Trump Is "A Threat to Constitutional Democracy."

 

11/15/18: The president is losing his nerve. He appears to realize something terrible is coming. 

Does he know, perhaps because Acting Hack Matt Whitaker, now in charge at the Department of Justice, has been fully briefed on the Russia inquiry, that a new batch of indictments is impending? 

Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi, a fringe player, have said they expect to be served with court papers. 

Recently, Trump and his lawyers spent three days trying to formulate written answers to questions posed by Special Counsel Mueller. Experts wonder if Twitter Thumbs might now understand how hard it’s going to be to craft a story that keeps him out of trouble without pitching him headlong into the realm of perjury and obstruction of justice.

Miriam Adelson awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom - for donating to the GOP.

 

When Trump is in a foul mood, we know what’s coming. A Twitter typhoon blows in at 7:14 a.m. 

Once again, in the name of brevity, we’ll just hit the highlights. Investigators, Trump shrieks, “have gone absolutely nuts. They are screaming and shouting at people, horribly threatening them to come up with the answers they want. They are a disgrace to our Nation.” Mueller and his team are “Angry People.” Obama is to blame. The Russia probe is “A TOTAL WITCH HUNT LIKE NO OTHER IN AMERICAN HISTORY!” Mueller leads a “gang of Democratic thugs.” 

What could be eating the president? Is it that Democrats have gained a total of 35 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and may end up gaining 40? Does he realize that starting in January, they’re going to subpoena the sh*t out of his family and members of his corrupt and grossly incompetent regime? 

 

A window on the id of Trump. 

Trump’s Twitter feed, quips pundit Eugene Robinson, is, “A window on the id” of this president. 

A quick refresher may be in order. As the website Simply Psychiatry reminds us, the human psyche has three parts: 

…the id is the primitive and instinctual part of the mind that contains sexual and aggressive drives and hidden memories, the super-ego operates as a moral conscience, and the ego is the realistic part that mediates between the desires of the id and the super-ego.

 

Trump seems wracked by fear and anger. He feels cornered and he’s lashing out. His super ego has always been stunted. 

His id is in total command. 

Politico reports: 

Lawyers for President Donald Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. insist they aren’t worried about special counsel Robert Mueller.

 

But half a dozen people in contact with the White House and other Trump officials say a deep anxiety has started to set in that Mueller is about to pounce after his self-imposed quiet period [in weeks leading up to the midterms], and that any number of Trump’s allies and family members may soon be staring down the barrel of an indictment.

 

And if you don’t think we might be facing a constitutional crisis in weeks ahead, you need to pay closer attention.

 

Even members of the Federalist Society, which helped Trump stack the federal bench with a fresh crop of conservative jurists, are restless. A dozen members have formed a group called “Checks and Balances.” They believe Trump is undermining the rule of law. The group includes George T. Conway III, husband of White House aide and fulltime Trump apologist Kellyanne Conway, and John B. Bellinger III, former White House lawyer under George W. Bush. 

“Conservative lawyers are not doing enough to protect constitutional principles that are being undermined by the statements and actions of this president,” Bellinger explains. 

Peter D. Keisler, former Acting Attorney General adds this: 

It’s important that people from across the political spectrum speak out about the country’s commitment to the rule of law and the core values underlying it—that the criminal justice system should be nonpartisan and independent, that a free press and public criticism should be encouraged and not attacked. These are values that might once have been thought so basic and universally accepted that they didn’t need defending [emphasis added] but that’s no longer clearly the case. 

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“A threat to constitutional democracy.” 

Marisa Maleck, member of the Federalist Society

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A similar article in the Washington Post adds fair warning: 

Having three functioning branches of government is the healthiest way for a democracy to work, said Marisa Maleck, a former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas [and member of the Federalist Society]. Since Trump took office, he has repeatedly attempted to consolidate the power of those branches himself, she said.

 

“The worst part about it is that he normalizes it. Most people don’t realize what he’s doing poses a threat to a constitutional democracy,” she said.

