If he had had the chance he would have gone
on and on: “Donald J. Trump is to coaching Americans to strive for greatness as
Bill Belichick is to getting the Patriots to the Super Bowl every year.”
There would have been no stopping the fool.
“Trump is a hero to all patriotic Americans,” Pence would have said, “like
Audie Murphy during World War II and Alvin York during World War I, if they had
debilitating bone spurs.”
What Pence would do would be grovel at
Trump’s feet. “The president,” he’d add, “is leading the nation to greatness
again, like George Washington crossing the Delaware, like Teddy Roosevelt
taking on the Robber Barons, only if Teddy was on the other side, handing out tax
breaks.”
“Trump,” he would insist in full suck-up mode,
“could star as a male stripper, he’s so cut and well-built. If he grabbed
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—or even Pelosi by the p-word—they’d both get a thrill.”
(Pence wouldn’t use the p-word. “Mother”
would not be pleased if he dared.)
There’d be only one way to stop Vice
President Pence from going on and on about the greatness of his boss. Someone
would have to hit him upside the head with an iron frying pan.
POSTSCRIPT: The president and VP did make a
trip to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in D.C. to “honor” his memory.
They stayed roughly six minutes and Trump
gave a “speech” to no one in particular and failed to mention Dr. King by name.
More of a reality check, below: This is what Dr. King was
fighting about: the lynching (Emmett Till in 1955, for example), the riot at
Old Miss in 1962, when a single African American tried to enroll, George
Wallace blocking the door to the University of Alabama the following year, the
murder of three civil rights activists trying to register African Americans to
vote in 1964, and the belated decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967, allowing
interracial marriage to finally become legal.
That doesn’t include the fight to get African Americans into
most schools, battles over Jim Crow blood banks, theater seats, swimming pools,
sporting events and even laws banning the playing of interracial checkers.
 |
| Peaceful sit-in demonstrators beset by mob. |
1/22/19: The delusional buffoon
in the Oval Office touts his rising approval
rating with Hispanics—up to 50% in a Marist poll—proving they “understand” the
need for a wall. If you check the poll, however, you discover that Trump
couldn’t have studied the results. If he had he’d have noticed his approval
rating was 40%. And you know he didn’t read the fine print—and none of the
sycophants surrounding him would dare tell him: 57% of those polled said they
would definitely not vote for him in
2020, vs. 31% who said they would.
1/23-24/19: Sometimes there’s so much horrible news
involving and revolving around Trump you can be frozen in knowing what to
address first.
Trump Tantrum Shutdown: Days 33-34.
We’ve now survived Day 33
of the Trump Tantrum Shutdown and there’s no resolution in sight.
That means 800,000
federal workers are still not being paid—even though nearly half have been ordered
to report for work, making it the no-pay-but-report-to-work-anyway-Trump
Tantrum Shutdown, which could go on for
years.
Who said “years?”
Trump!
Meanwhile, the damage done
grows daily. The FBI Agents Association warns the shutdown
has harmed the Agency’s ability to protect the nation from terrorists, MS-13 gang
members and other nefarious characters, such as pals of the President of the
United States. The National Air Traffic Controllers Association is suing the Trump
administration, warning of growing safety concerns. The national parks are
closed, although Trump doesn’t care because he’s never going to drag his lard
ass out to a national park unless you tell him there’ll be strippers dressed up
as park rangers. A protest outside the office of Sen. Milksop Mitch, led by
labor leaders representing federal workers’ unions, ends with a dozen
arrests.
Trump himself has ordered
36,000 IRS workers to return to their jobs—but not to be paid—so that he won’t look
like a moron and tax refunds can go out in good
time, rather than piss off every American expecting a check.
*
ON THE INTERNATIONAL
FRONT, Trump is taking a series of well-earned lumps because he creates foreign
policy in tweets. We have defeated ISIS he recently claimed. A suicide bomber immediately
killed four Americans in Syria. Lawmakers were so rattled by news that
President Twitter Thumbs might pull the U.S. out of NATO that the House of
Representatives voted to
strip him of the power to do so. The vote was 357-22. That means 60 members
decided to duck and cover rather than vote against Twitter Thumbs. But only 22
Republicans offered support. That includes Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas, a man we
know is nuts.
