welcome to trumpland
the face of the failed american state
oct 22, 2020
The Bullshit Has Only Just Started
nancegreggs - du
Donald Trump is not a well man – physically, mentally, or emotionally. Right now, he is more frightened than he’s ever been in his gold-plated life.
As a result of that fear building with every passing day, we should fully expect to hear more and more bizarre pronouncements, threats, all-caps TWEETS!!!, along with a rapid decline in physical agility and mental acuity.
The man is scared shitless. Losing re-election means having to face pending criminal charges that could lead to prison time. It means leaving the WH as A LOSER!, forever to be known as a failure. In addition, he has no life ‘to go back to’: his brand is toxic, his name is toxic, and whatever reputation he once had as a brilliant businessman is gone.
I, for one, will not be surprised if the Dotard suffers a complete breakdown before the election – physically, mentally and emotionally. The pressure he is currently living under would test the strength of a healthy man or woman – and we all know that Donald is not ‘healthy’ by any measure.
So prepare yourselves for declarations that peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are hereby outlawed, pronouncements about a vaccine that cures windmill cancer, and executive orders that prohibit the use of vowels in the English language, and establish that the entire US is now on Russian standard time.
The man is like a fallen tree in an un-raked forest – he’s dry, he’s brittle, and he’s ready to explode.
Trump Death Clock
www.TrumpDeathClock.com
133,450
Estimated Portion U.S. COVID-19 Deaths Due To POTUS Inaction
In January 2020, the Trump administration was advised that immediate action was required to stop the spread of COVID-19. According to NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, “there was a lot of pushback” to this advice. President Trump declined to act until March 16th. Epidemiologists now estimate that, had mitigation measures been implemented one week earlier, 60% of American COVID-19 deaths would have been avoided.
more at washington post
Let's put things into prespective
Americans killed in Bowling Green Massacre: 0
Americans killed in Trump's Caravan Attack: 0
Americans killed By Soup Cans: 0
Americans killed by Ebola: 2
Americans killed in Benghazi: 4
Americans killed in the Spanish American: 2,246
Americans killed in War of 1812: 2,260
Americans killed in 9/11/2001 Terrorist Attacks : 2996
Americans killed in American Revolution: 4,435
Americans killed in the Mexican War: 13,283
Americans killed in Korean War: 33,746
Americans killed in Vietnam War: 58,152
Confederate Soldiers Killed on the battle field during the Civil War: 94,000
Union Soldiers Killed on the battle field during the Civil War: 110,100
Americans killed in Europe WWI: 116,516
Americans killed by Japan WWII: 160,914
Americans killed by Trump in COVID pandemic: 196,345 <--- Today you are here
Americans killed by Axis in Europe WWII: 214,362
https://ehistory.osu.edu/exhibitions/cwsurgeon/cwsurgeon/statistics
Alexander Hamilton
CATERING TO THE STUPID!!!
|
CATERING TO THE STUPID!!!
|
’*DAILY BULLSHIT*
Washington Post tally : 20,000 lies and counting!!!
the second president of the confederacy
a daily log of the white trash and illegitimate occupant currently occupying the white house! it's not a matter of whether HE is going to lie but when. A PIECE OF SHIT WRAPPED IN HUMAN SKIN!!!
10/23/2020
*Trump ropes foreign leaders into his attacks on ‘Sleepy Joe’ during his briefing on Sudan-Israel deal
*Trump believes the GOP will take the House — here’s why that’s ridiculous
*Trump may fire Bill Barr and FBI director for not aiding his campaign by investigating Biden: report
---
*LADIES AND THE TRUMP: THE MAKING OF A SEXUAL PREDATOR
USING COMPREHENSIVE FIRSTHAND INTERVIEWS, TRANSCRIPTS AND COURT REPORTS, A DISTURBING NEW BOOK, "ALL THE PRESIDENT’S WOMEN", DISCOVERS AT LEAST 67 SEPARATE ACCUSATIONS OF INAPPROPRIATE BEHAVIOUR, INCLUDING 26 INSTANCES OF UNWANTED SEXUAL CONTACT BY US PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP.
*HERE'S CREW'S MASSIVE CONFLICTS-OF-INTEREST REPORT ON TRUMP
(HTTPS://WWW.CITIZENSFORETHICS.ORG/PROFITINGFROMTHEPRESIDENCY/ )
(HTTPS://WWW.CITIZENSFORETHICS.ORG/TRUMP-TIMELINE/ )
*COLLUSION IN PLAIN SIGHT ANALYZING RUSSIAN ATTACKS ON OUR DEMOCRACY – AND TRUMP'S INVOLVEMENT(HTTPS://THEMOSCOWPROJECT.ORG/)
*TRUMP-RUSSIA SCANDAL(ARCHIVES)
traitor trump
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/07/trump-ripped-as-a-traitor-by-veterans-for-his-mask-photo-op-at-walter-reed-hospital/
FOR THE STUPID!!!
The Man Who Told The Truth About Donald Trump … And No One Listened
Forty Years Ago, Journalist Wayne Barrett Was Uncovering the Lies of the Queens Con Man While The New York Times Fell for His Scams
By David Cay Johnston, DCReport Editor-in-Chief
10/1/2020
Of all the books about Donald Trump this year, the one that will help you best understand the man, his rise to power and his inability to carry out the duties of a president is by a journalist who has been dead for almost four years.
Without Compromise is a collection of columns by the late Wayne Barrett of the Village Voice, the first journalist to seriously cover Trump. Way back in 1979, when The New York Times was running puff pieces that helped propel Trump to national celebrity, Barrett revealed the real Trump with hard facts and moral clarity.
Just three of the 19 reprinted pieces are about Trump, but they are the foundation of all serious Trump coverage, so rich with lasting insight that they can reasonably be read as the alpha and omega of Trump coverage.
When the Village Voice shut down two years ago, The New York Times having since seen the light on the Trump it so utterly failed to investigate during the 2016 campaign, noted that Barrett’s “obsessive work on Donald J. Trump has become a resource for reporters covering the president today.”
In cold, clear prose Barrett lays bare the rot behind Trump’s carefully polished patina of success and respectability. The rest of the book is a college degree in corrupt politics and how journalists could, but largely don’t, cover government.
Barrett was a former Brooklyn schoolteacher and community organizer who wangled a job with the Village Voice, the immensely profitable alternative weekly founded by Norman Mailer and three other journalists who couldn’t abide the straitjacket of conventional 1950s journalism.
Life, Not Journal School
Like many of our best journalists, Barrett got his approach not from journalism school, though he did graduate from the one at Columbia University and later taught for years at Columbia, but from life experience. He worked in cash-poor Brooklyn neighborhoods as a teacher and community organizer, which taught him about life beyond the glitter of Manhattan shown in his first Trump piece.
“Trump’s problem isn’t so much what he’s done as how he’s done it,” Barrett wrote after spending 15 hours interviewing Trump and many more digging through government records in New York and Philadelphia, interviewing law enforcement sources, competing developers and politicians.
Barrett saw right off that Trump’s money lust was not his worst attribute. Trump has a pathological need to introduce an evil twist into every deal, what another real estate developer called Trump’s “moral larceny.”
Trump, soon realizing Barrett was no lightweight feature writer he could romance, tried threats. When that failed, Trump turned to bribery, offering Barrett a free Trump Tower apartment.
“Trump was testing me,” Barrett wrote, “to see what would work–convinced that either fear or the suggestion that I could have some undefined future relationship with his wealth or his influence could help shape the story. He had only to figure out what I wanted. Every relationship is a transaction.”
It never occurred to Donald that some people are immune to flattery and threats and don’t have a price. Nearly a decade later he tried the same strategies on me.
The three Barrett pieces in Without Compromise paint a more accurate, concise, and damning portrait of the man than the later work of any other journalist including me.
Eileen Markey chose the 19 pieces and rounded up notables in academia and journalism to write accompanying essays. Markey is one of many journalists who survived Barrett Bootcamp, the toughest journalism training in the country.
‘You’re Fired’
Barrett was an obsessively demanding boss, beloved by those who learned technique from him and put up with his famous yelling. Wayne called me once to basically say he needed to yell, and no one was around so I patiently listened to my friend for 90 minutes.
Once Barrett shouted at intern Marcus Baram, returning two hours late from a brief errand, “you’re fired!” Baram, later a Fast Company masthead editor, smartly took his seat and got to work, Barrett soon forgetting his command.
Those who survived Barrett Bootcamp became some of the best journalists in New York. Among them: Timothy L. O’Brien of Bloomberg, Jennifer Gonnerman of The New Yorker, Errol Louis of NY1 television, Andrea Bernstein of WNYC, Jarrett Murphy of City Magazine, and Markey, his wife, who put together the anthology.
You can get an idea of how focused Barrett was on hard facts that matter from a story his wife Fran told my wife and me one night over dinner near Atlantic City, where we then lived and the Barretts had a summer home purchased with money from his 1992 book Trump: The Deals and The Downfall.
“Wayne came back from interviewing Trump and was regaling me with this lie and that by Trump and I kept asking him about the apartment – what’s it like, Wayne?” Fran said.
“What? Oh, the apartment? It’s big.”
Truth’s Surprising Consequences
Barrett did his work with such decency that after he died at age 71, the day before Trump took office in 2017, his memorial service was filled with politicians he had exposed, some of whom ended up behind bars. Both Governor Andrew Cuomo and Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, went on and on with praise for Barrett.
Schumer told stories of how, but for Barrett’s journalistic policing when he first held office, he would never have made it to the United States Senate. Schumer said Barrett made him realize he was being seduced by money and “fancy women,” adding that’s why he married a Brooklyn cabbie’s daughter.
I visited Wayne at his Brooklyn townhouse one afternoon when the door was opened by Alan Hevesi, the former New York State comptroller who had gone to prison after Barrett exposed his criminal acts.
As the three of us ate lunch Hevesi told me he had no hard feelings. “I did it, Wayne nailed it down and reported it. How can I hold a grudge against a man who wrote the truth?” That’s not the way Trump reacts.
Journalism, Barrett taught, is the only occupation where you get paid to tell the truth. That’s a journalist’s job, start to finish. Tell the truth as best they can uncover it. That’s why Trump calls journalists the enemy of the people. He can’t stand the truth. Without Comprise is nothing but truth.
Without Compromise is a collection of columns by the late Wayne Barrett of the Village Voice, the first journalist to seriously cover Trump. Way back in 1979, when The New York Times was running puff pieces that helped propel Trump to national celebrity, Barrett revealed the real Trump with hard facts and moral clarity.
Just three of the 19 reprinted pieces are about Trump, but they are the foundation of all serious Trump coverage, so rich with lasting insight that they can reasonably be read as the alpha and omega of Trump coverage.
When the Village Voice shut down two years ago, The New York Times having since seen the light on the Trump it so utterly failed to investigate during the 2016 campaign, noted that Barrett’s “obsessive work on Donald J. Trump has become a resource for reporters covering the president today.”
In cold, clear prose Barrett lays bare the rot behind Trump’s carefully polished patina of success and respectability. The rest of the book is a college degree in corrupt politics and how journalists could, but largely don’t, cover government.
Barrett was a former Brooklyn schoolteacher and community organizer who wangled a job with the Village Voice, the immensely profitable alternative weekly founded by Norman Mailer and three other journalists who couldn’t abide the straitjacket of conventional 1950s journalism.
Life, Not Journal School
Like many of our best journalists, Barrett got his approach not from journalism school, though he did graduate from the one at Columbia University and later taught for years at Columbia, but from life experience. He worked in cash-poor Brooklyn neighborhoods as a teacher and community organizer, which taught him about life beyond the glitter of Manhattan shown in his first Trump piece.
“Trump’s problem isn’t so much what he’s done as how he’s done it,” Barrett wrote after spending 15 hours interviewing Trump and many more digging through government records in New York and Philadelphia, interviewing law enforcement sources, competing developers and politicians.
Barrett saw right off that Trump’s money lust was not his worst attribute. Trump has a pathological need to introduce an evil twist into every deal, what another real estate developer called Trump’s “moral larceny.”
Trump, soon realizing Barrett was no lightweight feature writer he could romance, tried threats. When that failed, Trump turned to bribery, offering Barrett a free Trump Tower apartment.
“Trump was testing me,” Barrett wrote, “to see what would work–convinced that either fear or the suggestion that I could have some undefined future relationship with his wealth or his influence could help shape the story. He had only to figure out what I wanted. Every relationship is a transaction.”
It never occurred to Donald that some people are immune to flattery and threats and don’t have a price. Nearly a decade later he tried the same strategies on me.
The three Barrett pieces in Without Compromise paint a more accurate, concise, and damning portrait of the man than the later work of any other journalist including me.
Eileen Markey chose the 19 pieces and rounded up notables in academia and journalism to write accompanying essays. Markey is one of many journalists who survived Barrett Bootcamp, the toughest journalism training in the country.
‘You’re Fired’
Barrett was an obsessively demanding boss, beloved by those who learned technique from him and put up with his famous yelling. Wayne called me once to basically say he needed to yell, and no one was around so I patiently listened to my friend for 90 minutes.
Once Barrett shouted at intern Marcus Baram, returning two hours late from a brief errand, “you’re fired!” Baram, later a Fast Company masthead editor, smartly took his seat and got to work, Barrett soon forgetting his command.
Those who survived Barrett Bootcamp became some of the best journalists in New York. Among them: Timothy L. O’Brien of Bloomberg, Jennifer Gonnerman of The New Yorker, Errol Louis of NY1 television, Andrea Bernstein of WNYC, Jarrett Murphy of City Magazine, and Markey, his wife, who put together the anthology.
You can get an idea of how focused Barrett was on hard facts that matter from a story his wife Fran told my wife and me one night over dinner near Atlantic City, where we then lived and the Barretts had a summer home purchased with money from his 1992 book Trump: The Deals and The Downfall.
“Wayne came back from interviewing Trump and was regaling me with this lie and that by Trump and I kept asking him about the apartment – what’s it like, Wayne?” Fran said.
“What? Oh, the apartment? It’s big.”
Truth’s Surprising Consequences
Barrett did his work with such decency that after he died at age 71, the day before Trump took office in 2017, his memorial service was filled with politicians he had exposed, some of whom ended up behind bars. Both Governor Andrew Cuomo and Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, went on and on with praise for Barrett.
Schumer told stories of how, but for Barrett’s journalistic policing when he first held office, he would never have made it to the United States Senate. Schumer said Barrett made him realize he was being seduced by money and “fancy women,” adding that’s why he married a Brooklyn cabbie’s daughter.
I visited Wayne at his Brooklyn townhouse one afternoon when the door was opened by Alan Hevesi, the former New York State comptroller who had gone to prison after Barrett exposed his criminal acts.
As the three of us ate lunch Hevesi told me he had no hard feelings. “I did it, Wayne nailed it down and reported it. How can I hold a grudge against a man who wrote the truth?” That’s not the way Trump reacts.
Journalism, Barrett taught, is the only occupation where you get paid to tell the truth. That’s a journalist’s job, start to finish. Tell the truth as best they can uncover it. That’s why Trump calls journalists the enemy of the people. He can’t stand the truth. Without Comprise is nothing but truth.
Five key takeaways from the NY Times report on Trump’s tax returns
france 24
issued on: 28/09/2020 - 15:37
A New York Times report that President Donald Trump paid just $750 in federal income tax the year he entered the White House — and, thanks to colossal losses, no income tax at all in 11 of the 18 years that the Times reviewed — served to raise doubts about Trump’s self-image as a shrewd and successful businessman.
That Sunday’s report came just weeks before Trump’s re-election bid served to intensify the spotlight on Trump the businessman — an identity that he has spent decades cultivating and that helped him capture the presidency four years ago in his first run for political office. The Times’ report deepens the uncertainty surrounding a tumultuous presidential campaign set against the backdrop of a viral pandemic, racial unrest in American cities and a ferocious battle over the Supreme Court seat left vacant by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Since entering the White House, Trump has broken with tradition set by his predecessors by not only refusing to release his tax returns but by waging a legal battle to keep them hidden. The Times report suggests why that might have been so. It reported that many of Trump’s top businesses are losing money, even as those losses have helped him shrink his federal tax bill to essentially nothing.
Eugene Steuerle, a tax expert at the Urban Institute, said he wasn’t surprised that it turns out that Trump had paid almost no federal income tax. Most commercial real estate developers deduct large interest payments on their debts from taxable income, thereby lowering their tax bills. Typically, they also often avoid capital gains taxes by plowing profits from the sale of one building into the purchase of another.
“Most tax experts expected you would find little in the way of tax payments by President Trump,” said Steuerle, who served as a Treasury Department official under President Ronald Reagan.
The Times noted that Alan Garten, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, said of the Times report that “most, if not all, of the facts appear to be inaccurate” and asked for the documents on which the reporting was based, which the Times declined to provide in order to protect its sources. The Times said Garten then directly disputed only the amount of taxes Trump had paid.
NY Times report on Trump´s tax returns: ‘Some says he is using presidency to help himself financially’
Here are some key takeaways from the Times’ reporting:
Trump paid just $750 in taxes in both 2016 and 2017
The newspaper said Trump initially paid $95 million in taxes over the 18 years it studied. But he managed to recover most of that money by claiming — and receiving — a stunning $72.9 million federal tax refund. According to the Times, Trump also pocketed $21.2 million in state and local refunds, which are typically based on federal filings.
Trump’s outsize refund became the subject of a now-long-standing Internal Revenue Service audit of his finances. The audit was widely known. Trump has claimed it was the very reason why he cannot release his returns. But the Times report is the first to identify the issue that was mainly in dispute.
As a result of the refund, Trump paid an average $1.4 million in federal taxes from 2000 to 2017, the Times reported. By contrast, the average U.S. taxpayer in the top .001% of earners paid about $25 million annually over the same timeframe.
Trump has financed an extravagant lifestyle with the use of business expenses
From his homes, his aircraft — and $70,000 on hair styling during his television show “The Apprentice” — Trump has capitalized on cost incurred from his businesses to finance a luxurious lifestyle.
The Times noted that Trump’s homes, planes and golf courses are part of the Trump family business and, as such, Trump classified them as business expenses as well. Because companies can write off business expenses as deductions, all such expenses have helped reduce Trump’s tax liability.
Many of his best-known businesses are money-losers
The president has frequently pointed to his far-flung hotels, golf courses and resorts as evidence of his success as a developer and businessman. Yet these properties have been draining money.
The Times reported that Trump has claimed $315 million in losses since 2000 on his golf courses, including the Trump National Doral near Miami, which Trump has portrayed as a crown jewel in his business empire. Likewise, his Trump International Hotel in Washington has lost $55 million, the Times reported.
Foreign visitors have helped support Trump’s properties
Since Trump began his presidential run, lobbyists, foreign governments and politicians have lavished significant sums of money on his properties, a spending spree that raised questions about its propriety and legality.
The Times report illustrates just how much that spending has been: Since 2015, his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida has taken in $5 million more a year from a surge in membership. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association spent at least $397,602 in 2017 at Trump’s Washington hotel. Overseas projects have produced millions more for Trump — $3 million from the Philippines, $2.3 million from India and $1 million from Turkey.
Trump will face financial pressure as debts come due
Trump seems sure to face heavy financial pressures from the enormous pile of debt he has absorbed. The Times said the president appears to be responsible for $421 million in loans, most of which will come due within four years. On top of that, a $100 million mortgage on Trump Tower in New York will come due in 2022.
RELATED: Trump: The Biggest Loser
Forget "The Apprentice" — Trump's taxes show he was really "The Biggest Loser"
Between Poppa Trump and Mark Burnett, Trump was gifted $840 million — but he may still owe as much as $1 billion
That Sunday’s report came just weeks before Trump’s re-election bid served to intensify the spotlight on Trump the businessman — an identity that he has spent decades cultivating and that helped him capture the presidency four years ago in his first run for political office. The Times’ report deepens the uncertainty surrounding a tumultuous presidential campaign set against the backdrop of a viral pandemic, racial unrest in American cities and a ferocious battle over the Supreme Court seat left vacant by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Since entering the White House, Trump has broken with tradition set by his predecessors by not only refusing to release his tax returns but by waging a legal battle to keep them hidden. The Times report suggests why that might have been so. It reported that many of Trump’s top businesses are losing money, even as those losses have helped him shrink his federal tax bill to essentially nothing.
Eugene Steuerle, a tax expert at the Urban Institute, said he wasn’t surprised that it turns out that Trump had paid almost no federal income tax. Most commercial real estate developers deduct large interest payments on their debts from taxable income, thereby lowering their tax bills. Typically, they also often avoid capital gains taxes by plowing profits from the sale of one building into the purchase of another.
“Most tax experts expected you would find little in the way of tax payments by President Trump,” said Steuerle, who served as a Treasury Department official under President Ronald Reagan.
The Times noted that Alan Garten, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, said of the Times report that “most, if not all, of the facts appear to be inaccurate” and asked for the documents on which the reporting was based, which the Times declined to provide in order to protect its sources. The Times said Garten then directly disputed only the amount of taxes Trump had paid.
NY Times report on Trump´s tax returns: ‘Some says he is using presidency to help himself financially’
Here are some key takeaways from the Times’ reporting:
Trump paid just $750 in taxes in both 2016 and 2017
The newspaper said Trump initially paid $95 million in taxes over the 18 years it studied. But he managed to recover most of that money by claiming — and receiving — a stunning $72.9 million federal tax refund. According to the Times, Trump also pocketed $21.2 million in state and local refunds, which are typically based on federal filings.
Trump’s outsize refund became the subject of a now-long-standing Internal Revenue Service audit of his finances. The audit was widely known. Trump has claimed it was the very reason why he cannot release his returns. But the Times report is the first to identify the issue that was mainly in dispute.
As a result of the refund, Trump paid an average $1.4 million in federal taxes from 2000 to 2017, the Times reported. By contrast, the average U.S. taxpayer in the top .001% of earners paid about $25 million annually over the same timeframe.
Trump has financed an extravagant lifestyle with the use of business expenses
From his homes, his aircraft — and $70,000 on hair styling during his television show “The Apprentice” — Trump has capitalized on cost incurred from his businesses to finance a luxurious lifestyle.
The Times noted that Trump’s homes, planes and golf courses are part of the Trump family business and, as such, Trump classified them as business expenses as well. Because companies can write off business expenses as deductions, all such expenses have helped reduce Trump’s tax liability.
Many of his best-known businesses are money-losers
The president has frequently pointed to his far-flung hotels, golf courses and resorts as evidence of his success as a developer and businessman. Yet these properties have been draining money.
The Times reported that Trump has claimed $315 million in losses since 2000 on his golf courses, including the Trump National Doral near Miami, which Trump has portrayed as a crown jewel in his business empire. Likewise, his Trump International Hotel in Washington has lost $55 million, the Times reported.
Foreign visitors have helped support Trump’s properties
Since Trump began his presidential run, lobbyists, foreign governments and politicians have lavished significant sums of money on his properties, a spending spree that raised questions about its propriety and legality.
The Times report illustrates just how much that spending has been: Since 2015, his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida has taken in $5 million more a year from a surge in membership. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association spent at least $397,602 in 2017 at Trump’s Washington hotel. Overseas projects have produced millions more for Trump — $3 million from the Philippines, $2.3 million from India and $1 million from Turkey.
Trump will face financial pressure as debts come due
Trump seems sure to face heavy financial pressures from the enormous pile of debt he has absorbed. The Times said the president appears to be responsible for $421 million in loans, most of which will come due within four years. On top of that, a $100 million mortgage on Trump Tower in New York will come due in 2022.
RELATED: Trump: The Biggest Loser
Forget "The Apprentice" — Trump's taxes show he was really "The Biggest Loser"
Between Poppa Trump and Mark Burnett, Trump was gifted $840 million — but he may still owe as much as $1 billion
how to steal $800 million!!!
Trump Tower Hicksville: Why is the Trump campaign sending rent checks to a Long Island P.O. box?
Trump campaign's rent payments to Hicksville, New York, might be of interest to a tax fraud investigation
ROGER SOLLENBERGER - salon
SEPTEMBER 25, 2020 9:00AM (UTC)
President Donald Trump has charged his own campaign hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent for offices in Trump Tower for more than five years. But the campaign doesn't always send its rent to Trump Tower. In fact, most of the checks have gone to a post office box in Hicksville, New York, a suburban community on Long Island. It's not clear why, or who is receiving those checks. But experts say that the address may be of interest to Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, who in a court filing earlier this week made his clearest statements yet about the scope and focus of his criminal investigation into President Trump's finances.
The Trump campaign has rented office space at Trump Tower, off and on, since Donald Trump first announced his candidacy in June 2015. Exactly how much space the campaign actually uses in the landmark Fifth Avenue building is unclear. FEC filings show that the rent started around $35,000 a month, then jumped over the $100,000 mark after Trump won the 2016 Republican nomination, before settling at its current rate of $37,541.67 a month, or about $450,500 a year. Sometimes the rent spikes, for reasons that are difficult to understand.
But while the campaign's payments go to Trump Tower Commercial LLC, the business operation behind Trump Tower — and ultimately to Trump himself — they don't always go to Trump Tower. Federal Election Commission records show that most of those checks have been sent to P.O. Box 1926 in Hicksville, which is a suburban town in central Nassau County, just south of Oyster Bay on the affluent North Shore of Long Island.
The Hicksville post office box has been described by Trump money watchers as the "white whale" of Trump's financial dealings. It is, in a word, bizarre — even by Trump standards. (The campaign did not reply to multiple specific requests for comment.) It's unclear whether other Trump Tower commercial tenants, such as the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, for instance, send their rent checks to Hicksville, or if they pay at the building itself — as the campaign itself did, for a while.
In the early days of the campaign, however, it wasn't just rent — some of the Trump campaign's payroll also went through Trump Tower Commercial LLC, but apparently to a certain type of employee.
But even given that confusing history, FEC filings show that 2020 is turning out to be an exceptional year in terms of the destination of the Trump campaign's rent checks to Trump Tower Commercial LLC.
In 2015, 2016 and 2017, all rent checks all went to the Hicksville address. The rent payments stopped after September 2017, but resumed in 2018, the year after the Trump tax bill passed, and the same year that the campaign also took up offices in Rosslyn, Virginia. All rent checks in that year, 2018, went upstairs to the accountants in Trump Tower. But in the first half of 2019, the checks went back to Hicksville. Then, in the second half of that year, they once again went to Trump Tower.
The pattern grew even more erratic in 2020. This year, public filings show, the campaign has so far sent six of its eight rent checks to Hicksville — the two outliers being April and May, when the coronavirus ravaged the city and the checks went to Trump Tower, in Manhattan.
Interviews with state income tax and commercial property tax experts familiar with the workings of New York city and state yielded bafflement: Comments included, "Totally bizarre," "No idea," "I've never seen something like that" and "Holy shit, that's absolutely weird."
Vance's announcement this week that his office is investigating Trump for criminal tax fraud and misrepresenting business records might throw the Hicksville mystery in a new light.
Vance is the district attorney of New York County, which is the same thing as the borough of Manhattan. He has no jurisdiction anywhere else. So if Vance is investigating Trump for tax fraud, he must believe that Trump defrauded Manhattan authorities in a unique way — through either school, income or property taxes. While New York state Attorney General Letitia James is also interested in Trump's taxes, she has not announced a similar criminal tax fraud investigation. And there is, as far as public records show, no federal investigation into Trump's taxes.
Hicksville is in Nassau County, about 30 miles east of Manhattan. If Trump attached the Nassau County address to Trump Tower payments that should otherwise have qualified for income, payroll or occupancy taxes in Manhattan, and did not make that clear — or actively concealed it, possibly with a second bank account — that, experts say, could amount to fraud.
Another possibility is that Trump is using the Hicksville address to hide portions of rent income, which could give him a property tax advantage in the city, where appraisers tie income to property value and tax.
"Given the jurisdiction of the Manhattan D.A., a tax fraud charge makes total sense if manipulated rental income results in a lower real property tax assessment," a New York City tax attorney told Salon.
A corporate accountant told Salon that if Trump has expenses "that should be allocated to the Trump Organization, but are paid outside to another entity, like Trump Tower Commercial, less expenses means more income — so he could inflate the value to make himself look much wealthier than he is."
It turns out that the campaign didn't only expense its rent there. It also spent payroll.
In the 2016 election cycle, federal filings show, the Trump campaign paid then-candidate Trump's personal bodyguard Keith Schiller $2,574 a week, occasionally a little more. Trump would make those payments himself, routed through payroll at Trump Tower Commercial LLC in Hicksville, and the campaign would reimburse him.
Schiller, however, was unique. Trump had a number of Trump Organization employees on the campaign payroll at one time or another. Hope Hicks, for instance, or the Trump Organization's chief legal officer, Allen Garten. None of those people, however, were ever on the Trump Tower Commercial LLC payroll. Trump routed their campaign salary through Trump Payroll Corp., which he also owned.
When Schiller went to work at the White House, he told the U.S. government in his financial disclosures that he had been paid $160,000 a year by the Trump Organization. He also said the campaign had paid him $70,000, when campaign filings indicate he made much more than that. What's more, those filings also indicate that Schiller was not on the Trump Organization payroll, but specifically on the payroll at Trump Tower Commercial LLC.
This makes a difference. At the time, Trump Tower Commercial was owned by Donald Trump personally, according to his 2015 and 2016 financial disclosures. This is a unique thing in TrumpWorld: Trump Tower Manhattan (or Hicksville) was all his.
(Well, along with any "silent partners" in the four Trump-owned entities between which Trump Tower was split. One of those was an obscure entity called Tipperary Realty Corp., which is owned by Donald Trump but lists his son, Eric, as CEO. Nothing in TrumpWorld is ever simple, an insider told Salon, but if anything is strange, it's intentional.)
Schiller wasn't the only person the Trump campaign paid through Trump Tower Commercial payroll. FEC records show that Trump's longtime personal driver Noel Cintron — who sued Trump for years of unpaid overtime shortly after he took office in 2017 — also at one point took campaign money routed through Hicksville. So did Trump Tower security chief Bert Mentor. Notably, both Cintron and former Trump Tower porter Rakhim Urazov sued Trump Tower Commercial — not the Trump Organization — for their lost overtime, eventually settling out of court.
"It appears that Trump had only certain employees on the Trump Tower Commercial payroll, rather than the Trump Organization's," campaign finance and government ethics law expert Brett Kappel told Salon. "Employees like Keith Schiller, his personal driver, the night security guard at Trump Tower — employees in a position to know embarrassing and possibly incriminating information about Trump."