 

“We believe in the rule of law, the power of truth, the independence of the criminal justice system, the imperative of individual rights and the necessity of civil discourse,” the group says in a statement. “We believe these principles apply regardless of the party or persons in power.”

 

* 

THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES shows a total lack of class (again), awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Miriam Adelson. 

Miriam is the wife of Sheldon Adelson. Miriam and Sheldon are GOP mega-donors, and in MAGA land money is the one true measure of value. In the same way that Trump is a “great” patriot, despite no one in his direct family line ever having served in the U.S. military (or in his grandfather’s case, the German military, either), Miriam fought hard for freedom by donating big chunks of cash to the Donald J. Trump Scuzz Bag Aides’ Defense Fund. 

In the last three months of 2018, with guys like Roger Stone and Paul Manafort and George Nader racking up felonies, and needing expensive legal help to stay out of jail (just because they met with Russians during the 2016 campaign), Miriam and Sheldon each ponied up $250,000. 

The Adelsons also gave $30 million to Trump’s 2016 campaign; and just to be safe, gave another $5 million to his inaugural committee. 

So, forget heroes who bled for this country: John McCain, Robert Mueller, and Alexander Vindman, and warned that this president was no patriot but an active menace to democracy. Big checks matter more than blood, sweat or tears.

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE (4/24/21): Vindman was added to the sentence above after he testified before Congress about Trump’s phone call to the President of Ukraine. For telling the truth, as he saw it, under oath, his promotion to full colonel in the U.S. Army – which his superiors said he had earned – was blocked.

July 30, 2020: Trump Suggests Delaying the Election - Until Never?

 

7/30/20: What should scare us most today? Let’s begin with the fact the president has tweeted out his boldest, most brazen plan yet to circumvent the Constitution. 

He says he thinks we should delay the November election until it’s safe for everyone to vote, at least those of us not wiped out by the virus. “Ol’ Twitter Thumbs” has clearly been looking at the “fake polls.” With 95 days left to avoid a beatdown, Trump could use some extra time to turn voter opinions around. Maybe we could all vote on Christmas? Or New Year’s Eve? 

If enough Americans get wasted, Trump might corral the drunkard vote. 

His tweet on the topic reads: 

With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???

We of a liberal persuasion, and those good Republicans, conservatives and libertarians who understand the fragility of the system of checks and balances, have long been worried about the authoritarian instincts of this president. Now we know. Trump would be happy to pull a Robert Mugabe. 

Back in March 2018, we of the liberal stripe paid attention when Trump said he thought it was cool that President Xi Jinping of China had cleared a path which would allow him to serve as long as he liked. “He’s now president for life, president for life. And he’s great,” Trump told an adoring dinner crowd. “I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”

 

As shocking as it is that Trump is floating the half-baked idea of moving the election, there’s a second layer to this cake of proto-fascism. Mike Pompeo, his Secretary of State, as loyal a toady as ever hopped at his superior’s command, says he didn’t think it was a problem. When members of a congressional panel asked the secretary if he believed Trump had power to move the day, Pompeo said he didn’t want to offer “a legal judgement on the fly.” Lawmakers, no doubt bug-eyed in disbelief, pressed him for detail. Pompeo suggested that Attorney General Bill Barr might have final say. “In the end, the DOJ, others, will make that legal determination,” he said. 

Others? 

The president, perhaps?

Asked to comment on the president’s latest democracy-killing idea, most Republicans showed as much spine as a dish of Jell-O.  

 

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“I had taken as political hyperbole the Democrats’ assertion that President Trump is a fascist.” 

Professor Steven Calabresi

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One leading conservative sounded a clarion warning. In an op-ed for The New York Times, Steven Calabresi, a co-founder of the Federalist Society, thundered disdain. 

Here, we turn to Fox News’s report on the op-ed –  since all good Trump fans’ eyes glaze over if they hear the words, “The New York Times.” As Fox explained, Calabresi’s organization helped craft the lists of judges with whom Team Trump and Mitch McConnell have been filling hundreds of seats on the federal bench. Many of those seats were open, of course, because McConnell blocked President Obama from filling them when he had a chance. 

