Trump Talk: “The only thing James Comey ever got right was when he said that President Trump was not under investigation!”
Plain English: Comey did say that, way, way back in 2017. That was before Trump fired him because of the Russian investigation. That was before General Flynn agreed to cooperate with Special Counsel Robert Mueller. That was before the “Fake News Media” proved in July 2017 that the Trump Tower meeting had occurred. That was before the president drafted a misleading letter, claiming the meeting was all about adoption.
The fact that Flynn has not yet been sentenced indicates he is still cooperating.
Rick Gates, who worked on the Trump 2016 campaign through its duration, is also cooperationg.
TT: “I am very excited about the person who will be taking the place of Don McGahn as White House Councel! I liked Don, but he was NOT responsible for me not firing Bob Mueller or Jeff Sessions. So much Fake Reporting and Fake News!”
PE: Trump has repeatedly expressed his burning desire to end the Mueller investigation. And in June the president made clear what he thought of his Attorney General, tweeting his wrath:
The Russian Witch Hunt Hoax continues, all because Jeff Sessions didn’t tell me he was going to recuse himself...I would have quickly picked someone else. So much time and money wasted, so many lives ruined...and Sessions knew better than most that there was No Collusion!
Or: “constipation!” Again: Collusion is a bogus construct. “Conspiracy” is what we’re talking about.
TT: “Wow, Nellie Ohr, Bruce Ohr’s wife, is a Russia expert who is fluent in Russian. She worked for Fusion GPS where she was paid a lot. Collusion! Bruce was a boss at the Department of Justice and is, unbelievably, still there!”
PE: You say, “Collusion!” I say, “Constipation!”
You have to be an idiot to get sucked in by Trump’s vacuous arguments. Nellie Ohr had a job. She can speak Russian. A company that deals with Russians hired her. She was “paid a lot.”
Trump was paid a lot to run his company. His sons and son-in-law are paid a lot. What point is the president trying to make here?
Maybe he thinks Nellie needs another big tax cut?
Bruce Ohr, Nellie’s husband, did have contacts with Christopher Steele, author of the Steele dossier. Many claims in that dossier are as yet unproven. (We can only hope the reputed “pee tape” will someday be revealed.)
Here’s the key point Trump fans miss—and Trump hopes they keep missing. Steele was not working for the Russian government. The Russians who met with Don Jr. and Jared and Paul Manafort at Trump Tower in June 2016 were. You know: the meeting those three hid for over a year. Steele is on a hit list compiled by Vladimir Putin.
And Steele previously helped the F.B.I. expose massive corruption at the highest levels in international soccer.
The Steele dossier claimed, for example, that Carter Page had gone to Moscow to talk to Russian officials.
Page first denied, but later admitted he did.
The dossier claims that Cohen was in Prague in the fall of 2016 to try to work out a deal to cover up any contacts between the Trump campaign and assorted Russians. This is still in dispute. But if Mueller has evidence he did—or Cohen flips and admits he was—the nooses will be tightly knotted around several White House necks.
TT: “The Rigged Russia Witch Hunt did not come into play, even a little bit, with respect to my decision on Don McGahn!”
PE: Sure, sure. We all believe that. No constipation! Not counting the 62% who believe Cohen is telling the truth about the felonies he committed at your behest. If we don’t count Republicans—who would believe President Obama murdered the Easter Bunny if Sean Hannity said so on his nightly show—roughly four of every five Americans think the president is a lying sack of poo poo.
In other polls we find that CNN is more trusted to tell the truth than the president (50 percent to 43 percent), that the Washington Post and New York Times are more trusted (a 9 point lead) and ABC, CBS and NBC are more trusted by the public than Trump, by 11 points.
That same poll finds that while Republicans approve of the president’s incessant tweeting, Democrats (no surprise) do not. More to the point, in understanding where the American public stands: three-fourths of pure independents (those who lean neither left nor right) disapprove of his tweeting. The top descriptors they chose: “undignified,” “mean” and “dishonest.”
8/31/18: At this point, if federal investigators caught Donald J. Trump with a conical hat on his head, a book of spells in his hands, and a bubbling vat of noxious ingredients cooking in the Oval Office, his Helen Keller-like fans would still insist he had nothing to do with witchcraft.
Friday, prosecutors bring another witch to justice. That witch, like several others recently, pleads guilty and agrees to cooperate with authorities. This time the man in the tall black hat is W. Samuel Patten, heretofore a little-known Republican lobbyist. What makes Patten interesting in this whole “Russia story” is that he has long had ties with Paul Manafort (the convicted felon).
Like Manafort, Patten worked secretly for a pro-Russian Ukrainian political party, backed by Vladimir Putin (of course). In the process he earned a cool million dollars plus for his services. If the Russians killed a few thousand Ukrainians in attacks on their country, Patten couldn’t be bothered.
Hey: a million dollars plus!
Patten later worked for Cambridge Analytica, the now-bankrupt company which is under investigation both here and in Great Britain, which had deep ties to the Trump campaign in 2016.
Kilimnik was indicted along with Manafort recently, in another federal investigation. This time the charges were conspiracy and obstruction of justice, with a spritz of witness-tampering. Both men are scheduled to stand trial starting September 24; but Kilimnik will apparently decline to attend.
He has fled to Russia (where else).
Patten pled guilty to funneling a secret $50,000 donation from foreign sources to the Trump Inaugural Committee—which is, for obvious reasons, illegal. That crime may not seem like much to Trump’s Hellen Keller supporters. But Patten copped to a single felony, while admitting to several.
In theory he has to know about bigger crimes and more of them or he would not have merited a plea deal.
Is there anything else that smells fishy in regards to the Trump Inaugural Committee? It was led by two men, Elliott Broidy, a bigtime Republican financier, aided by Rick Gates (now also a convicted felon). A year ago the “Fake News Media” revealed that Broidy had agreed to pay $1.6 million in hush money to a Playboy Bunny who claims he impregnated her Bunny self. That Bunny went on to have an abortion (because, of course, Republicans want to overturn Roe v. Wade).
Who set up that lucrative deal? It was Michael D. Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer (now a felon), who is cooperating with prosecutors.