It could also be that the story of the wandering rent checks is no big deal. One corporate accountant told Salon that the location of the payments did not raise any flags for him, and that outside of misrepresenting income, the arrangement appears benign.
Trump could be actively trying to keep this one entity — his flagship building — clear of any dirt. If so, that would seem to require a lot of legwork.
"Regular businesses don't run like Trump businesses," Jordan Libowtiz, of the government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), told Salon. "If he's hiding something, he's doing a pretty good job of hiding it. And if he's not hiding something, he's doing a good job of making it look like he is."
New York City tax assessors consider income when they calculate the taxable value of commercial properties, making New York property tax filings resemble those of income taxes more than property tax filings typically do in other parts of the country. Trump Tower tax filings reviewed by ProPublica showed small discrepancies in terms of income.
In other words, a New York City tax attorney told Salon, the Hicksville setup might not be about falsifying tax records, but falsifying business records — also a subject of Vance's subpoenas.
"The whole thing is a lie perpetrated by Trump and [Trump Organization CFO] Allen Weisselberg, who concocted a method to defray the salary costs of the Trump Organization and shift them to the campaign, on the backs of donations from unsuspecting supporters," said a source with knowledge of the payment arrangements.
It may be worth noting that the first of Trump's infamous checks to former personal attorney and "fixer" Michael Cohen — reimbursing the $131,000 in hush money paid out to adult film star Stormy Daniels — weren't signed by Trump himself, but by Weisselberg and Donald Trump Jr. The president began writing those checks from his personal account only a few months into his term. Before doing that, however, he quietly gained access to the trust into which he had put all his assets, as a symbolic promise to the American people that he could be trusted.
The Trump campaign has rented office space at Trump Tower, off and on, since Donald Trump first announced his candidacy in June 2015. Exactly how much space the campaign actually uses in the landmark Fifth Avenue building is unclear. FEC filings show that the rent started around $35,000 a month, then jumped over the $100,000 mark after Trump won the 2016 Republican nomination, before settling at its current rate of $37,541.67 a month, or about $450,500 a year. Sometimes the rent spikes, for reasons that are difficult to understand.
But while the campaign's payments go to Trump Tower Commercial LLC, the business operation behind Trump Tower — and ultimately to Trump himself — they don't always go to Trump Tower. Federal Election Commission records show that most of those checks have been sent to P.O. Box 1926 in Hicksville, which is a suburban town in central Nassau County, just south of Oyster Bay on the affluent North Shore of Long Island.
The Hicksville post office box has been described by Trump money watchers as the "white whale" of Trump's financial dealings. It is, in a word, bizarre — even by Trump standards. (The campaign did not reply to multiple specific requests for comment.) It's unclear whether other Trump Tower commercial tenants, such as the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, for instance, send their rent checks to Hicksville, or if they pay at the building itself — as the campaign itself did, for a while.
In the early days of the campaign, however, it wasn't just rent — some of the Trump campaign's payroll also went through Trump Tower Commercial LLC, but apparently to a certain type of employee.
But even given that confusing history, FEC filings show that 2020 is turning out to be an exceptional year in terms of the destination of the Trump campaign's rent checks to Trump Tower Commercial LLC.
In 2015, 2016 and 2017, all rent checks all went to the Hicksville address. The rent payments stopped after September 2017, but resumed in 2018, the year after the Trump tax bill passed, and the same year that the campaign also took up offices in Rosslyn, Virginia. All rent checks in that year, 2018, went upstairs to the accountants in Trump Tower. But in the first half of 2019, the checks went back to Hicksville. Then, in the second half of that year, they once again went to Trump Tower.
The pattern grew even more erratic in 2020. This year, public filings show, the campaign has so far sent six of its eight rent checks to Hicksville — the two outliers being April and May, when the coronavirus ravaged the city and the checks went to Trump Tower, in Manhattan.
Interviews with state income tax and commercial property tax experts familiar with the workings of New York city and state yielded bafflement: Comments included, "Totally bizarre," "No idea," "I've never seen something like that" and "Holy shit, that's absolutely weird."
Vance's announcement this week that his office is investigating Trump for criminal tax fraud and misrepresenting business records might throw the Hicksville mystery in a new light.
Vance is the district attorney of New York County, which is the same thing as the borough of Manhattan. He has no jurisdiction anywhere else. So if Vance is investigating Trump for tax fraud, he must believe that Trump defrauded Manhattan authorities in a unique way — through either school, income or property taxes. While New York state Attorney General Letitia James is also interested in Trump's taxes, she has not announced a similar criminal tax fraud investigation. And there is, as far as public records show, no federal investigation into Trump's taxes.
Hicksville is in Nassau County, about 30 miles east of Manhattan. If Trump attached the Nassau County address to Trump Tower payments that should otherwise have qualified for income, payroll or occupancy taxes in Manhattan, and did not make that clear — or actively concealed it, possibly with a second bank account — that, experts say, could amount to fraud.
Another possibility is that Trump is using the Hicksville address to hide portions of rent income, which could give him a property tax advantage in the city, where appraisers tie income to property value and tax.
"Given the jurisdiction of the Manhattan D.A., a tax fraud charge makes total sense if manipulated rental income results in a lower real property tax assessment," a New York City tax attorney told Salon.
A corporate accountant told Salon that if Trump has expenses "that should be allocated to the Trump Organization, but are paid outside to another entity, like Trump Tower Commercial, less expenses means more income — so he could inflate the value to make himself look much wealthier than he is."
It turns out that the campaign didn't only expense its rent there. It also spent payroll.
In the 2016 election cycle, federal filings show, the Trump campaign paid then-candidate Trump's personal bodyguard Keith Schiller $2,574 a week, occasionally a little more. Trump would make those payments himself, routed through payroll at Trump Tower Commercial LLC in Hicksville, and the campaign would reimburse him.
Schiller, however, was unique. Trump had a number of Trump Organization employees on the campaign payroll at one time or another. Hope Hicks, for instance, or the Trump Organization's chief legal officer, Allen Garten. None of those people, however, were ever on the Trump Tower Commercial LLC payroll. Trump routed their campaign salary through Trump Payroll Corp., which he also owned.
When Schiller went to work at the White House, he told the U.S. government in his financial disclosures that he had been paid $160,000 a year by the Trump Organization. He also said the campaign had paid him $70,000, when campaign filings indicate he made much more than that. What's more, those filings also indicate that Schiller was not on the Trump Organization payroll, but specifically on the payroll at Trump Tower Commercial LLC.
This makes a difference. At the time, Trump Tower Commercial was owned by Donald Trump personally, according to his 2015 and 2016 financial disclosures. This is a unique thing in TrumpWorld: Trump Tower Manhattan (or Hicksville) was all his.
(Well, along with any "silent partners" in the four Trump-owned entities between which Trump Tower was split. One of those was an obscure entity called Tipperary Realty Corp., which is owned by Donald Trump but lists his son, Eric, as CEO. Nothing in TrumpWorld is ever simple, an insider told Salon, but if anything is strange, it's intentional.)
Schiller wasn't the only person the Trump campaign paid through Trump Tower Commercial payroll. FEC records show that Trump's longtime personal driver Noel Cintron — who sued Trump for years of unpaid overtime shortly after he took office in 2017 — also at one point took campaign money routed through Hicksville. So did Trump Tower security chief Bert Mentor. Notably, both Cintron and former Trump Tower porter Rakhim Urazov sued Trump Tower Commercial — not the Trump Organization — for their lost overtime, eventually settling out of court.
"It appears that Trump had only certain employees on the Trump Tower Commercial payroll, rather than the Trump Organization's," campaign finance and government ethics law expert Brett Kappel told Salon. "Employees like Keith Schiller, his personal driver, the night security guard at Trump Tower — employees in a position to know embarrassing and possibly incriminating information about Trump."
It could also be that the story of the wandering rent checks is no big deal. One corporate accountant told Salon that the location of the payments did not raise any flags for him, and that outside of misrepresenting income, the arrangement appears benign.
Trump could be actively trying to keep this one entity — his flagship building — clear of any dirt. If so, that would seem to require a lot of legwork.
"Regular businesses don't run like Trump businesses," Jordan Libowtiz, of the government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), told Salon. "If he's hiding something, he's doing a pretty good job of hiding it. And if he's not hiding something, he's doing a good job of making it look like he is."
New York City tax assessors consider income when they calculate the taxable value of commercial properties, making New York property tax filings resemble those of income taxes more than property tax filings typically do in other parts of the country. Trump Tower tax filings reviewed by ProPublica showed small discrepancies in terms of income.
In other words, a New York City tax attorney told Salon, the Hicksville setup might not be about falsifying tax records, but falsifying business records — also a subject of Vance's subpoenas.
"The whole thing is a lie perpetrated by Trump and [Trump Organization CFO] Allen Weisselberg, who concocted a method to defray the salary costs of the Trump Organization and shift them to the campaign, on the backs of donations from unsuspecting supporters," said a source with knowledge of the payment arrangements.
It may be worth noting that the first of Trump's infamous checks to former personal attorney and "fixer" Michael Cohen — reimbursing the $131,000 in hush money paid out to adult film star Stormy Daniels — weren't signed by Trump himself, but by Weisselberg and Donald Trump Jr. The president began writing those checks from his personal account only a few months into his term. Before doing that, however, he quietly gained access to the trust into which he had put all his assets, as a symbolic promise to the American people that he could be trusted.
Trump's obsession with "good genes"
Trump's eugenics obsession: He thinks he has "good German genes," because he's a fascist
Trump's "racehorse theory" of genetics is profoundly racist — it's also why he thinks he's a natural-born genius
HEATHER DIGBY PARTON - SALON
9/21/2020
Over the past five years or so, I've had no problem using the "F" word (fascism) to describe what's been happening under President Trump and the Republican Party. I wrote about it here in Salon all the way back in 2015, noting that I wasn't the only one. In fact, it was his fellow Republicans who were the first to use the term to describe him. All you have to do is go back and read that full-page newspaper ad Trump took out in 1989, headlined "Bring Back the Death Penalty, Bring Back Our Police," to understand his fundamental authoritarian nature.
Even though we knew from the beginning that we were dealing with an essentially authoritarian leader, our awareness of it has sometimes been subsumed amid the sheer chaos of daily news over the past five years. But if you look at the various issues Trump is most obsessed with, whether it was the lurid obsession with terrorist violence and refugees during the 2016 campaign or his preoccupation with immigrants, the pardoning of war criminals, his flirtations with dictators, the endless threats to jail his political opponents and muzzle the press, the valorizing of the Confederacy and the openly racist "law and order" campaign of this year, it's pretty clear what gets him excited — along with his devoted following.
But wait, you say: Donald Trump only cares about himself! He's not interested in anything as abstract as "issues," not even the ones that tickle his lizard brain. But these are not mutually exclusive things. You see, Donald Trump genuinely believes he is scientifically superior to all those "others" and that they must be kept in check, with whatever level of violence may be necessary.
He doesn't talk about this a whole lot, but it definitely comes up from time to time. Just this past weekend in Minnesota, in the midst of one of his most rambling, racist rallies in a long while, Trump said this, startling quite a few people who perhaps weren't aware of his deep and abiding belief in eugenics:
Steve Silberman
@stevesilberman
As a historian who has written about the Holocaust, I'll say bluntly: This is indistinguishable from the Nazi rhetoric that led to Jews, disabled people, LGBTQ, Romani and others being exterminated. This is America 2020. This is where the GOP has taken us.
Aaron Rupar
@atrupar
Replying to @atrupar
"You have good genes, you know that, right? You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn't it, don't you believe? The racehorse theory. You think we're so different? You have good genes in Minnesota." -- Trump
---
Trump is poorly educated, so he probably doesn't even know that such language evokes Nazi Germany's eugenics program and Adolf Hitler's theory of the "master race," especially when discussing the notorious anti-Semite Henry Ford. But it's clear enough that regardless of the historical context, Trump is on Ford's wavelength when it comes to eugenics.
He's talked about "bloodlines" line before, weirdly telling a group of British businessmen in 2018 that "you've all got such good bloodlines in this room.You've all got such amazing DNA.'" He obviously didn't know anything about their "bloodlines," but made the assumption they must be amazing because they were a bunch of rich, successful white, men.
According to Trump biographer Michael D'Antonio, he does believe in a "racehorse theory of human development." It's all about the breeding.
"I'm a big believer in natural ability," Trump told me during a discussion about his leadership traits, which he said came from a natural sense of how human relations work. "If Obama had that psychology, Putin wouldn't be eating his lunch. He doesn't have that psychology and he never will because it's not in his DNA." Later in this discussion, Trump said: "I believe in being prepared and all that stuff. But in many respects, the most important thing is an innate ability."
Perhaps Trump's conviction that DNA — not life experience — is everything explains why he proudly claims that he's "basically the same" today as when he was a boy. "When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now, I'm basically the same," he said. "The temperament is not that different."
The racehorse theory of human development explains Trump's belief in his suitability for political leadership, despite the fact that he has never held office. He's absolutely convinced that America's problems will be solved by his God-given management skills, bankruptcies notwithstanding. You are either born with superior qualities — the right DNA — or you are not. And people get what they deserve. In his case, that includes the White House.
According to D'Antonio, Donald Trump Jr. also told him that he believes in the racehorse theory as well, and that he too is "in the high percentile on the bell curve," although his father scores even higher.
In Trump's case, the belief that he has "great genes" means that he is not required to study or consult experts or really ever bother to learn anything. He explained this to the Washington Post back in 2016:
He said in a series of interviews that he does not need to read extensively because he reaches the right decisions "with very little knowledge other than the knowledge I [already] had, plus the words 'common sense,' because I have a lot of common sense and I have a lot of business ability." He believes that when he makes decisions, people see that he instinctively knows the right thing to do: "A lot of people said, 'Man, he was more accurate than guys who have studied it all the time.' "
---
It's easy to laugh at Trump's foolishness or assume that he's just blathering on as usual. But consider his obvious willingness to sacrifice the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans to the deadly pandemic for his own purposes. As he has put it, "We'll let it wash over the country" and achieve "herd mentality." Or what about the horrific conditions at the border over the past three years, most recently the accusations that doctors are performing hysterectomies and other sterilization procedures on immigrant women against their will. Think about what former Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor reported: "This was the president of the United States who looked at me and told me, when we're deciding who to let in to the U.S., he didn't want us to accept people who had quote, 'missing toes or funny foreheads.' This is how the president talks about human beings."
Trump's absurd talk about his "good German genes" doesn't sound so funny when you consider his policies. Somewhere along the line, all these words of his and all the actions of his administration come together in a pattern in which his belief in eugenics fits right in with a program that looks an awful lot like that "F" word.
RELATED: Psychiatrist: Trump's attacks echo Nazis
Even though we knew from the beginning that we were dealing with an essentially authoritarian leader, our awareness of it has sometimes been subsumed amid the sheer chaos of daily news over the past five years. But if you look at the various issues Trump is most obsessed with, whether it was the lurid obsession with terrorist violence and refugees during the 2016 campaign or his preoccupation with immigrants, the pardoning of war criminals, his flirtations with dictators, the endless threats to jail his political opponents and muzzle the press, the valorizing of the Confederacy and the openly racist "law and order" campaign of this year, it's pretty clear what gets him excited — along with his devoted following.
But wait, you say: Donald Trump only cares about himself! He's not interested in anything as abstract as "issues," not even the ones that tickle his lizard brain. But these are not mutually exclusive things. You see, Donald Trump genuinely believes he is scientifically superior to all those "others" and that they must be kept in check, with whatever level of violence may be necessary.
He doesn't talk about this a whole lot, but it definitely comes up from time to time. Just this past weekend in Minnesota, in the midst of one of his most rambling, racist rallies in a long while, Trump said this, startling quite a few people who perhaps weren't aware of his deep and abiding belief in eugenics:
Steve Silberman
@stevesilberman
As a historian who has written about the Holocaust, I'll say bluntly: This is indistinguishable from the Nazi rhetoric that led to Jews, disabled people, LGBTQ, Romani and others being exterminated. This is America 2020. This is where the GOP has taken us.
Aaron Rupar
@atrupar
Replying to @atrupar
"You have good genes, you know that, right? You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn't it, don't you believe? The racehorse theory. You think we're so different? You have good genes in Minnesota." -- Trump
---
Trump is poorly educated, so he probably doesn't even know that such language evokes Nazi Germany's eugenics program and Adolf Hitler's theory of the "master race," especially when discussing the notorious anti-Semite Henry Ford. But it's clear enough that regardless of the historical context, Trump is on Ford's wavelength when it comes to eugenics.
He's talked about "bloodlines" line before, weirdly telling a group of British businessmen in 2018 that "you've all got such good bloodlines in this room.You've all got such amazing DNA.'" He obviously didn't know anything about their "bloodlines," but made the assumption they must be amazing because they were a bunch of rich, successful white, men.
According to Trump biographer Michael D'Antonio, he does believe in a "racehorse theory of human development." It's all about the breeding.
"I'm a big believer in natural ability," Trump told me during a discussion about his leadership traits, which he said came from a natural sense of how human relations work. "If Obama had that psychology, Putin wouldn't be eating his lunch. He doesn't have that psychology and he never will because it's not in his DNA." Later in this discussion, Trump said: "I believe in being prepared and all that stuff. But in many respects, the most important thing is an innate ability."
Perhaps Trump's conviction that DNA — not life experience — is everything explains why he proudly claims that he's "basically the same" today as when he was a boy. "When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now, I'm basically the same," he said. "The temperament is not that different."
The racehorse theory of human development explains Trump's belief in his suitability for political leadership, despite the fact that he has never held office. He's absolutely convinced that America's problems will be solved by his God-given management skills, bankruptcies notwithstanding. You are either born with superior qualities — the right DNA — or you are not. And people get what they deserve. In his case, that includes the White House.
According to D'Antonio, Donald Trump Jr. also told him that he believes in the racehorse theory as well, and that he too is "in the high percentile on the bell curve," although his father scores even higher.
In Trump's case, the belief that he has "great genes" means that he is not required to study or consult experts or really ever bother to learn anything. He explained this to the Washington Post back in 2016:
He said in a series of interviews that he does not need to read extensively because he reaches the right decisions "with very little knowledge other than the knowledge I [already] had, plus the words 'common sense,' because I have a lot of common sense and I have a lot of business ability." He believes that when he makes decisions, people see that he instinctively knows the right thing to do: "A lot of people said, 'Man, he was more accurate than guys who have studied it all the time.' "
---
It's easy to laugh at Trump's foolishness or assume that he's just blathering on as usual. But consider his obvious willingness to sacrifice the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans to the deadly pandemic for his own purposes. As he has put it, "We'll let it wash over the country" and achieve "herd mentality." Or what about the horrific conditions at the border over the past three years, most recently the accusations that doctors are performing hysterectomies and other sterilization procedures on immigrant women against their will. Think about what former Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor reported: "This was the president of the United States who looked at me and told me, when we're deciding who to let in to the U.S., he didn't want us to accept people who had quote, 'missing toes or funny foreheads.' This is how the president talks about human beings."
Trump's absurd talk about his "good German genes" doesn't sound so funny when you consider his policies. Somewhere along the line, all these words of his and all the actions of his administration come together in a pattern in which his belief in eugenics fits right in with a program that looks an awful lot like that "F" word.
RELATED: Psychiatrist: Trump's attacks echo Nazis
Indictments Of A Killer
New Books Make It Clear: Trump Threatens Every Man, Woman and Child on Earth
By Bandy X. Lee - DC REPORT
9/12/2020
We have a mass killer, a killer-in-chief, as our president, which is a truth that must be confronted.
Bob Woodward’s new book, Rage, demonstrates how Donald Trump lied to the American people: “It goes through air, Bob. That’s always tougher than the touch…. It’s also more deadly than … even your strenuous flus. You know, people don’t realize, we lose 25,000, 30,000 people a year here.” He proceeds to say that the novel virus causes five times the mortality and calls it, “deadly stuff.” Yet he downplayed the threat in public, hampering national efforts and misinforming about the worst global pandemic in 100 years.
Similarly, Michael Cohen recounts in his new book, Disloyal: “The President of the United States wanted me dead. Or, let me say it the way Donald Trump would: He wouldn’t mind if I was dead. That was how Trump talked. Like a mob boss, using language carefully calibrated to convey his desires and demands, while at the same time employing deliberate indirection to insulate himself and avoid actually ordering a hit on his former personal attorney.” We have witnessed the president do this in public, playing on his followers’ psychology to encourage violence without directly taking responsibility for even massacres and widespread violence that ensue.
John Bolton’s book, The Room Where It Happened, shows that Trump’s thought process “was like an archipelago of dots, leaving the rest of us to discern—or create—policy.” He went into tough negotiations with foreign leaders with minimal understanding of the stakes, lured by grand spectacle, which led him to sign a toothless, vague agreement with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore and side with Russian President Vladimir Putin rather than the U.S. intelligence community. He casually advocated for withdrawing the U.S. from NATO solely to “do something historic.”
‘Petty and Pathetic’
Mary Trump’s book, Too Much and Never Enough, depicts in developmental detail the president as a “petty, pathetic little man—ignorant, incapable, out of his depth, and lost to his own delusional spin.” “He’ll withhold ventilators or steal supplies from states that have not groveled sufficiently. What Donald thinks is justified retaliation is, in this context, mass murder.” She states her reasons for writing about her uncle: “Donald, following the lead of my grandfather and with the complicity, silence and inaction of his siblings, destroyed my father. I can’t let him destroy my country.”
In this manner, just in recent weeks, a doctor of clinical psychology who happens to be the president’s niece and has known him and his family all her life; a former national security adviser who was privy to the internal conversations that led to many high-stakes foreign policy decisions; a former personal lawyer and fixer who worked closely with him for a very long time; and one of the country’s best-known, leading journalists all confirm through major books that Donald Trump is a great “danger” to the nation and the world. Intimate accounts now completely validate the concerns that mental health experts laid out in The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, a book I edited in 2017 when few, if any, were willing to call the president “dangerous”.
Forewarned
On April 20, 2017, one of the authors stated: “it is important to mention that everybody in America, and in fact everybody in the world, is in danger from the currently most powerful man in the world.” On May 24, 2017, I stated: “We have an obligation to speak about Donald Trump’s mental health issues because many lives and our survival as a species may be at stake.” We said so because of the seriousness of our message: “The president was more dangerous than people suspected, would grow more dangerous with time, and could ultimately become uncontainable.”
Though many have come around to our position, we must note that he is not merely “dangerous”, just as he is not simply lying when he has said the novel coronavirus, “like a miracle … will disappear.” He vacillates between, “I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic,” and “I still like playing it down,” as he said on March 17 and March 19, 2020, respectively.
‘Uncontainable’
His unique danger lies in the fact that he is not only “criminally-minded,” as we say in forensic psychiatry, but also combines with mental pathology in a way that makes him vastly more dangerous. This, in part, is what we meant when we said he could become “uncontainable”. To the same measure that he commits felony-level crimes and perhaps even murder, he also mobilizes his “gut”, the effectiveness of which he is well aware, to maintain the unyielding support of his followers. He does not recognize, however, that this “skill” he obeys is a pathological symptom that will eventually lead to his ruin as equally as that of his “enemies”.
In the short-run, the emotional drive that pathology brings is far more effective in bulldozing others into acquiescing or enabling him than rational persuasion. In garnering fervent, irrational support from followers, it is unparalleled. This is what we see in the accelerating menace of the QAnon movement. This is not a unique dynamic; it is common in prison settings where highly mentally-impaired individuals often become gang or ring leaders. Carl Jung described it as a state of being “seized or possessed.”
Followers in a ‘Cult of Personality’
The president’s long-time associate, Cohen describes himself as a “demented follower” who fell under a “trance-like spell…. Around Trump I felt excited, alive, like he possessed the urgent and only truth, the chance for my salvation and success in life,” the former fixer writes. When helping Trump spread the birtherism lie about Barack Obama, he could hardly restrain himself: “That is what it feels like to lose control of your mind—you actually give up your common sense, sense of decency, sensitivity, even your grip on reality…. I was in a cult of personality. And I loved it.”
In this state of mind, vast suffering and deaths only solidify his following in fearful dependence and defensive idealization. As he creates more crises, these become opportunities for his criminal mind to further its grip on power. Since the growing fury will never be directed at him, it becomes an additional weapon for him to redirect against his enemies and critics. And this is what we have largely seen: the more he kills his followers, the more they cling to him.
Delusions and Lies
Hence, will the revelations that he lied about the pandemic defeat him? If they were mere lies, they likely would. If they combined with an actual belief in his lies—in other words, delusions—then they likely would not. This is the part that we can only partially discern from a distance, although there are signs that he fluctuates in and out of delusions.
Most criminal minds are not mentally ill, and most mentally ill minds are not criminal. Yet they can combine to form vastly greater power that makes democide of genocidal proportions possible. We should therefore think in terms of “and” and not “either-or.” The presence of “insanity” (a legal term) does not negate the fact that he willfully and brazenly lied, but it could make him more dangerous. And in Trump’s case, the special counsel’s report pretty much proved criminal intent. Indeed, mass killings are already happening; nearly 200,000 deaths later and entering a pandemic spiral—a catastrophic loss of control that mental health experts predicted—we are again failing to confront the problem.
How do we confront it? If we found a mass killer, we would take him into custody. If we found a person dangerous for psychological reasons, we would hospitalize him immediately. What is the equivalent for a president? We cannot convince ourselves that rules or laws do not apply; they should.
Bob Woodward’s new book, Rage, demonstrates how Donald Trump lied to the American people: “It goes through air, Bob. That’s always tougher than the touch…. It’s also more deadly than … even your strenuous flus. You know, people don’t realize, we lose 25,000, 30,000 people a year here.” He proceeds to say that the novel virus causes five times the mortality and calls it, “deadly stuff.” Yet he downplayed the threat in public, hampering national efforts and misinforming about the worst global pandemic in 100 years.
Similarly, Michael Cohen recounts in his new book, Disloyal: “The President of the United States wanted me dead. Or, let me say it the way Donald Trump would: He wouldn’t mind if I was dead. That was how Trump talked. Like a mob boss, using language carefully calibrated to convey his desires and demands, while at the same time employing deliberate indirection to insulate himself and avoid actually ordering a hit on his former personal attorney.” We have witnessed the president do this in public, playing on his followers’ psychology to encourage violence without directly taking responsibility for even massacres and widespread violence that ensue.
John Bolton’s book, The Room Where It Happened, shows that Trump’s thought process “was like an archipelago of dots, leaving the rest of us to discern—or create—policy.” He went into tough negotiations with foreign leaders with minimal understanding of the stakes, lured by grand spectacle, which led him to sign a toothless, vague agreement with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore and side with Russian President Vladimir Putin rather than the U.S. intelligence community. He casually advocated for withdrawing the U.S. from NATO solely to “do something historic.”
‘Petty and Pathetic’
Mary Trump’s book, Too Much and Never Enough, depicts in developmental detail the president as a “petty, pathetic little man—ignorant, incapable, out of his depth, and lost to his own delusional spin.” “He’ll withhold ventilators or steal supplies from states that have not groveled sufficiently. What Donald thinks is justified retaliation is, in this context, mass murder.” She states her reasons for writing about her uncle: “Donald, following the lead of my grandfather and with the complicity, silence and inaction of his siblings, destroyed my father. I can’t let him destroy my country.”
In this manner, just in recent weeks, a doctor of clinical psychology who happens to be the president’s niece and has known him and his family all her life; a former national security adviser who was privy to the internal conversations that led to many high-stakes foreign policy decisions; a former personal lawyer and fixer who worked closely with him for a very long time; and one of the country’s best-known, leading journalists all confirm through major books that Donald Trump is a great “danger” to the nation and the world. Intimate accounts now completely validate the concerns that mental health experts laid out in The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, a book I edited in 2017 when few, if any, were willing to call the president “dangerous”.
Forewarned
On April 20, 2017, one of the authors stated: “it is important to mention that everybody in America, and in fact everybody in the world, is in danger from the currently most powerful man in the world.” On May 24, 2017, I stated: “We have an obligation to speak about Donald Trump’s mental health issues because many lives and our survival as a species may be at stake.” We said so because of the seriousness of our message: “The president was more dangerous than people suspected, would grow more dangerous with time, and could ultimately become uncontainable.”
Though many have come around to our position, we must note that he is not merely “dangerous”, just as he is not simply lying when he has said the novel coronavirus, “like a miracle … will disappear.” He vacillates between, “I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic,” and “I still like playing it down,” as he said on March 17 and March 19, 2020, respectively.
‘Uncontainable’
His unique danger lies in the fact that he is not only “criminally-minded,” as we say in forensic psychiatry, but also combines with mental pathology in a way that makes him vastly more dangerous. This, in part, is what we meant when we said he could become “uncontainable”. To the same measure that he commits felony-level crimes and perhaps even murder, he also mobilizes his “gut”, the effectiveness of which he is well aware, to maintain the unyielding support of his followers. He does not recognize, however, that this “skill” he obeys is a pathological symptom that will eventually lead to his ruin as equally as that of his “enemies”.
In the short-run, the emotional drive that pathology brings is far more effective in bulldozing others into acquiescing or enabling him than rational persuasion. In garnering fervent, irrational support from followers, it is unparalleled. This is what we see in the accelerating menace of the QAnon movement. This is not a unique dynamic; it is common in prison settings where highly mentally-impaired individuals often become gang or ring leaders. Carl Jung described it as a state of being “seized or possessed.”
Followers in a ‘Cult of Personality’
The president’s long-time associate, Cohen describes himself as a “demented follower” who fell under a “trance-like spell…. Around Trump I felt excited, alive, like he possessed the urgent and only truth, the chance for my salvation and success in life,” the former fixer writes. When helping Trump spread the birtherism lie about Barack Obama, he could hardly restrain himself: “That is what it feels like to lose control of your mind—you actually give up your common sense, sense of decency, sensitivity, even your grip on reality…. I was in a cult of personality. And I loved it.”
In this state of mind, vast suffering and deaths only solidify his following in fearful dependence and defensive idealization. As he creates more crises, these become opportunities for his criminal mind to further its grip on power. Since the growing fury will never be directed at him, it becomes an additional weapon for him to redirect against his enemies and critics. And this is what we have largely seen: the more he kills his followers, the more they cling to him.
Delusions and Lies
Hence, will the revelations that he lied about the pandemic defeat him? If they were mere lies, they likely would. If they combined with an actual belief in his lies—in other words, delusions—then they likely would not. This is the part that we can only partially discern from a distance, although there are signs that he fluctuates in and out of delusions.