Speaking of threats to America, is there
anything else happening round the world that we might worry about? Well, good
news, of a sort, as Trump and Kim Jong-un are scheduled to meet again next
month. It could be our “favorite President,” as he styles himself, will simply
declare the problem of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal solved and jet off to
Mar-a-Lago for a rest.
Phew!
Getting Kim to “give up all his nukes,” Trump
will tell reporters, was really hard work!! But he did it. He did what no
president had ever done before.
Alas, in the real world where most of us still
live, Kim has not given up any nukes
yet, even though last summer Trump declared North Korea was no longer a threat.
The North appears to be expanding its long-range missile
bases, instead.
Trump may say he loves Kim, and Kim loves him,
but, so far, Kim is cheating on Don the way Don cheats on his wives.
Oceans rise 0.03 inches per year.
As if North Korea isn’t bad enough, scientists
have now released another ominous report outlining the growing threat
of climate change. The ice cap atop Greenland, they warn, began melting
seventeen years ago. Between 2002 and 2016 the cap lost an average of 280
billion tons of ice annually.
If you’re a Trump fan, or the
Science-Moron-in-Chief himself, you can read one sentence in the report and
shrug off the rest. The melting so far has raised the level of the oceans a
mere “0.03 inches per year.”
So, we’re not going to “drown” in that extra
half inch.
It’s the cumulative danger that has scientist
sounding the alarm. The ice, says Professor Michael Bevis, lead author of the report,
is now melting four times faster than a
decade ago.
“The only thing we can do is adapt and
mitigate further global warming—it’s too late for there to be no effect. We are
watching the ice sheet hit a tipping point.”
If you were the President of the United
States—and not also a moron—you could read the report and note that if all the
ice atop Greenland melted the oceans would rise 216 feet. You could read reports
highlighting the problem of vanishing glaciers across the
Himalayas and the long term threat that represents to Southwest Asian water
supplies. You could read about glaciers melting in Antarctica. You could read
about 400,000 glaciers worldwide, including Iceland, and what happens if they continue to melt. If you
weren’t tweeting all day you could Google, “NASA climate change,” or “National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climate change,” and read more reports.
You could even study the report released two weeks ago by the
Department of Defense, outlining future damage to U.S. facilities round the globe.
Or, if you’re a Trump fan, you could blindly
follow the guy who thinks global warming is a “hoax.”
As Day 34 of the Tantrum Shutdown draws to a
close we know one cabinet member has no earthly clue. For the life of him, Commerce
Secretary Wilbur Ross tells a reporter, he can’t understand why federal workers
are worried about missing two
paychecks in a row. The reporter notes that there are furloughed workers
showing up at food banks. Secretary Ross can’t see why these people have a
“liquidity crisis.” He wonders why they don’t just go out and get loans.
And besides, even if they never got their pay, it would represent a loss of only 1/3rd
of a percent of GDP.
That’s easy for Ross to say because:
A)
He has no more empathy than the
common wart.
B)
He never has to worry because he’s
a billionaire who has his loot stashed in offshore bank accounts.
At last, darkness descends on the capital.
Trump tweets one last time at 10:28 p.m., watches a little Fox News and the
last TV is clicked off in his bedroom and he drifts off to sleep.
Day 34 of the shutdown ends.
1/25/19: Day 35 of the Tantrum
Shutdown starts with a bang when F.B.I. agents raid the home of former Trump adviser
Roger Stone.
“F.B.I. Open the door!”
At 6:00 a.m. a caravan of law enforcement
vehicles pulls up in front of Mr. Stone’s Fort Lauderdale abode. It’s dark and dozens
of officers, some heavily armed and wearing tactical vests fan out to cover the
entrances, guns drawn.
An officer knocks at the front door. “F.B.I.,”
he shouts. “Open the door.” (Too bad he didn’t add, “You dirty rat!”)
Still no light inside—and the agent shouts
again, “F.B.I. Warrant!”