And why might that be relevant? There have been hints that Broidy actually took the fall for the president in the case of the aborting Bunny. That is: the child was his. So it should be fun to see how that story plays out in weeks or months to come.
Patten is currently free on bail. He had to surrender his passport and may face five years in prison unless he cooperates fully.
In related “witch hunting” news, Senators Richard Byrd (R-NC) and Mark Warner (D-VA) issue a bipartisan statement Friday.
Their committee sent a “criminal referral” to federal authorities, involving Patten, but related to an entirely different matter.
9/1/18: Much of the nation mourns the passing of Sen. John McCain, who fought for his country during the Vietnam War. Former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama are invited to give eulogies.
The Big Orange Buffoon in the White House is unwelcome at the services. And instead, he heads off Saturday for one of his private golf courses.
Meaghan McCain, the senator’s daughter, speaking first, rebukes the president without naming him. “We gather to mourn the passing of American greatness—the real thing, not cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice he gave so willingly,” she says, “nor the opportunistic appropriation of those who live lives of comfort and privilege while he suffered and served.”
Her implicit comparison of her father’s service to that of the sitting president, a man who used five draft deferments to avoid ever putting himself in harm’s way, could not be more pointed.
Politico describes the scene:
John McCain’s “America does not boast because she has no need to,” [his daughter] said. “The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great.”
The line drew sustained applause from within the cathedral, including from many service members in uniform.
President Bush speaks later and he is equally clear. Without mentioning the current occupant of the White House, Bush lays out the differences between McCain, the war hero, and Trump.
“He was honest, no matter whom it offended. Presidents were not spared,” Bush says of McCain.
He was honorable, always recognizing that his opponents were still patriots and human beings. He loved freedom with the passion of a man who knew its absence. He respected the dignity inherent in every life, a dignity that does not stop at borders and cannot be erased by dictators.
Perhaps above all, John detested the abuse of power, could not abide bigots and swaggering despots.
Obama admits he was surprised when McCain called him not long before he died and asked him to speak at the funeral service. Again, a former leader cut down Trump without spelling it out.
So much of our politics, our public life, our public discourse, can seem small and mean and petty. Trafficking in bombast and insult and phony controversies and manufactured outrage, it’s a politics that pretends to be brave and tough but in fact is born of fear. John called on us to be bigger than that. He called on us to be better than that.
…He understood that if we get in the habit of bending the truth to suit political expediency or party orthodoxy, our democracy will not work.
No doubt, if President Trump was watching, he had to be fuming. Naturally, he spent a good part of his day tweeting.
9/2/18: The president will spend the day at the White House, relaxing after a hard day of tweeting and golfing Saturday.
His fingers, no doubt are weary after tweeting, 19 times on Saturday, alone.
He could get busy and try to speed the process of reuniting the 497 children separated from their parents along the border, some only five years old and younger, many of the torn from mothers and fathers months ago.
9/3/18: It’s Labor Day, a day to honor
the working men and women of the nation.
Last week the president announced that 1.8 million federal workers would have to forego a scheduled
2.1% pay raise in October.
The man who just blew a gigantic hole in the
federal deficit (see: 8/15/18)
informed Congress that the nation could not afford to pay it. “We must maintain
efforts to put our nation on a fiscally sustainable course, and federal agency
budgets cannot sustain such increases,” he said.
Billionaires and multimillionaires, the
nation’s fattest cats? Yes, what America really needed most—and Republicans in
Congress and the fat cat in the Oval Office delivered—were tax cuts for the
richest.
As Trump once said to all the other chunky cats at
Mar-a-Lago, after he pushed through those cuts, “You all just got a little
richer.”
Actually, the fat got a lot fatter! Trump and
almost every member of his immediate family got tax cuts estimated to be worth
millions. We have to estimate the president’s windfall because no one has ever
seen his tax returns, which are eternally under audit. Hedge fund managers, all
the Walton siblings, and every Trump cabinet member with cash stashed in
offshore bank accounts—and there are several cabinet members who do stash cash—love
those cuts. One estimate puts the tax savings for each of
the two main Koch brothers at $1.0 to $1.4 billion annually.
As for those federal workers, they can do
without a raise.
*
Or, maybe not! Less than 24 hours later, having
announced that the nation could not afford a small raise for federal workers,
Republicans awoke to the fact that this was not the best look politically,
heading into midterms. To the untrained eye it appeared the GOP cared more for
billionaires than they did for the “little guy,” which is true.
They do.
They just don’t want the coal miners, truck
drivers, waitresses and plumbers who voted for Trump to get wise to the scam.
With Republicans up for re-election suddenly
sounding the alarm, Trump quickly started to buckle. “I’m going to be studying, you
know, the federal workers in Washington that you’ve been reading so much about,”
he told reporters the day after saying there’d be no raise. “People don’t want
to give them any increase. They haven’t had one in a long time,” he offered in
way of mitigation. “People” didn’t want to give them a raise. It isn’t Trump’s
fault! It never is. But he cares about those workers. Yes, he does! They haven’t
had a raise “in a long time.”
“I said I’m going to study that over the
weekend,” he tells reporters. “It’s a good time to study it—Labor Day. Let’s
see how they do next week. But a lot of people were against it. I’m going to
take a good hard look over the weekend.”
Federal workers: stay tuned.
Fat cats: Go buy bigger yachts! You will need
them to visit your offshore bank accounts in the Cayman Islands. You know: the
place where you stash cash so you don’t have to pay taxes and support those
“freeloading” workers who chase down Mafia types at the F.B.I., man Visitors’
Centers at National Parks or help college students apply for federal loans.
Trump is in the White House. GOP lawmakers are bought and paid for and all is
right in the world.
9/4/18: Just when you think Trump might
make it through an entire day without trampling on the rule of law, he puts on
golf spikes and starts taking divots out of the U.S. system of justice.
First, he puts his fat orange thumb on the
Twitter button and pushes down hard on the scales of justice. This time he’s
upset about the indictments of two Republican members of Congress.
That means it’s time to insult Attorney
General Jeff Sessions and vilify the Department of Justice:
Two long
running, Obama era, investigations of two very popular Republican Congressmen
were brought to a well publicized charge, just ahead of the Mid-Terms, by the
Jeff Sessions Justice Department. Two easy wins now in doubt because there is
not enough time. Good job Jeff......