Most criminal minds are not mentally ill, and most mentally ill minds are not criminal. Yet they can combine to form vastly greater power that makes democide of genocidal proportions possible. We should therefore think in terms of “and” and not “either-or.” The presence of “insanity” (a legal term) does not negate the fact that he willfully and brazenly lied, but it could make him more dangerous. And in Trump’s case, the special counsel’s report pretty much proved criminal intent. Indeed, mass killings are already happening; nearly 200,000 deaths later and entering a pandemic spiral—a catastrophic loss of control that mental health experts predicted—we are again failing to confront the problem.
How do we confront it? If we found a mass killer, we would take him into custody. If we found a person dangerous for psychological reasons, we would hospitalize him immediately. What is the equivalent for a president? We cannot convince ourselves that rules or laws do not apply; they should.
Donald Trump
Michael Cohen book details Trump's racism and toxic family dynamic
Trump’s former lawyer publishes memoir Disloyal, prompting White House statement calling him a liar
Martin Pengelly in New York
the guardian
Tue 8 Sep 2020 08.59 EDT
Michael Cohen published his memoir of his time as Donald Trump’s fixer on Tuesday, greeted by a White House statement calling him a “disgraced felon and disbarred lawyer”, and a liar.
It was pointed out in return that Cohen was convicted of lying to Congress in order to protect Trump – himself a well-catalogued liar – over his links to Russia and payments to women which may have violated campaign finance law.
Cohen was also convicted of lying to a financial institution and tax fraud. He is still serving a three-year sentence, begun in a federal institution but now at home in New York because of the coronavirus.
Cohen beat official attempts to stop his book, and Disloyal was duly leaked, to be picked over by the Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN and the Associated Press.
Those reports revealed Cohen’s claims about Trump’s racism and hatred of Barack Obama; his admiration for Vladimir Putin and his business interests in Russia; his mutually beneficial relationship with the National Enquirer tabloid; and his brutal treatment of women, including a vulgar sexual remark about a 15-year-old he did not know was Cohen’s daughter.
Cohen also gave an interview to NBC, in which he called the president a “cult leader” who should resign, to receive a pardon from Mike Pence and thereby avoid criminal charges. He also said he thought Trump would “manipulate the ballots” or “start a war” in order to avoid losing the White House to Joe Biden in November.
“Donald Trump will do anything and everything within which to win. And I believe that includes manipulating the ballots,” Michael Cohen tells @LesterHoltNBC. pic.twitter.com/XtRjGivvKO
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) September 8, 2020But other stories are still emerging from the book. For example, Cohen piles on embarrassments for Donald Trump Jr, a top campaign surrogate for his father, offering further detail into what was included in testimony to Congress about the president’s brittle relationship with his oldest child.
Cohen describes Trump confronting his son over his fondness for trophy hunting, a hobby pursued with his brother Eric Trump to the fury of conservationists and delight of political opponents.
“‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’ Trump screamed at his namesake. ‘You think you’re a big man sitting on the rocks and then boom! You kill some fucking animal? Then you drag your brother into this bullshit? Why the fuck would you post photos like that? Get the fuck out of my office.’”
Donald Jr, Cohen writes, “left without a word, head downcast”.
The president’s distaste for his sons’ hunting was also detailed in Melania & Me, a recent tell-all by Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former aide and friend to the first lady. According to Wolkoff, the first lady’s lobbying was behind Trump changing his mind on reversing an Obama-era ban on importing big game trophies.
Cohen says his own relationship with Ivanka Trump, a senior White House adviser, was mostly warm. But he says Trump “didn’t particularly like Jared Kushner”, Ivanka’s husband, tolerating him because he will “do as he’s told, with discretion, in a way that Trump can’t find in other advisers”.
Cohen writes: “The truth was that all three kids were starved for their father’s love … abandoned by their egomaniacal dad and humiliated when he openly cheated on their mother, and now all three are forever trapped in a cycle of seeking his attention.”
Donald Jr, Eric and Ivanka are Trump’s children with his first wife, Ivana Trump. Cohen writes that those three children referred to his fourth child, Tiffany Trump, whose mother was Trump’s second wife, Marla Maples, as the “red-haired stepchild”. He also describes the president and Ivanka Trump belittling Tiffany’s looks.
Tiffany spoke in support of her father at last month’s Republican convention. Barron Trump, 14, whose mother is first lady Melania Trump, attended but did not speak.
Cohen quotes the first lady as saying she did not “care what people say or write” about her husband’s many alleged affairs.
“But she knew,” Cohen writes. “She knew everything, but she didn’t do what most wives would do and insist on the whole story.”
Disloyal also offers Cohen’s side of the story about hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, a porn star, and Karen McDougal, a Playboy model, who claimed affairs with Trump which Trump denies. Those payments, the mechanics of which Cohen explains, are at the heart of an attempt by prosecutors in New York to obtain financial information Trump has refused to disclose.
Cohen says Trump was not concerned that the first lady might leave him.
“I can always get another wife,” he says Trump told him. “That’s no problem for me. If she wants to go, so be it.”
Cohen also says Donald Jr, who divorced the mother of his five children and who many think could run for the Republican nomination in 2024, “more and more resembles his father”.
Cohen was notoriously brutal to reporters and anyone else who might damage the man he protected. In his book, he details dreams of living like a gangster. The White House statement released on Saturday implied he made it at least some of the way there, calling Cohen “a disgraced felon and disbarred lawyer, who lied to Congress. He has lost all credibility, and it’s unsurprising to see his latest attempt to profit off of lies.”
Nonetheless, Disloyal shows just how close Cohen came to the corridors of power. In October 2016, when a tape of Trump boasting about sexually assaulting women was released, the man who made such problems go away was in London, “catching up with some folks we knew who lived in the United Kingdom”.
Cohen includes a picture with one such individual. It is “former PM Tony Blair”.
It was pointed out in return that Cohen was convicted of lying to Congress in order to protect Trump – himself a well-catalogued liar – over his links to Russia and payments to women which may have violated campaign finance law.
Cohen was also convicted of lying to a financial institution and tax fraud. He is still serving a three-year sentence, begun in a federal institution but now at home in New York because of the coronavirus.
Cohen beat official attempts to stop his book, and Disloyal was duly leaked, to be picked over by the Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN and the Associated Press.
Those reports revealed Cohen’s claims about Trump’s racism and hatred of Barack Obama; his admiration for Vladimir Putin and his business interests in Russia; his mutually beneficial relationship with the National Enquirer tabloid; and his brutal treatment of women, including a vulgar sexual remark about a 15-year-old he did not know was Cohen’s daughter.
Cohen also gave an interview to NBC, in which he called the president a “cult leader” who should resign, to receive a pardon from Mike Pence and thereby avoid criminal charges. He also said he thought Trump would “manipulate the ballots” or “start a war” in order to avoid losing the White House to Joe Biden in November.
“Donald Trump will do anything and everything within which to win. And I believe that includes manipulating the ballots,” Michael Cohen tells @LesterHoltNBC. pic.twitter.com/XtRjGivvKO
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) September 8, 2020But other stories are still emerging from the book. For example, Cohen piles on embarrassments for Donald Trump Jr, a top campaign surrogate for his father, offering further detail into what was included in testimony to Congress about the president’s brittle relationship with his oldest child.
Cohen describes Trump confronting his son over his fondness for trophy hunting, a hobby pursued with his brother Eric Trump to the fury of conservationists and delight of political opponents.
“‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’ Trump screamed at his namesake. ‘You think you’re a big man sitting on the rocks and then boom! You kill some fucking animal? Then you drag your brother into this bullshit? Why the fuck would you post photos like that? Get the fuck out of my office.’”
Donald Jr, Cohen writes, “left without a word, head downcast”.
The president’s distaste for his sons’ hunting was also detailed in Melania & Me, a recent tell-all by Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former aide and friend to the first lady. According to Wolkoff, the first lady’s lobbying was behind Trump changing his mind on reversing an Obama-era ban on importing big game trophies.
Cohen says his own relationship with Ivanka Trump, a senior White House adviser, was mostly warm. But he says Trump “didn’t particularly like Jared Kushner”, Ivanka’s husband, tolerating him because he will “do as he’s told, with discretion, in a way that Trump can’t find in other advisers”.
Cohen writes: “The truth was that all three kids were starved for their father’s love … abandoned by their egomaniacal dad and humiliated when he openly cheated on their mother, and now all three are forever trapped in a cycle of seeking his attention.”
Donald Jr, Eric and Ivanka are Trump’s children with his first wife, Ivana Trump. Cohen writes that those three children referred to his fourth child, Tiffany Trump, whose mother was Trump’s second wife, Marla Maples, as the “red-haired stepchild”. He also describes the president and Ivanka Trump belittling Tiffany’s looks.
Tiffany spoke in support of her father at last month’s Republican convention. Barron Trump, 14, whose mother is first lady Melania Trump, attended but did not speak.
Cohen quotes the first lady as saying she did not “care what people say or write” about her husband’s many alleged affairs.
“But she knew,” Cohen writes. “She knew everything, but she didn’t do what most wives would do and insist on the whole story.”
Disloyal also offers Cohen’s side of the story about hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, a porn star, and Karen McDougal, a Playboy model, who claimed affairs with Trump which Trump denies. Those payments, the mechanics of which Cohen explains, are at the heart of an attempt by prosecutors in New York to obtain financial information Trump has refused to disclose.
Cohen says Trump was not concerned that the first lady might leave him.
“I can always get another wife,” he says Trump told him. “That’s no problem for me. If she wants to go, so be it.”
Cohen also says Donald Jr, who divorced the mother of his five children and who many think could run for the Republican nomination in 2024, “more and more resembles his father”.
Cohen was notoriously brutal to reporters and anyone else who might damage the man he protected. In his book, he details dreams of living like a gangster. The White House statement released on Saturday implied he made it at least some of the way there, calling Cohen “a disgraced felon and disbarred lawyer, who lied to Congress. He has lost all credibility, and it’s unsurprising to see his latest attempt to profit off of lies.”
Nonetheless, Disloyal shows just how close Cohen came to the corridors of power. In October 2016, when a tape of Trump boasting about sexually assaulting women was released, the man who made such problems go away was in London, “catching up with some folks we knew who lived in the United Kingdom”.
Cohen includes a picture with one such individual. It is “former PM Tony Blair”.
bullshit exposed!!!
Trump deadline for drug pricing order passes with no action
BY PETER SULLIVAN - the hill
08/25/20 09:33 AM EDT
A deadline set by President Trump for moving forward with an executive order to lower drug prices passed at midnight on Tuesday without any action so far from the White House.
Trump held a highly touted signing ceremony on July 24 for four executive orders aimed at lowering drug prices, a key issue for voters ahead of the election. But on the most consequential of the orders, to lower certain Medicare drug prices by tying prices to those paid in other countries, Trump delayed the order for one month, until Aug. 24, saying he wanted to give the pharmaceutical industry time to make a deal.
That deadline has now come and gone, without the announcement of any deal with drug companies, yet the White House has not moved forward with the order and is not saying if it will.
The White House declined to comment when asked about the path forward for the order on Tuesday.
The order in question is called a “most-favored nation clause” and is aimed at lowering the prices for a subset of drugs paid for by Medicare to be in line with the lower prices paid in other developed countries.
“We’re going to hold that until Aug. 24, hoping that the pharmaceutical companies will come up with something that will substantially reduce drug prices,” Trump said at the signing ceremony in July. “And the clock starts right now. So, it’s Aug. 24 at 12 [a.m.], after which the order on favored nations will go into effect.”
Since then, Trump has repeatedly touted the order, though even now that the deadline has passed, the administration so far is not saying if it is actually going forward with implementing it.
“I did a favored nations clause, meaning we pay the same price as the lowest country that has the best deal, the companies are going crazy, the drug companies,” Trump said in remarks to the Republican National Convention on Monday.
The pharmaceutical industry, a powerful force in Washington, is fiercely opposed to the move.
The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) has been in talks with the White House in recent days, sources said, amid Trump’s stated openness to a deal to avert the order, but it remains unclear if any deal will be reached.
Drug pricing advocates are urging Trump to go forward now that his deadline has passed.
“Abandoning the most-favored nation proposal at the 11th hour would be a capitulation to drug corporations,” Ben Wakana, the executive director of Patients For Affordable Drugs Now, said in a statement. “If President Trump does not implement a proposal to lower the list prices of prescription drugs, he will leave Americans continuing to pay the highest prices in the world.”
PhRMA did not say what proposals it is putting forward instead, but said it supports “market-based, competitive solutions.”
“The most favored nation executive order is an irresponsible and unworkable policy that will give foreign politicians a say in how America provides access to treatments and cures for seniors and people struggling with devastating diseases,” a PhRMA spokesperson said.
“We remain committed to working with all stakeholders to identify market-based, competitive solutions that lower costs for patients, ensure patients’ access to medicines and protect the critical work being done to end COVID-19.”
Trump held a highly touted signing ceremony on July 24 for four executive orders aimed at lowering drug prices, a key issue for voters ahead of the election. But on the most consequential of the orders, to lower certain Medicare drug prices by tying prices to those paid in other countries, Trump delayed the order for one month, until Aug. 24, saying he wanted to give the pharmaceutical industry time to make a deal.
That deadline has now come and gone, without the announcement of any deal with drug companies, yet the White House has not moved forward with the order and is not saying if it will.
The White House declined to comment when asked about the path forward for the order on Tuesday.
The order in question is called a “most-favored nation clause” and is aimed at lowering the prices for a subset of drugs paid for by Medicare to be in line with the lower prices paid in other developed countries.
“We’re going to hold that until Aug. 24, hoping that the pharmaceutical companies will come up with something that will substantially reduce drug prices,” Trump said at the signing ceremony in July. “And the clock starts right now. So, it’s Aug. 24 at 12 [a.m.], after which the order on favored nations will go into effect.”
Since then, Trump has repeatedly touted the order, though even now that the deadline has passed, the administration so far is not saying if it is actually going forward with implementing it.
“I did a favored nations clause, meaning we pay the same price as the lowest country that has the best deal, the companies are going crazy, the drug companies,” Trump said in remarks to the Republican National Convention on Monday.
The pharmaceutical industry, a powerful force in Washington, is fiercely opposed to the move.
The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) has been in talks with the White House in recent days, sources said, amid Trump’s stated openness to a deal to avert the order, but it remains unclear if any deal will be reached.
Drug pricing advocates are urging Trump to go forward now that his deadline has passed.
“Abandoning the most-favored nation proposal at the 11th hour would be a capitulation to drug corporations,” Ben Wakana, the executive director of Patients For Affordable Drugs Now, said in a statement. “If President Trump does not implement a proposal to lower the list prices of prescription drugs, he will leave Americans continuing to pay the highest prices in the world.”
PhRMA did not say what proposals it is putting forward instead, but said it supports “market-based, competitive solutions.”
“The most favored nation executive order is an irresponsible and unworkable policy that will give foreign politicians a say in how America provides access to treatments and cures for seniors and people struggling with devastating diseases,” a PhRMA spokesperson said.
“We remain committed to working with all stakeholders to identify market-based, competitive solutions that lower costs for patients, ensure patients’ access to medicines and protect the critical work being done to end COVID-19.”
New report suggests Trump chose negligent homicide as his pandemic response
Sadism often drives politics. So does masochism.
While the president chose to let Americans who live in blue states get sick and die, Congressional Republicans chose to starve those same cities and states of needed resources.
John Stoehr - the editorial board
7/31/2020
I felt some pangs of regret after saying Thursday that a third of America would cheer, or shrug, if the other two-thirds were wiped out by Covid-19. My point was that we should vote like our lives depend on it (they do!), but no one likes hearing such ugliness about other Americans. An outraged subscriber alleged I was being “deeply cynical.” “Instead of talking about the work that needs to be done, you are sabotaging us.”
As I was thinking this through, Vanity Fair published an investigation by Katherine Eban establishing a timeline of the Trump administration’s pandemic response. In the early stages, the White House task force, led by the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, decided a national approach was best. “Simply working together as a nation on it ‘would have put us in a fundamentally different place,’” said Eban’s source.
By early April, things changed. Donald Trump, fearing its effect on the economy and Wall Street, minimized the reality of the virus while accusing his enemies and the press corps of hyping its dangers to wound him. Kushner’s team, along with GOP leaders and their media allies, followed suit. “Against that background, the prospect of launching a large-scale national plan was losing favor, said one public health expert.”
Over time, Kushner’s team convinced itself that the pandemic was not affecting Republican voters. A national approach, therefore, wasn’t needed. Trump downplayed the body count even as he accused Democratic governors of failing to stop its rise. (Ohio and Massachusetts, among the early pandemic states, have GOP governors, but I digress.) “Because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. ‘The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,’ said the expert” (emphasis is mine).
During this period, it’s bear remembering, the president pushed the US Congress to stabilize the economy by shoving billions into it. While GOP allies got preferential access to $2.2 trillion in stimulus, cities and states run by Democrats got nothing—despite being on the front lines of a national pandemic. Democrats in the US House have since passed a bill to replace lost revenues, and then some, but the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, maintains there will be no “blue-state bailout.” The Senate’s latest proposal, which is standing idle while senators are away for August recess, has no appropriations for cites and states, even deep-red Republican ones.
What does this mean? While the president chose to let Americans who live in blue states get sick and die, Congressional Republicans chose to starve those same cities and states of resources amid their struggle to save lives. Given that elected officials, from the president on down, tend to reflect the will of their supporters, it’s safe to say, in light of Trump’s 91 percent approval rating among Republicans (per Gallup), that about a third of America approves of the GOP’s informal policy of negligent homicide. It may sound cynical, but truth is, the pleasure other people’s pain often drives politics.
Paying so much attention to sadism runs the risk of ignoring its opposite: masochism. Some Republican voters are willing to hurt themselves, with exquisite pleasure, if hurting themselves exquisitely hurts their enemies. (A textbook example is Republican governors rejecting Obamacare’s health-insurance subsidies in order to undermine a Black president.) Even as the pandemic is rampaging through Republican-controlled states, setting records in Florida and Texas, many Republicans will never blame Trump, because if he’s wrong, the enemy is right, and the enemy can never be right.
Not all Republicans, though. As small numbers defect due to Trump’s failed leadership, they leave behind individuals still taking immense pleasure in losing themselves to the “collective power structure,” as an EB subscriber described it to me. “All they want is to continue feeling the way being part of a collective power structure makes them feel. The way Trump makes them feel.” As the group shrinks, so does that pleasure, until one day, however Trump leaves office, MAGA addicts will “crash, many with their entire senses of self having been stripped away. It’s not their ‘evil’ that worries me most. It’s their anguish, and how they will respond to that anguish.”
The collective trauma that’s coming from millions being forced to go cold turkey? And the fact that nearly every one of us on Team Blue is out of empathy for anyone who supported him? That is what should scare the shit out of everyone.
As I was thinking this through, Vanity Fair published an investigation by Katherine Eban establishing a timeline of the Trump administration’s pandemic response. In the early stages, the White House task force, led by the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, decided a national approach was best. “Simply working together as a nation on it ‘would have put us in a fundamentally different place,’” said Eban’s source.
By early April, things changed. Donald Trump, fearing its effect on the economy and Wall Street, minimized the reality of the virus while accusing his enemies and the press corps of hyping its dangers to wound him. Kushner’s team, along with GOP leaders and their media allies, followed suit. “Against that background, the prospect of launching a large-scale national plan was losing favor, said one public health expert.”
Over time, Kushner’s team convinced itself that the pandemic was not affecting Republican voters. A national approach, therefore, wasn’t needed. Trump downplayed the body count even as he accused Democratic governors of failing to stop its rise. (Ohio and Massachusetts, among the early pandemic states, have GOP governors, but I digress.) “Because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. ‘The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,’ said the expert” (emphasis is mine).
During this period, it’s bear remembering, the president pushed the US Congress to stabilize the economy by shoving billions into it. While GOP allies got preferential access to $2.2 trillion in stimulus, cities and states run by Democrats got nothing—despite being on the front lines of a national pandemic. Democrats in the US House have since passed a bill to replace lost revenues, and then some, but the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, maintains there will be no “blue-state bailout.” The Senate’s latest proposal, which is standing idle while senators are away for August recess, has no appropriations for cites and states, even deep-red Republican ones.
What does this mean? While the president chose to let Americans who live in blue states get sick and die, Congressional Republicans chose to starve those same cities and states of resources amid their struggle to save lives. Given that elected officials, from the president on down, tend to reflect the will of their supporters, it’s safe to say, in light of Trump’s 91 percent approval rating among Republicans (per Gallup), that about a third of America approves of the GOP’s informal policy of negligent homicide. It may sound cynical, but truth is, the pleasure other people’s pain often drives politics.
Paying so much attention to sadism runs the risk of ignoring its opposite: masochism. Some Republican voters are willing to hurt themselves, with exquisite pleasure, if hurting themselves exquisitely hurts their enemies. (A textbook example is Republican governors rejecting Obamacare’s health-insurance subsidies in order to undermine a Black president.) Even as the pandemic is rampaging through Republican-controlled states, setting records in Florida and Texas, many Republicans will never blame Trump, because if he’s wrong, the enemy is right, and the enemy can never be right.
Not all Republicans, though. As small numbers defect due to Trump’s failed leadership, they leave behind individuals still taking immense pleasure in losing themselves to the “collective power structure,” as an EB subscriber described it to me. “All they want is to continue feeling the way being part of a collective power structure makes them feel. The way Trump makes them feel.” As the group shrinks, so does that pleasure, until one day, however Trump leaves office, MAGA addicts will “crash, many with their entire senses of self having been stripped away. It’s not their ‘evil’ that worries me most. It’s their anguish, and how they will respond to that anguish.”
The collective trauma that’s coming from millions being forced to go cold turkey? And the fact that nearly every one of us on Team Blue is out of empathy for anyone who supported him? That is what should scare the shit out of everyone.
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Trump's properties: A playground for white nationalists, Groypers and other far-right loons
Right-wing extremists are trying to infiltrate mainstream politics — and they sure do love Trump properties
ROGER SOLLENBERGER - salon
JULY 30, 2020 11:00AM (UTC)
Conspiracy theorists, alt-right memers and prominent white nationalists have frequently appeared at properties owned by President Trump, where they've hosted gatherings, mingled with officials and spent money, according to research obtained by Salon.
Trump properties are well-documented hot spots for MAGA-world luminaries and hangers-on, particularly Trump International Hotel in Washington, where the lobby is frequently a blur of lobbyists, administration officials, lawmakers, corporate leaders and foreign dignitaries — the physical embodiment of the president's numerous conflicts of interest.
But in a sense those properties are also real-world iterations of the president's Twitter feed, a running scroll of the same groups. Both are also sprinkled to varying degrees with influential right-wing extremists and internet trolls (Diamond and Silk kicked off their 2019 "Chit Chat Live" tour at Trump Hotel D.C.), some of whom now are now moving into legitimate electoral politics under the auspices of the Republican Party in various states, including Oregon, Colorado, Georgia and Trump's new home state of Florida.
And though Trump fandom is little more than an ironic lark to young fringe-right adherents, who see themselves as more pure, edgy and extreme, those places draw an older generation that has influence, but might be looking for someone who knows better how to wield it today.
"Trump properties are the place to be if you're an elected Republican looking to dip your toe in alt-right waters. So no one should be surprised that once-mainstream Republicans and the NRCC are now backing the very QAnon supporters and fringe factions they've mingled with for years," said Kyle Morse, an American Bridge 21st Century spokesperson.
The more high-profile of these patron-extremists include:
Trump properties are a particularly popular draw for the Fuentes-led Groyper movement, a loose affiliation of far-right and alt-right nationalists who peddle racist and anti-Semitic tropes while mocking mainstream conservatives — including some less radical white nationalists — as phonies.
As with most things born in the nether regions of the internet, the origins of the Groyper movement are not easy to understand. Its name is drawn from a specific Pepe the Frog pose, in which the alt-right cartoon mascot rests his chin on his interlinked hands.
Marilyn Mayo, senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremis, described the movement in a 2019 interview.
"What they're trying to do, there's this whole grouping who refer to themselves as the dissident right, they want to move the Overton window," said Mayo, referring to the shifting spectrum of acceptable ideological and political discourse. "They want to make racism and anti-Semitism mainstream."
Trump made waves this January when he retweeted a clip of Michelle Malkin, the self-described "mommy" of the Groyper movement, complaining about online censorship. Trump added his own caption, thanking her:
"The Radical Left is in total command & control of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Google. The Administration is working to remedy this illegal situation. Stay tuned, and send names & events. Thank you Michelle!"
That Malkin clip was produced by Fuentes' internet show, America First.
"Donald Trump is watching America First Clips," Fuentes tweeted.
Fuentes has attended events at Trump International in Washington, including with friend and fellow Groyper Megan Harris, and both appeared there during the conservative gathering CPAC this year, as documented in a since-deleted Instagram post. The two were joined at CPAC by musician and Groyper Ricky Rebel, who shared a number of pictures from Trump International on his Instagram story.
Fuentes, like several other fringe-right personalities, has also patronized Trump National Doral, the president's golf resort near Miami, where he appeared in an Instagram photo with alt-right internet personality Baked Alaska (Tim Gionet).
Gionet, a former BuzzFeed writer who later got Trump's face tattooed on his arm, has shared Instagram posts from Trump properties three times in the last year: at Doral National, and the Trump International hotels in Las Vegas and Washington. The last of those included a photograph of a burger and fries, captioned, "imagine eatin this good."
Three summers ago, Gionet joined Fuentes at the infamous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, where he was billed as a scheduled speaker alongside leading white supremacist Richard Spencer. He has tweeted the "14 Words" (a well-known neo-Nazi phrase) and, in since-deleted tweets, shared videos of friends saying that "Hitler did nothing wrong." He's also posted images of people in gas chambers.
In March 2019, Gionet attempted to distance himself from the alt-right, denouncing it as hateful and violent. Following the mosque attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand, he posted a video in which he apologized for his contributions to the culture, but a few months later was caught spewing Islamophobia at an ICE protest. He subsequently linked up with the Groyper movement and deleted his apologies.
Other fringe-right associates of Gionet have spent time and money at Trump properties.
One of the more well-known names is alt-right personality, Pizzagate truther and noted misogynist Mike Cernovich, whom Gionet engaged in multiple projects. Cernovich has spent considerable time at Trump properties.
Gionet once spent Christmas with blogger Chuck Johnson, the aforementioned "most hated man on the internet," who reportedly had a hand in vetting Trump Cabinet picks during the transition (working with Facebook's Peter Thiel) — and may have acted as an inadvertent conduit between WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Donald Trump Jr.
In January 2017, Johnson posted on Facebook that he was "building algorithms to ID all the illegal immigrants for the deportation squads." HuffPost quoted a source claiming to have seen Johnson discussing that same project with "a whole bunch of really important people" at the Trump hotel in D.C. Former Breitbart editor Katie McHugh has said that Johnson asked to be connected with senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller so he could pitch a "way to identify every illegal alien in the country."
In 2018, Johnson was also spotted at Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas.
Then there's the Posobiec, who while not exactly a Groyper is a fringe conspiracy theorist with anti-Semitic views whom Trump has retweeted a number of times. Posobiec and his wife met Brexit architect Nigel Farage at the Trump Hotel in Washington in February, 2017, and have spent both Christmas and New Year's holidays there.
In July 2019, Posobiec joined QAnon acolyte Tracy Beanz, MAGA alt-right memesmith Carpe Donktum and former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders for a conservative conference called AMPFest, held at Trump National Doral. Documents obtained by the Washington Post showed that the Florida property's revenues were "in steep decline" at the time.
Posobiec spread the debunked conspiracy theory that the Las Vegas mass shooter was affiliated with ISIS, but was challenged for credit by right-wing provocateur, Islamophobe and Trump patron Laura Loomer. The two seemed to smooth things over before AMPFest 2019, where Loomer appeared alongside Posobiec.
Loomer is currently running as a Republican congressional candidate in Florida's 21st district — home to Donald Trump's private Palm Beach club Mar-a-Lago, where she appeared at a 2019 winter gala that featured Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, former White House staffer Sebastian Gorka and guest of honor Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.
Just a few days after that, Trump tweeted his support for Loomer's candidacy. And since the 21st is officially his district of residence, he will have the chance to vote for her should she appear on the ballot in November. (Her chances of winning are not strong: Incumbent Rep. Lois Frankel, a Democrat, was re-elected without opposition in 2018.)
On March 3, Loomer was back at Trump International in D.C.
Trump properties are well-documented hot spots for MAGA-world luminaries and hangers-on, particularly Trump International Hotel in Washington, where the lobby is frequently a blur of lobbyists, administration officials, lawmakers, corporate leaders and foreign dignitaries — the physical embodiment of the president's numerous conflicts of interest.
But in a sense those properties are also real-world iterations of the president's Twitter feed, a running scroll of the same groups. Both are also sprinkled to varying degrees with influential right-wing extremists and internet trolls (Diamond and Silk kicked off their 2019 "Chit Chat Live" tour at Trump Hotel D.C.), some of whom now are now moving into legitimate electoral politics under the auspices of the Republican Party in various states, including Oregon, Colorado, Georgia and Trump's new home state of Florida.
And though Trump fandom is little more than an ironic lark to young fringe-right adherents, who see themselves as more pure, edgy and extreme, those places draw an older generation that has influence, but might be looking for someone who knows better how to wield it today.
"Trump properties are the place to be if you're an elected Republican looking to dip your toe in alt-right waters. So no one should be surprised that once-mainstream Republicans and the NRCC are now backing the very QAnon supporters and fringe factions they've mingled with for years," said Kyle Morse, an American Bridge 21st Century spokesperson.
The more high-profile of these patron-extremists include:
- Laura Loomer, an anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist and Trump-favored congressional candidate
- Jack Posobiec, an internet troll, Pizzagate truther and OANN reporter
- Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist and accused Holocaust denier who founded the far-right Groyper movement
- Baked Alaska, aka Tim Gionet, alt-right internet troll and supposedly reformed neo-Nazi
- Chuck Johnson, a right-wing activist once described as "the most hated man on the internet"
Trump properties are a particularly popular draw for the Fuentes-led Groyper movement, a loose affiliation of far-right and alt-right nationalists who peddle racist and anti-Semitic tropes while mocking mainstream conservatives — including some less radical white nationalists — as phonies.
As with most things born in the nether regions of the internet, the origins of the Groyper movement are not easy to understand. Its name is drawn from a specific Pepe the Frog pose, in which the alt-right cartoon mascot rests his chin on his interlinked hands.