(Fox didn’t say that. Mr. Blogger did.)

 

Dr. Calabresi, professor of law at Northwestern, wrote that he had defended Trump against what he called an “unconstitutional investigation” by Robert Mueller and his team. Now, even a staunch defender of the president was scared. And rightfully so. Here’s what he wrote: 

I am frankly appalled by the president’s recent tweet seeking to postpone the November election. Until recently, I had taken as political hyperbole the Democrats’ assertion that President Trump is a fascist. But this latest tweet is fascistic and is itself grounds for the president’s immediate impeachment again ... and his removal from office by the Senate.

 

Calabresi called on “every Republican in Congress” to tell Trump that postponing the election would be “illegal, unconstitutional, and without precedent in American history. Anyone who says otherwise should never be elected to Congress again.”

 

* 

IF THE PRESIDENT hinting at an end-run around the Constitution wasn’t bad enough, we also learned today that unemployment claims for the last seven-day period ticked up again, to 1.43 million. Another 830,000 people filed for help under a special program aimed at aiding gig workers and self-employed. 

The U.S. economy also declined precipitously in the second quarter. It’s official. We saw a drop in GDP of 32.9%. According to Fox News, unemployment may have surged again to 14.7%.

 

* 

“All over the world, they’re having tremendous problems.” 

During another free-wheeling, unedifying press conference at the White House, the president blamed pretty much every case and every death in this country due to COVID-19 on the Chinese. 

He also hastened to point out that it wasn’t just in this country that cases were skyrocketing again. 

“All over the world, they’re having tremendous problems,” he said. “A resurgence has taken place in many countries that people thought were doing well.” There had been “a wide range of approaches to the pandemic,” he said, by way of excuse, although we’re still the only country where our leader suggested injecting bleach as a cure. Trump wanted to be sure that everyone watching at home knew there had been a “resurgence in cases… throughout large portions of our planet.” 

He listed Japan, China, Australia, Belgium, Spain, France, Germany, and Hong Kong as “places where they thought it was – they had really done great. It came back. And in a couple of cases, it came back very strongly.” 

In other words, if we focused on how poorly other countries were doing, Trump wouldn’t look so bad. So, let’s add a little nuance to what the president was trying to say. A check for July 30 shows the U.S. had 

68,042 new cases.

 

Japan, with a population slightly more than a third of the United States, had 1,323 new cases. 

Only 1,008 Japanese have died so far. 

If we check all the countries Trump listed, China is suspect. Government censors take care of anything they consider “fake news” (and they use the same standard for deciding what news is fake as Trump would apply if he could; that is, it’s “fake” if it makes the ruling party look bad). 

In any case, the Chinese reported 127 new cases on July 30.

 

More reliably, Australia reported 721, Belgium 673, Spain 2,789, France 1,377, Germany 902, and Hong Kong 149. You can do the math yourself, but a rough estimate tells me, if Australia had the same population as the USA, they would have had 9,400 cases. Belgium would have the equivalent of 20,000, still a “bending the curve” level of new disease. Spain would have 20,000. France would be at 7,000. Germany would stand at 4,000. Hong Kong – about to have its freedoms crushed by Trump’s friend, Xi Jinping – would have the equivalent of 3,600. 

Total deaths so far for those same countries, using statistics compiled by Worldometers, which run slightly higher: 

Japan: 1,011 (8 deaths per million population)

China: 4,634 (3)

Australia: 201 (8)

Belgium: 9,845 (849)

Spain: 28,445 (608)

France: 30,265 (464)

Germany: 9,226 (110)

Hong Kong: 33 (4)

—and—

 

United States: 157,898 deaths (474 per million).

 

That means, even allowing President Trump to pick and choose the facts he shares, we’re worse than all but two of the countries he mentioned when it comes to deaths adjusted for population. As for the continued spread of the coronavirus, we’re doing worse than them all. 

 

He’s the Wizard of Oz, only without the kind heart. 