....The
Democrats, none of whom voted for Jeff Sessions, must love him now. Same thing
with Lyin’ James Comey. The Dems all hated him, wanted him out, thought he was
disgusting - UNTIL I FIRED HIM! Immediately he became a wonderful man, a saint
like figure in fact. Really sick!
And there in one tidy package you glimpse the
“beauty” of President Twitter Thumbs and his tweets.
In just 95 words, without checking grammar,
employing “logic” any fifth grader could demolish, the President of the United
States manages to:
1.
Undercut faith in the Department
of Justice
2.
Sow doubt about the fairness of
the courts
3.
Show disrespect for the rule of
law
4.
Hint that Obama still can’t be trusted
5.
Avoid mentioning the indicted men
by name
6.
Avoid talking about why they were
indicted
7.
Label Comey a liar (and hope his
fans aren’t keeping track of all the president’s lies, which are bountiful)
8.
Call Democrats “sick” (a favorite
ploy)
9.
Insult Sessions without having
the nuts to fire him
It’s a dump truck of stupidity; but there are
a stunning number of Trump lovers who swallow it down.
(Note the “retweets” and “likes” when I
checked at 9:22 this morning.)
I know it probably won’t dent their thinking;
but let’s try to sort this out in sensible fashion. We know, for starters, that
the Department of Justice is run by a Republican appointed by President Trump.
Trump can remove Jeff Sessions—and we know he
burns to do so. He doesn’t dare, at least till after midterms. If he were to
fire Sessions now, most Americans, including sensible people among his
supporters, would see it as increasingly clear proof of intent to obstruct
justice.
Sessions gets it first. Trump puts a stooge
in his place: Devin Nunes, maybe? The stooge fires Special Counsel Robert
Mueller. The “witch hunt” is ended.
No more annoying rule of law!
Indeed, even on the president’s favorite
cable news channel, where logic often goes to die, real journalists are
increasingly restive. Brit Hume, senior political analyst at Fox, quickly
counters Trump’s pair of tweets with one of his own: “Will DJT never learn that
an attorney general’s job is not to play goalie for a president or his party,
or any party for that matter?”
Amen.
I might also point out to rabid Trump fans
that Obama is not some Muslim, born-in-Kenya, steal-all-your-guns boogieman. That
would require a great expenditure of words and the logic would still be lost
upon them.
Nevertheless, I would be remiss if I failed
to point out that the Department of Justice regularly investigates politicians
of all stripes.
Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) was indicted
on fourteen felony counts in April 2015, when Obama was seated in the White
House. Menendez managed to survive a trial, however.
In most cases the Department of Justice gets
its man or woman. Prosecutors indicted Sheldon Silver, a powerful Democratic
New York State legislator in 2015. This time they managed to prove that Silver
was a bribe-taking bum, who pocketed millions of dollars over a period of ten
years. Silver survived a first trial, only to be convicted in a second this
past May.
You can easily look this up. Trump could
himself, save for the fact he has the intellectual curiosity of a clam.
If you’d like to be both appalled and amused
go to Wikipedia for a list of “American federal politicians
convicted of crimes.”
Under Mr. Obama, the Department of Justice
went after miscreants in bipartisan fashion. Anthony Weiner, a Democrat, was
convicted after sending pictures of his weenie to a 15-year-old girl. Rick
Renzi, a Republican, was acquitted on 15 felony charges! At last, an innocent
politician….or, not. He was found guilty on 17 other felony counts. Dennis
Hassert, a former Republican lawmaker, was convicted of paying off a wrestler
he had sexually assaulted when Hassert was coaching in high school. Jesse
Jackson Jr. (D-IL), scion of a famous clan, was nailed for misusing $750,000 in
campaign funds. Trey Radel (R-FL) got busted for possession of cocaine. Chaka
Fattah (D-PA) ran up an impressive total of 23 felony counts. Michael Grimm
(R-NY) pled guilty to a single count of felony tax evasion. In return, he avoided
trial on nineteen additional counts and was sentenced to eight months in jail.
Still, if you like audacity, all hail Mr.
Grimm! Fresh out of the slammer, he decided to run for Congress again in 2018. Alas,
for those of us who like to make fun of the Republican Party, Grimm went down
to defeat in a June primary.
It’s not hard to understand any of this, really.
We want the Department of Justice to go after
as many crooks in government as they can find and convict them when the
evidence merits.
The two congressman indicted, but not named by
Trump in his tweets, are Chris Collins (see:
8/8/18) and Duncan Hunter (see:
8/22/18). I suspect the president didn’t want to name them because some of
his supporters might google their names and not come away impressed.
Collins has been accused of insider
trading—and just to give you a taste—he and a few in-laws and relatives are
accused of dumping stock they owned just before the price plunged. Collins and
his crew kept losses to a minimum and suckers got stuck with stock that
promptly lost 90% of its value.
Hunter was indicted—along with his wife—and
charged with misusing campaign funds, the same crime with which the Democrat
Jesse Jackson Jr. was charged, when Obama was in office. Among their felonious
indiscretions, the Hunters are accused of using $600 in campaign cash to fly their
pet bunny along on a family vacation. That vacation was also paid for with
campaign donations.
The U.S. system of justice is arguably the
best ever designed in the long history of mankind. Still, problems abound. It’s
a system of men and women not just laws and therefore lacking perfection.
Innocent individuals have been convicted of murders and sent to death
row. Illegal immigrants do sneak into our country and some do commit heinous
crimes. See, for example, the tragic story of Mollie Tibbetts.
Native-born Americans also commit heinous crimes. They shoot down concert goers
in Las Vegas, mow down church members in Sutherland Springs, and massacre
teachers and children at Sandy Hook Elementary School. In our system of justice
even the most terrible criminals are accorded the fairest possible trials. Real
criminals sometimes get off when a dozen jurors can’t be positive they committed crimes they likely committed. Police have
been known to plant evidence. Prosecutors have suppressed exculpatory material. A crime
lab technician forged test results. Poor defendants are often
ill-served by bad lawyers, including one barrister who repeatedly fell asleep during his client’s trial.
