaign chair Paul Manafort, Donald Trump Jr., and Jared Kushner, husband of Ivanka Trump.
Donald Jr. will later claim the purpose of the gathering was
to talk about the adoption of Russian children by American families. That is a
bald-faced lie. And there will be countless others.
___
7/27/16: By late July, both Clinton’s campaign email system and the email system of the Democratic National Committee have been hacked. A flood of damaging information has followed.
An F.B.I. investigation continues into Mrs. Clinton’s possible misuse of a private email server, and an estimated 33,000 missing emails.
“A total sign of disrespect for our country.”
On this day, Candidate Trump holds a press conference and famously asks: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let’s see if that happens. That will be next. Yes, sir.”
Reporters ask Trump if he believes Russia is responsible for the hacking. “Nobody even knows this, it’s probably China, or it could be somebody sitting in his bed,” he replies.
But it shows how weak we are, it shows
how disrespected we are. Total – assuming it’s Russia or China or one of the
major countries and competitors, it’s a total sign of disrespect for our
country. Putin and the leaders throughout the world have no respect for our
country anymore, and they certainly have no respect for our leader.
Mr. Trump also signals that he would be open to recognizing Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. The Obama administration and the European Union consider the seizure illegal and have imposed heavy sanctions.
“We’ll be looking at that,” Mr. Trump said when asked if he would, as president, recognize Crimea as Russian land and lift sanctions that had been imposed after the annexation. “Yeah, we’ll be looking.”
This
would be music to Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian ears.
___
11/10/16: Just
two days after Trump’s surprise victory, spokeswoman Hope Hicks told reporters,
“There was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during
the campaign.”
The short list of those who knew at that instant this was a bold, brazen, shameless lie would include, but not be limited to:
Michael Caputo
Michael Cohen
General Michael T. Flynn
Rick Gates
Jared Kushner
Paul Manafort
Carter Page
George Papadopoulos
Roger Stone
Donald Trump Jr.
All of the above would later admit having met with Russians or helped set up meetings with Russians.
One might imagine that Ms. Hicks has been kept in the dark and does not realize she has just told a lie. We don’t know for sure, what Donald J. Trump Sr. knows at that moment. But it would boggle the mind to imagine that the man set to become President of the United States did not know Hicks had just uttered an incredible untruth.
This, then, is the Ur-lie of the Trump administration, the founding untruth on which so much else will be built. (President
Trump will repeat that same lie, in slightly different formulation. See: 5/18/17.)
___
1/5/17: F.B.I. Director James Comey attends a meeting with top White House officials and President Obama.
He’s worried about Russian contacts with Gen. Michael T. Flynn, slotted to be the next president’s National Security Advisor. Current NSA head Susan Rice sends out this email after the meeting:
Director
Comey affirmed that he is proceeding “by the book” as it relates to law
enforcement. From a national security perspective, Comey said he does have some
concerns that incoming NSA Flynn is speaking frequently with Russian Ambassador
Kislyak. Comey said that could be an issue as it relates to sharing sensitive
information. President Obama asked if Comey was saying that the NSC [National
Security Council] should not pass sensitive information related to Russia to
Flynn. Comey replied “potentially.” He added that he has no indication thus far
that Flynn has passed classified information to Kislyak, but he noted that “the
level of communication is unusual.”
Also in attendance that day: VP Joe Biden and Deputy Attorney
General Sally Yates, who will soon warn President-Elect Trump that Flynn has
been lying about having had no contact with Russians.
This previously classified email is not released until May 2019, possibly as part of an effort to fan the fires of right-wing outrage, with the idea that Obama’s people were “spying” on Team Trump. I read it, by contrast, as the previous administration having serious concerns about Flynn, not to mention wondering about Hope Hicks’ blatantly untrue statement on November 10.
Why would members of Team Trump already be trying to cover up
contacts they had with Russians?
___
1/11/17: President-Elect Donald J. Trump holds a press conference and reporters get to ask questions.
__________
“To demonize the press, to characterize it as not just
mistaken but malign, is to lay the groundwork for repression.”
Time
magazine
__________
His respect for the First Amendment is clear. Jim Acosta, a correspondent for CNN, raises a hand. Trump points at him and says, “Your organization is terrible,” and refuses to call on him.