Marilyn Mayo, senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremis, described the movement in a 2019 interview.
"What they're trying to do, there's this whole grouping who refer to themselves as the dissident right, they want to move the Overton window," said Mayo, referring to the shifting spectrum of acceptable ideological and political discourse. "They want to make racism and anti-Semitism mainstream."
Trump made waves this January when he retweeted a clip of Michelle Malkin, the self-described "mommy" of the Groyper movement, complaining about online censorship. Trump added his own caption, thanking her:
"The Radical Left is in total command & control of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Google. The Administration is working to remedy this illegal situation. Stay tuned, and send names & events. Thank you Michelle!"
That Malkin clip was produced by Fuentes' internet show, America First.
"Donald Trump is watching America First Clips," Fuentes tweeted.
Fuentes has attended events at Trump International in Washington, including with friend and fellow Groyper Megan Harris, and both appeared there during the conservative gathering CPAC this year, as documented in a since-deleted Instagram post. The two were joined at CPAC by musician and Groyper Ricky Rebel, who shared a number of pictures from Trump International on his Instagram story.
Fuentes, like several other fringe-right personalities, has also patronized Trump National Doral, the president's golf resort near Miami, where he appeared in an Instagram photo with alt-right internet personality Baked Alaska (Tim Gionet).
Gionet, a former BuzzFeed writer who later got Trump's face tattooed on his arm, has shared Instagram posts from Trump properties three times in the last year: at Doral National, and the Trump International hotels in Las Vegas and Washington. The last of those included a photograph of a burger and fries, captioned, "imagine eatin this good."
Three summers ago, Gionet joined Fuentes at the infamous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, where he was billed as a scheduled speaker alongside leading white supremacist Richard Spencer. He has tweeted the "14 Words" (a well-known neo-Nazi phrase) and, in since-deleted tweets, shared videos of friends saying that "Hitler did nothing wrong." He's also posted images of people in gas chambers.
In March 2019, Gionet attempted to distance himself from the alt-right, denouncing it as hateful and violent. Following the mosque attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand, he posted a video in which he apologized for his contributions to the culture, but a few months later was caught spewing Islamophobia at an ICE protest. He subsequently linked up with the Groyper movement and deleted his apologies.
Other fringe-right associates of Gionet have spent time and money at Trump properties.
One of the more well-known names is alt-right personality, Pizzagate truther and noted misogynist Mike Cernovich, whom Gionet engaged in multiple projects. Cernovich has spent considerable time at Trump properties.
Gionet once spent Christmas with blogger Chuck Johnson, the aforementioned "most hated man on the internet," who reportedly had a hand in vetting Trump Cabinet picks during the transition (working with Facebook's Peter Thiel) — and may have acted as an inadvertent conduit between WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Donald Trump Jr.
In January 2017, Johnson posted on Facebook that he was "building algorithms to ID all the illegal immigrants for the deportation squads." HuffPost quoted a source claiming to have seen Johnson discussing that same project with "a whole bunch of really important people" at the Trump hotel in D.C. Former Breitbart editor Katie McHugh has said that Johnson asked to be connected with senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller so he could pitch a "way to identify every illegal alien in the country."
In 2018, Johnson was also spotted at Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas.
Then there's the Posobiec, who while not exactly a Groyper is a fringe conspiracy theorist with anti-Semitic views whom Trump has retweeted a number of times. Posobiec and his wife met Brexit architect Nigel Farage at the Trump Hotel in Washington in February, 2017, and have spent both Christmas and New Year's holidays there.
In July 2019, Posobiec joined QAnon acolyte Tracy Beanz, MAGA alt-right memesmith Carpe Donktum and former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders for a conservative conference called AMPFest, held at Trump National Doral. Documents obtained by the Washington Post showed that the Florida property's revenues were "in steep decline" at the time.
Posobiec spread the debunked conspiracy theory that the Las Vegas mass shooter was affiliated with ISIS, but was challenged for credit by right-wing provocateur, Islamophobe and Trump patron Laura Loomer. The two seemed to smooth things over before AMPFest 2019, where Loomer appeared alongside Posobiec.
Loomer is currently running as a Republican congressional candidate in Florida's 21st district — home to Donald Trump's private Palm Beach club Mar-a-Lago, where she appeared at a 2019 winter gala that featured Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, former White House staffer Sebastian Gorka and guest of honor Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.
Just a few days after that, Trump tweeted his support for Loomer's candidacy. And since the 21st is officially his district of residence, he will have the chance to vote for her should she appear on the ballot in November. (Her chances of winning are not strong: Incumbent Rep. Lois Frankel, a Democrat, was re-elected without opposition in 2018.)
On March 3, Loomer was back at Trump International in D.C.
The whole new list of Trump’s impeachable offenses: Post editorial chief details new crimes by the president
July 26, 2020
By Sarah K. Burris - raw story
President Donald Trump has already been impeached once, and it didn’t even include the ten examples of obstruction of justice during special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. But in just the past month, Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt outlined many, many more.
Writing Sunday, Hiatt walked through the Articles in the Constitution that Trump has violated in the past four weeks. He noted that in June, Trump decided that his ability to win in November depended on reopening the economy, even if it put Americans’ lives at risk. Meanwhile, the White House, Fox News and elected Republicans in the House and Senate waged a “bizarre campaign to discredit the nation’s top infectious-disease doctor, Anthony S. Fauci.” Even if Trump is demanding businesses all reopen, Trump has belittled testing, saying that it is the reason COVID-19 cases are so high.
“My month-old Article 2, abuse of law-enforcement powers, will have to be retopped, because the offenses I included a month ago pale beside the recent, reckless deployment of federal forces into U.S. cities for political purposes,” wrote Hiatt.
He cited Post reporter Ruth Marcus, who explained Trump’s actions attacking Portland, Oregon is “unconstitutional.” Sending federal agents in dressed as military members to throw protesters into unmarked vans so that Trump can get campaign footage is one charge.
“My Article 3, abuse of appointment power, will have to be updated, too, now that the courageous Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman has been not only drummed out of the White House but bullied out of the military altogether,” Hiatt wrote.
“Article 4, abuse of power in foreign affairs, gets a new count,” he continued. “The original cited Trump’s acquiescence to China’s concentration camps in western China in exchange for the campaign help of promising to buy soybeans from Midwest farmers.”
Then there’s the matter of Trump ignoring Russia issuing a bounty for the lives of American soldiers in Afghanistan.
In the past, Trump has been charged with violating the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which prevents a president from earning money off of his position. There are a whole new slate of examples.
“We would need some new articles as well, starting with Article 5: Abuse of power for personal enrichment,” cited Hiatt. “The New York Times reports that the U.S. ambassador to Britain told several people in 2018 that Trump was pushing him to get the British government to steer the lucrative British Open golf tournament to a Trump-owned resort in Scotland. He hasn’t landed the tournament yet. But attempted sleaze is still sleaze.”
He noted that if there’s a need for actual profits, Post reporter David Fahrenthold has been slowly working to uncover those for the three years Trump has been in office. Just in this election cycle alone, Trump has scored more than $4 million from the Republican Party and his own campaign.
“Article 6 would be abuse of the reprieve and pardon power,” Hiatt said. “The Constitution allows the president to free felons, including one who has been convicted of lying to Congress and the FBI to protect the president. That doesn’t make it okay.”
Article 7 could be a charge against Trump for trying to take down the U.S. electoral process.
“The president’s lies about the possibility of fraud in mail-in balloting, combined with his threats to disregard the results of the election, wouldn’t register as transgressions in the U.S. criminal code,” Hiatt closed. “But could there be any higher crime and misdemeanor than deliberately seeking to suppress the vote, seed chaos and lay the groundwork to obstruct a peaceful transfer of power?”
He noted that he isn’t suggesting that Congress act with these crimes. Still, if the Senate goes Democratic in November, it’s entirely possible that Congress could vote to impeach in 2021 to show any future presidents that they can’t get away with breaking the law the way Trump did.
Writing Sunday, Hiatt walked through the Articles in the Constitution that Trump has violated in the past four weeks. He noted that in June, Trump decided that his ability to win in November depended on reopening the economy, even if it put Americans’ lives at risk. Meanwhile, the White House, Fox News and elected Republicans in the House and Senate waged a “bizarre campaign to discredit the nation’s top infectious-disease doctor, Anthony S. Fauci.” Even if Trump is demanding businesses all reopen, Trump has belittled testing, saying that it is the reason COVID-19 cases are so high.
“My month-old Article 2, abuse of law-enforcement powers, will have to be retopped, because the offenses I included a month ago pale beside the recent, reckless deployment of federal forces into U.S. cities for political purposes,” wrote Hiatt.
He cited Post reporter Ruth Marcus, who explained Trump’s actions attacking Portland, Oregon is “unconstitutional.” Sending federal agents in dressed as military members to throw protesters into unmarked vans so that Trump can get campaign footage is one charge.
“My Article 3, abuse of appointment power, will have to be updated, too, now that the courageous Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman has been not only drummed out of the White House but bullied out of the military altogether,” Hiatt wrote.
“Article 4, abuse of power in foreign affairs, gets a new count,” he continued. “The original cited Trump’s acquiescence to China’s concentration camps in western China in exchange for the campaign help of promising to buy soybeans from Midwest farmers.”
Then there’s the matter of Trump ignoring Russia issuing a bounty for the lives of American soldiers in Afghanistan.
In the past, Trump has been charged with violating the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which prevents a president from earning money off of his position. There are a whole new slate of examples.
“We would need some new articles as well, starting with Article 5: Abuse of power for personal enrichment,” cited Hiatt. “The New York Times reports that the U.S. ambassador to Britain told several people in 2018 that Trump was pushing him to get the British government to steer the lucrative British Open golf tournament to a Trump-owned resort in Scotland. He hasn’t landed the tournament yet. But attempted sleaze is still sleaze.”
He noted that if there’s a need for actual profits, Post reporter David Fahrenthold has been slowly working to uncover those for the three years Trump has been in office. Just in this election cycle alone, Trump has scored more than $4 million from the Republican Party and his own campaign.
“Article 6 would be abuse of the reprieve and pardon power,” Hiatt said. “The Constitution allows the president to free felons, including one who has been convicted of lying to Congress and the FBI to protect the president. That doesn’t make it okay.”
Article 7 could be a charge against Trump for trying to take down the U.S. electoral process.
“The president’s lies about the possibility of fraud in mail-in balloting, combined with his threats to disregard the results of the election, wouldn’t register as transgressions in the U.S. criminal code,” Hiatt closed. “But could there be any higher crime and misdemeanor than deliberately seeking to suppress the vote, seed chaos and lay the groundwork to obstruct a peaceful transfer of power?”
He noted that he isn’t suggesting that Congress act with these crimes. Still, if the Senate goes Democratic in November, it’s entirely possible that Congress could vote to impeach in 2021 to show any future presidents that they can’t get away with breaking the law the way Trump did.
Mental Health Experts: Why The Next Four Months Could Be Really Dangerous
Trump’s Narcissism and Antisocial Disorder Have Taken Over; He Is Unraveling in Plain View
By Alan D. Blotcky and John M. Talmadge - dc report
7/15/2020
Donald Trump on Friday commuted the sentence of his crony, Roger Stone. As Mitt Romney tweeted, “Unprecedented historic corruption: an American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president.”
So the president of the United States takes action to help his buddy, a convicted felon, but he cannot take decisive steps to combat the coronavirus pandemic and save lives. This is an act of corruption of the highest order. And this is an example of Trump’s mental disorder and a stark preview of his unraveling over the next four months leading up to the November election.
Now, Trump has found a new foil and is attacking Anthony Fauci, a highly respected public health expert. Dr. Fauci has served in five presidential administrations. He relies on data and science. Trump trying to discredit Dr. Fauci is a desperate attempt to blame him for Trump’s own catastrophic handling of the deadly pandemic.
And it is another reflection of the gravity of his mental disorder.
Unstable and Unraveling
What we are seeing in plain view is a narcissistic and antisocial president who is unstable and unraveling daily. He is faced with falling poll numbers, a ferocious and ignored pandemic, an economic recession that he caused, a damaging tell-all book by his niece and defeats by the Supreme Court.
Trump’s responses: rants, tweets, lies, whining, conspiracy theories, threats, scapegoating, corruption, feeling victimized, stubbornness. The list goes on and on.
Since taking office, Trump’s mental disorder has been in full display. Story after story has been written about his grandiose view of himself; his 19,000 lies to the American people, his bullying, his vindictiveness, his unprecedented breaking of norms, his reckless behavior, his total lack of empathy, his use of projection, his refusal to accept responsibility for his actions and his corruption.
All combined, these symptoms and characteristics and behaviors constitute a mental disorder that is serious and debilitating. And the only way to change a personality disorder is with ongoing treatment, especially psychotherapy.
Cognitive Issues, Too
Added to his personality pathology is the strong likelihood of Trump’s cognitive decline. His vocabulary range has narrowed. His abstract thinking is limited. His reasoning is shallow. He is unfocused. He has difficulty processing complex information. His decision-making is impaired. His judgment is poor. He often appears listless and apathetic. He repeats simple words and phrases over and over. He cannot shift and adapt. His gait can be abnormal. He had trouble drinking a glass of water with one hand. Trump’s cognitive decline could be reflective of dementia; such cognitive problems gradually get worse, not better.
Heading to the November election, Trump’s mental disorder will continue to unravel in the face of mounting pressures and stress. He will become increasingly erratic, unstable and desperate. His display of power and corruption may not be hidden any longer. He will take great measures to suppress voter turnout. He will incite racism and a culture war. He will blame and scapegoat others. He will engage in escalating rants, tweets, name-calling, accusations, overt threats, projections, bullying, lies, gaslighting, triangulation, obstruction and whining. His thinking, reasoning, decision-making and judgment will continue to wane.
The next four months will be unnerving and unsettling for sure. Trump is unraveling before our eyes.
So the president of the United States takes action to help his buddy, a convicted felon, but he cannot take decisive steps to combat the coronavirus pandemic and save lives. This is an act of corruption of the highest order. And this is an example of Trump’s mental disorder and a stark preview of his unraveling over the next four months leading up to the November election.
Now, Trump has found a new foil and is attacking Anthony Fauci, a highly respected public health expert. Dr. Fauci has served in five presidential administrations. He relies on data and science. Trump trying to discredit Dr. Fauci is a desperate attempt to blame him for Trump’s own catastrophic handling of the deadly pandemic.
And it is another reflection of the gravity of his mental disorder.
Unstable and Unraveling
What we are seeing in plain view is a narcissistic and antisocial president who is unstable and unraveling daily. He is faced with falling poll numbers, a ferocious and ignored pandemic, an economic recession that he caused, a damaging tell-all book by his niece and defeats by the Supreme Court.
Trump’s responses: rants, tweets, lies, whining, conspiracy theories, threats, scapegoating, corruption, feeling victimized, stubbornness. The list goes on and on.
Since taking office, Trump’s mental disorder has been in full display. Story after story has been written about his grandiose view of himself; his 19,000 lies to the American people, his bullying, his vindictiveness, his unprecedented breaking of norms, his reckless behavior, his total lack of empathy, his use of projection, his refusal to accept responsibility for his actions and his corruption.
All combined, these symptoms and characteristics and behaviors constitute a mental disorder that is serious and debilitating. And the only way to change a personality disorder is with ongoing treatment, especially psychotherapy.
Cognitive Issues, Too
Added to his personality pathology is the strong likelihood of Trump’s cognitive decline. His vocabulary range has narrowed. His abstract thinking is limited. His reasoning is shallow. He is unfocused. He has difficulty processing complex information. His decision-making is impaired. His judgment is poor. He often appears listless and apathetic. He repeats simple words and phrases over and over. He cannot shift and adapt. His gait can be abnormal. He had trouble drinking a glass of water with one hand. Trump’s cognitive decline could be reflective of dementia; such cognitive problems gradually get worse, not better.
Heading to the November election, Trump’s mental disorder will continue to unravel in the face of mounting pressures and stress. He will become increasingly erratic, unstable and desperate. His display of power and corruption may not be hidden any longer. He will take great measures to suppress voter turnout. He will incite racism and a culture war. He will blame and scapegoat others. He will engage in escalating rants, tweets, name-calling, accusations, overt threats, projections, bullying, lies, gaslighting, triangulation, obstruction and whining. His thinking, reasoning, decision-making and judgment will continue to wane.
The next four months will be unnerving and unsettling for sure. Trump is unraveling before our eyes.
As The Election Draws Near, Trump Goes With A Message Of Division And Anger
He Sides with Aggrieved Whites over the Pleas for Justice for Blacks and Latinos
By Terry H. Schwadron, DCReport Opinion Editor
7/4/2020
That all three of these stories about how we are handling racism were on the same New York Times.com front yesterday should underscore where we find ourselves on the 244th birthday of the nation:
It is something to behold that the demand for rights and respect is being supported by well over 65% of Americans in multiple polls even as Trump continues his campaign of subtle and outwardly offensive insults for the substance of Black Lives Matter – and the rest of us continue to countenance a million daily injustices meant or not.
White Grievance
Republicans who complain that Trump lacks goals for a second term (he gave a rambling answer about “experience” to Fox’s Sean Hannity last week to this question) “are truly naïve or if they’re just pretending so they don’t have to admit what a foul enterprise they’re part of. Because Trump does indeed have a re-election message, a stark and obvious one. It is “white power,” argued Goldberg.
It’s a message that seems at odds with the times, with the word on the streets, with demographic change already happening. Whites are a minority in a growing number of counties. But even in his Fourth of July speech, Trump promised a friendly rally crowd to deepen the divides, not repair the rift.
There are simply too many Trump quotes, tweets and retweets, and actual policies to sidestep what has become clear. Whether retweeting a guy shouting “White Power,” or praising both sides of Charlottesville, attacking immigrants and countries that are not Norway, recasting all protests for racial justice in the name of Antifa hooliganism, Trump indicates repeatedly that he has an affinity for those wishing for a happier time when being White was sufficient for success.
“Now Trump’s poll numbers are cratering, we have double-digit unemployment and our pandemic-ravaged nation has been rendered an international pariah. America is faring exactly as well under Trump’s leadership as his casinos, airline and scam university did. It’s not surprising that he’s returning to what he knows, and what seemed to work for him before. In fact, Trump appears to think his problem is that he hasn’t been racist enough,” argued Goldberg, who clearly likes nothing at all about the Trump presidency.
For his part, we see Trump repeatedly insisting that his emphasis on economic growth, now in ruins, was lifting Black and brown employment rates, though always less than that for Whites. He does not see a persistent policy bias unduly affecting Black experience not only in policing and criminal justice, but in health, education, housing, environmental concerns and development in urban areas.
Well, for once, Trump isn’t claiming that he alone can fix racism. He just dismisses it.
We Resist Change
Throughout history, we see that when economics tighten, there always is a scapegoat, and too often it becomes described by a racial or ethnic group – Blacks, Jews, Muslim Croats, Palestinians, Islamic militants, Roma. The list is practically endless.
Still, what distinguishes America is its history with slavery and an insistence on individualism that requires Black success be based on overcoming twice the obstacles as face Whites – the oversimplified explanation for White Privilege and the reason behind years of need for and resistance to affirmative actions to force an equalization of treatment and experience.
But Trump, and basically most of conservative White America, sees none of this as clearly as they do the success of individuals. So, admission of a Black college student over a White student forces lawsuit after lawsuit until affirmative action thinking is eliminated, government policies allow for redlining of loans and votes, health statistics are allowed to reflect real and measurable racial difference. That list, too, is nearly endless.
Now Trump says he wants to withdraw from the baby steps his administration has taken about criminalization and imprisonment policies that have 1 of every 3 Black men in America in jail at some point in their lives, and that has made even routine stops of Black men by police into a potential death or injurious confrontation. Trump wants to scrap an Obama-era housing regulation requiring cities to address illegal patterns of residential segregation. Trump wants to eliminate the Affordable Care Act affecting low-income people first. He has limited food stamps. And then, there are his actions on the pandemic.
It’s quite a record. Ousting Trump won’t fix all of it. But it would be a start.
- Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History detailed how 15 to 26 million souls have turned out for public protests in 550 cities in recent weeks. Having spent many years in protests over war, violence, Civil Rights, climate and education changes, it is refreshing to hear.
- Another reflected concern among Latinos, who also feel the brunt of disproportionate adverse treatment at the hands of police and institutions, are pushing to have the generalities of abuses against Black and brown communities spelled out. That we are talking about equality means we need to think about the experiences forced by societal laws and practices on a variety of ethnicities, of course.
- It was the third, an opinion piece by columnist Michelle Goldberg, that laid out that, despite criticism that his reelection campaign has no central theme, the Donald Trump reelection message is “White Grievance”—almost in reaction to the push for equality. Given the progression of events, news, and discussions about how American values are up for grabs, this piece struck a devastating, if familiar, smack in the face of voters.
It is something to behold that the demand for rights and respect is being supported by well over 65% of Americans in multiple polls even as Trump continues his campaign of subtle and outwardly offensive insults for the substance of Black Lives Matter – and the rest of us continue to countenance a million daily injustices meant or not.
White Grievance
Republicans who complain that Trump lacks goals for a second term (he gave a rambling answer about “experience” to Fox’s Sean Hannity last week to this question) “are truly naïve or if they’re just pretending so they don’t have to admit what a foul enterprise they’re part of. Because Trump does indeed have a re-election message, a stark and obvious one. It is “white power,” argued Goldberg.
It’s a message that seems at odds with the times, with the word on the streets, with demographic change already happening. Whites are a minority in a growing number of counties. But even in his Fourth of July speech, Trump promised a friendly rally crowd to deepen the divides, not repair the rift.
There are simply too many Trump quotes, tweets and retweets, and actual policies to sidestep what has become clear. Whether retweeting a guy shouting “White Power,” or praising both sides of Charlottesville, attacking immigrants and countries that are not Norway, recasting all protests for racial justice in the name of Antifa hooliganism, Trump indicates repeatedly that he has an affinity for those wishing for a happier time when being White was sufficient for success.
“Now Trump’s poll numbers are cratering, we have double-digit unemployment and our pandemic-ravaged nation has been rendered an international pariah. America is faring exactly as well under Trump’s leadership as his casinos, airline and scam university did. It’s not surprising that he’s returning to what he knows, and what seemed to work for him before. In fact, Trump appears to think his problem is that he hasn’t been racist enough,” argued Goldberg, who clearly likes nothing at all about the Trump presidency.
For his part, we see Trump repeatedly insisting that his emphasis on economic growth, now in ruins, was lifting Black and brown employment rates, though always less than that for Whites. He does not see a persistent policy bias unduly affecting Black experience not only in policing and criminal justice, but in health, education, housing, environmental concerns and development in urban areas.
Well, for once, Trump isn’t claiming that he alone can fix racism. He just dismisses it.
We Resist Change
Throughout history, we see that when economics tighten, there always is a scapegoat, and too often it becomes described by a racial or ethnic group – Blacks, Jews, Muslim Croats, Palestinians, Islamic militants, Roma. The list is practically endless.
Still, what distinguishes America is its history with slavery and an insistence on individualism that requires Black success be based on overcoming twice the obstacles as face Whites – the oversimplified explanation for White Privilege and the reason behind years of need for and resistance to affirmative actions to force an equalization of treatment and experience.
But Trump, and basically most of conservative White America, sees none of this as clearly as they do the success of individuals. So, admission of a Black college student over a White student forces lawsuit after lawsuit until affirmative action thinking is eliminated, government policies allow for redlining of loans and votes, health statistics are allowed to reflect real and measurable racial difference. That list, too, is nearly endless.
Now Trump says he wants to withdraw from the baby steps his administration has taken about criminalization and imprisonment policies that have 1 of every 3 Black men in America in jail at some point in their lives, and that has made even routine stops of Black men by police into a potential death or injurious confrontation. Trump wants to scrap an Obama-era housing regulation requiring cities to address illegal patterns of residential segregation. Trump wants to eliminate the Affordable Care Act affecting low-income people first. He has limited food stamps. And then, there are his actions on the pandemic.
It’s quite a record. Ousting Trump won’t fix all of it. But it would be a start.
How Chinese Spies Penetrated The Trump White House
A Bombshell Investigation Reveals Espionage in Top Republican Circles and Naive, Amateur U.S. Responses
By David Cay Johnston, DCReport Editor-in-Chief
6/25/2020
Communist Chinese government operatives got into the Trump White House and also sat at a confidential Republican election strategy meeting, Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal reports.
Some of the conduct the Journal described could form the basis for federal felony indictments.
Fronts for the People’s Liberation Army and the Chinese Communist Party donated at least $450,000 to Trump’s 2017 inaugural and his campaign, money the newspaper said was crucial to obtaining direct access to Trump and GOP strategy meetings. A furtive organization was created in California to boost Trump’s chances of getting a second term.
The Journal focused on four men, three of whom operate through fronts for the Chinese military or the Communist Party. One of the three, Tang Ben, is a naturalized American citizen. He and his wife gave $300,000 to Trump Victory, among the largest donations made to that organization. After assuming office, Trump and wife Melania posed for photos with Tang.
The fourth man, a Chinese national whose green card allows him to work here, created Chinese Americans for Trump. The group boosted Trump’s political fortunes and ignored his many racist anti-Asian comments, which have continued to this week.
The Journal said David Tian Wang acted at the behest of the Chinese consulate in Los Angeles in creating the group. This appears to be an example of astroturfing, the practice of masking the identities of sponsors to make them seem to be grassroots participants and to hide financial connections.
Wang gave $150,000 to the group, which passed the money on to the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee.
The Journal’s report included the following disturbing incident shortly after Trump assumed office and already was campaigning for a second term:
“In May 2017, Mr. Wang attended a Republican National Committee invitation-only leadership meeting in San Diego as a guest of [GOP official Shawn] Steel, the California committeeman, people familiar with the matter said. The gathering was an early chance for Republican leaders to plan the path forward for the party after Mr. Trump’s inauguration.
“Accompanying Mr. Wang to the meeting as Mr. Steel’s guests were three men linked to China’s government. The first was Zhao Gang, whom Chinese official websites identify as a researcher for China’s Ministry of Science and Technology focused on national security, tech diplomacy and other issues. Mr. Zhao’s work has connected him with the senior echelons of China’s Communist Party, including a close associate of President Xi Jinping, say people who have met Mr. Zhao.”
Rank Incompetence
As I read the Journal article—and taking into context the notorious interview Trump gave ABC News last year—Trump is not acting in league with Beijing. Rather, the article shows, Trump and his staff of unqualified family and equally unqualified sycophants are naive and gullible, their rank incompetence unwittingly putting our national security in jeopardy.
A closed-door meeting in San Diego in September 2016, just weeks before the election, was visited by foreigners. The Journal was unable to identify one of the four men who attended, describing him as “an older man wearing a Mao suit [who] led the Chinese side, who participants were told was a personal adviser to President Xi.”
The conduct of the four Chinese men so alarmed one of the Americans present that he alerted American national security officials. That action by Welton Chang, a former U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency officer, stands in sharp contrast to the Trump campaign leadership secretly meeting with Kremlin agents. Donald Trump Jr. received an email that the Putin regime was eager to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016. None of the Americans alerted American intelligence officials. Instead, they repeatedly lied, denying any such meeting occurred until The New York Times published incriminating emails.
Moscow TV Calls Trump a ‘Russian Agent’
The Journal revelations come six months after Russian state television, which is under the control of Vladimir Putin, called Trump a “Russian agent” and referred to Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov as Trump’s “puppet master.”
Rossiya 1, a Kremlin channel, titled its Dec. 11, 2019 program “Puppet Master and ‘Agent’—How to Understand Lavrov’s Meeting With Trump.”
Given the absolute power with which Putin rules as a modern czar, murdering political opponents and jailing rivals, that no rebuke was issued about the television program is the most telling indication of what Putin thinks about Trump.
The Journal report was posted online just hours after John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, revealed that Trump pleaded with Chinese President Xi Jinping for help to win a second term. Trump wanted Xi, general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, to buy billions of dollars of American soybeans and wheat so that Midwest farmers, a key Trump constituency, would maintain support for him, Bolton wrote in “The Room Where it Happened.”
The Trump Justice Department tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade a federal judge to block publication. The book went on sale June 23.
Trump OK with Foreign Interference
Soliciting or accepting help from foreign interests is a felony. But in 2016, the leadership of the Trump campaign met with Kremlin operatives after being told in writing that Moscow wanted to help Trump win election. Then, for a full year, Trump associates lied and denied any such meeting happened.
In June 2019, George Stephanopoulos of ABC News asked Trump about accepting help from Moscow or Beijing to win re-election. Embedded in his question was the fact that accepting such help is a violation of American law. Trump disputed that point.
“It’s not an interference, they have information—I think I’d take it,” Trump said, adding that he saw nothing wrong with accepting campaign assistance from foreign powers, even adversaries of the United States. That is one of many examples of Trump’s criminality, disloyalty and utter lack of patriotism.
At the same time that Trump & Co. have either been duped by or willingly embraced fronts for the Chinese military and the ruling Communist Party, the administration has posed as tough on Chinese infiltration of American academic institutions.
Various academics have been arrested on charges whose significance is unclear, but some of which appear from my reading of court records to be trumped up.
Professor Arrested
In January the Justice Department arrested Charles Lieber, a globally renown nontechnology expert who is chair of Harvard University’s Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department. Two Chinese nationals also were charged in connection with aiding the People’s Republic of China.
As described by the Justice Department, the case against Lieber seems to be technical, not substantive. It seems aimed primarily at securing Lieber’s help in convicting the Chinese nationals, one a People’s Liberation Army lieutenant, on theft and spying-related charges. Lieber’s lawyer, Marc Mukasey, says Lieber is a victim, not a perpetrator.
The Trump Justice Department and local authorities persuaded judges to impose harsh penalties against two Chinese women, one who appears to be just a tourist whose sightseeing went awry.
Mystery still shrouds the separate cases of two Chinese nationals arrested at Mar-a-Lago.
Yujing Zhang, a 33-year-old Chinese businesswoman who carried a Faraday bag that blocks electronic signals lied her way into the resort last year. It is unclear whether she was a bumbling tourist who wanted to see the American president or an inept spy. Zhang got eight months in federal prison for lying to a Secret Service agent and an order of deportation.