Rich white people generally get off with light
sentences while darker individuals get carted off to
jail.
More than two thousand men and women,
convicted of crimes in recent years, have been set free when new DNA evidence has exonerated them. Those two thousand
plus individual spent an average of 8.8 years behind bars.
In the same way, Collins and his pals, and
Mr. and Mrs. Hunter, may ultimately prove innocent. Yet the rule of law
requires they be indicted if evidence indicates crimes have been committed.
So, you see, you can learn a great deal about
how the U.S. courts function if you’re not too lazy to read.
You won’t learn anything—and you usually end
up dumber—if you are gullible enough to fall for most of the president’s
tweets.
*
Speaking of ending up dumber, with public attention
directed toward late summer picnics and last chances to go swimming, Rudy
Giuliani announces that once Special Counsel
Mueller completes his investigation and reports to Deputy Attorney General Rob
Rosenstein, the White House will assert executive privilege.
In other words, the President of the United
States will endeavor to suppress any findings so the public never sees them.
*
The president tucks himself into bed after
another bad day. When he turns on the TV he can’t escape the news. All the
cable channels are reporting on Bob Woodward’s new book, Fear: Trump in the White House.
The book is due out September 11.
So far, the details revealed are far from
unflattering for the man watching television.
According to CNN, Woodward quotes White House
Chief of Staff John Kelly as saying of Trump after one staff meeting:
“He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone
off the rails. We’re in Crazytown. I don’t even know why any of us are here.
This is the worst job I’ve ever had.”
Woodward also writes about the efforts of the
president’s lawyers to prepare him for a possible meeting with Special Counsel
Robert Mueller. The president can’t get through a 30-minute mock session
without exploding. John Dowd, at the time head of his defense team, finally warns
him never to sit down and testify under oath. “There’s no way you can get
through these [talks]. ...Don’t testify. It’s either that or an orange jump
suit.”
Dowd, Kelly and others have denied saying
what Woodward quotes them as saying; but if we go back to Watergate days, we
know Mark Felt, the F.B.I. agent who tipped off Woodward and Bernstein constantly,
denied repeatedly that he was their famous source, known as “Deep Throat.”
Woodward describes the president as lonely
and increasingly paranoid, often watching hours of TV in the White House
residence.
And Trump often sounds, in Woodward’s
telling, exactly how you think Trump would sound behind closed doors. The
president describes Reince Priebus, his first chief of staff, as “a little rat.
He just scurries around.”
Trump isn’t interested in the details of
foreign policy. He doesn’t care about the positions of our allies, about
diplomatic niceties, or even the subtleties of our enemies’ negotiating positions.
In considering the nuclear standoff with North Korea, he shrugs off advice from
top advisers. “This is all about leader versus leader. Man versus man. Me
versus Kim,” he replies.
In the same way, Trump goes off on his
generals when they try to explain the complexities of the fighting in
Afghanistan. “You should be killing guys. You don’t need a strategy to kill
people,” he fumes. Woodward says it was after this that Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson declared: “He’s a fucking moron.”
CNN continued its review:
Woodward also
quotes an unnamed White House official who gave an even more dire assessment of
the meeting: “It seems clear that many of the president’s senior advisers, especially
those in the national security realm, are extremely concerned with his erratic
nature, his relative ignorance, his inability to learn, as well as what they
consider his dangerous views.”
In a January 2018, Defense Secretary James
Mattis is described as explaining why the U.S. has a large troop presence in South
Korea. “We’re doing this in order to prevent World War III,” he tells the
president. Afterwards, he tells a close associate Trump has the understanding
of a “fifth or sixth grader.”
Trump’s tweets are a constant source of
concern to his aides. The president sometimes orders printouts of his most
popular tweets and studies them instead of diving more deeply into matters of healthcare
or environmental policy. White House staffers try to intervene but they can’t
stop President Twitter Thumbs. Priebus, the “little rat,” refers to the
presidential bedroom, where Trump often goes to tweet, as “the devil’s workshop”
and calls the early morning hours and Sunday night, when Trump often vents via
Twitter, “the witching hour.”
Perhaps Priebus comes closest to describing
the dysfunction that typifies this administration. The White house, he tells
Woodward, is filled with “natural predators at the table.” “When you put a
snake and a rat and a falcon and a rabbit and a shark and a seal in a zoo
without walls, things start getting nasty and bloody.”
Axios and other media outlets review the book with similar results. “After
Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad launched a chemical attack on civilians in April
2017, Trump called Mattis and said he wanted to assassinate the dictator. ‘Let’s
fucking kill him! Let’s go in. Let’s kill the fucking lot of them,’ Trump said,
according to Woodward.” His top military advisers had to convince him that
would be a bad move and, under U.S. law, illegal.
9/5/18: The president wakes up in a
sour mood, knowing that the highly critical book by Bob Woodward is being
widely reviewed by the “Fake News” media. At least three members of the administration
quoted have already denied saying what they are quoted as saying.
The problem is that the quotes cited so far sound
exactly like Trump sounds at campaign rallies, during off-the-cuff talks and when
he’s off on a Twitter rampage. Woodward’s Trump is the Trump we’ve seen daily the
last two years. Woodward, for example, claims that behind closed doors Trump
has called Attorney General Jeff Sessions “mentally retarded” and “a dumb
Southerner.”
Trump decides to defend himself in a tweet.
When he tweets no reporter can ask him hard follow-up questions. So he serves
up this nugget for fans: “I said NEITHER, never used those terms on anyone,
including Jeff, and being a southerner is a GREAT thing. He [Woodward] made
this up to divide!”
The problem, if anyone cares to check is that we have tapes that belie
the president’s disclaimers. We have all seen the famous video where he mocks a
handicapped reporter, mimicking his lack of coordination. Newsweek notes that Trump called a golf instructor “mentally
retarded” during a taped appearance on the Howard Stern show in 2004. On another
occasion, again on tape, he called a reporter who questioned his business
acumen “retarded.”
We can also check his Twitter feed or play
back his words at campaign rallies. This is a man who often refers to people he
doesn’t like as “lowlifes,” “pigs” and “animals,” who calls foes “low I.Q.” or
“dumb as a rock.” So his comments on Sessions, as quoted by Woodward, are
perfectly in keeping.