Moments later, Stone opens the door, is placed
under arrest, and led away in handcuffs.
*
A THOUSAND MILES to the north, in Washington,
D.C., the president is either sleeping late or hiding under his bed, because
when I check his Twitter feed at 8:07 a.m. he still hasn’t posted.
This is a rarity for a man who typically
tweets before the sun has peeked over the eastern horizon.
Once the president does catch up to the story,
you know he’s going to lose his shit. First, Stone has been indicted on seven felony counts. You have
obstruction of justice for the appetizer, five counts of making false
statements for the main course, and a count of witness tampering for desert.
Even worse for Trump and his pals, the
indictment makes clear that while Stone was allegedly breaking the law senior
officials in the Trump 2016 campaign allegedly urged him to continue. If you
dive into the indictment—which “Fake News” CNN was kind enough
to provide—you quickly realize that this is major bad news for Old Twitter Thumbs. From page 2, forward, we see
land mines that could explode as Trump and his top aides try to cross an
increasingly complex legal minefield without blowing themselves to tiny Trump
bits.
For example, a senior campaign official “was
directed” by an unnamed person to contact Stone and find out if WikiLeaks (“Organization
1” in the filing) was planning to dump more stolen emails to harm the Clinton
campaign.
Press Secretary Pinocchio will claim later in
the day that, “The charges brought against Mr. Stone have nothing to do with
this president.” But with that, Sanders’ nose only grows another inch. Reading
between the lines, the entire court filing is aimed at the president and his
campaign.
Who in that campaign could have directed a senior official—save a more important
personage? The suspicion falls immediately on Donald J. Trump. (There’s an
outside chance that Stone might have been directed by Don Jr. or Jared Kushner
or some other shady character, like Steve Bannon.) And for whose benefit was
Stone doing all this dirty work? Everything described in the indictment was
done to further the campaign.
In the summer of 2016, for example, the
indictment notes, “Stone was contacted by senior Trump Campaign officials to
inquire about future releases [of stolen emails] by Organization 1.”
Note the plural: “officials.”
As noted, “Organization 1” is WikiLeaks,
proud possessor that summer of thousands of stolen Clinton and Democratic
National Committee emails. These emails were hacked (as we now know) by
Russians and passed on to do harm to her campaign.
In other words: Russian interference in a
U.S. election.
Trump and top aides knew who was helping them out.
We know today how much of the rest of the
story unfolded. In those days, Stone could claim that he had no idea the
Russians were behind the hack. Yet, days after the first dump of damaging
emails, Trump could go on stage and say, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope
you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” a reference to Mrs.
Clinton’s now closed private email account.
Trump didn’t call for Julian Assange and
WikiLeaks to find the emails, which would have made sense if he didn’t know the
Russians were at work. He called on the
Russians for help.
Soon after Trump took office, the story of Russian
interference finally broke. Yet, the president insisted for more than a year that
there was no evidence the Russians interfered. Now, this indictment comes ever
closer to proving that Trump and his aides knew all along who was helping them
out. (See: false cover letter issued
about the Trump Tower meeting with Russians; 1/13/19.)
Eventually, Congress set to work. The Senate conducted
a fairly serious investigation. Mr. Stone was called to appear before the House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), chaired by Rep. Devin
Nunes. (Nunes would later be labeled “Trump’s stooge” by his hometown
paper.)
During testimony, Stone was asked about any contacts
he had had with WikiLeaks or any Russian hackers. According to the indictment, Stone
“made multiple false statements” in an effort to obstruct justice. He “denied
possessing records that contained evidence” of interactions involving WikiLeaks
and the Trump campaign—and those records he still possessed.
Stone asks for specific emails damaging to Clinton.
The indictment is damning in multiple ways:
After the July
22, 2016, release of stolen (Democratic National Committee) emails by
Organization 1, a senior Trump Campaign
official was directed to contact STONE [emphasis added] about any
additional releases and what other damaging information Organization 1 had
regarding the Clinton Campaign. STONE thereafter told the Trump Campaign about
potential future releases of damaging material by Organization 1.
