October 31, 2018: Donald Trump Jr. Not Worried - Gen. Colin Powell Warns: "Deranged People Feel Empowered."

 

10/31/18: Once the midterms pass, Special Counsel Mueller and his team may kick the investigation into overdrive. 

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Don Jr. didn’t do anything any politician wouldn’t do.

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For some odd reason, this makes Donald Trump Jr. nervous. Newsweek notes that the president’s eldest son is telling reporters he’s not worried. 

Then again, he is. “I know that I’m not worried about anything I actually did,” he insists to all who care to listen. “That doesn’t mean they don’t totally fabricate all of this stuff at this point.” 

This is similar to what Jr. said a month ago in an interview with Good Morning America. Newsweek sums up: 

“I’m not [worried about the investigation], because I know what I did, and I’m not worried about any of that,” the president’s eldest son said. “That doesn’t mean they won’t try to create something. I mean, we’ve seen that happen with everything. But, again, I’m not.”

 

Trump Jr. in that same interview admitted that Mueller’s probe “has been very difficult” for him but that he has been able to separate it from the rest of his life.

“In the end, I know what I’ve done and I’m not worried about that at all, because you know, I’ve done nothing that anyone else wouldn’t do in that position [emphasis added, here and throughout], in my opinion,” he said.

 

He also downplayed the indictments and plea deals that Trump campaign associates have been hit with in the investigation.

 

“I understand that they are trying to get my father, and they’ll do anything they can to get that,” Trump Jr. said.

 

Yes, investigators will do anything – to stop Russians from interfering in U.S. elections – by indicting 25 Russians. They will do anything to secure 34 felony convictions (so far) on members of the Trump campaign. 

Good old Dad weighed in on Jr.’s concerns this past August – naturally – in a tweet: 

Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower. This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics - and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!

 

Yes, totally legal and everyone would do it; and that’s why all the participants from the campaign “forgot” about it for more than a year, until The New York Times started digging up unpleasant facts.

 
There were a lot of meetings with Russians, and Russians meddling in the election.

 

* 

“An environment where deranged people feel empowered.” 

SPEAKING OF LIES, a daily topic in Trumpistan, former Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Madeline Albright lambast the immigration policies of Team Trump. Powell, a decorated war hero and Republican, says, “We have come to live in a society based on insults, on lies and on things that just aren’t true. It creates an environment where deranged people feel empowered.” 

“My parents came from Jamaica on banana boats and raised two children here,” he adds, “that one became a teacher and the other had success as a soldier. We are giving that image up, and we shouldn’t. It’s the strongest message we give the rest of the world.” 

Albright, who served in the Clinton administration, adds, “I’m deeply troubled by the direction we’re going. I’m a naturalized American citizen. I came when I was 11 years old. I’m very upset about the image we’re projecting abroad.” 

She talks about escaping the Nazis and learning that 26 Jewish relatives died during the Holocaust.  

“I’ll never forget what it was like to come to America, on the SSAmerica, past the Statue of Liberty. I remember [years later] giving a certificate to a man, a refugee, who said, ‘Can you believe I’m a refugee and the secretary of state is handing me my naturalization certificate?’ I said, ‘Can you believe the secretary of state is a refugee?’”

 

“You see things that should not be happening,” Powell warns in another interview. 

How can a president of the United States get up and say that the media is the enemy of Americans? Hasn’t he read the First Amendment? You are not supposed to like everything the press says, or what anyone says…that’s why we have a First Amendment, to protect that kind of speech.

 

Simple explanation: No. Trump does not understand the import of the First Amendment.

 

* 

IN A SIGN of craziness to come Republican candidate for Congress from Nevada, Joyce Bentley, posts a nine-minute film clip outlining some of the main ideas of a conspiracy theory called QAnon. 

According to Bentley’s clip, a  “deep state” operates at  “the highest levels of power” and includes people who participate in “a dark and deeply sinister death cult with a strong reliance on symbolism and numerology with levels of cruelty unimaginable to all right-thinking people.” 

The video goes on to warn that the “deep state” has achieved “almost total influence over the media.” And for some reason Saudi Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal supposedly funded former President Barack Obama’s education.