*
The president’s mood is not improved when late
in the afternoon The New York Times prints
an anonymous editorial by an individual the newspaper says is a “top official”
in the Trump administration. The title is: “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the
Trump Administration.”
Key passages include:
President Trump
is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American
leader.
It’s not just
that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided
over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House
to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.
The
dilemma—which he does not fully grasp—is that many of the senior officials in
his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of
his agenda and his worst inclinations.
The author rarely faults Trump’s policies—rather
questioning his fitness as a man to hold high office:
…we believe our
first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner
that is detrimental to the health of our republic.
That is why many
Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to
preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided
impulses until he is out of office.
The root of the
problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not
moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.
…Meetings with
him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his
impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless
decisions that have to be walked back.
If what the writer says sounds chilling, he
or she offers some solace. Top White House aides are doing everything they can
to mitigate the damage done by an “erratic” president. “It may be cold comfort…but
Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize
what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump
won’t.
The president may cuddle up to Putin and
other authoritarian leaders; but top aides work every day to contain the
damage.
The bigger
concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as
a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed
our discourse to be stripped of civility.
Senator John
McCain put it best in his farewell letter. All Americans should heed
his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting
through our shared values and love of this great nation.
We may no longer
have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example — a lodestar for
restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue. Mr. Trump may fear
such honorable men, but we should revere them.
There is a quiet
resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first.
But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above
politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor
of a single one: Americans.
Almost as soon as the editorial is posted,
Trump rushes out to respond, and proves he’s not unhinged by acting unhinged. He
blasts, “The New York Times and CNN and all these phony media news
outlets.” His political opponents are in favor of “disaster and crime.” It’s
the “failing New York Times” that
he’s mad about. These media people, “They don’t like Donald Trump and I don’t
like them, because they’re very dishonest people.” He calls the editorial writer
“gutless” for writing anonymously.
“We’re doing a great job. The poll numbers
are through the roof,” he insists, “our poll numbers are great, and guess what,
nobody is going to come close to beating me in 2020 because of what we’ve
done.”
(We have seen the numbers, below. They are
not “great.” They are not “through the roof.” They are not good. They are not
even fair.)
Part of his impromptu performance involves
whipping out a paper from an inner pocket of his suit jacket. It’s a list of
his accomplishments which he proceeds to read in a loud, aggrieved tone.
He brags about adding “four million jobs” to
the economy—which is true, as far as it goes, but pretty much a continuation of
what Obama was doing, starting in 2011, once the Great Recession ended.
Trump keeps turning his back on reporters to
address comments to a bank of sheriffs there at the White House for some
ceremony. When he attacks the free press they clap like idiots with badges.
Eventually Trump stomps out of the room,
refusing to take any questions. Jesus. What a performance.
*
In fact, there are several problems in regard
to the president’s defense of his behavior, not the least of which is proof of
his past behavior. His problems are only compounded by the display of behavior
that follows as he finishes out a bad day.
Having fled the presence of reporters, Trump
quickly retreats to his private residence. This is where he goes when he wants
to whine and tweet and feel sorry for himself. Naturally, he posts a clip of
his own performance, now just ended. Half-an-hour later he issues a one-word
tweet.
“TREASON.”
If you care about the U.S. Constitution and
the rule of law you have to wonder. Who does the president accuse of treason—a
crime punishable by death?
Is the president accusing The New York Times of treason, for
operating as the free press always does? Is he calling the anonymous author
treasonous—because he expressed opinions that pissed him off?
Treason occurs only in wartime. So the
president sounds either ignorant and angry or totally irrational.
A second, equally ominous tweet comes at 6:40
p.m.: “If the GUTLESS anonymous person does indeed exist, the Times must, for
National Security purposes, turn him/her over to government at once.”
Turn that person over for what? Expressing
opinions?
Turn them to face what? Arrest? Summary
execution.
And which is it? Trump says the story is
“fake news.” So, does the source exist?—because if the source does exist—what
the source says should shock all Americans for what this editorial proves.
At 10:22 p.m. the President of the United
States tweets one last time before heading for bed: “I’m draining the Swamp,
and the Swamp is trying to fight back. Don’t worry, we will win!”
The problem with that argument is immediately
clear. The man or woman who wrote that piece in the paper—that person Trump brought
to the swamp. And that person thinks rightly that Trump is nuts.
*
Meanwhile, Gina Loudon, a member of President
Trump’s media advisory board appears on Sean Hannity’s show. Clearly,
her job is to help calm Fox News viewers who might be starting to catch on to
the possibility that the president they love is, frankly, a little bit crackers.
We can probably assume the president is watching because Fox is the only
channel he approves and Hannity is his close personal friend. Loudon is author
of the book Mad Politics, and now on
the show she and Sean totally agree that Trump is the best president of all
time!
Loudon (whose book you figure Trump won’t read
because Trump won’t read) tells Hannity, “My book actually uses science and
real data and true psychological theory to explain why it is quite possible
that this president is the most sound-minded person to ever occupy the White
House.”
Once again, when I go to Amazon to check out
Loudon’s book, I am reminded that the policy of Fox News is to reach as many
male viewers as possible not through the intellect but through the loins. When click
on Amazon to get a picture of the cover of Loudon’s book, the second reviewer I see gives the work five
stars and titles his review: “Amazing endorsements and smoking hot author.”
I think to myself: Maybe Loudon could send the
president a copy and he could lie in bed and gaze upon the cover with lust and…
Let’s face it. We all suspect Melania is
sleeping in a separate bedroom at night.
 |
| Smoking hot author--or how to get Trump to pick up a book. |
9/6/18: We know the president insists the
dishonest media employs made up sources to attack him.
As the sun rises once more over Washington, I
think we can assume the president will be calm and the mood at the White House
will be “business as usual, let’s just keep on making America great.” Because the
scathing editorial in The New York Times
on September 5 was just “Fake News.”
Or not.
Trump is reportedly in a rage. His temper is
“volcanic.” There’s pandemonium at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
There is talk among aides of hitching up
everyone in the White House to lie detectors, including Ivanka.