In other words, people close to Trump—and
possibly Trump, himself—knew what Stone was up to and urged him to keep up the
good work.
It is worth remembering, too, that a secret
meeting in Trump Tower with agents of
the Russian government had occurred just one month prior. It is also worth noting
that in May 2016, Stone had met with a Russian agent offering
dirt on Clinton; but that Russian wanted $2 million. We also know that Trump’s
personal lawyer was working on a deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow all that
summer. So there’s no doubt Candidate Trump knew the Russians were willing to
help him.
“On or about August 2, 2016,” prosecutors now
allege,
Person 1 emailed
STONE. Person 1 wrote that he was in Europe and planned to return about
mid-August. Person 1 stated in part, “Word is friend in embassy [Julian Assange
of WikiLeaks] plans 2 more dumps. One shortly after I’m back. 2nd in Oct.
Impact planned to be very damaging.”
(Jerome Corsi, a right-wing conspiracy
theorist has admitted he is “Person 1” and says that the information contained
in the indictment is substantially correct as far as his role is concerned.)
At one point, according to the indictment, Stone
goes so far as to request “Person 2” to contact the head of “Organization 1”
and ask him to provide “any State [Department] or HRC [Hillary Rodham Clinton] e-mail
from August 10 to August 30—particularly on August 20, 2011,” to support a
damaging narrative related to the Democratic presidential candidate.
In other words, Stone is putting in an order for specific stolen emails. He and “Person 2,”
now known to be Randy Credico, exchange a series of emails and text messages and
sometimes speak by phone. According to the indictment, on or about October 2,
2016, Person 2 assures Stone, “big news Wednesday….now pretend u don’t know
me.” Assange is about to drop another load of stolen emails. Two days later,
Stone is communicating with a “supporter involved in the Trump campaign.” That
supporter wants to know about other damaging info that might be coming. Stone
replies, “Yes - want to talk on a secure line - got Whatsapp?”
These guys know they’re up to no good—and,
from what we can tell—worry they’re breaking the law.
It will take months before the free press can
start digging up the truth. But by the spring of 2017, both the House and
Senate will have started investigations into Russian meddling in our election. Nunes’
panel will ask Stone for any records “that reasonably could lead to the
discovery of facts within the investigation’s publically-announced parameters.”
On May 22, Mr. Stone notifies Nunes and HPSCI
that he has “no documents, records, or electronically stored information,
regardless of form” that might help in any way. Happy to hear this wonderful
news, Chairman Nunes—who has zero interest in actually uncovering any info
damaging to Trump or his crew—wishes Stone a good day and prepares to send him
on his way.
“You have no emails, no texts, no documents whatsoever?”
Sadly, for Mr. Stone, before he can dash for
the exit, a Democratic member of the panel asks if he has any information about WikiLeaks, the timing of the email dumps, or the
stolen Clinton emails. “You have no emails, no texts, no documents whatsoever,
any kind of that nature?” his questioner asks.
“That is correct,” Stone responds. “Not to my
recollection.”
The indictment alleges that Stone was lying
at that point and would continue to do so for months:
In truth and in
fact, STONE had sent and received numerous emails and text messages during the
campaign, in which he discussed Organization 1, its head, and its possession of
hacked emails. At the time of his false testimony, STONE was in possession of
many of these emails and text messages…
Stone didn’t lie once or twice. He was asked
if he had ever communicated by email or text with Person 2. “He’s not an email
guy,” Stone explained. “No,” he added, there were no texts.
Mueller’s team includes a raft of emails and
texts between Stone and “Person 2” in the indictment.
Person 2 repeatedly warned Stone he was committing perjury.
Stone was asked by investigators if he had
discussed his conversations with “an intermediary” to Organization 1 “with
anyone involved in the Trump campaign?”
The indictment notes: “Stone falsely and
misleadingly answered, ‘I did not.’ In truth and in fact…STONE spoke to multiple
individuals in the Trump campaign about what he claimed to have learned from
his intermediary to Organization 1[.]”