October 10-14, 2019: Trump Screws Our Most Loyal Allies in the Middle East

 

10/10-14/19: Trump’s claim of “no ammunition,” (see: 10/9/19) came with Trump facing a firestorm of criticism for his decision to abandon the Syrian Kurds. That decision came so suddenly that U.S. diplomats, allies and the Pentagon were caught flat-footed. 

“No one in the U.S. government told us” about the U.S. decision to reposition troops or possibly pull out of northern Syria, a Kurdish intelligence official told Newsweek. “When we heard the news of American withdrawals, well, it was over Twitter.” Knowing how Trump works, that figures. “We had no idea, we were like, ‘What is this shit?’” the Kurdish official said.

Kurdish fighters, including women, celebrate victory over ISIS.

 

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“They trusted us and we broke that trust. It’s a stain on the American conscience.” 

U.S. Army officer

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“This shit,” in the eyes of most Americans, was a cold-hearted betrayal of some of the best fighters the U.S. has allied with since the Korean War. The Kurds weren’t led by corrupt officers, as were South Vietnamese units. They weren’t actively hostile to U.S. forces, as were many Iraqis. They weren’t afraid of the Taliban, as Afghan military forces often are. The Kurds knew how to fight. 

Now the president had dumped them as unceremoniously as he dumped his first wife for his second. 

Fidelity is not the president’s strong suit. 

Criticism came from all directions. You could almost imagine Kellyanne Conway losing her grip at last and running across the South Lawn, shouting, “The man has no soul! TRUMP HAS NO SOUL!”

 

Sen. Marco Rubio pointed out what everyone, save the president, seemed to grasp. “We degraded ISIS using Kurds as the ground force. Now we have abandoned them. They face annihilation…We must always have the backs of our allies [emphasis added throughout, unless otherwise noted], if we expect them to have our back.” 

Former Secretary of State and four-star U.S. Army general, Colin Powell, summed up the situation. “Our foreign policy is in shambles right now.” 

U.S. troops who had been fighting beside the Kurds were aghast. One officer put it this way. “They trusted us and we broke that trust. It’s a stain on the American conscience.” “I’m ashamed,” said a second. General John Allen, recently retired, was blunt. “There is blood on Trump’s hands,” he said, “for abandoning our Kurdish allies.” 

 

“It’s a lot of sand.” 

Faced with bipartisan opposition in Congress, the president began digging deep in his bag of duplicitous tricks. Why should we care about the Kurds, he wondered aloud? The fight in Syria didn’t affect us. We were 7,000 miles away. This was “not our problem,” he told reporters. Let the Turks and Syrians and Kurds fight it out, maybe with Russia’s help. “If Syria wants to fight for their land, that’s up to Turkey and Syria, as it has been for hundreds of years, they’ve been fighting,” Trump explained to the press. “And the Kurds have been fighting for hundreds of years. That whole mess, it’s been going along for a long time. Syria may have some help with Russia, and that’s fine. It’s a lot of sand,” he added dismissively. “They’ve got a lot of sand over there. So there’s a lot of sand there that they can play with.” 

Got it. 

Sand. 

A journalist pointed out that the Kurds had suffered 11,000 casualties in the battle against ISIS. A lot of blood had been spilled while they “played” with that sand. 

“And we’ve lost a lot of fighters, too,” Trump responded cluelessly.

 

As is so often the case, Trump was talking out his ass. An estimate from the Department of Defense should have helped him put Kurdish losses in perspective. Yes, the U.S. supplied ammunition (we had plenty). Yes, we backed the Kurds with pinpoint artillery and air support. Otherwise, our allies did nearly all the bleeding. U.S. losses in the fight against ISIS, across Iraq and Syria, totaled 88, a tragedy for their families, but a toll that paled in comparison to sacrifices made by the Kurds. 

Still, when it came to defeating ISIS, President Trump was clear about who the hero was. “Everybody said that was going to be an impossible thing to do,” Trump preened for the cameras. “I did it, and I did it quickly, because we have a great military now.”