The hunt for the person who talked to the Times is on—and the president is said to
have a list of a dozen prime suspects.
As the hours pass the denials pile up. “I
didn’t write it,” Vice President Jesus is first to claim. And we know that man
cannot tell a lie, because if he does, he fears he will burn in hell for all
eternity and be stuck spending untold centuries with a flaming Donald J. Trump
by his side.
The initial betting, even on Las Vegas
betting sites, is that the anonymous author is really Mike Pence. The writer
has used the word “lodestar,” a word the vice president often uses in speeches.
It’s an unusual word to employ.
“Not mine,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tells
reporters. He’s traveling in India and it has to be embarrassing to have to
address the topic.
Defense Secretary James Mattis is innocent. A
Pentagon spokesperson says, “It was not his op-ed.”
Attorney General Jeff Sessions says, through
a spokesman, he didn’t write it. In his heart you figure he wishes he had.
By evening at least 24 cabinet members,
ambassadors, and other top administration officials have insisted they never put pen to paper.
Even Melania issues a statement, saying the author of the piece is “sabotaging”
the country.
A spokesman for E.P.A. Administrator Andrew
Wheeler says there is no way Wheeler would criticize the president. He “supports
President Trump 100% and is honored to serve in his Cabinet. He also believes
whoever wrote the op-ed should resign.” Besides, Wheeler is too busy writing
new rules so that chemical companies can poison the nation’s water and coal
companies can pour pollution into our air to be bothering about whether his
Boss is a nut case.
Pundits spend the day weighing possibilities.
Who wrote it? Should the author have come out publically? Is this “gutless” and
“shameful” behavior? Is the writer a “quiet hero” sounding an alarm.
At least one expert points to a key passage:
The root of the
problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not
moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.
The phrase “not moored” seems to hint that
the writer is familiar with nautical terms, perhaps someone who served in the
Navy.
Still, the bottom line is obvious. Someone
working at the top of the administration thinks the man in charge at the White
House is a pyromaniac.
The fires he sets must be doused.
9/7/18: George Papadopoulos, the first
member of the Trump campaign to be sentenced to jail, gets off easy, with 14
days behind bars.
Trump fans will imagine that this proves
there’s “no there there” in the Russia investigation. George, the convicted
felon and purported “coffee boy” might beg to differ. In court, he explains to the judge why he lied to the
F.B.I. during the early stages of the investigation. He was a young man working
for the Trump campaign. “I was surrounded by important people. I was young and
ambitious and excited.”
His lawyer, Thomas M. Breen tries to shift
blame from his client to the president. “The president of the United States
hindered this investigation more than George Papadopoulos ever could,” Mr.
Breen argues in court.
In addition to two weeks in jail,
Papadopoulos is ordered to pay a $9,500 fine and perform 200 hours of community
service.
More ominously—for Trump fans—a prosecutor
tells the judge that Papadopoulos’ failure to cooperate fully in the initial
stages of the investigation forced the prosecution to pour through more than
100,000 emails and other communications. That means investigators have been
digging deep in the pile of manure that was the Trump campaign. Naturally, when
asked about the case by reporters aboard Air Force One, during a trip to Fargo,
N.D., Trump tries to act nonchalant. “I see
Papadopoulos today; I don’t know Papadopoulos, I don’t know,” the president says.
“They got him, on I guess,
on a couple of lies.”
For his part, Papadopoulos tells
the judge he felt the Mueller investigation was legitimate, the investigators
fair-minded. He was paying for his mistakes. That’s all he knew. “And if anyone
else made mistakes, they’re going to have to pay a price, too.”
9/8/18: In case you missed the story,
the good jobs report for August masks a hideous reality.
How do I know? Have I been reading “Fake
News?” I admit I subscribe to the “failing New
York Times” seven days a week.
But a front page story in the Times on Friday focused on the positive aspects of the report. “The
American economy’s stamina was showcased Friday as the government reported that
wages in August sprinted forward at their fastest pace since the recession
ended and that the job creation streak extended to 95 months.”
The “enemies of the people” at the Times added: “the jobless rate remained
under 4 percent, near territory not seen since the 1960s; and average hourly
earnings rose by 10 cents, up 2.9 percent from a year earlier.”
Well, you cannot fool me with fake good news!
I am going to quote Donald J. Trump, the greatest president ever, previously
the greatest businessman ever to walk the earth, or any other planet, assuming
their might be life in distant corners of the galaxy—such as Giant Ferret
Women! If such creatures did exist and ever saw the president they would
definitely want to mate! That sexy orange coif, those saggy jowls, that lumpy
body! We all know the president’s hair looks like a ferret crawled atop his cranium
and died.
Wait. Where was I? Ah. The economy!
As I was saying, these are supposedly boom
times. Jobs in the coal mines are on the rise. Lawyers are in demand!
Practically every member of the Trump administration has lawyered up. The
president is keeping platoons of defense lawyers busy on a half-dozen fronts.
I am not fooled.
Friday the White House was touting the August
jobs report as “blockbuster” good news. Press Secretary Pinocchio said
Americans should run out in November and vote Republican in the midterms like
lemmings.
Pay no mind if the President of the United
States stomps on the rule of law every time he turns around! The man produces
jobs!
Or so he claims—and also doesn’t claim.
Yes. The economy added 201,000 jobs last
month. Yes. Non-farm wages are up, year-over-year, 2.9%. That’s the best yearly
gain since 2009.
You still can’t fool me. I am going to quote
someone Trump loyalists will find impossible to dispute. This man has made the
bad news clear. He has warned that tens of millions of Americans still remain
without jobs. They live underground, occasionally sticking their heads out of doors,
like Punxsutawney Phil, desperately looking for work. There are no jobs to be
seen and they retreat to their loungers to await the coming of boom times.
Who says? Donald J. Trump says. And who am I
to imagine that this great man might ever lie?
(Okay, true, in a recent Quinnipiac poll, 60%
of Americans said they thought the president was not honest and only 32% said
he was. I am guessing that latter figure did not include Melania.)