Stone knew when he testified before Congress
that there were witnesses who might reveal his trail. For that reason, on or
about October 19, 2017, he began “urging Person 2…to falsely confirm” parts of his
testimony. Person 2 “repeatedly told STONE that his testimony was false and told
him to correct his testimony to HPSCI. STONE did not do so. STONE then engaged
in a prolonged effort to prevent Person 2 from contradicting STONE’s false
statements to HPSCI.”
In November, “Person 2” was invited to
testify. Stone and Credico talked and emailed frequently in days ahead. Stone
suggested that Credico say he “could not remember what he had told STONE,” or
“alternatively…invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination”
when called before the panel. On November 19, Credico notified Stone that his
lawyer wanted to talk.
Stone channels Richard Nixon.
According to the indictment, Stone made it
clear he wanted his friend to cover their tracks. Stone responded by quoting
that pillar of rectitude, Richard Nixon, from the worst days of the Watergate
Affair. “Stonewall it.” Stone suggested. “Plead the Fifth. Anything to save the
plan.”
As if citing Nixon wasn’t bad enough, in December
2017, Stone and Credico repeatedly discussed the latter’s coming testimony.
Stone channeled a character from The
Godfather: Part II. Credico, he said, should pull a “Frank Pentangeli.”
That is, like the movie character, he should tell the House panel he did not
know “critical information that he does in fact know.”
Stone was clear. If Credico turned anything
over to the F.B.I., he was “a fool.” Credico advised Stone, again, to correct
his own testimony before it was too late. Stone responded, “Because of tromp [Trump?]
I could never get away with a certain [sic] my Fifth Amendment rights but you
can. I guarantee you you are the one who gets indicted for perjury if you’re
stupid enough to testify.”
As events transpire, when called before
Congress, “Person 2” does assert a Fifth Amendment right. Still, Stone and Credico
realize they remain in danger and continue to discuss how to deal with ongoing investigations.
On December 24, Stone writes again to Credico,
“I’m not talking to the FBI and if your [sic] smart you won’t either.”
By the spring of 2018, Credico has weakened. When
he finally begins opening up to investigators Stone goes bonkers. “You are a
rat. A stoolie. You back-stab your friends,” Stone howls. He threatens “to take
that dog away from you,” a threat to Credico’s furry best friend.
“Prepare to die [expletive],” Stone adds to
hammer home the point.
A central theme in all six indictments.
And so, Friday, there it was. A sixth member
of the Trump 2016 campaign had been indicted; and a central theme ran through
all six indictments. Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos, Paul Manafort, Rick
Gates, Michael Cohen, and Stone, had all been convicted of or accused of lying
about contacts with Russian agents. The obvious question was: Why?
What were all six trying to hide?
In summary, this latest indictment alleges that
from May at least through December 2017, “the defendant, ROGER JASON STONE JR.,
corruptly influenced, obstructed, impeded, and endeavored to influence,
obstruct, and impede the due and proper exercise of the power of the inquiry”
of congressional oversight panels.
That meant seven felony counts for Stone.
Naturally, Pinocchio the Press Secretary was trotted
out early Friday morning to deny to reporters that the indictment had anything
at all to do with the “White House” and, no, no, no, there was no collusion and…
Roger Stone?
Sanders hardly recognized his name.
The President of the United States remained notably
silent—not tweeting once, till 11:16 a.m.
Then we got this: “Greatest Witch Hunt in the
History of our Country! NO COLLUSION! Border Coyotes, Drug Dealers and Human
Traffickers are treated better. Who alerted CNN to be there?”
In reality, the president’s problem was clear.
It wasn’t a matter of how CNN knew to be there when law enforcement officers
rolled up to Stone’s dark home. The problem was that Stone had been caught with
a Book of Spells in his mitts.
The next question investigators must answer is
profound: Was the author of that book Donald J. Trump?
1/26/19: The dumbest
government shutdown in history ends. For thirty-five days 800,000 federal
workers went without pay.
Finally, the president ended
the mess the way he began, with the same pile of cash for his Great Wall he had
the day he shut everything down.
That is: no pile at all.
President Twitter Thumbs’
performance is reminiscent of this famous play by Minnesota Vikings star
defensive lineman Jim Marshall.