 

Trump did what he does best when faced with complex issues. He made up weird excuses. The Kurds didn’t help us in World War II, he said –  which made absolutely no sense. He insisted he didn’t green-light a Turkish invasion. He talked to President Erdogan by phone, agreed to remove U.S. forces from positions in northern Syria, where they had served as a tripwire, and the Turks just happened to storm across the border. Who could have known! 

Trump also decided to attack his former Secretary of Defense, James Mattis. The veteran Marine general wasn’t tough enough to take out ISIS, Trump claimed – and only he, Cadet Bone Spurs, was man enough to get the job done. 

Mattis, he grumbled, was the most-overrated general in history. Trump? Cadet Bone Spurs was the best! (See: 10/17/19.) 

As for the president, the more he thought about it, Trump wasn’t even sure he liked the Kurds. They’re “no angels,” he told reporters. 

“The PKK, which is a part of the Kurds, as you know, is probably worse at terror and more of a terrorist threat in many ways than ISIS.”

 

Once again, Trump was banking on the fact that his biggest fans would never realize the Kurds in Syria were a different group from the PKK. And they’d never know the Syrian Kurds had been dying by our side for years. Finally, Trump said we’d given the Kurds a lot of money. In his mind, that more than made up for the fact they had suffered 11,000 dead and wounded. 

Trump didn’t understand – and can’t understand – because no one in his family ever sheds any blood for any true cause.

The hero in Trump's book is always Trump.

August 18, 2020: "A President Who is a Danger to National Security."

 

8/18/20: If you’re not watching the Democratic Convention, Joe Biden is now the official candidate of the party and will try to defeat Donald J. Trump.

 

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“I never thought I would have a president who is a danger to national security.” 

Lt. Gen. Jack Weinstein

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You’ve also missed seeing former Republican governor of Ohio, John Kasich, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, come out in favor of Mr. Biden. Powell, a lifelong Republican, was joined by former GOP senator Chuck Hagel, who accused the president of “dereliction of duty.” Trump, warned Hagel, “has degraded and debased the presidency and our country in the eyes of the world.” Retired Lt. Gen. Jack Weinstein added his voice to the chorus. Citing his 36 years in uniform, he said, “I never thought I would have a president who is a danger to national security.” 

We have, Powell said, a nation divided, and “a president doing everything in his power to keep it that way.”

 

* 

Connections with Russian intelligence assets. 

IN OTHER NEWS, the final volume of the Senate report on Russian interference in the 2016 election is released. 

Most Americans are too busy trying not to get sneezed on to consider the findings. We will briefly note: 

The bipartisan committee uncovered the same kind of evidence found by Robert Mueller and his investigators. There were multiple contacts between Russians and members of the Trump campaign. Some were more problematic than previously known. For instance, Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer, who met with top campaign officials in a secret meeting in June 2016 (a meeting which included Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort), had connections with Russian intelligence assets that were “far more extensive and concerning than what had been publicly known.” 

(As we at this blog have previously noted, Ms. Veselnitskaya fled this country, one step ahead of arrest.) 

As The Hill notes, the Senate panel also found that, hostile foreign powers looked upon the Trump transition team as an easy mark: 

“Russia and other countries took advantage of the Transition Team’s inexperience, transparent opposition to Obama Administration policies, and Trump’s desire to deepen ties with Russia, to pursue unofficial channels through which Russia could conduct diplomacy,” the report reads, noting that this made the “transition open to influence and manipulation.” 

 

Senate investigators also went further than the Mueller Report had, tagging Konstantin Kilimnik, the business partner of Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, as “a Russian intelligence officer [emphasis added].” The committee labeled Manafort “a grave counterintelligence risk” in its report. 

Kilimnik also fled to Russia before the feds could slap on the cuffs. And Manafort went to prison. 

Evidence indicated that at least two members of Team Trump, Don Jr., and Felix Sater, may have lied to Congress about Candidate Trump’s efforts to get a hotel deal closed in Moscow, during the campaign. (Again, as we have previously noted, Sater was a convicted felon with he went to work for Trump.) 

Further, the committee found that Russian President Vladimir Putin was personally behind the hack and leak operation that published stolen Democratic Party emails, which did serious damage to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. 

Trump fans might find some comfort in knowing that the committee faulted the F.B.I. for giving too much credence to the Steele dossier.