Harsh Sentence
The other woman, Lu Jing, 56, who was acquitted by a state jury on trespassing charges, says she innocently was taking photographs. She was sentenced to six months. Her crime? Nonviolently resisting arrest. Jing crossed her arms, balled her hands and shouted, “No, no, no,” according to Palm Beach police. Think about that –– six months behind bars for that.
Those harsh sentences, the arrest of Lieber and recent arrests of others all are designed to show the Trump regime is looking for ways to make voters believe it is pushing a hard line on Chinese infiltration and spying even as Trump pleads for favors from President Xi, as John Bolton revealed.
These Trumpian tactics create confusion about where Trump stands. They also deflect attention about Trump & Co.’s perfidy in dealing with fronts for the communist dictator in Beijing.
Some of the conduct the Journal described could form the basis for federal felony indictments.
Fronts for the People’s Liberation Army and the Chinese Communist Party donated at least $450,000 to Trump’s 2017 inaugural and his campaign, money the newspaper said was crucial to obtaining direct access to Trump and GOP strategy meetings. A furtive organization was created in California to boost Trump’s chances of getting a second term.
The Journal focused on four men, three of whom operate through fronts for the Chinese military or the Communist Party. One of the three, Tang Ben, is a naturalized American citizen. He and his wife gave $300,000 to Trump Victory, among the largest donations made to that organization. After assuming office, Trump and wife Melania posed for photos with Tang.
The fourth man, a Chinese national whose green card allows him to work here, created Chinese Americans for Trump. The group boosted Trump’s political fortunes and ignored his many racist anti-Asian comments, which have continued to this week.
The Journal said David Tian Wang acted at the behest of the Chinese consulate in Los Angeles in creating the group. This appears to be an example of astroturfing, the practice of masking the identities of sponsors to make them seem to be grassroots participants and to hide financial connections.
Wang gave $150,000 to the group, which passed the money on to the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee.
The Journal’s report included the following disturbing incident shortly after Trump assumed office and already was campaigning for a second term:
“In May 2017, Mr. Wang attended a Republican National Committee invitation-only leadership meeting in San Diego as a guest of [GOP official Shawn] Steel, the California committeeman, people familiar with the matter said. The gathering was an early chance for Republican leaders to plan the path forward for the party after Mr. Trump’s inauguration.
“Accompanying Mr. Wang to the meeting as Mr. Steel’s guests were three men linked to China’s government. The first was Zhao Gang, whom Chinese official websites identify as a researcher for China’s Ministry of Science and Technology focused on national security, tech diplomacy and other issues. Mr. Zhao’s work has connected him with the senior echelons of China’s Communist Party, including a close associate of President Xi Jinping, say people who have met Mr. Zhao.”
Rank Incompetence
As I read the Journal article—and taking into context the notorious interview Trump gave ABC News last year—Trump is not acting in league with Beijing. Rather, the article shows, Trump and his staff of unqualified family and equally unqualified sycophants are naive and gullible, their rank incompetence unwittingly putting our national security in jeopardy.
A closed-door meeting in San Diego in September 2016, just weeks before the election, was visited by foreigners. The Journal was unable to identify one of the four men who attended, describing him as “an older man wearing a Mao suit [who] led the Chinese side, who participants were told was a personal adviser to President Xi.”
The conduct of the four Chinese men so alarmed one of the Americans present that he alerted American national security officials. That action by Welton Chang, a former U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency officer, stands in sharp contrast to the Trump campaign leadership secretly meeting with Kremlin agents. Donald Trump Jr. received an email that the Putin regime was eager to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016. None of the Americans alerted American intelligence officials. Instead, they repeatedly lied, denying any such meeting occurred until The New York Times published incriminating emails.
Moscow TV Calls Trump a ‘Russian Agent’
The Journal revelations come six months after Russian state television, which is under the control of Vladimir Putin, called Trump a “Russian agent” and referred to Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov as Trump’s “puppet master.”
Rossiya 1, a Kremlin channel, titled its Dec. 11, 2019 program “Puppet Master and ‘Agent’—How to Understand Lavrov’s Meeting With Trump.”
Given the absolute power with which Putin rules as a modern czar, murdering political opponents and jailing rivals, that no rebuke was issued about the television program is the most telling indication of what Putin thinks about Trump.
The Journal report was posted online just hours after John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, revealed that Trump pleaded with Chinese President Xi Jinping for help to win a second term. Trump wanted Xi, general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, to buy billions of dollars of American soybeans and wheat so that Midwest farmers, a key Trump constituency, would maintain support for him, Bolton wrote in “The Room Where it Happened.”
The Trump Justice Department tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade a federal judge to block publication. The book went on sale June 23.
Trump OK with Foreign Interference
Soliciting or accepting help from foreign interests is a felony. But in 2016, the leadership of the Trump campaign met with Kremlin operatives after being told in writing that Moscow wanted to help Trump win election. Then, for a full year, Trump associates lied and denied any such meeting happened.
In June 2019, George Stephanopoulos of ABC News asked Trump about accepting help from Moscow or Beijing to win re-election. Embedded in his question was the fact that accepting such help is a violation of American law. Trump disputed that point.
“It’s not an interference, they have information—I think I’d take it,” Trump said, adding that he saw nothing wrong with accepting campaign assistance from foreign powers, even adversaries of the United States. That is one of many examples of Trump’s criminality, disloyalty and utter lack of patriotism.
At the same time that Trump & Co. have either been duped by or willingly embraced fronts for the Chinese military and the ruling Communist Party, the administration has posed as tough on Chinese infiltration of American academic institutions.
Various academics have been arrested on charges whose significance is unclear, but some of which appear from my reading of court records to be trumped up.
Professor Arrested
In January the Justice Department arrested Charles Lieber, a globally renown nontechnology expert who is chair of Harvard University’s Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department. Two Chinese nationals also were charged in connection with aiding the People’s Republic of China.
As described by the Justice Department, the case against Lieber seems to be technical, not substantive. It seems aimed primarily at securing Lieber’s help in convicting the Chinese nationals, one a People’s Liberation Army lieutenant, on theft and spying-related charges. Lieber’s lawyer, Marc Mukasey, says Lieber is a victim, not a perpetrator.
The Trump Justice Department and local authorities persuaded judges to impose harsh penalties against two Chinese women, one who appears to be just a tourist whose sightseeing went awry.
Mystery still shrouds the separate cases of two Chinese nationals arrested at Mar-a-Lago.
Yujing Zhang, a 33-year-old Chinese businesswoman who carried a Faraday bag that blocks electronic signals lied her way into the resort last year. It is unclear whether she was a bumbling tourist who wanted to see the American president or an inept spy. Zhang got eight months in federal prison for lying to a Secret Service agent and an order of deportation.
Harsh Sentence
The other woman, Lu Jing, 56, who was acquitted by a state jury on trespassing charges, says she innocently was taking photographs. She was sentenced to six months. Her crime? Nonviolently resisting arrest. Jing crossed her arms, balled her hands and shouted, “No, no, no,” according to Palm Beach police. Think about that –– six months behind bars for that.
Those harsh sentences, the arrest of Lieber and recent arrests of others all are designed to show the Trump regime is looking for ways to make voters believe it is pushing a hard line on Chinese infiltration and spying even as Trump pleads for favors from President Xi, as John Bolton revealed.
These Trumpian tactics create confusion about where Trump stands. They also deflect attention about Trump & Co.’s perfidy in dealing with fronts for the communist dictator in Beijing.
Trump defended Saudi leader after Khashoggi's murder to distract from Ivanka’s email scandal: Bolton
Trump sought to "divert" attention from Ivanka's personal emails by undercutting his own CIA, a new book claims
IGOR DERYSH - salon
JUNE 18, 2020 2:48PM (UTC)
President Donald Trump wrote a statement defending Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman after the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in order to distract from his daughter's personal email scandal, according to former national security adviser John Bolton.
Trump, who repeatedly excoriated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server, sought to use the 2018 killing to divert attention from reports that Ivanka Trump had sent hundreds of emails to White House aides and Cabinet officials using a personal email account in violation of federal records rules, Bolton's new book claims.
"This will divert from Ivanka," Trump said at the time, according to an excerpt from the book published by The Washington Post. "If I read the statement in person, that will take over the Ivanka thing."
Trump then issued a statement riddled with exclamation points, which disputed the CIA's findings that bin Salman had ordered the killing.
"It could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event — maybe he did and maybe he didn't!" Trump wrote. "That being said, we may never know all of the facts surrounding the murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi. In any case, our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia."
After U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that bin Salman had ordered the killing, a damning U.N. forensic report called for the crown prince to be investigated last year after finding "credible evidence" that he and other senior officials were responsible for the murder.
White House ethics officials discovered that Ivanka Trump had used a private email for official business throughout "much of 2017," according to The Washington Post. Some aides were "startled by the volume" and "taken aback" after she claimed that she was not familiar with some details of the federal records rules.
Former White House ethics chief Walter Shaub, who resigned about six months into Trump's first term, highlighted several emails released in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the watchdog group American Oversight in 2017 suggesting Ivanka's scandal was even worse than it first appeared.
"Well now, this is disturbing. Ivanka Trump didn't become a government employee until March 29, 2017. This email is dated four weeks earlier than that. Why is she appearing to conduct government business in this email she sent while still a private citizen?" he tweeted, pointing to an email Ivanka sent to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.
"A MONTH before Ivanka Trump became a government official, she refers to a WHITE HOUSE OFFICIAL as her own 'chief of staff.' Wow! This is really crazy stuff," he said about another email.[...]
Trump, who repeatedly excoriated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server, sought to use the 2018 killing to divert attention from reports that Ivanka Trump had sent hundreds of emails to White House aides and Cabinet officials using a personal email account in violation of federal records rules, Bolton's new book claims.
"This will divert from Ivanka," Trump said at the time, according to an excerpt from the book published by The Washington Post. "If I read the statement in person, that will take over the Ivanka thing."
Trump then issued a statement riddled with exclamation points, which disputed the CIA's findings that bin Salman had ordered the killing.
"It could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event — maybe he did and maybe he didn't!" Trump wrote. "That being said, we may never know all of the facts surrounding the murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi. In any case, our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia."
After U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that bin Salman had ordered the killing, a damning U.N. forensic report called for the crown prince to be investigated last year after finding "credible evidence" that he and other senior officials were responsible for the murder.
White House ethics officials discovered that Ivanka Trump had used a private email for official business throughout "much of 2017," according to The Washington Post. Some aides were "startled by the volume" and "taken aback" after she claimed that she was not familiar with some details of the federal records rules.
Former White House ethics chief Walter Shaub, who resigned about six months into Trump's first term, highlighted several emails released in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the watchdog group American Oversight in 2017 suggesting Ivanka's scandal was even worse than it first appeared.
"Well now, this is disturbing. Ivanka Trump didn't become a government employee until March 29, 2017. This email is dated four weeks earlier than that. Why is she appearing to conduct government business in this email she sent while still a private citizen?" he tweeted, pointing to an email Ivanka sent to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.
"A MONTH before Ivanka Trump became a government official, she refers to a WHITE HOUSE OFFICIAL as her own 'chief of staff.' Wow! This is really crazy stuff," he said about another email.[...]
Trump’s ‘appalling’ treatment of his late father as he struggled with Alzheimer’s detailed in new tell-all book
June 17, 2020
By Brad Reed - raw story
An upcoming tell-all book written by President Donald Trump’s niece will detail the ways that the president treated his late father as he struggled with Alzheimer’s disease.
Huffington Post notes that the Simon & Schuster blurb for psychologist Mary Trump’s upcoming book claims that the president’s niece will describe “the appalling way Donald, Fred Trump’s favorite son, dismissed and derided him when he began to succumb to Alzheimer’s.”
Additionally, the publisher says the book will go in depth about “the strange and harmful relationship between Fred Trump and his two oldest sons, Fred Jr. and Donald,” which Mary Trump claims “created the damaged man who currently occupies the Oval Office.”
In addition to its revelations about Trump’s alleged mistreatment of his late father, the book will also reportedly detail how Mary Trump leaked damaging information to the New York Times detailing how the family committed fraud to avoid paying taxes.
President Trump this week claimed that his niece signed a nondisclosure agreement nearly 20 years ago as part of a settlement over Fred Trump’s estate, and he reportedly said he’d consider suing her to block publication of her book.
Huffington Post notes that the Simon & Schuster blurb for psychologist Mary Trump’s upcoming book claims that the president’s niece will describe “the appalling way Donald, Fred Trump’s favorite son, dismissed and derided him when he began to succumb to Alzheimer’s.”
Additionally, the publisher says the book will go in depth about “the strange and harmful relationship between Fred Trump and his two oldest sons, Fred Jr. and Donald,” which Mary Trump claims “created the damaged man who currently occupies the Oval Office.”
In addition to its revelations about Trump’s alleged mistreatment of his late father, the book will also reportedly detail how Mary Trump leaked damaging information to the New York Times detailing how the family committed fraud to avoid paying taxes.
President Trump this week claimed that his niece signed a nondisclosure agreement nearly 20 years ago as part of a settlement over Fred Trump’s estate, and he reportedly said he’d consider suing her to block publication of her book.
Stunning Poll: Majority of Americans Think Trump is Racist and Below Average or FAILURE as President
By Tommy Christopher - Medaite
Jun 13th, 2020, 12:43 pm
A stunning new poll finds that significant majorities believe President Donald Trump as racist, and rate him as “below average” or a “failure” as President.
Trump has gotten a lot of bad polling news recently, as his approval ratings have cratered and his general election opponent Joe Biden has widened his lead over the incumbent. A new Yahoo! News/YouGov poll is arguably worse news for Trump, as the results cut at his character and place in American history.
When directly asked “Do you think that President Trump is a racist?”, 52 percent said yes, while only 34 percent said no — an 18 point spread. Even a hefty plurality of white voters agreed Trump is a racist, 46-39, while only 14 percent of Republicans said yes to the question. Crucially, among independent voters, the spread was even wider than the overall number, with 53 percent saying Trump is a racist and only 31 percent saying he is not.
Respondents were also asked “How would you rate the following Presidents?”, and given choices ranging from “Great” to “failure” in assessing Trump and former Presidents Barack Obama, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, John F. Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower, and Franklin Roosevelt.
It did not go well for Trump. A whopping 54 percent rated Trump either a “failure” or “below average,” with the results overwhelmingly tilted to “failure” at 43 percent. That’s more than double the number who said the same of President Obama, whose polarizing presidency scored 21 percent in that metric. That’s versus 45 percent who said Obama was “great” or “near great.”
In fact, Trump was seen as a failure by more than triple the number of people who said the same of President Bush (13%) and President Carter (12%). As for President Lincoln, to whom Trump has frequently compared himself, only 2 percent of Americans rated him a failure.
Overall, Biden led Trump by nine points in the poll, 49 percent to 40 percent.
Significant pluralities in the poll also said that former Vice President Joe Biden would do a better job handling a raft of issues: Protests, Coronavirus pandemic, Race relations, Immigration, and Foreign policy.
Trump did retain a 3-point advantage over Biden on the economy, 37 percent to 34 percent, but with 29 percent saying they didn’t know or that Biden and Trump would handle it “about the same.”
On the bright side of things, at least Trump doesn’t have to worry about running against Abe Lincoln.
Trump has gotten a lot of bad polling news recently, as his approval ratings have cratered and his general election opponent Joe Biden has widened his lead over the incumbent. A new Yahoo! News/YouGov poll is arguably worse news for Trump, as the results cut at his character and place in American history.
When directly asked “Do you think that President Trump is a racist?”, 52 percent said yes, while only 34 percent said no — an 18 point spread. Even a hefty plurality of white voters agreed Trump is a racist, 46-39, while only 14 percent of Republicans said yes to the question. Crucially, among independent voters, the spread was even wider than the overall number, with 53 percent saying Trump is a racist and only 31 percent saying he is not.
Respondents were also asked “How would you rate the following Presidents?”, and given choices ranging from “Great” to “failure” in assessing Trump and former Presidents Barack Obama, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, John F. Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower, and Franklin Roosevelt.
It did not go well for Trump. A whopping 54 percent rated Trump either a “failure” or “below average,” with the results overwhelmingly tilted to “failure” at 43 percent. That’s more than double the number who said the same of President Obama, whose polarizing presidency scored 21 percent in that metric. That’s versus 45 percent who said Obama was “great” or “near great.”
In fact, Trump was seen as a failure by more than triple the number of people who said the same of President Bush (13%) and President Carter (12%). As for President Lincoln, to whom Trump has frequently compared himself, only 2 percent of Americans rated him a failure.
Overall, Biden led Trump by nine points in the poll, 49 percent to 40 percent.
Significant pluralities in the poll also said that former Vice President Joe Biden would do a better job handling a raft of issues: Protests, Coronavirus pandemic, Race relations, Immigration, and Foreign policy.
Trump did retain a 3-point advantage over Biden on the economy, 37 percent to 34 percent, but with 29 percent saying they didn’t know or that Biden and Trump would handle it “about the same.”
On the bright side of things, at least Trump doesn’t have to worry about running against Abe Lincoln.
Everything He Says Is Bullshit
Trump’s Administration Has Ripped Away Any Connection With Truth
By Erik Sherman - dc report
6/10/2020
Many call Donald Trump a liar because he’s made it so obvious and easy to do so. But the reality is even worse than lying. What Trump & Co. have done is attack the very existence of fact and truth.
The victims of those repeated actions: decency, business, governance, justice, public discourse, our Constitution and democracy itself.
Documenting the torrent of Trumpian falsity has become a cottage industry in journalism. One recent tally totaled 18,000 false or misleading claims in 1,170 days. That’s more than 15 a day.
Putting the ‘BS’ in Repubs
To understand the nature of what Trump has been doing, it helps to analyze the term “bullshit.”
Harry Frankfurt, an emeritus professor of philosophy at Princeton, wrote a short volume titled “On Bullshit” 15 years ago. It’s an engaging and wonderful read. He makes two of the critical points that bear on Trump and the people who work for him.
One is that both honest people and liars orient to truth—one to communicate it, the other deny it.
When slinging bullshit, however, practitioners have no such relationship. Instead, they say whatever might suit their purpose—facts and truth be damned.
The bullshitter will say anything. When one line fails, they switch to another because they have no allegiance to anything other than what they want at the moment.
Get caught making things up? Then attack critics, blame the press or set off some outrage to distract from facts and truth.
Or else, keep repeating what you want others to believe, using the same approach as the endlessly repetitive television commercials for everything from auto insurance to pizza. It doesn’t matter so long as it sells.
I use “truth” here with a small “t,” meaning reality as best we can determine the facts. Trump tries to sell us a Big-T Truth, meaning it is supposedly right because he said it. That’s bullshit.
Destroying the Public Mind
The second point is that years of spinning disinformation have degraded respect for truth, for empirical reality. Neither political party has completely clean hands, but the GOP has been the most egregious abuser.
Human thought depends on the structure of language and a general agreement about what words mean. Distort that, and over time people can get confused, losing respect for fact in public discourse. The founders of our country and the framers of our Constitution believed in the ideals of research, reasoned debate and rational thought—sadly forgotten by too many of us.
The GOP chose over decades to weaponize institutional bullshit, starting in earnest with Newt Gingrich. That mendacious Georgia politician and one-time speaker of the House of Representatives cut the path that Trump now marches down. The awful result is the current vicious effort to discredit fact, principle, thought and constitutionalism.
Trump Hit the Ground Running
Trump, dragging his appointees along, has spewed BS throughout his long career. You could point to the early days, after being set up with a huge financial stake by his father, when Trump pretended to be far wealthier and more successful than was true. He also claimed to be a self-made man, helped only by a single million-dollar loan from Daddy, another outrageous perversion of reality.
His willingness to say and do anything had a special highlight when he used a false PR persona for self-promotion. Trump would call reporters and pretend to be his own press agent before his distinctive voice became so well known that People Magazine outed him in 1990.
You could call it sad, but the results grew worse. There was the flagrant use of bankruptcies to offload the cost of his own reckless choices and bad management onto investors large and small while he pocketed tens of millions of dollars.
Then there were his full-page newspaper ads demanding the execution of five young men in the 1989 Central Park jogger case. Eventually, after years in jail, they were shown to be innocent. But Trump insisted he got it right, showing he has no orientation to truth, only to BS.
Following that came Trump’s baseless claim that Barack Obama wasn’t born here. We’re still waiting for the report from investigators he claimed found proof in Hawaii.
With Trump, there’s never an apology or even consideration that he might have erred, advice he got from the notorious lawyer Roy Cohn. If it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t matter. Trump ignores his transgressions and then moves on to another line of BS.
Playing President on TV
Anyone who thought this pattern would ever change—that anything but more of the C-list heavily edited reality TV star would come forth on election as president—should just stop.
Of course, he continued to make up one thing and another on the campaign trail. And, as night follows day, that would be his approach in office.
The establishment of institutional BS saw its official presidential genesis on Inauguration Day, when Trump denied reality to claim a demonstrably modest crowd of onlookers was actually “a massive amount of people.”
Even then, Trump and his minions immediately began to preside over a wearying pile of mendacity that would only grow, heaped out day upon day.
Trump’s visceral hatred for Barack Obama—likely an issue of racism, jealousy, and Trump’s personal sense of inferiority—led him to claim, though then-White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, that the turnout for his inauguration was larger than any other.
Photos and rapid fact-checking made short work from a factual view. Spicer clearly was slinging BS on the command of his master. But the administration kept insisting that it should have the right to redefine reality.
White House Website
That opening salvo was followed by persistent underhanded and subtle attacks on fact. The White House on Jan. 20, 2017—day one—scrubbed critical national issues from its website.
Topics that would affect income inequality for example—an essential problem facing the country—suddenly vanished from view.
Searches at whitehouse.gov for such terms as “LGBT,” “Lesbian,” “Gay,” “Bisexual” and “Transgender” turned up little or nothing.
“Alternative facts,” Kellyanne Conway called this process of insisting that blue was red. More accurate would have been the establishment of an Orwellian Ministry of Truth, American-style.
Twisting language wasn’t Trump’s invention. Previous administrations at times created vast coverups and massive compendiums of lies. But their actions still oriented to truth and how to avoid confronting it. The press and the American people had a fighting chance.
The Pentagon Papers in 1971 laid bare the vicious and ugly farce of the Vietnam War. Watergate showed how a president’s administration could exercise power to crush political opponents.
The Reagan administration ran the illegal Iran Contra affair, subverting the authority and directions of Congress and, not incidentally, enriching narco-traffickers, a bizarre action for a president who proclaimed himself Mr. Law and Order.
In all these cases, reality remained. Truth eventually prevailed, however imperfectly. People went to jail. Nixon rightly resigned in disgrace.
Shame Matters
On a lighter note, Reagan’s administration wanted to classify ketchup and relish as vegetables on school lunch menus, as well as call doughnuts bread, in the early 1980s.
Back then, those running our government still retained a sense of shame. Reagan era budget director David Stockman, for example, called the school lunch move a “bureaucratic goof” and reversed the decision.
But to have shame, first there must be facts. Never until Trump had political history so completely and brutally cut its tethers to reality using a dull knife.
Trump’s mastery of BS includes his lack of remorse, no matter how serious the action.
When information and data are no longer sacrosanct—when there may not be an accurate record kept anywhere—dangers multiply exponentially. Under Trump, the destruction of fact is relentless.
Climate Change Swept Away
From the get-go, the Trump administration removed references to climate change, greenhouse gases and clean energy from the records of the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Energy and State Department.
This, at a time when the impact of climate change—droughts, fires, floods, glacial melting—hit like body blows from a heavyweight contender called Mother Earth.
The Environmental Data & Governance Initiative found that between 2016 and 2018, U.S. government website use of such terms as “climate change,” “clean energy” and “adaptation” dropped by 26%. Replacing them were fuzzy terms like “energy independence,” “resilience” and “sustainability.”
“Over half of all pages where ‘climate change’ was completely removed (73 /136) were U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) pages,” the report noted.
Heather Zichal, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center and former energy and climate change adviser to Obama, told Time magazine the heavily changed webpages of the EPA were “unprecedented attempt to delete or bury credible scientific information they find politically inconvenient.”
Trump’s orientation to BS was never limited to climate change. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last year launched a plan to examine and redefine what can be considered a human right.
In its State Department Country Reports on Human Rights, the administration cut reporting on women’s rights and issues outside the country by almost a third, according to an Oxfam America analysis. LGBTI rights and issues reporting plummeted 21%.
The critical area of immigration asylum decisions is another hotbed of disregard and ineptitude in which Immigration Court data goes missing, month after month, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse of Syracuse University.
An April 2020 release of data was missing 68,282 relief applications that had been present at the end of March 2020. That represents tens of thousands of immigrants applying for asylum who have now been legally and informationally disappeared.
“We request that you take immediate action to prevent any possible further loss of data,” the organization wrote James McHenry, the director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review. “TRAC is greatly concerned that failure to do so could irreparably harm the integrity of the Immigration Court’s data.”
This is only part of redefining reality into meaninglessness. When there’s less information available from our government, informed public debate becomes narrower and shallower until fact and truth evaporate.
When the press points out any of this, Trump shouts “fake news.”
Coronavirus Careening
The latest and perhaps most important example of out-of-control spinning is the administration’s response to the coronavirus. The story has been one of continuous downplaying of the serious nature of the pandemic and robust rewriting of what the government has done.
This includes:
The Centers for Disease Control provided a particularly outrageous example by combining and confusing results from very different types of coronavirus tests. The impact is an ongoing inaccurate picture of the pandemic—and a blunder that should have been unthinkable to anyone versed in science and public health.
As the November election approaches—and the importance of a gutted economy becomes clearer—the White House won’t release traditional formal economic projections this summer. Officials blame volatility, which certainly makes accurate projections much more difficult to achieve.
But this seems to be a first since at least the 1970s. That includes such periods as the banking crisis in the 1980s, the dot com implosion, and the Great Recession. All times with significant volatility.
“It gets them off the hook for having to say what the economic outlook looks like,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former Congressional Budget Office director, told The Washington Post.
And then, the Office of Financial Research—an independent research bureau within the Treasury that is supposed to promote financial stability “by delivering high-quality financial data, standards, and analysis”--hasn’t published anything in months, according to Center for American Progress senior policy analyst Gregg Gelzinis.
These projections and analyses are critical to state and local governments, federal agencies and businesses across the country.
And that’s just what people have noticed. Given the rate at which the administration is firing inspectors general, there is likely far more that will go unseen.
But then, for this administration, reality isn’t all it’s cracked up to be anyway.
The victims of those repeated actions: decency, business, governance, justice, public discourse, our Constitution and democracy itself.
Documenting the torrent of Trumpian falsity has become a cottage industry in journalism. One recent tally totaled 18,000 false or misleading claims in 1,170 days. That’s more than 15 a day.
Putting the ‘BS’ in Repubs
To understand the nature of what Trump has been doing, it helps to analyze the term “bullshit.”
Harry Frankfurt, an emeritus professor of philosophy at Princeton, wrote a short volume titled “On Bullshit” 15 years ago. It’s an engaging and wonderful read. He makes two of the critical points that bear on Trump and the people who work for him.
One is that both honest people and liars orient to truth—one to communicate it, the other deny it.
When slinging bullshit, however, practitioners have no such relationship. Instead, they say whatever might suit their purpose—facts and truth be damned.
The bullshitter will say anything. When one line fails, they switch to another because they have no allegiance to anything other than what they want at the moment.
Get caught making things up? Then attack critics, blame the press or set off some outrage to distract from facts and truth.
Or else, keep repeating what you want others to believe, using the same approach as the endlessly repetitive television commercials for everything from auto insurance to pizza. It doesn’t matter so long as it sells.
I use “truth” here with a small “t,” meaning reality as best we can determine the facts. Trump tries to sell us a Big-T Truth, meaning it is supposedly right because he said it. That’s bullshit.
Destroying the Public Mind
The second point is that years of spinning disinformation have degraded respect for truth, for empirical reality. Neither political party has completely clean hands, but the GOP has been the most egregious abuser.
Human thought depends on the structure of language and a general agreement about what words mean. Distort that, and over time people can get confused, losing respect for fact in public discourse. The founders of our country and the framers of our Constitution believed in the ideals of research, reasoned debate and rational thought—sadly forgotten by too many of us.
The GOP chose over decades to weaponize institutional bullshit, starting in earnest with Newt Gingrich. That mendacious Georgia politician and one-time speaker of the House of Representatives cut the path that Trump now marches down. The awful result is the current vicious effort to discredit fact, principle, thought and constitutionalism.
Trump Hit the Ground Running
Trump, dragging his appointees along, has spewed BS throughout his long career. You could point to the early days, after being set up with a huge financial stake by his father, when Trump pretended to be far wealthier and more successful than was true. He also claimed to be a self-made man, helped only by a single million-dollar loan from Daddy, another outrageous perversion of reality.
His willingness to say and do anything had a special highlight when he used a false PR persona for self-promotion. Trump would call reporters and pretend to be his own press agent before his distinctive voice became so well known that People Magazine outed him in 1990.
You could call it sad, but the results grew worse. There was the flagrant use of bankruptcies to offload the cost of his own reckless choices and bad management onto investors large and small while he pocketed tens of millions of dollars.
Then there were his full-page newspaper ads demanding the execution of five young men in the 1989 Central Park jogger case. Eventually, after years in jail, they were shown to be innocent. But Trump insisted he got it right, showing he has no orientation to truth, only to BS.
Following that came Trump’s baseless claim that Barack Obama wasn’t born here. We’re still waiting for the report from investigators he claimed found proof in Hawaii.
With Trump, there’s never an apology or even consideration that he might have erred, advice he got from the notorious lawyer Roy Cohn. If it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t matter. Trump ignores his transgressions and then moves on to another line of BS.
Playing President on TV
Anyone who thought this pattern would ever change—that anything but more of the C-list heavily edited reality TV star would come forth on election as president—should just stop.
Of course, he continued to make up one thing and another on the campaign trail. And, as night follows day, that would be his approach in office.
The establishment of institutional BS saw its official presidential genesis on Inauguration Day, when Trump denied reality to claim a demonstrably modest crowd of onlookers was actually “a massive amount of people.”
Even then, Trump and his minions immediately began to preside over a wearying pile of mendacity that would only grow, heaped out day upon day.
Trump’s visceral hatred for Barack Obama—likely an issue of racism, jealousy, and Trump’s personal sense of inferiority—led him to claim, though then-White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, that the turnout for his inauguration was larger than any other.
Photos and rapid fact-checking made short work from a factual view. Spicer clearly was slinging BS on the command of his master. But the administration kept insisting that it should have the right to redefine reality.