In February 2016, with Obama holding the
fort, Trump appeared on Fox News and made it clear to host Sarah Palin (remember her) that the nation’s employment
situation was dire. “Well, if you really looked, Sarah, at the economy it’s
been terrible,” Trump claimed. “We have 93,000,000 people out of work. They
look for jobs, they give up, and all of a sudden, statistically, they’re
considered employed.”
There might be fools who believed the good
monthly jobs reports issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics back in those
days.
Not Trump.
Those good monthly numbers—which Candidate
Trump called “rigged”—showed that once the Great Recession ended in late 2010,
the economy added jobs 76 months in a row, under Obama.
In January 2017, Sean Hannity blasted Obama one last time as he left
office. It burned his ass, Hannity said, to listen to the outgoing president
boast about the healthy economy as he returned to civilian life. Hannity was
wise to the scam. The state of the economy was not good:
Well, facts,
they paint a much different picture. Now, what is actually true, he oversaw the
precipitous decline of the American economy, that’s a fact. And here’s why.
Under President Obama we have seen the lowest labor participation rate since
the 70s, 95 million of your fellow Americans are out of the labor force, he
didn’t mention that tonight…”
So there you had it. Facts! Hannity facts!
Trump facts! Holy-shit-facts!!!! Somewhere north of 90,000,000 Americans were
desperate for work. Trump was warning voters not to elect Hillary. If they did
the economy would crash, just as it had in 2008—because of Obama—when President
George W. Bush was in office. The good jobs numbers that had been pouring forth
from the Bureau of Labor Statistics since late 2010, Trump insisted, were faked.
First, he claimed the real unemployment rate
was 15%. Then he said it was 18 to 20 percent. On August 11, 2015, when the
official rate was 5.4%, Trump insisted “it’s probably 40%.”
Trump was fuzzy about exact numbers. He often
is. No matter! By August 30, he had the rate nailed down. “The real number,” he
told a reporter, “I saw a number that could be 42 percent, believe it or not.”
Believe it or not!
In September 2015, Candidate Trump said the
unemployment number was either 24% or 42%.
You had to wonder: Is Donald dyslexic?
In October he said it was 32%.
By the start of 2016, he was claiming the
Bureau of Labor Statistic had “cooked the books.” The jobs reports were
“phony.” In February Trump revealed the truth. The unemployment rate was 35%!
Or maybe 42%! It was awful either way.
In August 2016 he scoffed at the official
unemployment rate. “The 5 percent figure is one of the biggest hoaxes in modern
politics.”
“Hoax.” Where have we heard that word of
late?
Even after he won election Trump couldn’t be
fooled—and neither could his loyal fans. “The
unemployment number, as you know,” Trump told reporters in December 2016, “is
totally fiction.”
Then he took charge. The Trump jobs boom
began! Or so we were told. But Donald J. Trump himself, with the able
assistance of Hannity and the rest of the hosts at Fox News, had tipped this
liberal off. The numbers coming out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics had to be
wrong.
Here are the shocking facts—as revealed by
Donald J. Trump! Starting from that figure of 93,000,000 unemployed, which he
posited at the end of 2016, the Bureau reported that in January 2017, 259,000
jobs were added to the U.S. economy. The official unemployment rate stood at 4.8 percent.
When the jobs report for February 2017,
Trump’s first full month in office, was good, Press Secretary Sean Spicer said the numbers might have been phony in
the past. Now they were “very real.”
Only this liberal knew math! I had listened
to Candidate Trump and his sidekick, Gelled Hair Sean.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics said 200,000
jobs were added in February 2017. The Bureau claimed the unemployment rate
ticked down to 4.7 percent. But I was using Trump’s figures because I knew
Trump never lies. He just can’t do it. He is the modern equivalent of George
Washington with his little hatchet, facing a cherry tree of facts. He cannot
cut it down and say he didn’t. And by his figures more than 92.5 million
Americans still had to be seeking
work!
I’m not crazy. I can’t deny addition and subtraction.
The economy has continued to add jobs every
month since Trump took charge. The streak of 95 positive monthly job reports
has continued through 2018, meaning that Trump, if we listen to right-wing
“real news,” has kept the economy humming since late 2010. In nineteen full
months since he first took office 3,583,000 jobs have been added to the U.S.
economy (February 2017-August 2018).
Well, you still can’t fool me. I have a
calculator and I know how to punch the buttons. As of now, Trump can claim he has been adding 188,579 jobs
per month. And the unemployment rate has officially dropped to 3.9 percent. But
I was not born yesterday. I was born in 1949. I’m old. You can’t trick me
again—like when I thought Obama was adding jobs 76 months in succession.
If we subtract jobs all the jobs created
under Trump, from the number of Americans who Trump and Hannity said were
crying out for work (we’ll use Trump’s lower estimate), then we find:
93,000,000 Americans looking for work (December 2016)
- 259,000 jobs added in January
2017 (Obama in office for 19.5 days)
-
3,583,000 jobs created since
89,158,000 Americans still looking for work!
In other words, since I have listened to Hannity
and Lou Dobbs and all the other angry right-wing nuts, I know the horrible
truth. The official unemployment rate can’t be right. The numbers must be
“rigged.”
By Trump’s own math, we know more than
89,000,000 Americans are still pounding the pavement, crying out, “Work! Work!
We need work!”
In fact, the situation is even worse than we imagine.
In January 2017, when Trump took office, the Labor Participation Rate was 62.9
percent, having fallen from 65.7 percent in January 2009, when Obama took
office.
Remember! Hannity was pissed. He blamed the
decline all on Obama.
Lord, have mercy. As of August 2018, the rate
is only 62.7 percent. It hasn’t budged in almost two years.
So I am going to try to estimate the true
unemployment rate, using the kind of math Trump employed when Obama was in
office. I am going to figure the rate is 39%. Or maybe 26%, or some other scary
number, like 102%. Frankly, I don’t know. But it can’t possibly be as low as
3.9%.
Because I know math and I listened to Trump.
And Trump can’t fool Trump.
9/9/18: As recently as last week, Trump
claimed his poll numbers were “through the roof.” A poll from Quinnipiac seems to
lead us to question that assessment. First, Trump
has a 38% approval rating in the poll. That’s with 7 out of 10 Americans saying
the economy is “excellent” or “good.”