 

Also, six of the eight Republicans on the committee happily announced that after three years of investigations, “we can now say with no doubt, there was no collusion.” 

This is an interesting assessment, since we know Veselnitskaya and Kilimnik are safe in Russia and will never testify. 

And because Trump has always said he won’t take a pardon for Manafort “off the table” – so Manafort has no reason to cooperate with any investigations. 

And because Don Jr. refused to return to Congress and clear up his earlier testimony until he got a sweetheart deal, including limited hours he’d have to stay on the stand, limits to topics he’d have to address, and a promise he would never be called again to testify about any contacts with Russians. 

Top Trump allies in both the House and Senate argued absurdly that Don Jr. shouldn’t have to come again, in the first place, because so far no one had been able to prove he had been lying.

Veselnitskaya secretly met with Donald J. Trump Jr.

Later, she fled to...Russia.

BLOGGER’S NOTE (12/24/20): Paul Manafort gets an early Christmas present when the president indeed pardons him. You could say for “services rendered.” 

That is: Not ratting on Donald Sr.

January 11, 2021:

1/11/21: Only nine more days until the 45^th President of the United States finishes his term and goes on to fresh criminal pursuits.

 

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The only man ever to have been impeached twice.

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We learn this afternoon that the U.S. House of Representatives will move tomorrow to impeach Donald Trump for a second time, meaning the president will slink out of Washington D.C. on or about January 20, the only man in U.S. history ever to have been impeached twice. 

Trump loyalists continue to defend the indefensible, but reality sinks in with each passing day. The overarching reaction is one of disgust. The PGA decides to withdraw from an agreement with the Trump Organization to hold its championship tournament at Trump National in Bedminster, N.J., in 2022.

 

Bill Belichick, coach of the New England Patriots, informs the White House he will not be coming to pick up his Presidential Medal of Freedom. “Above all,” he says, by way of explanation, “I am an American citizen with great reverence for our nation’s values, freedom and democracy.” And, reading between the lines, he cannot accept a medal from the hand of a leader who is not. 

He also makes a point of noting his support for the whole idea that black lives do matter, saying: 

I know I also represent my family and the New England Patriots team. One of the most rewarding things in my professional career took place in 2020 when, through the great leadership within our team, conversations about social justice, equality and human rights moved to the forefront and became actions. Continuing those efforts while remaining true to the people, team and country I love outweigh the benefits of any individual award.

 

In related news, Gen. Colin Powell said today he could no longer consider himself a Republican in the wake of the mob attack on Wednesday. Would he support impeachment again? “Of course,” he told a reporter, although he doubted there was time for it to do much good.

 

* 

IN A CLOSED-DOOR CEREMONY, Trump does manage to award Rep. Jim Jordan his own Presidential Medal of Freedom. Rep. Jordan wins the award for bravely insisting that the November election was stolen and for generally craven, cowardly, sycophantic actions in service to his master. 

(He later denies that he ever said the election was stolen.)

Jim Jordan at a "Stop the Steal" rally.

 

 

* 

AT 7:00 P.M., Vice President Pence and President Trump meet for the first time since the attack on Capitol Hill. No word on whether they hugged or kissed or even shook hands. 

We assume topics to avoid included impeachment, hanging, and tensile strengths of various brands of rope. 

 

FUN FACT: Randall Lane, editor of Forbes magazine, warns companies not to hire former communications officials from the Trump administration. Should they do so, he explains, “Forbes will assume that everything your company or firm talks about is a lie.” 

Lane names five individuals specifically, referring to them as “Trump’s fellow fabulists.” Namely: Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Stephanie Grisham, Kayleigh McEnany and Kellyanne Conway.

October 19, 2021: Rejected-President Trump Insults Another War Hero

10/19/21: Another day, another Loser Donald outburst. Two actually; but let’s stick with the first for now. After Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) tells a reporter he does not believe Trump will be the party nominee in 2024, you had to know Trump would explode.

Trump never dodged bullets. Powell did. For his country.

 

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Once again, the hurt Trump felt deeply, was the hurt he felt for himself.

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When Cassidy added, “President Trump is the first president, in the Republican side at least, to lose the House, the Senate and the presidency in four years. Elections are about winning,” you knew a tantrum was coming.