White House Website
That opening salvo was followed by persistent underhanded and subtle attacks on fact. The White House on Jan. 20, 2017—day one—scrubbed critical national issues from its website.
Topics that would affect income inequality for example—an essential problem facing the country—suddenly vanished from view.
Searches at whitehouse.gov for such terms as “LGBT,” “Lesbian,” “Gay,” “Bisexual” and “Transgender” turned up little or nothing.
“Alternative facts,” Kellyanne Conway called this process of insisting that blue was red. More accurate would have been the establishment of an Orwellian Ministry of Truth, American-style.
Twisting language wasn’t Trump’s invention. Previous administrations at times created vast coverups and massive compendiums of lies. But their actions still oriented to truth and how to avoid confronting it. The press and the American people had a fighting chance.
The Pentagon Papers in 1971 laid bare the vicious and ugly farce of the Vietnam War. Watergate showed how a president’s administration could exercise power to crush political opponents.
The Reagan administration ran the illegal Iran Contra affair, subverting the authority and directions of Congress and, not incidentally, enriching narco-traffickers, a bizarre action for a president who proclaimed himself Mr. Law and Order.
In all these cases, reality remained. Truth eventually prevailed, however imperfectly. People went to jail. Nixon rightly resigned in disgrace.
Shame Matters
On a lighter note, Reagan’s administration wanted to classify ketchup and relish as vegetables on school lunch menus, as well as call doughnuts bread, in the early 1980s.
Back then, those running our government still retained a sense of shame. Reagan era budget director David Stockman, for example, called the school lunch move a “bureaucratic goof” and reversed the decision.
But to have shame, first there must be facts. Never until Trump had political history so completely and brutally cut its tethers to reality using a dull knife.
Trump’s mastery of BS includes his lack of remorse, no matter how serious the action.
When information and data are no longer sacrosanct—when there may not be an accurate record kept anywhere—dangers multiply exponentially. Under Trump, the destruction of fact is relentless.
Climate Change Swept Away
From the get-go, the Trump administration removed references to climate change, greenhouse gases and clean energy from the records of the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Energy and State Department.
This, at a time when the impact of climate change—droughts, fires, floods, glacial melting—hit like body blows from a heavyweight contender called Mother Earth.
The Environmental Data & Governance Initiative found that between 2016 and 2018, U.S. government website use of such terms as “climate change,” “clean energy” and “adaptation” dropped by 26%. Replacing them were fuzzy terms like “energy independence,” “resilience” and “sustainability.”
“Over half of all pages where ‘climate change’ was completely removed (73 /136) were U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) pages,” the report noted.
Heather Zichal, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center and former energy and climate change adviser to Obama, told Time magazine the heavily changed webpages of the EPA were “unprecedented attempt to delete or bury credible scientific information they find politically inconvenient.”
Trump’s orientation to BS was never limited to climate change. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last year launched a plan to examine and redefine what can be considered a human right.
In its State Department Country Reports on Human Rights, the administration cut reporting on women’s rights and issues outside the country by almost a third, according to an Oxfam America analysis. LGBTI rights and issues reporting plummeted 21%.
The critical area of immigration asylum decisions is another hotbed of disregard and ineptitude in which Immigration Court data goes missing, month after month, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse of Syracuse University.
An April 2020 release of data was missing 68,282 relief applications that had been present at the end of March 2020. That represents tens of thousands of immigrants applying for asylum who have now been legally and informationally disappeared.
“We request that you take immediate action to prevent any possible further loss of data,” the organization wrote James McHenry, the director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review. “TRAC is greatly concerned that failure to do so could irreparably harm the integrity of the Immigration Court’s data.”
This is only part of redefining reality into meaninglessness. When there’s less information available from our government, informed public debate becomes narrower and shallower until fact and truth evaporate.
When the press points out any of this, Trump shouts “fake news.”
Coronavirus Careening
The latest and perhaps most important example of out-of-control spinning is the administration’s response to the coronavirus. The story has been one of continuous downplaying of the serious nature of the pandemic and robust rewriting of what the government has done.
This includes:
- Promotion of dangerous medical treatments
- Lies about how long it may take to develop a vaccine—years, if ever, not weeks or months
- Blaming state governments for the complete national failure to have enough protective equipment and ventilator. It was the Trump administration that presided over inadequate national stockpiles and forced states to bid against each other and the federal government
- Removal of warnings about how religious choirs can further spread the virus
The Centers for Disease Control provided a particularly outrageous example by combining and confusing results from very different types of coronavirus tests. The impact is an ongoing inaccurate picture of the pandemic—and a blunder that should have been unthinkable to anyone versed in science and public health.
As the November election approaches—and the importance of a gutted economy becomes clearer—the White House won’t release traditional formal economic projections this summer. Officials blame volatility, which certainly makes accurate projections much more difficult to achieve.
But this seems to be a first since at least the 1970s. That includes such periods as the banking crisis in the 1980s, the dot com implosion, and the Great Recession. All times with significant volatility.
“It gets them off the hook for having to say what the economic outlook looks like,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former Congressional Budget Office director, told The Washington Post.
And then, the Office of Financial Research—an independent research bureau within the Treasury that is supposed to promote financial stability “by delivering high-quality financial data, standards, and analysis”--hasn’t published anything in months, according to Center for American Progress senior policy analyst Gregg Gelzinis.
These projections and analyses are critical to state and local governments, federal agencies and businesses across the country.
And that’s just what people have noticed. Given the rate at which the administration is firing inspectors general, there is likely far more that will go unseen.
But then, for this administration, reality isn’t all it’s cracked up to be anyway.
As The Crises Mount, Trump’s Mental Condition Grows Worse
Amid the Violence, Sickness and Economic Collapse, the Psychiatric Establishment Still Ignores the Mental Health Emergency in the Oval Office
By Bandy X. Lee - dc report
june 2, 2020
A nation most afflicted with a mental health problem is the least likely to address it. I am speaking of the mental health, or lack thereof, of the president.
His psychological impairments have been deadly through action and inaction. They are promoting violence through pronouncements such as, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Donald Trumps calls protesters “thugs.”
It is an uncomfortable fact that needs to be stated: The president’s dangerous psyche has resulted in tens of thousands more deaths, with still no end in sight. Trump is responsible for the coronavirus lockdown and the economic collapse.
We knew in advance that he could not handle a crisis and attempts to cover up incapacity would result in devastating crises.
That the mental health field has been silent is unconscionable; there is no way around it.
If the people cannot count on health professionals to stand up for human safety and survival to whom can they turn?
Our ethics code explicitly states that physicians have a “responsibility to patients … as well as to society.” That a prominent psychiatric association has campaigned not just to protect a public figure over public safety but stopped independent mental health professionals from fulfilling their societal duty should be the scandal of our era.
We know from the pandemic that the exclusion of expert ideas can be a death pact. Mental health is no exception.
Now, with a nation in flames, we cannot pretend it was unknowable. Mental health professionals do not just diagnose illness. We assess signs of psychological danger, and warn and protect potential victims including the public. That is our most primary duty.
By the time violence erupts, there has usually been a long process leading up to it.
Trump did not invent racism, nor generate the pandemic. But, as we anticipated, a psychologically dangerous president has provoked social, cultural, public health and now civic dangers.
Human beings are symbolic creatures, and the office of the president carries great symbolism. A president who lacks respect for life—even disdains it—will give aid and comfort not just to racists but to white supremacist terrorists who are in truth more anti-life than pro-white.
OK with Police BrutalityTrump:
He is also the president who will give permission to police brutality as he threatens protesters with “vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons.”
This occurred after he contributed to grievances:
These are not coincidences but a deep-seated pattern that is already intensifying in the face of an unrealistic re-election campaign. Trump has exercised deployment of the National Guard as well as the targeting of journalists. Autocrats often use such tracks to steal elections.
Longing for Love
Individuals who lack empathy or conscience often exhibit cruelty or even pleasure at others’ suffering and death. They are commonly consumed with envy or vindictiveness at a world in which they cannot take part.
They are, as psychopathy expert Dr. Elizabeth Howell calls them, “outsiders to love.”
I have written that violence is a longing for love gone awry: When one is deprived of love, one does not become neutral to it but develops psychological defenses that make the dearth more endurable.
In the process, however, one rejects love, life and ultimately humanity itself. Substituting respect for love, and fear for respect, if one can have neither respect nor love, the focus turns to subjugation through violence and fear.
This is why experts cautioned against Trump holding onto war-making powers and access to nuclear weapons.
There is no excuse for the professionals who encounter numerous Donald Trumps through the course of their careers and yet choose to remain silent.
Some cite technicalities to ignore the main tenets of medical ethics and standards of practice, which hold our responsibility to human life and wellbeing as paramount.
That the dangers were occurring in the political sphere is not a valid excuse when the combination of personality and political power produces the toxic mix.
A Misguided Psychiatric Association
In this context, I would like to urge the mental health field—especially psychiatry—to meet its societal responsibility.
Through my 25-year career, I have greatly valued the mental health knowledge I have been able to impart to my students at Yale Law School. They learn to represent asylum seekers or prisoners, or affect the World Health Organization’s violence prevention division.
However, a self-image problem seems to be afflicting psychiatry.
Low self-esteem in an individual can lead to a failure to stand up for one’s beliefs.
The same in a field can result in a failure to represent justly its own principles of ethics and practice.
It easily can be pulled into corruption, such as it has with the pharmaceutical industry. That was my reason for resigning from the American Psychiatric Association in 2007.
More recently, to my disdain, the APA wrongly has protected an impaired president to preserve its federal funding.
Some members of my field may cite principle, emphasizing the need to avoid “ad hominem attacks,” and I would generally agree. But medical identification is not an “attack.” The issue at hand is protecting public health and safety, not a formula for keeping oneself in the good graces of power.
If not psychiatrists, who will connect the dots to dangerous psychopathology in the president?
If not mental health, who will have the language to address the colossal elephant in the nation’s room?
If not the experts, who will break the stigma and misconceptions and bring to bear the practical knowledge of dealing with this natural phenomenon?
In the office of the presidency, this common occurrence has turned into what I have called democide (government killing of a citizen), genocide, bioterrorism and now a death wish, while meeting all criteria for each.
It is an issue we can no longer afford to avoid.
His psychological impairments have been deadly through action and inaction. They are promoting violence through pronouncements such as, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Donald Trumps calls protesters “thugs.”
It is an uncomfortable fact that needs to be stated: The president’s dangerous psyche has resulted in tens of thousands more deaths, with still no end in sight. Trump is responsible for the coronavirus lockdown and the economic collapse.
We knew in advance that he could not handle a crisis and attempts to cover up incapacity would result in devastating crises.
That the mental health field has been silent is unconscionable; there is no way around it.
If the people cannot count on health professionals to stand up for human safety and survival to whom can they turn?
Our ethics code explicitly states that physicians have a “responsibility to patients … as well as to society.” That a prominent psychiatric association has campaigned not just to protect a public figure over public safety but stopped independent mental health professionals from fulfilling their societal duty should be the scandal of our era.
We know from the pandemic that the exclusion of expert ideas can be a death pact. Mental health is no exception.
Now, with a nation in flames, we cannot pretend it was unknowable. Mental health professionals do not just diagnose illness. We assess signs of psychological danger, and warn and protect potential victims including the public. That is our most primary duty.
By the time violence erupts, there has usually been a long process leading up to it.
Trump did not invent racism, nor generate the pandemic. But, as we anticipated, a psychologically dangerous president has provoked social, cultural, public health and now civic dangers.
Human beings are symbolic creatures, and the office of the president carries great symbolism. A president who lacks respect for life—even disdains it—will give aid and comfort not just to racists but to white supremacist terrorists who are in truth more anti-life than pro-white.
OK with Police BrutalityTrump:
- tried to revive the death penalty for the wrongly accused “Central Park Five”
- called white nationalists after a murder in Charlottesville, “very fine people”
- derided athletes who respectfully knelt to honor blacks who died from brutality as “sons of bitches”
- remained silent about a police officer who murdered with his knee
He is also the president who will give permission to police brutality as he threatens protesters with “vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons.”
This occurred after he contributed to grievances:
- by allowing disproportionate COVID-19 deaths among minorities
- by invoking the Defense Production Act to force minority workers to their deaths
- by allowing big businesses to profiteer off the pandemic while leaving minorities especially defenseless against layoffs and evictions.
These are not coincidences but a deep-seated pattern that is already intensifying in the face of an unrealistic re-election campaign. Trump has exercised deployment of the National Guard as well as the targeting of journalists. Autocrats often use such tracks to steal elections.
Longing for Love
Individuals who lack empathy or conscience often exhibit cruelty or even pleasure at others’ suffering and death. They are commonly consumed with envy or vindictiveness at a world in which they cannot take part.
They are, as psychopathy expert Dr. Elizabeth Howell calls them, “outsiders to love.”
I have written that violence is a longing for love gone awry: When one is deprived of love, one does not become neutral to it but develops psychological defenses that make the dearth more endurable.
In the process, however, one rejects love, life and ultimately humanity itself. Substituting respect for love, and fear for respect, if one can have neither respect nor love, the focus turns to subjugation through violence and fear.
This is why experts cautioned against Trump holding onto war-making powers and access to nuclear weapons.
There is no excuse for the professionals who encounter numerous Donald Trumps through the course of their careers and yet choose to remain silent.
Some cite technicalities to ignore the main tenets of medical ethics and standards of practice, which hold our responsibility to human life and wellbeing as paramount.
That the dangers were occurring in the political sphere is not a valid excuse when the combination of personality and political power produces the toxic mix.
A Misguided Psychiatric Association
In this context, I would like to urge the mental health field—especially psychiatry—to meet its societal responsibility.
Through my 25-year career, I have greatly valued the mental health knowledge I have been able to impart to my students at Yale Law School. They learn to represent asylum seekers or prisoners, or affect the World Health Organization’s violence prevention division.
However, a self-image problem seems to be afflicting psychiatry.
Low self-esteem in an individual can lead to a failure to stand up for one’s beliefs.
The same in a field can result in a failure to represent justly its own principles of ethics and practice.
It easily can be pulled into corruption, such as it has with the pharmaceutical industry. That was my reason for resigning from the American Psychiatric Association in 2007.
More recently, to my disdain, the APA wrongly has protected an impaired president to preserve its federal funding.
Some members of my field may cite principle, emphasizing the need to avoid “ad hominem attacks,” and I would generally agree. But medical identification is not an “attack.” The issue at hand is protecting public health and safety, not a formula for keeping oneself in the good graces of power.
If not psychiatrists, who will connect the dots to dangerous psychopathology in the president?
If not mental health, who will have the language to address the colossal elephant in the nation’s room?
If not the experts, who will break the stigma and misconceptions and bring to bear the practical knowledge of dealing with this natural phenomenon?
In the office of the presidency, this common occurrence has turned into what I have called democide (government killing of a citizen), genocide, bioterrorism and now a death wish, while meeting all criteria for each.
It is an issue we can no longer afford to avoid.
Opinion - Donald Trump
Fire, pestilence and a country at war with itself: the Trump presidency is over
A pandemic unabated, an economy in meltdown, cities in chaos over police killings. All our supposed leader does is tweet
Robert Reich - the guardian
Sun 31 May 2020 01.02 EDT
You’d be forgiven if you hadn’t noticed. His verbal bombshells are louder than ever, but Donald J Trump is no longer president of the United States.
By having no constructive response to any of the monumental crises now convulsing America, Trump has abdicated his office.
He is not governing. He’s golfing, watching cable TV and tweeting.
How has Trump responded to the widespread unrest following the murder in Minneapolis of George Floyd, a black man who died after a white police officer knelt on his neck for minutes as he was handcuffed on the ground?
Trump called the protesters “thugs” and threatened to have them shot. “When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” he tweeted, parroting a former Miami police chief whose words spurred race riots in the late 1960s.
On Saturday, he gloated about “the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons” awaiting protesters outside the White House, should they ever break through Secret Service lines.
Trump’s response to the last three ghastly months of mounting disease and death has been just as heedless. Since claiming Covid-19 was a “Democratic hoax” and muzzling public health officials, he has punted management of the coronavirus to the states.
Governors have had to find ventilators to keep patients alive and protective equipment for hospital and other essential workers who lack it, often bidding against each other. They have had to decide how, when and where to reopen their economies.
Trump has claimed “no responsibility at all” for testing and contact-tracing – the keys to containing the virus. His new “plan” places responsibility on states to do their own testing and contact-tracing.
Trump is also awol in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
More than 41 million Americans are jobless. In the coming weeks temporary eviction moratoriums are set to end in half of the states. One-fifth of Americans missed rent payments this month. Extra unemployment benefits are set to expire at the end of July.
What is Trump’s response? Like Herbert Hoover, who in 1930 said “the worst is behind us” as thousands starved, Trump says the economy will improve and does nothing about the growing hardship. The Democratic-led House passed a $3tn relief package on 15 May. Mitch McConnell has recessed the Senate without taking action and Trump calls the bill dead on arrival.
What about other pressing issues a real president would be addressing? The House has passed nearly 400 bills this term, including measures to reduce climate change, enhance election security, require background checks on gun sales, reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act and reform campaign finance. All are languishing in McConnell’s inbox. Trump doesn’t seem to be aware of any of them.
There is nothing inherently wrong with golfing, watching television and tweeting. But if that’s pretty much all that a president does when the nation is engulfed in crises, he is not a president.
Trump’s tweets are no substitute for governing. They are mostly about getting even.
When he’s not fomenting violence against black protesters, he’s accusing a media personality of committing murder, retweeting slurs about a black female politician’s weight and the House speaker’s looks, conjuring up conspiracies against himself supposedly organized by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and encouraging his followers to “liberate” their states from lockdown restrictions.
He tweets bogus threats that he has no power to carry out – withholding funds from states that expand absentee voting, “overruling” governors who don’t allow places of worship to reopen “right away”, and punishing Twitter for factchecking him.
And he lies incessantly.
In reality, Donald Trump doesn’t run the government of the United States. He doesn’t manage anything. He doesn’t organize anyone. He doesn’t administer or oversee or supervise. He doesn’t read memos. He hates meetings. He has no patience for briefings. His White House is in perpetual chaos.
His advisers aren’t truth-tellers. They’re toadies, lackeys, sycophants and relatives.
Since moving into the Oval Office in January 2017, Trump hasn’t shown an ounce of interest in governing. He obsesses only about himself.
But it has taken the present set of crises to reveal the depths of his self-absorbed abdication – his utter contempt for his job, his total repudiation of his office.
Trump’s nonfeasance goes far beyond an absence of leadership or inattention to traditional norms and roles. In a time of national trauma, he has relinquished the core duties and responsibilities of the presidency.
He is no longer president. The sooner we stop treating him as if he were, the better.
By having no constructive response to any of the monumental crises now convulsing America, Trump has abdicated his office.
He is not governing. He’s golfing, watching cable TV and tweeting.
How has Trump responded to the widespread unrest following the murder in Minneapolis of George Floyd, a black man who died after a white police officer knelt on his neck for minutes as he was handcuffed on the ground?
Trump called the protesters “thugs” and threatened to have them shot. “When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” he tweeted, parroting a former Miami police chief whose words spurred race riots in the late 1960s.
On Saturday, he gloated about “the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons” awaiting protesters outside the White House, should they ever break through Secret Service lines.
Trump’s response to the last three ghastly months of mounting disease and death has been just as heedless. Since claiming Covid-19 was a “Democratic hoax” and muzzling public health officials, he has punted management of the coronavirus to the states.
Governors have had to find ventilators to keep patients alive and protective equipment for hospital and other essential workers who lack it, often bidding against each other. They have had to decide how, when and where to reopen their economies.
Trump has claimed “no responsibility at all” for testing and contact-tracing – the keys to containing the virus. His new “plan” places responsibility on states to do their own testing and contact-tracing.
Trump is also awol in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
More than 41 million Americans are jobless. In the coming weeks temporary eviction moratoriums are set to end in half of the states. One-fifth of Americans missed rent payments this month. Extra unemployment benefits are set to expire at the end of July.
What is Trump’s response? Like Herbert Hoover, who in 1930 said “the worst is behind us” as thousands starved, Trump says the economy will improve and does nothing about the growing hardship. The Democratic-led House passed a $3tn relief package on 15 May. Mitch McConnell has recessed the Senate without taking action and Trump calls the bill dead on arrival.
What about other pressing issues a real president would be addressing? The House has passed nearly 400 bills this term, including measures to reduce climate change, enhance election security, require background checks on gun sales, reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act and reform campaign finance. All are languishing in McConnell’s inbox. Trump doesn’t seem to be aware of any of them.
There is nothing inherently wrong with golfing, watching television and tweeting. But if that’s pretty much all that a president does when the nation is engulfed in crises, he is not a president.
Trump’s tweets are no substitute for governing. They are mostly about getting even.
When he’s not fomenting violence against black protesters, he’s accusing a media personality of committing murder, retweeting slurs about a black female politician’s weight and the House speaker’s looks, conjuring up conspiracies against himself supposedly organized by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and encouraging his followers to “liberate” their states from lockdown restrictions.
He tweets bogus threats that he has no power to carry out – withholding funds from states that expand absentee voting, “overruling” governors who don’t allow places of worship to reopen “right away”, and punishing Twitter for factchecking him.
And he lies incessantly.
In reality, Donald Trump doesn’t run the government of the United States. He doesn’t manage anything. He doesn’t organize anyone. He doesn’t administer or oversee or supervise. He doesn’t read memos. He hates meetings. He has no patience for briefings. His White House is in perpetual chaos.
His advisers aren’t truth-tellers. They’re toadies, lackeys, sycophants and relatives.
Since moving into the Oval Office in January 2017, Trump hasn’t shown an ounce of interest in governing. He obsesses only about himself.
But it has taken the present set of crises to reveal the depths of his self-absorbed abdication – his utter contempt for his job, his total repudiation of his office.
Trump’s nonfeasance goes far beyond an absence of leadership or inattention to traditional norms and roles. In a time of national trauma, he has relinquished the core duties and responsibilities of the presidency.
He is no longer president. The sooner we stop treating him as if he were, the better.
What the signboard at St. John's Church said: CurtEastPoint@ DEMO. UNDERGROUND
a PHENOMENAL display of anti-semitism and ignorance!!!
Trump Hails “Good Bloodlines” of Henry Ford, Whose Anti-Semitism Inspired Hitler
Robert Mackey - the intercept
May 21 2020, 9:50 p.m.
Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent published 90 articles attacking Jews in the 1920s.
DONALD TRUMP’S CAMPAIGN to change the subject from the coronavirus pandemic took a bizarre turn on Thursday, as the president paused during a speech at a Ford Motor Company plant in Michigan to praise the “good bloodlines” of the family descended from the firm’s founder, Henry Ford, a notorious anti-Semite and favorite of Adolf Hitler.
In an apparent ad-lib, Trump looked up from his prepared remarks — which praised the firm for teaming up with General Electric to produce ventilators and face shields for medical workers — to observe that Henry Ford’s descendants, like the current chairman, Bill Ford, who had introduced the president, have “good blood.”
The Hill✔
@thehill
President Trump: "The company founded by a man named Henry Ford -- good bloodlines, good bloodlines."
2:07 PM - May 21, 2020
“The company founded by a man named Henry Ford,” Trump’s prepared text appeared to say, “teamed up with the company founded by Thomas Edison — that’s General Electric.” But when Trump came to Ford’s name, he looked up from the text and observed: “good bloodlines, good bloodlines — if you believe in that stuff, you got good blood.”
Trump has made no secret of his own belief that he inherited everything from intelligence to an ability to withstand pressure through the “great genes” passed on to him by his parents and grandparents. He has also frequently compared the importance of “good bloodlines” in humans to the breeding of champion racehorses, a view that overlaps in uncomfortable ways with those of eugenicists and racists like Ford.
“I’m proud to have that German blood,” Trump once told an interviewer. “You’ve all got such good bloodlines,” Trump reportedly told British business leaders at a dinner in 2018. “You’ve all got such amazing DNA.”
Trump has also frequently suggested that because his uncle, John Trump, taught for decades at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he is similarly smart. “My uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT,” Trump said at a South Carolina rally in 2015. Pointing at his right temple, he then added: “Good genes, very good genes — okay? — very smart.”
Then in March, after he spoke to scientists working on the coronavirus response at the CDC in Atlanta, Trump told reporters: “I like this stuff. You know, my uncle was a great person. He was at MIT, he taught at MIT for, I think, like a record number of years. He was a great super genius. Dr. John Trump. I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it…. Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability.”
Trump also suggested on Thursday that Ford and Edison were both in heaven, “looking down right now.” The president’s belief that Ford, the only American singled out for praise in Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” should be in heaven was a stark contrast to his sarcastic comment during a visit to Michigan in December that the late Democratic congressman, John Dingell, might be “looking up” from hell.
Among the many reasons to believe that Henry Ford does not deserve a place in heaven is the fact that, as the writer Matthew Wills noted, starting in 1920, “Ford’s newspaper, the weekly Dearborn Independent, which was distributed through Ford dealers and sent free to schools and libraries around the country, published 90 anti-Semitic articles, later collected and distributed as a book called ‘The International Jew.'”
Victoria Saker Woeste, the author of “Henry Ford’s War on Jews and the Legal Battle Against Hate Speech,” explained that “the first article staked out the familiar anti-Semitic trope of ‘The Jew’ as ‘the world’s enigma. Poor in his masses, he yet controls the world’s finances,’ and was, ‘the power behind many a throne.'” The articles recapitulated and excerpted the notorious anti-Semitic forgery, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” for nearly 700,000 readers.
The collected articles were sold as a pamphlet, which was subsequently translated into German, and inspired Hitler’s praise for Ford in “Mein Kampf.” “It is Jews who govern the stock exchange forces of the American Union,” Hitler claimed, “only a single great man, Ford, to their fury, still maintains full independence.”
The New York Times reported in 1922 that Ford’s importance to Hitler was very obvious. “The wall beside his desk in Hitler’s private office is decorated with a large picture of Henry Ford,” the newspaper’s Berlin correspondent observed. “In the ante-chamber there is a large table covered with books, nearly all of which are a translation of a book written and published by Henry Ford.”
Although Ford was eventually forced to sign a public apology for the articles in 1927, after being sued for libel in federal court by Aaron Sapiro, a Jewish-American activist smeared by his newspaper, he remained an anti-Semite and a favorite of the Nazis. In 1938, Ford accepted the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the Nazi regime’s highest honor for foreigners, on the occasion of his 75th birthday. The two Nazi diplomats who pinned the medal on his chest also brought a personal message of congratulations from Hitler.
In 1940, Steven Watts recounted in “The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century,” Ford told the automobile editor of The Associated Press that he blamed the Jews, not Hitler, for the war in Europe. “I still think this is a phony war made by the international Jewish bankers,” Ford said, in remarks later reported by the automaker’s former personal secretary.
Trump’s praise of Ford on Thursday prompted Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, to demand an apology from the president for hailing a man who was “an antisemite and one of America’s staunchest proponents of eugenics.” “If he doesn’t know why,” Greenblatt added, the president should read his organization’s history of Ford’s role as an anti-Jewish propagandist.
In an apparent ad-lib, Trump looked up from his prepared remarks — which praised the firm for teaming up with General Electric to produce ventilators and face shields for medical workers — to observe that Henry Ford’s descendants, like the current chairman, Bill Ford, who had introduced the president, have “good blood.”
The Hill✔
@thehill
President Trump: "The company founded by a man named Henry Ford -- good bloodlines, good bloodlines."
2:07 PM - May 21, 2020
“The company founded by a man named Henry Ford,” Trump’s prepared text appeared to say, “teamed up with the company founded by Thomas Edison — that’s General Electric.” But when Trump came to Ford’s name, he looked up from the text and observed: “good bloodlines, good bloodlines — if you believe in that stuff, you got good blood.”
Trump has made no secret of his own belief that he inherited everything from intelligence to an ability to withstand pressure through the “great genes” passed on to him by his parents and grandparents. He has also frequently compared the importance of “good bloodlines” in humans to the breeding of champion racehorses, a view that overlaps in uncomfortable ways with those of eugenicists and racists like Ford.
“I’m proud to have that German blood,” Trump once told an interviewer. “You’ve all got such good bloodlines,” Trump reportedly told British business leaders at a dinner in 2018. “You’ve all got such amazing DNA.”
Trump has also frequently suggested that because his uncle, John Trump, taught for decades at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he is similarly smart. “My uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT,” Trump said at a South Carolina rally in 2015. Pointing at his right temple, he then added: “Good genes, very good genes — okay? — very smart.”
Then in March, after he spoke to scientists working on the coronavirus response at the CDC in Atlanta, Trump told reporters: “I like this stuff. You know, my uncle was a great person. He was at MIT, he taught at MIT for, I think, like a record number of years. He was a great super genius. Dr. John Trump. I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it…. Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability.”
Trump also suggested on Thursday that Ford and Edison were both in heaven, “looking down right now.” The president’s belief that Ford, the only American singled out for praise in Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” should be in heaven was a stark contrast to his sarcastic comment during a visit to Michigan in December that the late Democratic congressman, John Dingell, might be “looking up” from hell.
Among the many reasons to believe that Henry Ford does not deserve a place in heaven is the fact that, as the writer Matthew Wills noted, starting in 1920, “Ford’s newspaper, the weekly Dearborn Independent, which was distributed through Ford dealers and sent free to schools and libraries around the country, published 90 anti-Semitic articles, later collected and distributed as a book called ‘The International Jew.'”
Victoria Saker Woeste, the author of “Henry Ford’s War on Jews and the Legal Battle Against Hate Speech,” explained that “the first article staked out the familiar anti-Semitic trope of ‘The Jew’ as ‘the world’s enigma. Poor in his masses, he yet controls the world’s finances,’ and was, ‘the power behind many a throne.'” The articles recapitulated and excerpted the notorious anti-Semitic forgery, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” for nearly 700,000 readers.
The collected articles were sold as a pamphlet, which was subsequently translated into German, and inspired Hitler’s praise for Ford in “Mein Kampf.” “It is Jews who govern the stock exchange forces of the American Union,” Hitler claimed, “only a single great man, Ford, to their fury, still maintains full independence.”
The New York Times reported in 1922 that Ford’s importance to Hitler was very obvious. “The wall beside his desk in Hitler’s private office is decorated with a large picture of Henry Ford,” the newspaper’s Berlin correspondent observed. “In the ante-chamber there is a large table covered with books, nearly all of which are a translation of a book written and published by Henry Ford.”
