November 8, 2019: Trump Would Hang His Critics if He Could - And His Charity Gets Shut Down

 

11/8/19: Any attempt to chronicle the crimes, follies and warped impulses of President Trump, his aides, and family members must ultimately fail. The comedic blunders come in clusters. The lies come in clouds. The lack of empathy appalls. Threats to the rule of law multiply like cancer cells. Just when you think it can’t get worse, it gets – almost impossibly  – worse.

 

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“TREASON means long jail sentences, and this was TREASON!” 

President Trump

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The burgeoning Ukraine scandal, with something like 1,500 pages of testimony having already been released – on top of more than 400 pages of the Mueller Report – can bury anyone who tries to track all the crimes and misdeeds of Trump and his terrible team. 

The president’s Twitter feed, since he swore to uphold the U.S. Constitution, stretches to 266,000 words. That’s more than James Joyce required to write Ulysses, and far less edifying. What Trump’s tweets reveal is a cesspool psyche, a mind stunted by incuriosity, a soul polluted by dishonesty, and a heart easily stirred to hate. The man-boy in the White House is impelled to act by warped impulses, which even his best aides have been unable to check.

We have, for instance, Trump tweeting about those who investigate him as “treasonous.” Robert Mueller and his investigators, the president once claimed, were involved in a “Witch Hunt, a Treasonous Hoax. That is the Constitutional Crisis & hopefully guilty people will pay!” 

The president later pedaled the false narrative that his predecessor should be brought to justice. “My Campaign for President was conclusively spied on,” he howled. “Nothing like this has ever happened in American Politics. A really bad situation. TREASON means long jail sentences, and this was TREASON!” “Treason” actually means death; and according to the president’s Twitter feed Obama was guilty of treason. So were F.B.I. agents involved in the Russia probe. The New York Times was guilty, he yelped, of “a virtual act of Treason,” a paper that would publish articles that were “bad for our Country.” When Democrats supported the Russia investigation, they were part of an “illegal and treasonous attack on our Country.”

Trump once said it was "treason" when Democrats didn't stand and applaud his speech.

 

Now we have the president insisting that Chairman Schiff, head of the House Intelligence Committee, duly elected by the people of his district, should be “questioned at the highest level for Fraud & Treason.....” 

In fact, Trump has decided that Schiff is not alone. He has an accomplice, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. By her support of the impeachment inquiry, he says, “This makes Nervous Nancy every bit as guilty as Liddle’ Adam Schiff for High Crimes and Misdemeanors, and even Treason.” 

DEATH TO HIS FOES!!!

 

Like Hitler, sweeping aside political opponents in 1934, Trump has the instincts of a dictator, only without the Brownshirts (yet) to back him up. “I guess that means that they, along with all of those that evilly ‘Colluded’ with them,” he tweets, “must all be immediately Impeached!” 

It was not so long ago, when Trump was tweeting that the whistleblower must come into the light and tell his or her story publicly, and Trump could maybe ruin his or her professional career in revenge. 

Now, as damaging revelations pour forth in sworn testimonies, the president’s weathervane mind spins in a different direction. “They shouldn’t be having public hearings. This is a hoax,” Trump told reporters Friday. “This is just like the Russian witch hunt. This is just a continuation.” 

He’s right. 

He deserved to be impeached for that too.

 

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LIKE SOULLESS FATHER, like soulless son. In a new book, which we won’t bother to cite, Don Jr. talks about visiting Arlington Cemetery the day before dad was inaugurated. The 400,000 graves (not one filled by a Trump) remind Jr. how much he loves our great country. 

Then he thinks about how his family fought and bled and…well, okay…no Trump ever has served. 

But still! 

“In that moment,” Don Jr. writes, 

I also thought of all the attacks we’d already suffered as a family, and about all the sacrifices we’d have to make to help my father succeed – voluntarily giving up a huge chunk of our business and all international deals to avoid the appearance that we were “profiting off the office.” 

 

Yes, he would serve his country, just as his dad, “Fighting Lips” Trump, did in 1964, when he dodged the draft.

 

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The Trump Foundation gets shut down! 

DID SOMEONE say, “Sacrifice?” This week, a federal judge ruled that President Trump must pay $2 million to settle claims that his charity foundation misused donations. The entire Trump Foundation is dissolved. Ironically, the charity is accused of misusing funds it raised to help…wait for it…veterans! 

As NPR reports: 

The Trump Foundation has shut down, funds that were illegally misused are being restored, the president will be subject to ongoing supervision by my office, and the Trump children had to undergo compulsory training to ensure this type of illegal activity never takes place again,” New York Attorney General Letitia James, whose office filed the case, said in a statement. “The court’s decision, together with the settlements we negotiated, are a major victory in our efforts to protect charitable assets and hold accountable those who would abuse charities for personal gain.”

 

As one example, the Trump Foundation sent a “charitable” donation of $25,000 to help the political campaign of Pam Bondi, a Republican candidate for Attorney General of Florida in 2016. 

Any other shady examples of the Trump charity at work? Why, yes. A cool $10,000 went to purchase a six-foot high painting of…Donald, himself. That painting now hangs over a bar at Trump National Doral. 

And there was that other $11,525 Trump spent on sports memorabilia and champagne for himself. 

And, of course, the $100,000 “charity contribution” to pay lawyers who were fighting a zoning violation at Mar-a-Lago, filed by the city of Palm Beach.