 

When the reporter said it appeared “clear” Cassidy would not be voting for Trump in any case, Cassidy responded, “I’m not.”

 

It’s possible that Trump nerves were already frayed. By a 58% to 35% margin, in a recent Quinnipiac poll, Americans were already hoping he wouldn’t run in 2024.

 

Trump had no choice but to issue another one of those periodic statements from his desk, these statements serving as a kind of extension of his old Twitter account, without the limit of 280 characters per tweet. (This allows Trump to sound even stupider than he formerly did.) But what we get is vintage Trump-Twitterspeak. First, he calls Cassidy a “RINO,” (a “Republican in name only”) which is typical, sloppy logic from Rejected-President Don. Off the top of my head, this blogger might note that Trump has called former GOP Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Sen. Mitt Romney, Sen. Richard Shelby, Sen. John Thune, Sen. Pat Toomey, and Sen. Ben Sasse RINOs. He went to the trouble to tag Sasse as “Little Ben Sasse,” in one of his juvenile outbursts. Trump has also intimated that Sen. Mitch McConnell might be a bogus Republican, and for good measure referred to the former Majority Leader as “an old crow.”

 

Did we mention that Loser Donald really enjoys juvenile insults?

 

(I am really hoping someday McConnell will respond, and refer to Loser Donald as “a fat Horny toad.”)

 

*

 

ANY REASONABLY ASTUTE OBSERVER should be able to understand that Loser Donald is a small, petty man. His second tantrum of the day was directed – and Trump has done this before – at a man who had just passed away, reminding us yet again that Trump is devoid of any shreds of human decency. His “target” this time was the deceased Gen. Colin Powell, a decorated combat officer, architect of the quick Gulf War victory in 1991, and Secretary of State in the George W. Bush administration. No-Class Don decided it would be fun to insult the memory of a man who had just died, as he had done before, following the passing of Sen. John McCain and Rep. John Dingle. In Dingle’s case, the president intimated that he might be “looking up” from his place in hell.

 

Once again, the hurt Trump felt deeply, was the hurt he felt for himself. Powell might have gone to the Great Beyond, and his family might be mourning. Trump couldn’t have cared less. He couldn’t let his hurt go. This was all about him. First, he chastised the free press. “Wonderful to see Colin Powell, who made big mistakes on Iraq and famously, so-called weapons of mass destruction, be treated in death so beautifully by the Fake News Media,” he whined. “Hope that happens to me someday. He was a classic RINO, if even that, always being the first to attack other Republicans. He made plenty of mistakes, but anyway, may he rest in peace!”

 

The problem with that formulation is that the only Republican Powell ever attacked was Trump himself – whereas, as we have seen above, and will see in a moment below, bashing other Republicans is just what Donald does. As a man of honor, Gen. Powell had long since admitted his mistake in supporting claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Such claims were used, of course, to justify the invasion of Iraq eighteen years ago. Powell had served in and been wounded in Vietnam, unlike Trump. Trump had once claimed he faced his own Vietnam, by risking contracting STD’s and having sex with multiple women, while others dodged bullets and bombs, and tried not to trigger booby traps overseas. Trump had attacked Powell before, just not while his family was at his gravesite. After Gen. Powell endorsed Biden in 2020, No-Class Don tweeted: “Colin Powell, a real stiff who was very responsible for getting us into the disastrous Middle East Wars, just announced he will be voting for another stiff, Sleepy Joe Biden. Didn’t Powell say that Iraq had ‘weapons of mass destruction?’ They didn’t, but off we went to WAR!” 

 

Trump called Powell “highly overrated,” for good measure, in the same way, when he got mad, he called Gen. James Mattis, his first Secretary of Defense, the “world’s most overrated general.”

 

*

 

“Ruining America, right alongside Communist Democrats.”