True, Republicans remain loyal, with 84%
approving of the job he’s doing. But 54% of all Americans disapprove.
The internals give us some idea why Trump’s
ratings remain low: by a margin of 55% to 28%, Americans believe the author of
the anonymous New York Times editorial
and not the denials of Trump.
That editorial basically indicates that the
president is nuts and officials in his administration have to constantly
monitor his behavior like he’s a child with matches and a five gallon can of
gasoline in his room.
Other key findings:
57% of Americans do not think Trump has good
leadership skills.
55% don’t think he cares about “average
Americans”
65% don’t consider him level-headed
51% still think he is intelligent (not
exactly a stellar showing); even I think he’s “intelligent,” in a kind of
criminal mastermind way
55% believe Robert Mueller is conducting a
fair investigation (32% think he’s not)
And: did voters think the president was
honest? Only 32% said yes, and 60% said no (up 6 points since July). Only 5% of
Democrats, 29% of Independents, 28% of women, 28% of white men with college
degrees and 26% of Americans, ages 18-34, believe Trump is an honest man.
*
A second polls shows Trump and the GOP could
be in trouble in November. According to a CNN/SSRS survey, the president’s
approval rating has dropped to 36%, fueled by a precipitous decline among
independents (from 47% to 31% in recent weeks). Only 37% of Americans answer
yes when asked if Trump “cares about people like you.” And only 32% say Trump
is “honest and trustworthy.” By contrast 65 percent of all adults thought the
president was not.
*
Speaking of poll numbers, Sen. Ted Cruz finds
himself in a surprisingly tight reelection race for the U.S. Senate.
It probably doesn’t help that even other Republicans
say that in the deep red state of Texas, Cruz just isn’t “likeable” enough.
Suddenly worried
about his job, Cruz hits back at his Democratic rival. He warns that if Beto O’Rourke is elected
the End Times are nigh. Liberals like O’Rourke, Cruz says, “want us to be just
like California, right down to tofu and silicon and dyed hair.”
No one knows how
liberals will go about making conservatives dye their hair and get breast
implants. But this is the terrible future, in which liberals will also make it
impossible for real Americans to say, “Merry Christmas” whenever they want.
9/10/18: The president is up early
studying complex policies regarding Afghanistan, Iran, Syria and North Korea.
I’m joking, of course!
At 6:03 a.m. he’s already tweeting, which
means he’s tweeting the usual nonsense: “The GDP Rate (4.2%) is higher than the
Unemployment Rate (3.9%) for the first time in over 100 years!”
It wouldn’t be hard to check the facts before tweeting. The problem is that this would
require an intellectual effort the president is unwilling to make.
So he gets the facts wildly wrong.
From the end of World War II, until the early
80s, this combination of high GDP growth and low unemployment was frequently to
be seen. The rate of GDP growth compared to the unemployment rate was higher
under Presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush six quarters in twelve years. Clinton
did it five times during eight years in office, George W. Bush twice. In his
last full quarter as president, Bush and the GOP managed to kick the GDP into
an 8.4% decline and unemployment rose to 6.9%, headed for a high of more than
10%, as the economy spiraled.
Naturally, when the White House was called on
to correct the mistake, no one dared admit
Trump just tweets stupid shit. Kevin Hassett, a top White House economic
adviser, told reporters he could not explain how the president got his
information wrong. As far as facts go, Hassett said he didn’t know “from the
initial fact, to what the president said, I don’t know the whole chain of
command. But what is true is it’s the highest [quarterly GDP increase] in ten
years. And at some point, somebody probably conveyed it to him adding a zero,
and they shouldn’t have done that.
Ten years, a hundred. Who cares!
Hassett assured reporters that he and other
“geeks” at the White House deeply appreciated it when the press caught them in
errors and gave them a chance to correct their mistakes. They wanted to get the
facts straight.
*
This wasn’t the first time in recent weeks
that the White House got its facts tangled in hopeless knots. Just last month Press Secretary Pinocchio was forced to apologize when it became clear her claim
that President Trump was a hundred times better at creating jobs than President
Obama ever had been proved a tiny bit off. During a press briefing she told
reporters:
This
president since he took office created 700,000 new jobs for African-Americans.
After eight years of President Obama in office, he only created 195,000 jobs
for African-Americans. President Trump in his first year and a half has already
tripled what President Obama did in eight years.
That would be an amazing
feat, almost as amazing as Sanders’ feat of blasting simple addition to smithereens.
It turns out once again—if one is not too lazy to check facts—that Bureau of
Labor Statistics show 3.2 million jobs for African-Americans were created
during Obama’s eight years in office.
Sanders eventually corrected
her error. But it was too late to stop her nose from growing another inch.
CNBC posted the following
chart:
9/11/18: The entire coast of South
Carolina is under a mandatory evacuation order as Hurricane Florence, a
Category 4 storm churns toward landfall. Florence has been picking up added
strength as it passes over Atlantic waters that in some areas are three degrees
warmer than normal.
And if you imagine humanity can’t seriously
degrade its environment you don’t know your history or current events.
As scientist have predicted, warmer air means
more moisture remains suspended. The result: more intense rain storms. Consider, for example,
Hurricane Harvey, which dumped a record 51.88 inches of rain on the Houston
area in what experts described as a “once-in-a-thousand-years flood.”
Consider a second warning sign as waters off
Florida heat up. Hotter waters are a perfect breeding ground for the growth of
harmful microorganisms. As of today, a “red tide” of toxic algae, stretching
130 miles along the Florida Gulf Coast has remained in place since November
2017. Toxins released by the algae kill fish, manatees, sea turtles and other marine
mammals. The sight and smell of rotting fish and other sea creatures littering the
sands keeps tourists away.
Like President Trump, Florida Governor Rick
Scott thinks there are far too many regulations protecting the environment. Now
he has been forced to declare a state of emergency for seven counties “where
waterways and coastlines are filled with putrid fish floating in brass-colored
water.”
“Red tides” also create breathing problems
for humans.
And they are increasingly common, just as
scientists predicted they would become as oceans round the world heat up. An even worse “red tide” blanketed South Florida for seventeen
months from 2004 to 2006.