Trump wasn’t done trying to bamboozle the American people, or at least that portion that still hasn’t realized he’s the Wizard of Oz, only without the kind heart. It’s impossible any longer for Trump to pretend he’s doing a great job of handling the crisis. His new approach is to argue that everyone else is failing too. He seemed pleased to report that several states, where governors had been praised at first for handling the outbreak, weren’t doing so well either. States “like California, Washington State, Maryland, Virginia, Nevada, Illinois, Oregon, and many others.…And governors that were extremely popular are not so popular anymore.” 

It didn’t require sharp wits to realize that all the states he took the trouble to list were led by Democratic governors, save Maryland. And that state was led by Larry Hogan, a Republican Trump loathes. 

The president also wanted reporters, and people watching at home, to remember that nothing like this pandemic had been seen since 1917. 

It’s a minor point but Trump consistently gets the year of the Spanish Flu pandemic wrong. It erupted in 1918 and continued into the next year. Trump doesn’t do the homework needed to get even basics right.

 

More importantly, Trump is incapable of showing empathy. More than half our deaths, he reminded everyone, “come from less than 1% of our population.” People in nursing homes, he said. People in assisted living. “Think of it,” he explained. “The average age of those who die from the illness is 78.” 

They were almost dead already, he meant. 

He also mentioned the great job some states were doing, bringing the numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths down. He thought they were doing great in Arizona. Florida, too. Also, Texas. 

Again, it didn’t take a physicist to notice that all three states he mentioned had Republican governors. 

As for me, I might not be the brightest blogger in the land, but I do understand day-to-day math. I thought it might be fun to check a state or two, to see how Trump’s choices stacked up against others. Oregon? My daughter lives there. On July 30, they had 410 new cases, one per every 10,287 residents. Illinois had one new case for every 7,151. Virginia had one for every 10,085. 

All blue states.

 

How about those great red states? How were they doing by comparison? Arizona had 2,521 new cases on July 30. That would be one for every 2,887 Arizonans. Florida had one additional case for every 2,127 Floridians. Texas had one more for every 3,295 Texans. So, Trump’s favorite states – states he still hoped he might win in November – weren’t really doing well. 

What the hell, I said to myself. I wondered how Maryland was doing, with a Republican governor Trump didn’t like. Hmm…892 cases…population 6,045,680…one new sick person for every 6,778. 

Trump wasn’t done slinging the BS. He talked about how his administration was responsible for record-setting “job creation” in May and June. If you squinted hard enough and then had a friend brain you in the back of the head with a shovel, you might have missed the reality of what he was trying to claim. 

Yes, in those two months, 7.5 million Americans had gone back to work. Almost every one of those jobs represented a person coming back from furlough, as the pandemic began to ebb. This wasn’t “job creation.” When you checked records, you saw that 22 million jobs disappeared at least temporarily in March and April. An additional check of Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers indicated that an additional 3 million Americans had dropped out of the workforce.

 

Eventually, Trump stopped bragging and lying and took questions. We’ll save time and summarize his answers. 

Democrats and Joe Biden? 

Trump wanted us to know they hated America and wanted everyone to die from higher taxes, or from bad guys breaking into our homes, and the defunded police not answering 911 calls. 

 

POSTSCRIPT: If you’ve been worried about the coronavirus and the economy, you may be missing another critical story. Baghdad set an all-time record of 125.2°F on July 28, an almost unlivable level of heat. On July 30, Phoenix, Arizona broke a daily record high by three degrees, topping out at 118°. More worrisome is a fifteen-day streak, where the daily low never dropped below 90° even at night. That tied the record for most days in a year with lows above 90°. 

To get a better sense of the trend, the 15-day-straight stretch means 2020 is already tied with 2013 and 2003. There were fourteen such days in 2018 and 2007, thirteen in 2009-2011. Last year there were twelve. In 2012 and 2006, there were eleven. “Temperatures during this time of a year are rare and dangerous,” one weatherman warned. “You just have to really be on guard and respect the heat.” 

Rare, heretofore. Not so rare anymore. Climate change is not a hoax. Future generations will pay the price for our denials.