Although Ford was eventually forced to sign a public apology for the articles in 1927, after being sued for libel in federal court by Aaron Sapiro, a Jewish-American activist smeared by his newspaper, he remained an anti-Semite and a favorite of the Nazis. In 1938, Ford accepted the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the Nazi regime’s highest honor for foreigners, on the occasion of his 75th birthday. The two Nazi diplomats who pinned the medal on his chest also brought a personal message of congratulations from Hitler.
In 1940, Steven Watts recounted in “The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century,” Ford told the automobile editor of The Associated Press that he blamed the Jews, not Hitler, for the war in Europe. “I still think this is a phony war made by the international Jewish bankers,” Ford said, in remarks later reported by the automaker’s former personal secretary.
Trump’s praise of Ford on Thursday prompted Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, to demand an apology from the president for hailing a man who was “an antisemite and one of America’s staunchest proponents of eugenics.” “If he doesn’t know why,” Greenblatt added, the president should read his organization’s history of Ford’s role as an anti-Jewish propagandist.
The Bitch in charge!!!
‘The deaths don’t matter to him’: Art of the Deal coauthor says Trump ‘has no conscious’
May 15, 2020
By Bob Brigham - raw story
Donald Trump’s coauthor of the 1987 book “Trump: The Art of the Deal” blasted the president for his response to the coronavirus pandemic during a Friday appearance on MSNBC.
Schwartz joined MSNBC chief legal correspondent Ari Melber on “The Beat.”
“I’m curious what you see here on day when the president is again declaring victories he hasn’t achieved,” Melber said.
“This has been revelatory to me, are, the whole way he has responded has prompted me to really rethink Trump’s motivation,” Schwartz replied. “I’ve always assumed like most people have that the primary motivation is to be loved and admired and recognized and praised. That is a motivation, but the deeper motivation is domination — is to win.”
“And that is a function of the fact that he has no conscience,” he explained. “So he doesn’t make a distinction between right or wrong, nor does he feel a distinction between right or wrong. so when he is inventing stories and lies and a reality that is of his own making, he’s doing it without any shame or guilt, and that is an enormous advantage in a situation where most people would be limited by their respect for the truth and by their concern for how they were going to have an impact on others.”
“He doesn’t care. The deaths — I know this is extreme — the deaths don’t matter to him,” Schwartz concluded.
Schwartz joined MSNBC chief legal correspondent Ari Melber on “The Beat.”
“I’m curious what you see here on day when the president is again declaring victories he hasn’t achieved,” Melber said.
“This has been revelatory to me, are, the whole way he has responded has prompted me to really rethink Trump’s motivation,” Schwartz replied. “I’ve always assumed like most people have that the primary motivation is to be loved and admired and recognized and praised. That is a motivation, but the deeper motivation is domination — is to win.”
“And that is a function of the fact that he has no conscience,” he explained. “So he doesn’t make a distinction between right or wrong, nor does he feel a distinction between right or wrong. so when he is inventing stories and lies and a reality that is of his own making, he’s doing it without any shame or guilt, and that is an enormous advantage in a situation where most people would be limited by their respect for the truth and by their concern for how they were going to have an impact on others.”
“He doesn’t care. The deaths — I know this is extreme — the deaths don’t matter to him,” Schwartz concluded.
let the truth be heard!!!
‘Such a despicable human’: Economist pounds Trump as ‘vulgar fool’ offering ‘fear and paranoia’ instead of leadership
May 15, 2020
By Travis Gettys
Economist Jeffrey Sachs unloaded on President Donald Trump for purposefully blocking measures that could alleviate suffering during the coronavirus pandemic.
The Columbia University professor appeared Friday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” where he lamented that the president had abdicated his leadership during the public health crisis that has already cost more than 86,000 American lives.
“It’s hard with the death of the federal government,” Sachs said. “We have turned everything over to local action in a country where people move around, where the infections spread, where state and local governments don’t have [Centers for Disease Control], so we really have the death of the federal government right now.”
Sachs blasted the president for making thing worse by whipping up fear and division, instead of rallying Americans behind a common cause.
“As a president, we basically, the only analogy I can think of is if Joe McCarthy from the McCarthy era had become president,” Sachs said. “This man in his venom and paranoia makes claims, waves papers, says ‘worst crimes.’ He’s such a despicable human being, but he’s actually blocking the capacity for national action.”
Governors and mayors are left to handle the crisis on their own instead of relying on the president’s leadership, he said.
“What I would say to governors and mayors is, you’ve got to trace every case, every day,” Sachs said. People who are confirmed should be called. Are they safe at home or do they need to be moved to quarantine? The number of mistakes, by the way, being made at the state and local level is also shocking. Putting infected people from hospitals into nursing homes in my own state, it makes you cry because thousands of people are dying unnecessarily.”
“We’re so unequipped, and we have this vulgar fool who is blocking all the action at the national level,” he added. “We can’t really do this without a national government. Trump has to stand aside and let there be a serious response so that this country doesn’t have a great depression and this calamitous death toll. They go together. There’s no economic health trade-off. That’s the biggest lie. Unless this epidemic is controlled, our economy will stay in depression.”
The Columbia University professor appeared Friday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” where he lamented that the president had abdicated his leadership during the public health crisis that has already cost more than 86,000 American lives.
“It’s hard with the death of the federal government,” Sachs said. “We have turned everything over to local action in a country where people move around, where the infections spread, where state and local governments don’t have [Centers for Disease Control], so we really have the death of the federal government right now.”
Sachs blasted the president for making thing worse by whipping up fear and division, instead of rallying Americans behind a common cause.
“As a president, we basically, the only analogy I can think of is if Joe McCarthy from the McCarthy era had become president,” Sachs said. “This man in his venom and paranoia makes claims, waves papers, says ‘worst crimes.’ He’s such a despicable human being, but he’s actually blocking the capacity for national action.”
Governors and mayors are left to handle the crisis on their own instead of relying on the president’s leadership, he said.
“What I would say to governors and mayors is, you’ve got to trace every case, every day,” Sachs said. People who are confirmed should be called. Are they safe at home or do they need to be moved to quarantine? The number of mistakes, by the way, being made at the state and local level is also shocking. Putting infected people from hospitals into nursing homes in my own state, it makes you cry because thousands of people are dying unnecessarily.”
“We’re so unequipped, and we have this vulgar fool who is blocking all the action at the national level,” he added. “We can’t really do this without a national government. Trump has to stand aside and let there be a serious response so that this country doesn’t have a great depression and this calamitous death toll. They go together. There’s no economic health trade-off. That’s the biggest lie. Unless this epidemic is controlled, our economy will stay in depression.”
Rick Wilson and Steve Schmidt gang up on Trump over his pandemic failures: ‘He’s a weak man’
May 9, 2020
By Matthew Chapman - raw story
On Saturday’s edition of MSNBC’s “AM Joy,” Never Trump conservative strategists Steve Schmidt and Rick Wilson laid into President Donald Trump and walked through the extent of his failure to lead the country.
“This is a man who promised to run saying, I can fix it alone, I will make America great again,” said Schmidt. “And his legacy will be mass death, will be suffering at an epic level and economic collapse. That’s the Trump legacy, and he has demonstrated through this crisis, he has exactly zero capacity to lead this nation out of this mess.”
“And it will not be the work of one presidential term. It will be the work of many presidential terms,” added Schmidt. “For there to be a season of American recovery, and we see every day his incapacity to lead that and in shortly less than six months the American people are going to have to decide in the most important election this country’s had since 1864, whether the United States will go into a steep descent or decline, or we can possibly begin to recover from the Trumpian disaster that the country faces.”
Wilson concurred.
“The major factor here is Donald Trump, as my friend Steve just said, was a reality TV star who sold a brand of competence and leadership that never existed,” said Wilson. “It was only created in a teleprompter by a writer for a reality show. And we have seen he is overwhelmed. He is unable to process this mentally. He is a weak man. He is a man driven by his ego and his finality and not be a desire for the country.”
Wilson continued: “The difference between every other president — and you know what, we can love or hate and we can agree or disagree on their policies — but every other president, whether it was Bill Clinton or Richard Nixon or JFK or LBJ, they entered that Oval Office having taken an oath to serve this country and there is a — there was always a magic about becoming the president of the United States and they honored the history of the office, they honored the solemn responsibility … those men all, at a fundamental level, were there to serve the people of this country, and Donald Trump is in the White House to serve himself.”
“We are in a crisis without a president who can manage to lead this country effectively,” he added. “Donald Trump’s reaction is the kind of thing that — the way a weak man reacts to a strong crisis.”
“This is a man who promised to run saying, I can fix it alone, I will make America great again,” said Schmidt. “And his legacy will be mass death, will be suffering at an epic level and economic collapse. That’s the Trump legacy, and he has demonstrated through this crisis, he has exactly zero capacity to lead this nation out of this mess.”
“And it will not be the work of one presidential term. It will be the work of many presidential terms,” added Schmidt. “For there to be a season of American recovery, and we see every day his incapacity to lead that and in shortly less than six months the American people are going to have to decide in the most important election this country’s had since 1864, whether the United States will go into a steep descent or decline, or we can possibly begin to recover from the Trumpian disaster that the country faces.”
Wilson concurred.
“The major factor here is Donald Trump, as my friend Steve just said, was a reality TV star who sold a brand of competence and leadership that never existed,” said Wilson. “It was only created in a teleprompter by a writer for a reality show. And we have seen he is overwhelmed. He is unable to process this mentally. He is a weak man. He is a man driven by his ego and his finality and not be a desire for the country.”
Wilson continued: “The difference between every other president — and you know what, we can love or hate and we can agree or disagree on their policies — but every other president, whether it was Bill Clinton or Richard Nixon or JFK or LBJ, they entered that Oval Office having taken an oath to serve this country and there is a — there was always a magic about becoming the president of the United States and they honored the history of the office, they honored the solemn responsibility … those men all, at a fundamental level, were there to serve the people of this country, and Donald Trump is in the White House to serve himself.”
“We are in a crisis without a president who can manage to lead this country effectively,” he added. “Donald Trump’s reaction is the kind of thing that — the way a weak man reacts to a strong crisis.”
Opinion
Coronavirus outbreak
Donald Trump's four-step plan to reopen the US economy – and why it will be lethal
Robert Reich - the guardian
Sun 3 May 2020 01.00 EDT
The president and his allies are hiding the facts and pretending ‘freedom’ conquers all. As a result, more Americans will die
Donald Trump is getting nervous. Internal polls show him losing in November unless the economy comes roaring back.
But much of the economy remains closed because of the pandemic. The number of infections and deaths continue to climb.
So what is Trump’s re-election strategy? Reopen the economy anyway, despite the risks.
Step 1
Remove income support, so people have no choice but to return to work.
Trump’s labor department has decided that furloughed employees “must accept” an employer’s offer to return to work and therefore forfeit unemployment benefits, regardless of Covid-19.
Trump’s ally, Iowa’s Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, says employees cannot refuse to return to work for fear of contracting the disease. “That’s a voluntary quit,” making someone ineligible for benefits.
GOP officials in Oklahoma are even threatening to withhold the $600 a week of extra unemployment benefits Congress has provided workers, if an employer wants to hire them. Safety is irrelevant.
“If the employer will contact us … we will cut off their benefits,” says Teresa Thomas Keller of the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission.
Forcing people to choose between getting Covid-19 or losing their livelihood is inhumane. It is also nonsensical. Public health still depends on as many workers as possible staying home. That’s a big reason why Congress provided the extra benefits.
Step 2
Hide the facts.
No one knows how many Americans are infected because the Trump administration continues to drag its heels on testing. To date only 6.5m tests have been completed in a population of more than 200 million adults.
Florida, one of the first states to reopen, has stopped releasing medical examiners’ statistics on the number of Covid-19 victims because the figures are higher than the state’s official count.
But it’s impossible to fight the virus without adequate data. Dr Anthony Fauci, the administration’s leading infectious disease expert, warns that reopening poses “a really significant risk” without more testing.
Not surprisingly, the White House has blocked Fauci from testifying before the House.
Step 3
Pretend it’s about “freedom”.
Weeks ago, Trump called on citizens to “LIBERATE” states like Michigan, whose Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, imposed strict stay-at-home rules.
Michigan has the third-highest number of Covid-19 deaths in America, although it is 10th in population. When on Thursday Whitmer extended the rules to 28 May, gun-toting protesters rushed the state house chanting: “Lock her up!”
Rather than condemn their behavior, Trump suggested Whitmer “make a deal” with them.
“The Governor of Michigan should give a little, and put out the fire,” he tweeted. “These are very good people, but they are angry. They want their lives back again, safely!”
Meanwhile, the attorney general, William Barr, has directed the justice department to take legal action against any state or local authorities imposing lockdown measures that “could be violating the constitutional rights and civil liberties of individual citizens”.
Making this about “freedom” is absurd. Freedom is meaningless for people who have no choice but to accept a job that risks their health.
Step 4
Shield businesses against lawsuits for spreading the infection.
Trump is pushing to give businesses that reopen a “liability shield” against legal action by workers or customers who get infected by the virus.
This week, he announced he would use the Defense Production Act to force meat-processing plants to remain open, despite high rates of Covid-19 infections and deaths among meatpackers.
“We’re going to sign an executive order today, I believe, and that’ll solve any liability problems,” Trump said.
The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, insists that proposed legislation giving state and local governments funding they desperately needs to include legal immunity for corporations that cause workers or consumers to become infected.
“We have a red line on liability,” McConnell said. “It won’t pass the Senate without it.”
But how can the economy safely reopen if companies don’t have an incentive to keep people safe? Promises to provide protective gear and other safeguards are worthless absent the threat of damages if workers or customers become infected.
The truth
The biggest obstacle to reopening the economy is the pandemic itself.
Any rush to reopen without adequate testing and tracing – far more than now under way – will cause a resurgence of the disease and another and longer economic crisis.
Maybe Trump is betting that any resurgence will occur after the election, when the economy appears to be on the road to recovery.
The first responsibility of a president is to keep the public safe. But Donald Trump couldn’t care less. He was slow to respond to the threat, then he lied about it, then made it hard for states – especially those with Democratic governors – to get the equipment they need.
Now he’s trying to force the economy to reopen in order to boost his electoral chances this November, and he’s selling out Americans’ health to seal the deal. This is beyond contemptible.
Donald Trump is getting nervous. Internal polls show him losing in November unless the economy comes roaring back.
But much of the economy remains closed because of the pandemic. The number of infections and deaths continue to climb.
So what is Trump’s re-election strategy? Reopen the economy anyway, despite the risks.
Step 1
Remove income support, so people have no choice but to return to work.
Trump’s labor department has decided that furloughed employees “must accept” an employer’s offer to return to work and therefore forfeit unemployment benefits, regardless of Covid-19.
Trump’s ally, Iowa’s Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, says employees cannot refuse to return to work for fear of contracting the disease. “That’s a voluntary quit,” making someone ineligible for benefits.
GOP officials in Oklahoma are even threatening to withhold the $600 a week of extra unemployment benefits Congress has provided workers, if an employer wants to hire them. Safety is irrelevant.
“If the employer will contact us … we will cut off their benefits,” says Teresa Thomas Keller of the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission.
Forcing people to choose between getting Covid-19 or losing their livelihood is inhumane. It is also nonsensical. Public health still depends on as many workers as possible staying home. That’s a big reason why Congress provided the extra benefits.
Step 2
Hide the facts.
No one knows how many Americans are infected because the Trump administration continues to drag its heels on testing. To date only 6.5m tests have been completed in a population of more than 200 million adults.
Florida, one of the first states to reopen, has stopped releasing medical examiners’ statistics on the number of Covid-19 victims because the figures are higher than the state’s official count.
But it’s impossible to fight the virus without adequate data. Dr Anthony Fauci, the administration’s leading infectious disease expert, warns that reopening poses “a really significant risk” without more testing.
Not surprisingly, the White House has blocked Fauci from testifying before the House.
Step 3
Pretend it’s about “freedom”.
Weeks ago, Trump called on citizens to “LIBERATE” states like Michigan, whose Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, imposed strict stay-at-home rules.
Michigan has the third-highest number of Covid-19 deaths in America, although it is 10th in population. When on Thursday Whitmer extended the rules to 28 May, gun-toting protesters rushed the state house chanting: “Lock her up!”
Rather than condemn their behavior, Trump suggested Whitmer “make a deal” with them.
“The Governor of Michigan should give a little, and put out the fire,” he tweeted. “These are very good people, but they are angry. They want their lives back again, safely!”
Meanwhile, the attorney general, William Barr, has directed the justice department to take legal action against any state or local authorities imposing lockdown measures that “could be violating the constitutional rights and civil liberties of individual citizens”.
Making this about “freedom” is absurd. Freedom is meaningless for people who have no choice but to accept a job that risks their health.
Step 4
Shield businesses against lawsuits for spreading the infection.
Trump is pushing to give businesses that reopen a “liability shield” against legal action by workers or customers who get infected by the virus.
This week, he announced he would use the Defense Production Act to force meat-processing plants to remain open, despite high rates of Covid-19 infections and deaths among meatpackers.
“We’re going to sign an executive order today, I believe, and that’ll solve any liability problems,” Trump said.
The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, insists that proposed legislation giving state and local governments funding they desperately needs to include legal immunity for corporations that cause workers or consumers to become infected.
“We have a red line on liability,” McConnell said. “It won’t pass the Senate without it.”
But how can the economy safely reopen if companies don’t have an incentive to keep people safe? Promises to provide protective gear and other safeguards are worthless absent the threat of damages if workers or customers become infected.
The truth
The biggest obstacle to reopening the economy is the pandemic itself.
Any rush to reopen without adequate testing and tracing – far more than now under way – will cause a resurgence of the disease and another and longer economic crisis.
Maybe Trump is betting that any resurgence will occur after the election, when the economy appears to be on the road to recovery.
The first responsibility of a president is to keep the public safe. But Donald Trump couldn’t care less. He was slow to respond to the threat, then he lied about it, then made it hard for states – especially those with Democratic governors – to get the equipment they need.
Now he’s trying to force the economy to reopen in order to boost his electoral chances this November, and he’s selling out Americans’ health to seal the deal. This is beyond contemptible.
Newly revealed financial records show Trump owes millions to state-owned bank in China: report
Trump claims China would "own" the U.S. if Biden wins, but he's on the hook for millions — and the due date is 2022
IGOR DERYSH - salon
APRIL 24, 2020 3:33PM (UTC)
President Donald Trump owes tens of millions to a state-owned Chinese bank, and the loan is due in what would be the middle of his second term should he win re-election, according to financial records obtained by Politico.
Trump has claimed that "China will own the United States" if former Vice President Joe Biden wins the election, but the report reveals that the president will be on the hook for a large debt to the Bank of China in 2022.
That is the same bank that Trump linked to a $1.5 billion investment plan announced by Biden's son Hunter in 2013, days after both Bidens traveled to China.
"Why did the Chinese government's bank want to do business with Hunter Biden while his dad was Vice President," the Trump campaign asked on Twitter earlier this month. His campaign also pushed the issue in a campaign ad.
Trump's debt stems from his 30% ownership stake in a 43-story New York skyscraper at 1290 Avenue of the Americas, the documents show. Trump has bragged that he "got" the building from China in a "war."
"I beat China all the time," he said when he announced his presidential campaign in 2015. "I own a big chunk of the Bank of America building [in San Francisco] and 1290 Avenue of the Americas that I got from China in a war. Very valuable. I love China."
But The New York Times reported in 2016 that Trump only owned 30% of both buildings. And Trump's financial ties to the country do not end with his ownership stake in the building. Chinese state-owned companies are developing two luxury Trump buildings in Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates. The president and his daughter, Ivanka, have also been granted numerous trademarks by the Chinese government since he took office. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has sought Chinese investment in at least one real estate deal.
"We actually explored all these foreign enterprises and how once he became president he'd be seen differently by foreign leaders who would have leverage over this president, because he had investments in their countries and/or financial dealings with business enterprises and financial institutions and investors in their countries," Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., who sits on the House Oversight Committee, told Politico. "He is highly conflicted with respect to China."
Though Trump has denied any conflicts of interest, he has also refused to divest from his company. While Trump is considered a passive investor in the New York skyscraper, he is on the hook for tens of millions after the Vornado Realty Trust, the building's primary owner, refinanced the building for $950 million in 2012. The debt included a $211 million loan from the Bank of China, the first loan of its kind in the U.S., according to The Wall Street Journal. Vornado's federal filings show that it and Trump are still in debt to the bank, and the loan is due in 2022.
Government watchdogs said the report showed that Trump remains deeply conflicted because of his continued ownership of his company.
"While Trump is talking about the former vice president's son financial dealings, in Trump's case, it is the president himself who has a company he still owns and profits from that has financial relationships with the countries that he is supposed to be negotiating with on behalf of the American people," Robert Maguire of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told Politico. "There are definitely legitimate questions that are raised by Hunter Biden's actions. They are not even in the same ballpark as the conflict of interest questions raised by President Trump's continued relationship with his own company."
The Trump campaign told the outlet that Trump's debt to China is completely different from Hunter Biden's dealings.
"There is an obvious difference between Donald Trump working as a successful businessman as a private citizen and Hunter Biden using his name to cash in with a $1.5 billion investment from a state-controlled Chinese bank while his father was vice president," campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh said.
George Mesires, a lawyer for Hunter Biden, rejected the allegation. He told the outlet that Biden's business partners received $4.2 million from a group of investors in China in a private equity deal — not the $1.5 billion the investment firm said was its goal in the deal.
Mesires added that Biden did not conduct any business when he visited China with his father but did meet with a Chinese businessman later tapped to lead the investment venture. Biden did not participate in the deal until he acquired a 10% financial stake for $420,000. Biden announced he was stepping down from the investment firm last year.
Colin Kahl, a former aide to President Barack Obama and Joe Biden, said the newly revealed records show that Trump's attacks on Biden are hypocritical.
"The next time Trump breathes one word about Biden and China, remember this," he tweeted. "Trump is up to his eyeballs in debt to the Bank of China...and the loan is due soon."
Trump has claimed that "China will own the United States" if former Vice President Joe Biden wins the election, but the report reveals that the president will be on the hook for a large debt to the Bank of China in 2022.
That is the same bank that Trump linked to a $1.5 billion investment plan announced by Biden's son Hunter in 2013, days after both Bidens traveled to China.
"Why did the Chinese government's bank want to do business with Hunter Biden while his dad was Vice President," the Trump campaign asked on Twitter earlier this month. His campaign also pushed the issue in a campaign ad.
Trump's debt stems from his 30% ownership stake in a 43-story New York skyscraper at 1290 Avenue of the Americas, the documents show. Trump has bragged that he "got" the building from China in a "war."
"I beat China all the time," he said when he announced his presidential campaign in 2015. "I own a big chunk of the Bank of America building [in San Francisco] and 1290 Avenue of the Americas that I got from China in a war. Very valuable. I love China."
But The New York Times reported in 2016 that Trump only owned 30% of both buildings. And Trump's financial ties to the country do not end with his ownership stake in the building. Chinese state-owned companies are developing two luxury Trump buildings in Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates. The president and his daughter, Ivanka, have also been granted numerous trademarks by the Chinese government since he took office. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has sought Chinese investment in at least one real estate deal.
"We actually explored all these foreign enterprises and how once he became president he'd be seen differently by foreign leaders who would have leverage over this president, because he had investments in their countries and/or financial dealings with business enterprises and financial institutions and investors in their countries," Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., who sits on the House Oversight Committee, told Politico. "He is highly conflicted with respect to China."
Though Trump has denied any conflicts of interest, he has also refused to divest from his company. While Trump is considered a passive investor in the New York skyscraper, he is on the hook for tens of millions after the Vornado Realty Trust, the building's primary owner, refinanced the building for $950 million in 2012. The debt included a $211 million loan from the Bank of China, the first loan of its kind in the U.S., according to The Wall Street Journal. Vornado's federal filings show that it and Trump are still in debt to the bank, and the loan is due in 2022.
Government watchdogs said the report showed that Trump remains deeply conflicted because of his continued ownership of his company.
"While Trump is talking about the former vice president's son financial dealings, in Trump's case, it is the president himself who has a company he still owns and profits from that has financial relationships with the countries that he is supposed to be negotiating with on behalf of the American people," Robert Maguire of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told Politico. "There are definitely legitimate questions that are raised by Hunter Biden's actions. They are not even in the same ballpark as the conflict of interest questions raised by President Trump's continued relationship with his own company."
The Trump campaign told the outlet that Trump's debt to China is completely different from Hunter Biden's dealings.
"There is an obvious difference between Donald Trump working as a successful businessman as a private citizen and Hunter Biden using his name to cash in with a $1.5 billion investment from a state-controlled Chinese bank while his father was vice president," campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh said.
George Mesires, a lawyer for Hunter Biden, rejected the allegation. He told the outlet that Biden's business partners received $4.2 million from a group of investors in China in a private equity deal — not the $1.5 billion the investment firm said was its goal in the deal.
Mesires added that Biden did not conduct any business when he visited China with his father but did meet with a Chinese businessman later tapped to lead the investment venture. Biden did not participate in the deal until he acquired a 10% financial stake for $420,000. Biden announced he was stepping down from the investment firm last year.
Colin Kahl, a former aide to President Barack Obama and Joe Biden, said the newly revealed records show that Trump's attacks on Biden are hypocritical.
"The next time Trump breathes one word about Biden and China, remember this," he tweeted. "Trump is up to his eyeballs in debt to the Bank of China...and the loan is due soon."
Why is Trump undermining his own allies’ efforts to blame China for the coronavirus?
Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly
April 20, 2020
Donald Trump initially responded to the coronavirus outbreak by engaging in denial. But with the pandemic resulting in over 30,000 deaths in the United States, denial became untenable. Rather than step up to take responsibility to stop the spread of the virus, Trump moved on to allocate blame. In addition to the previous administration, one of his favorite targets these days is Democratic governors.
The Republican establishment, however, is intent on blaming another villain: China.
The strategy could not be clearer: From the Republican lawmakers blanketing Fox News to new ads from President Trump’s super PAC to the biting criticism on Donald Trump Jr.’s Twitter feed, the G.O.P. is attempting to divert attention from the administration’s heavily criticized response to the coronavirus by pinning the blame on China.
With the death toll from the pandemic already surpassing 34,000 Americans and unemployment soaring to levels not seen since the Great Depression, Republicans increasingly believe that elevating China as an archenemy culpable for the spread of the virus, and harnessing America’s growing animosity toward Beijing, may be the best way to salvage a difficult election.
As the authors of that New York Times piece point out, the attempt to blame China is running into a bit of a problem. Trump keeps sending mixed messages about the identified villian.
Even as the president tries to rebut criticism of his slow response to the outbreak by highlighting his January travel restrictions on China, he has repeatedly called Mr. Xi a friend and said “we are dealing in good faith” with the repressive government. He also dropped his periodic references to the disease as “the China virus” after a telephone call with Mr. Xi.
As the Republican establishment gears up to blame China and use that against Biden in the 2020 election, we’re seeing some powerful push-back that demonstrates the problem.
The suggestion has been that Trump’s hesitancy to join the Republican bandwagon is because he is intent on finalizing a trade agreement with China and recognizes that we are dependent on them for medical supplies.
I would propose that there is something else going on. What we know about Donald Trump is that he is always driven by self-interest. His conflicted approach to China is more likely to be based on his business interests.
You might remember that only three months after Trump was inaugurated, his daughter Ivanka’s company was awarded several Chinese trademarks on the same day that the family dined with President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago. Over the course of May and June 2018, Ivanka procured five more trademarks while the president was lifting sanctions against the Chinese telecommunications company ZTE. The pattern continued into the fall of 2018.
The Chinese government granted 18 trademarks to companies linked to President Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka Trump over the last two months, Chinese public records show, raising concerns about conflicts of interest in the White House.
In October, China’s Trademark Office granted provisional approval for 16 trademarks to Ivanka Trump Marks LLC, bringing to 34 the total number of marks China has greenlighted this year, according to the office’s online database.
Perhaps the timing of all of that is merely a coincidence—just as it might be a coincidence that Trump stopped referring to the “Chinese virus” after a phone call with President Xi Jinping. But I doubt it.
There is also this interesting little tidbit from the Steele dossier that has consistently been ignored.
In other words, Putin might not be the only one who has “the goods” on Trump.
The Republican establishment, however, is intent on blaming another villain: China.
The strategy could not be clearer: From the Republican lawmakers blanketing Fox News to new ads from President Trump’s super PAC to the biting criticism on Donald Trump Jr.’s Twitter feed, the G.O.P. is attempting to divert attention from the administration’s heavily criticized response to the coronavirus by pinning the blame on China.
With the death toll from the pandemic already surpassing 34,000 Americans and unemployment soaring to levels not seen since the Great Depression, Republicans increasingly believe that elevating China as an archenemy culpable for the spread of the virus, and harnessing America’s growing animosity toward Beijing, may be the best way to salvage a difficult election.
As the authors of that New York Times piece point out, the attempt to blame China is running into a bit of a problem. Trump keeps sending mixed messages about the identified villian.
Even as the president tries to rebut criticism of his slow response to the outbreak by highlighting his January travel restrictions on China, he has repeatedly called Mr. Xi a friend and said “we are dealing in good faith” with the repressive government. He also dropped his periodic references to the disease as “the China virus” after a telephone call with Mr. Xi.
As the Republican establishment gears up to blame China and use that against Biden in the 2020 election, we’re seeing some powerful push-back that demonstrates the problem.
The suggestion has been that Trump’s hesitancy to join the Republican bandwagon is because he is intent on finalizing a trade agreement with China and recognizes that we are dependent on them for medical supplies.
I would propose that there is something else going on. What we know about Donald Trump is that he is always driven by self-interest. His conflicted approach to China is more likely to be based on his business interests.
You might remember that only three months after Trump was inaugurated, his daughter Ivanka’s company was awarded several Chinese trademarks on the same day that the family dined with President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago. Over the course of May and June 2018, Ivanka procured five more trademarks while the president was lifting sanctions against the Chinese telecommunications company ZTE. The pattern continued into the fall of 2018.
The Chinese government granted 18 trademarks to companies linked to President Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka Trump over the last two months, Chinese public records show, raising concerns about conflicts of interest in the White House.
In October, China’s Trademark Office granted provisional approval for 16 trademarks to Ivanka Trump Marks LLC, bringing to 34 the total number of marks China has greenlighted this year, according to the office’s online database.