 

WE’VE SAID all this before. Trump has zero class. Trump cannot feel empathy. No president has ever hated more individuals and more broad swaths of the U.S. population. If we stick to just Republicans, the list of those Trump came to hate is long and his favorite insult is to call them RINOs. In the wake of the massacre in El Paso, in 2019, Dee Margo, the Republican mayor warned Trump he was spreading false information about crime in that city. Naturally, Mayor Margo got hit with the RINO label, albeit in private. The “Little” insult aimed at Sasse reminded me of a time Trump attacked former GOP Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, as “Liddle Bob Corker,” giving his response another juvenile twist. In the fevered mind of Donald J. Trump, Rep. Liz Cheney is a RINO. So is former Attorney General Bill Barr (who did more to derail the Mueller Report than any other human on earth). Barr’s predecessor, Jeff Sessions never got the RINO tag, but Trump made up for it by calling him “slime.” Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson was tagged as a “lightweight RINO.” That’s worse than a garden variety RINO, right?

 

Still. It’s better than “slime.”

 

Trump is a born hater and attacking others is one of his sinister skills. When the Washington Post reported on December 4, 2020, that 25 Republicans in Congress had acknowledged that Joe Biden won the November election, Trump labeled them all RINOs and howled about how he wanted the list. When 17 Republican senators advanced the Biden infrastructure bill, Trump slapped all 17 (we have some duplicates on these two lists) as RINOs, and said they were “ruining America, right alongside Communist Democrats.” This time, both senators from North Dakota, both from Idaho, Sen. Deb Fischer of Nebraska and Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio got tagged. So did Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of the greatest Trump bootlickers in all this land. Every one of these lawmakers had been a Republican for longer than Trump, himself.

 

Logic, of course, has never been Rejected-President Trump’s forte. Hatred is. And Trump hates a lengthy list of fellow Republicans. That list would include former President George W. Bush, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, former Sen. Jeff Flake, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, former GOP Rep. Justin Amash (now an independent), Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, and all the state officials who said the Georgia vote in 2020 election was legit, particularly Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Trump tagged longtime GOP strategist Karl Rove as both a RINO and a “pompous fool.” Former GOP Congressman Joe Scarborough, now an MSNBC host, got accused (without a shred of proof) of having committed murder. Because hate and not facts is what fuels Mr. Trump. Sen. John Cornyn ended up being called a “weak and ineffective” RINO after he made it clear he wouldn’t be supporting Trump’s efforts last January to stop the imaginary steal. When Trump called Maryland Governor Larry Hogan a RINO three weeks after the election, Hogan fired back nicely, tweeting, “Stop golfing and concede.”

 

With this herd of RINOs stampeding across America, you had to wonder. Who would Donald blast next?

 

Abraham Lincoln?

 

Trump went on to claim that Sen. Cassidy “begged” for his endorsement in 2020, “begging” being one of the ex-president’s favorite words of insult. He clearly believes it makes a critic sound weak. Save for him, Trump hinted, Cassidy would have failed in hopes of re-election – which is illogical in itself.

 

“Now, Wacky Bill Cassidy can’t walk down the street in Louisiana, a State I won by almost 20 points,” Trump claimed. “He could not even be elected dog catcher today, the great people curse him.”

 

“Wacky,” and the “dog catcher” line are also Trump go-to favorites when he’s hurling the slurs.

 

And for fun, we should point out that Cassidy won his race in 2020 by twenty-one points.

 

Out of office now just shy of nine months, Trump is still as small as ever.

 

*

 

NOT ALL POLITICIANS are alike, and politics matters. The U.S. Senate votes, 52-48, to confirm Dr. Rachel Levine as Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services. Levine, a four-star admiral, becomes the first openly transgender individual to serve in the Cabinet. Only two Republicans join the majority and the other 48 announce they will continue to stir up as much fear of the transgender population as possible. 

Hey, who’s that peeing in the next bathroom stall! Run! Go load up your AR-15!! 

LGBTQ advocacy organizations applaud the vote. Many religious groups, which form the GOP base, hate it. 

 

FUN FACT: Trump does have his fans, including Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida. Like Trump, Gaetz has zero class. In a since-deleted tweet he too took a cheap shot at Gen. Powell, who succumbed to the coronavirus even though he had been fully vaccinated. “Post-vaccine breakthrough infection kills more people than Iraq’s WMD’s ever did,” Rep. Gaetz sneered. Sneering being one of his skills. (See: 10/20/21.)