“You’re attacking us, can you give us a question?” Acosta asks.
“Don’t be rude,” the rudest man ever elected President of the United States sneers. “No, I’m not going to give you a question. You are fake news.” Trump turns instead to take a question from a Breitbart reporter.
Trump learns about the Steele dossier.
What has made Trump so angry? Why is CNN so “fake?” The network has reported that intelligence officials have briefed the president-elect on a mysterious dossier compiled by Christopher Steele.
CNN has not claimed that potentially damaging information in the “Steele dossier” is true, only that the dossier exists.
The Hill, another media outlet, explains:
The 35-page document – made up
of a collection of memos filled with explosive claims about the billionaire’s
relationship to Russia – has reportedly been circulating among journalists and
officials for at least a few weeks.
But the sourcing on the document
is unclear and likely unverifiable. CNN reported that it is based primarily on
memos compiled by a former British intelligence operative that were intended as
opposition research into Trump.
The president-elect on Tuesday
night immediately blasted the report, tweeting, “FAKE NEWS – A TOTAL POLITICAL
WITCH HUNT!”
During the press conference,
Trump specifically called out CNN for pushing the story, saying it was
“disgraceful that the intelligence agencies allowed any information that turned
out to be so false and fake out.”
“I think it’s a disgrace, and I
say that, and that’s something that Nazi Germany would have done and did do,”
he said.
“I think it’s a disgrace that
information that was false and fake and never happened got released to the
public. As far as BuzzFeed [which
released the dossier before CNN picked up the story], which is a failing pile
of garbage, writing it, I think they’re going to suffer the consequences.”
With that, the battle lines are drawn. Breitbart, where reporters fawn over Trump, is real news.
CNN, which questions Trump when it can and reports that a
dossier does exist – because a dossier does exist – is fake news.
In his first year in office, Trump will give just one solo press conference, open to reporters’ questions. It will not go well.
By comparison, past presidents faced the free press with some regularity. George W. Bush braved the fire four times in his first year in office, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, six, Barack Obama, seven. Bill Clinton took questions eleven times. Jimmy Carter stood before the free press 22 times and George H. W. Bush 27 times.
Time has this to say, in February 2017, at the very dawn of the Trump era:
Nearly every President has found
much to dislike in news coverage – Harry Truman referred to press clippings as
“the daily poison” – but seldom have reporters been the target of such
relentless hostility as we are seeing from the current administration
[emphasis added, unless otherwise note]. Barely a day in office, President
Trump declared his “running war” with the media; top adviser Stephen Bannon
calls the press “the opposition party” that should “keep its mouth shut,” and
Kellyanne Conway suggests that if journalism were a “real business,” 20% of the
media would have been fired for all the things they got wrong.
To demonize the press, to
characterize it as not just mistaken but malign, is to lay the groundwork for repression.
Time editor Nancy Gibbs promises:
We are committed to independent
inquiry, defending the possibility of progress, holding the powerful to account
and providing an arena where diverse voices and visions compete…
The enemy in any democracy is
not dissent, from either within or without. Dissent, in fact, is essential. The enemy is dishonesty, ignorance,
indifference, intolerance.
___
1/15/17: Five days before taking office, in one of the worst predictions ever, Trump tweets: “For many years our country has been divided, angry and untrusting [emphasis added]. Many say it will never change, the hatred is too deep. IT WILL CHANGE!!!!”
It’s the first of his many terrible predictions as president.
And then…oath of office taken…he’s president. The sorry saga of a terrible man at the helm of a great nation begins.
A FEW HINTS AS TO WHY A FREE PRESS IS NECESSARY
“The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” Thomas Jefferson
“Freedom of the
press is not an end in itself but a means to the end of achieving a free
society.” Felix Frankfurter
The Nazis held regular book burnings.
The name of the government newspaper in the Soviet Union was Pravda, or, in Russian: “Truth.”
Internet censorship is rampant in Communist China.
Under Kim Jong-un, the government of North Korea tightly controls radio and television.
When the journalist Jamal Khashoggi criticized the royal family of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had him executed.
Think:
bone saw.
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