Perhaps the timing of all of that is merely a coincidence—just as it might be a coincidence that Trump stopped referring to the “Chinese virus” after a phone call with President Xi Jinping. But I doubt it.
There is also this interesting little tidbit from the Steele dossier that has consistently been ignored.
In other words, Putin might not be the only one who has “the goods” on Trump.
‘Survival of the filthiest’: Conservative explains how Trump aides flourish and others are destroyed by his ‘culture of corruption’
April 13, 2020
By Tom Boggioni - raw story
In a brutally blunt column for the Daily Beast, conservative Matt Lewis accuses close aides and appointees of the president of being willing participants in what he calls “trickle-down Trumpism” that rewards the sycophants and punishes truth-tellers.
According to longtime Republican Lewis who has become one of the president’s most virulent critics, the highly controversial and unceremonious firing of Navy Captain Brett Crozier is a perfect example of what can happen if the president feels slighted and a Trump appointee seeks to find favor with his boss.
“Consider the case of the acting Navy Secretary who reassigned the captain of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, and referred to him as ‘stupid’ during a speech to the ship’s crew,” he wrote. ” Just as the mob boss doesn’t have to explicitly order a hit (‘nice house you got there, it’d be a shame if something happened to it…’), Trump didn’t have to ask, Who shall rid me of this troublesome captain?’ for Navy brass to know exactly how to treat Captain Crozier, whose letter pleading for help with a coronavirus outbreak on his ship risked embarrassing them—and the president. Indeed, one danger of not acting as quickly as Trump would want is that failing to do so might invite his intervention.”
The conservative then pointed out how the president treated a Navy Seal accused of murder by his fellow soldiers.
“Consider the case of Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, who was accused of war crimes. He was granted clemency by Trump after his comrades risked their careers to report his alleged atrocities,” Lewis recalled. “And what about the Navy Secretary who wanted to remove Gallagher’s Trident, thus preserving some semblance of proper discipline and adherence to a normal chain-of-command? He was removed. A victim of the ultimate cancel culture. The nail that sticks up gets hammered down. That’s how we are being trained to conform to Trumpism.”
Using that as a springboard, Lewis explained, “Trickle-down Trumpism doesn’t just prove Hayek’s maxim that in an authoritarian regime, the ‘worst get on top.’ It’s not survival of the fittest, it’s survival of the filthiest. It also proves the notion that ‘no good deed goes unpunished.'”
“Trump values attributes like toughness, loyalty (to him), and (the perception of) winning. He has no interest in things like the rule of law, fighting corruption, or prudence. And he hates it when other people grab the spotlight, blow the whistle (on behavior that reflects poorly on him), or otherwise raise topics that might be inconvenient,” he elaborated. “Trump’s style and priorities are contagious—even absent direct contact. It’s a culture of corruption that is infecting even our most revered institutions.”
Tying it to the current coronavirus pandemic that has killed over 22,000 Americans — and reports that Dr. Anthony Fauci is now being smeared by Trump acolytes — Lewis warned, “Ironically, this is coming to a head at the very moment when the tragic consequences of a culture that punishes truth-tellers have never been more apparent and terrifying.”
“Trump has created a culture that figuratively murders the messenger and rewards the executioner,” he concluded. ” The moral of the story is obvious. And if Trump loses re-election in 2020, it might end up being the cautionary tale that comes to define his presidency.”
You can read more here (subscription required).
According to longtime Republican Lewis who has become one of the president’s most virulent critics, the highly controversial and unceremonious firing of Navy Captain Brett Crozier is a perfect example of what can happen if the president feels slighted and a Trump appointee seeks to find favor with his boss.
“Consider the case of the acting Navy Secretary who reassigned the captain of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, and referred to him as ‘stupid’ during a speech to the ship’s crew,” he wrote. ” Just as the mob boss doesn’t have to explicitly order a hit (‘nice house you got there, it’d be a shame if something happened to it…’), Trump didn’t have to ask, Who shall rid me of this troublesome captain?’ for Navy brass to know exactly how to treat Captain Crozier, whose letter pleading for help with a coronavirus outbreak on his ship risked embarrassing them—and the president. Indeed, one danger of not acting as quickly as Trump would want is that failing to do so might invite his intervention.”
The conservative then pointed out how the president treated a Navy Seal accused of murder by his fellow soldiers.
“Consider the case of Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, who was accused of war crimes. He was granted clemency by Trump after his comrades risked their careers to report his alleged atrocities,” Lewis recalled. “And what about the Navy Secretary who wanted to remove Gallagher’s Trident, thus preserving some semblance of proper discipline and adherence to a normal chain-of-command? He was removed. A victim of the ultimate cancel culture. The nail that sticks up gets hammered down. That’s how we are being trained to conform to Trumpism.”
Using that as a springboard, Lewis explained, “Trickle-down Trumpism doesn’t just prove Hayek’s maxim that in an authoritarian regime, the ‘worst get on top.’ It’s not survival of the fittest, it’s survival of the filthiest. It also proves the notion that ‘no good deed goes unpunished.'”
“Trump values attributes like toughness, loyalty (to him), and (the perception of) winning. He has no interest in things like the rule of law, fighting corruption, or prudence. And he hates it when other people grab the spotlight, blow the whistle (on behavior that reflects poorly on him), or otherwise raise topics that might be inconvenient,” he elaborated. “Trump’s style and priorities are contagious—even absent direct contact. It’s a culture of corruption that is infecting even our most revered institutions.”
Tying it to the current coronavirus pandemic that has killed over 22,000 Americans — and reports that Dr. Anthony Fauci is now being smeared by Trump acolytes — Lewis warned, “Ironically, this is coming to a head at the very moment when the tragic consequences of a culture that punishes truth-tellers have never been more apparent and terrifying.”
“Trump has created a culture that figuratively murders the messenger and rewards the executioner,” he concluded. ” The moral of the story is obvious. And if Trump loses re-election in 2020, it might end up being the cautionary tale that comes to define his presidency.”
You can read more here (subscription required).
Stupidity Isn't Trump's Worst Trait
He is stupid, but his narcissism and utter lack of empathy are far more dangerous.
By Steve M. crooks & liars
4/11/20 7:27am
The New Yorker interview with Fran Lebowitz includes this exchange:
Has this crisis shown us anything about Donald Trump that we didn’t know before?
No. Every single thing that could be wrong with a human being is wrong with him. But the single most dangerous thing about Donald Trump is how unbelievably stupid he is. It’s not the most dangerous thing in someone who has no responsibilities, but in a President it’s the most dangerous thing.
I agree that "every single thing that could be wrong with a human being is wrong with" Trump. But I don't believe stupidity is his most dangerous trait now that he's president.
We've had stupid presidents before. Ronald Reagan was stupid. So was George W. Bush. They were awful -- though not as awful as Trump -- but they weren't awful because they were stupid.
The Iraq War, for instance, wasn't the work of stupid people in Bush's administration. It was the work of smart zealots, people like Dick Cheney, who is a loathsome human being, but is not at all stupid. In the Reagan administration, it was zealotry on the part of Reagan and his allies that led to the massive tax cuts for the rich that helped fuel the last four decades of increasing inequality.
Trump is in thrall to zealots, but it's not because he's stupid -- it's because he's a bully. He wasn't always a Republican or a right-winger, but in the past decade or so he recognized that the GOP is the party that pounds on the less favored on behalf of the favored. Trump loves that. The GOP demonizes non-whites, immigrants, gays, women, liberals, Democrats, educated people, people who live in cities. What's truly awful about Trump is that he wallows in this demonization, and spends every day finding newer and more vicious way of accelerating the process of making heartland white Americans hate everyone who's not like them.
Beyond that, Trump believes that a president's job is being a bully. He wants adoration. He wants reelection. And he's so incapable of imagining that the job of president involves some higher ideal of service that, in the midst of a deadly pandemic, his only concerns are attacking a succession of scapegoats and using needed medical and protective equipment as perks offered to politicians who kiss his ass and denied to those who don't.
Trump doesn't do this because he's stupid. Trump does this because he's an evil bastard with not a shred of empathy. That's his worst trait.
Oh, and he's colossally stupid, too.
Has this crisis shown us anything about Donald Trump that we didn’t know before?
No. Every single thing that could be wrong with a human being is wrong with him. But the single most dangerous thing about Donald Trump is how unbelievably stupid he is. It’s not the most dangerous thing in someone who has no responsibilities, but in a President it’s the most dangerous thing.
I agree that "every single thing that could be wrong with a human being is wrong with" Trump. But I don't believe stupidity is his most dangerous trait now that he's president.
We've had stupid presidents before. Ronald Reagan was stupid. So was George W. Bush. They were awful -- though not as awful as Trump -- but they weren't awful because they were stupid.
The Iraq War, for instance, wasn't the work of stupid people in Bush's administration. It was the work of smart zealots, people like Dick Cheney, who is a loathsome human being, but is not at all stupid. In the Reagan administration, it was zealotry on the part of Reagan and his allies that led to the massive tax cuts for the rich that helped fuel the last four decades of increasing inequality.
Trump is in thrall to zealots, but it's not because he's stupid -- it's because he's a bully. He wasn't always a Republican or a right-winger, but in the past decade or so he recognized that the GOP is the party that pounds on the less favored on behalf of the favored. Trump loves that. The GOP demonizes non-whites, immigrants, gays, women, liberals, Democrats, educated people, people who live in cities. What's truly awful about Trump is that he wallows in this demonization, and spends every day finding newer and more vicious way of accelerating the process of making heartland white Americans hate everyone who's not like them.
Beyond that, Trump believes that a president's job is being a bully. He wants adoration. He wants reelection. And he's so incapable of imagining that the job of president involves some higher ideal of service that, in the midst of a deadly pandemic, his only concerns are attacking a succession of scapegoats and using needed medical and protective equipment as perks offered to politicians who kiss his ass and denied to those who don't.
Trump doesn't do this because he's stupid. Trump does this because he's an evil bastard with not a shred of empathy. That's his worst trait.
Oh, and he's colossally stupid, too.
informing the stupid is a waste of time!!!
Trump failed to heed early COVID-19 warnings due to his ‘Deep State’ skepticism and White House chaos: NYT
April 11, 2020
By Matthew Chapman - raw story
On Saturday, The New York Times reported that President Donald Trump blocked out multiple early warnings of the coronavirus pandemic — in part because he believed it was part of a “Deep State” plot to ruin his presidency.
“A week after the first coronavirus case had been identified in the United States, and six long weeks before President Trump finally took aggressive action to confront the danger the nation was facing — a pandemic that is now forecast to take tens of thousands of American lives — Dr. Mecher was urging the upper ranks of the nation’s public health bureaucracy to wake up and prepare for the possibility of far more drastic action,” wrote Eric Lipton, David E. Sanger, Maggie Haberman, Michael D. Shear, Mark Mazzetti, and Julian E. Barnes.
“His was hardly a lone voice. Throughout January, as Mr. Trump repeatedly played down the seriousness of the virus and focused on other issues, an array of figures inside his government — from top White House advisers to experts deep in the cabinet departments and intelligence agencies — identified the threat, sounded alarms and made clear the need for aggressive action,” the report continued, noting that the officials trying to warn Trump included HHS Secretary Alex Azar and his disaster response chief Dr. Robert Kadlec.
“The president, though, was slow to absorb the scale of the risk and to act accordingly, focusing instead on controlling the message, protecting gains in the economy and batting away warnings from senior officials,” said the report. “Even after Mr. Trump took his first concrete action at the end of January — limiting travel from China — public health often had to compete with economic and political considerations in internal debates, slowing the path toward belated decisions to seek more money from Congress, obtain necessary supplies, address shortfalls in testing and ultimately move to keep much of the nation at home.”
“Unfolding as it did in the wake of his impeachment by the House and in the midst of his Senate trial, Mr. Trump’s response was colored by his suspicion of and disdain for what he viewed as the “Deep State” — the very people in his government whose expertise and long experience might have guided him more quickly toward steps that would slow the virus, and likely save lives,” said the report.
Trump was also slow to react because he was trying to hammer out a trade agreement with China, and was worried decisive action against the virus could involve actions that would antagonize Beijing.
You can read more here.
“A week after the first coronavirus case had been identified in the United States, and six long weeks before President Trump finally took aggressive action to confront the danger the nation was facing — a pandemic that is now forecast to take tens of thousands of American lives — Dr. Mecher was urging the upper ranks of the nation’s public health bureaucracy to wake up and prepare for the possibility of far more drastic action,” wrote Eric Lipton, David E. Sanger, Maggie Haberman, Michael D. Shear, Mark Mazzetti, and Julian E. Barnes.
“His was hardly a lone voice. Throughout January, as Mr. Trump repeatedly played down the seriousness of the virus and focused on other issues, an array of figures inside his government — from top White House advisers to experts deep in the cabinet departments and intelligence agencies — identified the threat, sounded alarms and made clear the need for aggressive action,” the report continued, noting that the officials trying to warn Trump included HHS Secretary Alex Azar and his disaster response chief Dr. Robert Kadlec.
“The president, though, was slow to absorb the scale of the risk and to act accordingly, focusing instead on controlling the message, protecting gains in the economy and batting away warnings from senior officials,” said the report. “Even after Mr. Trump took his first concrete action at the end of January — limiting travel from China — public health often had to compete with economic and political considerations in internal debates, slowing the path toward belated decisions to seek more money from Congress, obtain necessary supplies, address shortfalls in testing and ultimately move to keep much of the nation at home.”
“Unfolding as it did in the wake of his impeachment by the House and in the midst of his Senate trial, Mr. Trump’s response was colored by his suspicion of and disdain for what he viewed as the “Deep State” — the very people in his government whose expertise and long experience might have guided him more quickly toward steps that would slow the virus, and likely save lives,” said the report.
Trump was also slow to react because he was trying to hammer out a trade agreement with China, and was worried decisive action against the virus could involve actions that would antagonize Beijing.
You can read more here.
Trump isn’t a doctor, but he plays one on TV
Sheneman - nj.com - raw story
2020/4/9 09:13 (EDT)
There are few people less qualified to give medical advice than Donald Trump. He eats fast food because someone told him it has less germs and he doesn’t exercise because he thinks you only have a certain amount of energy available in your lifetime. He is a doofus.
Despite his complete and utter lack of medical knowledge, the president insists on giving medical advice and recommending unproven drugs with dangerous side effects to treat COVID-19. Do not take medical advice from a man who thinks a filet 'o fish is a vegetable.
The drugs in question are chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, which are used to treat malaria, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. The drug may in fact have some beneficial effect on COVID patients, there is scant and conflicting evidence. The drug is just now being tested in wide-scale clinical trials and honestly, I hope it works. Our best hope to return to some semblance of normalcy before a vaccine is developed is to find an existing anti-viral that has some efficacy against the novel coronavirus. Maybe that is chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine, but we have no idea.
That’s what makes Trump’s insistence on touting the unproven drug as a magic bullet so irresponsible. Just days after he mentioned it at his daily rally/coronavirus briefing, a couple in Arizona, scared out of their wits over COVID-19, drank an industrial version of chloroquine used to clean koi ponds and later died. That would never have happened if the president wasn’t on TV pretending he knows what the hell he’s talking about.
One thing we do know for certain about the president’s magic drug is that it can have very serious side effects like causing arrhythmia, an irregular heartbeat, which can drop you like a hot rock.
Do not take advice from Donald Trump about your business, your marriage and especially your health.
Despite his complete and utter lack of medical knowledge, the president insists on giving medical advice and recommending unproven drugs with dangerous side effects to treat COVID-19. Do not take medical advice from a man who thinks a filet 'o fish is a vegetable.
The drugs in question are chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, which are used to treat malaria, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. The drug may in fact have some beneficial effect on COVID patients, there is scant and conflicting evidence. The drug is just now being tested in wide-scale clinical trials and honestly, I hope it works. Our best hope to return to some semblance of normalcy before a vaccine is developed is to find an existing anti-viral that has some efficacy against the novel coronavirus. Maybe that is chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine, but we have no idea.
That’s what makes Trump’s insistence on touting the unproven drug as a magic bullet so irresponsible. Just days after he mentioned it at his daily rally/coronavirus briefing, a couple in Arizona, scared out of their wits over COVID-19, drank an industrial version of chloroquine used to clean koi ponds and later died. That would never have happened if the president wasn’t on TV pretending he knows what the hell he’s talking about.
One thing we do know for certain about the president’s magic drug is that it can have very serious side effects like causing arrhythmia, an irregular heartbeat, which can drop you like a hot rock.
Do not take advice from Donald Trump about your business, your marriage and especially your health.
Trump holds "financial interest" in pharmaceutical company that produces hydroxychloroquine: NYT
Trump and his allies have financial ties to companies that manufacture untested drug he’s touting for COVID-19
MATTHEW CHAPMAN - salon
APRIL 7, 2020 7:00AM (UTC)
President Donald Trump's fixation with hydroxychloroquine, a drug used to treat malaria and lupus, as a potential treatment for the novel coronavirus has left many medical experts, including members of his own administration, frustrated. The drug comes with severe side effects ranging from nausea and hair loss to blindness and cardiac arrest; the hoarding of the drug to test it in COVID-19 patients has resulted in autoimmune patients being denied it, and the evidence that it even helps COVID-19 patients in the first place is anecdotal at best.
But according to The New York Times, all of that may be secondary — because some people in the president's orbit stand to profit if hydroxychloroquine is approved to treat coronavirus.
The president himself, according to Peter Baker, Katie Rogers, David Enrich, and Maggie Haberman has a financial interest in Sanofi, the French pharmaceutical company that manufactures the drug under the brand Plaquenil.
"Some associates of Mr. Trump's have financial interests in the issue. Sanofi's largest shareholders include Fisher Asset Management, the mutual fund company run by Ken Fisher, a major donor to Republicans, including Mr. Trump," said the report. "Another investor in both Sanofi and Mylan, another pharmaceutical firm, is Invesco, the fund previously run by Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary. As of last year, Mr. Trump reported that his three family trusts each had investments in a Dodge & Cox mutual fund, whose largest holding was in Sanofi."
Fisher has not commented on the story. And Ross has issued a statement that he "was not aware that Invesco has any investments in companies producing" the drug, "nor do I have any involvement in the decision to explore this as a treatment."
You can read more here.
But according to The New York Times, all of that may be secondary — because some people in the president's orbit stand to profit if hydroxychloroquine is approved to treat coronavirus.
The president himself, according to Peter Baker, Katie Rogers, David Enrich, and Maggie Haberman has a financial interest in Sanofi, the French pharmaceutical company that manufactures the drug under the brand Plaquenil.
"Some associates of Mr. Trump's have financial interests in the issue. Sanofi's largest shareholders include Fisher Asset Management, the mutual fund company run by Ken Fisher, a major donor to Republicans, including Mr. Trump," said the report. "Another investor in both Sanofi and Mylan, another pharmaceutical firm, is Invesco, the fund previously run by Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary. As of last year, Mr. Trump reported that his three family trusts each had investments in a Dodge & Cox mutual fund, whose largest holding was in Sanofi."
Fisher has not commented on the story. And Ross has issued a statement that he "was not aware that Invesco has any investments in companies producing" the drug, "nor do I have any involvement in the decision to explore this as a treatment."
You can read more here.
Trump ‘personally’ pressured CDC, FDA, NIH to allow untested malaria drugs to be used to treat coronavirus: report
April 6, 2020
By David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement - raw story
President Donald Trump personally intervened in the medical approval process, calling top officials from three of the nation’s leading federal government medical agencies to pressure them to allow drugs untested for use in treating the novel coronavirus to be used for that purpose.
Top officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) received telephone calls from the President of the United States, who “personally pressed” them to make the malaria drugs, chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine available.
“Rarely, if ever, has a U.S. president lobbied regulators and health officials to focus their efforts on specific unproven drugs,” Reuters reveals in its exclusive report. “Shortly afterward, the federal government published highly unusual guidance informing doctors they had the option to prescribe the drugs, with key dosing information based on unattributed anecdotes rather than peer-reviewed science.”
His calls launched a “cascade of federal action.”
Trump’s focus came after a Fox News interview in mid-March of a a lawyer the conservative cable network said was associated with a small French study, who said “we have strong reason to believe that a preventative dose of hydroxychloroquine is going to prevent the virus from attaching to the body and just get rid of it completely.”
Two days later, that same attorney, appears on Fox News again, declaring, the president “has the authority to authorize the use of hydroxychloroquine against coronavirus immediately.”
Just one day later Trump began his campaign to promote the malaria drugs, despite only anecdotal evidence and that one small French study.
“On March 19, Trump vowed to make the drugs more widely available. ‘It’s shown very encouraging – very, very encouraging early results,’ he said at a press conference. ‘And we’re going to be able to make that drug available almost immediately. And that’s where the FDA has been so great. They – they’ve gone through the approval process; it’s been approved. And they did it – they took it down from many, many months to immediate.’
The drugs had not, in fact gone through the FDA’s “approval process” to treat coronavirus, nor had they been approved by the FDA to do so.
“Now, millions of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine pills are on their way to the public, donated by drugmakers, including Novartis’ Sandoz, Bayer and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. The FDA issued an emergency authorization on March 28 allowing them to be prescribed and distributed from the Strategic National Stockpile.”
RELATED: ‘He’s killing his own supporters’: Administration insider admits Trump’s coronavirus response is tragically lacking
RELATED: CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta pours cold water on Trump’s rush to use anti-malaria drug to treat COVID-19 patients - “This is an immunosuppressant drug — it might suppress the immune system. Why would you suppress the immune system? It might make sense if the immune system is overreacting"...
Top officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) received telephone calls from the President of the United States, who “personally pressed” them to make the malaria drugs, chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine available.
“Rarely, if ever, has a U.S. president lobbied regulators and health officials to focus their efforts on specific unproven drugs,” Reuters reveals in its exclusive report. “Shortly afterward, the federal government published highly unusual guidance informing doctors they had the option to prescribe the drugs, with key dosing information based on unattributed anecdotes rather than peer-reviewed science.”
His calls launched a “cascade of federal action.”
Trump’s focus came after a Fox News interview in mid-March of a a lawyer the conservative cable network said was associated with a small French study, who said “we have strong reason to believe that a preventative dose of hydroxychloroquine is going to prevent the virus from attaching to the body and just get rid of it completely.”
Two days later, that same attorney, appears on Fox News again, declaring, the president “has the authority to authorize the use of hydroxychloroquine against coronavirus immediately.”
Just one day later Trump began his campaign to promote the malaria drugs, despite only anecdotal evidence and that one small French study.
“On March 19, Trump vowed to make the drugs more widely available. ‘It’s shown very encouraging – very, very encouraging early results,’ he said at a press conference. ‘And we’re going to be able to make that drug available almost immediately. And that’s where the FDA has been so great. They – they’ve gone through the approval process; it’s been approved. And they did it – they took it down from many, many months to immediate.’
The drugs had not, in fact gone through the FDA’s “approval process” to treat coronavirus, nor had they been approved by the FDA to do so.
“Now, millions of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine pills are on their way to the public, donated by drugmakers, including Novartis’ Sandoz, Bayer and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. The FDA issued an emergency authorization on March 28 allowing them to be prescribed and distributed from the Strategic National Stockpile.”
RELATED: ‘He’s killing his own supporters’: Administration insider admits Trump’s coronavirus response is tragically lacking
RELATED: CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta pours cold water on Trump’s rush to use anti-malaria drug to treat COVID-19 patients - “This is an immunosuppressant drug — it might suppress the immune system. Why would you suppress the immune system? It might make sense if the immune system is overreacting"...
the fool in charge!!!
Trump administration waited 2 months before bolstering medical supplies for coronavirus pandemic, review shows
By MICHAEL BIESECKER - ASSOCIATED PRESS, chicago tribune
APR 05, 2020
As the first alarms sounded in early January that an outbreak of a novel coronavirus in China might ignite a global pandemic, the Trump administration squandered nearly two months that could have been used to bolster the federal stockpile of critically needed medical supplies and equipment.
A review of federal purchasing contracts by The Associated Press shows federal agencies largely waited until mid-March to begin placing bulk orders of N95 respirator masks, mechanical ventilators and other equipment needed by front-line health care workers.
By that time, hospitals in several states were treating thousands of infected patients without adequate equipment and were pleading for shipments from the Strategic National Stockpile. That federal cache of supplies was created more than 20 years ago to help bridge gaps in the medical and pharmaceutical supply chains during a national emergency.
Now, three months into the crisis, that stockpile is nearly drained just as the numbers of patients needing critical care is surging. Some state and local officials report receiving broken ventilators and decade-old dry-rotted masks.
“We basically wasted two months,” Kathleen Sebelius, health and human services secretary during the Obama administration, told AP.
As early as mid-January, U.S. officials could see that hospitals in China's Hubei province were overwhelmed with infected patients, with many left dependent on ventilator machines to breathe. Italy soon followed, with hospitals scrambling for doctors, beds and equipment.
HHS did not respond to questions about why federal officials waited to order medical supplies until stocks were running critically low. But President Donald Trump has asserted that the federal government should take a back seat to states when it comes to dealing with the pandemic.
Trump and his appointees have urged state and local governments, and hospitals, to buy their own masks and breathing machines, saying requests to the dwindling national stockpile should be a last resort.
“The notion of the federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be our stockpile,” Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and adviser, said at a White House briefing Thursday. “It’s not supposed to be state stockpiles that they then use.”
---
More than three months after China revealed the first COVID-19 cases, Trump finally relented last week, saying he will order companies to ramp up production of critical supplies. By then, confirmed cases of COVID-19 within the United States had surged to the highest in the world. Now, the number of people infected in the U.S. has climbed to more than 312,000 and deaths have topped 8,500.
Trump spent January and February playing down the threat from the new virus. He derided warnings of pandemic reaching the U.S. as a hoax perpetrated by Democrats and the media. As the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a global public health emergency on Jan. 30, Trump assured the American people that the virus was “very well under control” and he predicted “a very good ending."
His administration was so confident that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced on Feb. 7 that the government had airlifted nearly 18 tons of donated respirator masks, surgical masks, gowns and other medical supplies to China.
On Feb. 24, the White House sent Congress an initial $2.5 billion funding request to address the coronavirus outbreak. The next day, federal health experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that the virus was spreading quickly in the U.S. and predicted that disruptions to daily life could be “severe,” including school and business closures.
Unfazed, HHS Secretary Alex Azar told lawmakers on Feb. 27 that “the immediate risk to the American public remains low.”
During those crucial early weeks when the U.S. could have been tracking the spread of the disease and containing it, hardly anyone was being tested after a series of federal blunders led to a shortage of tests and testing capacity, as AP reported last month.
Without data showing how widespread the disease was, federal and state governments failed to prepare.
By the middle of March, hospitals in New York, Seattle and New Orleans were reporting a surge in sick patients. Doctors and nurses took to social media to express their alarm at dwindling supplies of such basic equipment as masks and gowns.
Trump accused some Democratic governors of exaggerating the need and derided those that criticized the federal response as complainers and snakes.
“I want them to be appreciative,” Trump said on March 27.
---
Federal contracting records show that HHS had made an initial order March 12 for $4.8 million of N95 masks from 3M, the largest U.S.-based manufacturer, which had ramped up production weeks earlier in response to the pandemic. HHS followed up with a larger $173 million order on March 21, but those contracts don't require 3M to start making deliveries to the national stockpile until the end of April. That's after the White House has projected the pandemic will reach its peak.
On Thursday, Trump threatened in a Tweet to “hit 3M hard" through a Defense Production Act order, saying the company “will have a big price to pay!” He gave no specifics.
HHS declined this past week to say how many N95 masks it has on hand. But as of March 31, the White House said more than 11.6 million had been distributed to state and local governments from the national stockpile — about 90% of what was available at the start of the year.
Dr. Robert Kadlec, the assistant secretary for preparedness and response at HHS, testified before Congress last month that the country would need roughly 3.5 billion N-95 respirators to get through the pandemic, but the national supply chain then had just about 1% of that amount.
Greg Burel, director of the Strategic National Stockpile from 2007 until his retirement at the start of this year, said the cache was only ever intended to serve as a short-term “bridge-stock.”
The stockpile was created in 1999 to prevent supply-chain disruptions for the predicted Y2K computer problems. It expanded after 9/11 to prepare for chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear attacks. Congress provided money in 2006 to prepare for a potential influenza pandemic, though Burel said much of that stock was used during the H1N1 flu outbreak three years later.
“There’s never enough money to buy everything that we want to see on those shelves,” said Burel, who stressed the stockpile uses its annual funding to prepare for a wide array of potential threats.
“Most of the time, commercially available products like masks can be bought in quantity at the time of an event.”
This time, it hasn’t worked out that way. As AP reported last month, much of the world’s supply of N95 masks and other basic medical supplies is made in China, the first nation hit by COVID-19. As a result, the Chinese government required its producers to reserve N95 respirators for domestic use. China resumed exports of the precious masks only in recent days.
Experts are now worried the U.S. will also soon exhaust its supply of ventilators, which can cost upward of $12,000 each.
---
Throughout March, governors and mayors of big cities urged Trump to use his authority under the Defense Production Act to direct private companies to ramp up production of ventilators. It wasn't until last week that Trump finally said he would use that power to order General Motors to begin manufacturing ventilators — work the company had already announced was underway. But GM says its first ventilators won’t be available before the summer.
The federal government had made an effort to prepare for a surge in the need for ventilators, but it was allowed to languish. Since 2014, HHS has paid a private company, Respironics Inc., $13.8 million to develop a cheaper, less complicated ventilator that could be bought in bulk to replenish the national stockpile. In September, HHS placed a $32.8 million order with the Dutch-owned company for 10,000 of the new model, set for delivery by 2022, federal contracts show.
Respironics' parent company, Royal Philips, said it's planning to double U.S. production of ventilators to 2,000 a week by the end of May.
Steve Klink, a spokesman for Royal Philips in Amsterdam, said the company is now focused on producing its other commercial models and will deliver the first ventilators to the national stockpile by August, long after the White House projects COVID-19 cases will peak.
Trump, who pledged on March 27 that his administration would ensure that 100,000 additional ventilators would be made available “within 100 days,” said on Thursday that he'll use the Defense Production Act to order Respironics and other ventilator makers to step up production.
It's not clear that Trump's order would translate into the 100,000 new ventilators he promised. In a House Oversight and Reform Committee briefing last week, top Federal Emergency Management Agency officials hedged, saying 100,000 ventilators would be available by late June “at the earliest.”
Cuomo predicted on Friday that New York would run out within days. With coronavirus deaths in his state surging, the governor vowed to use his authority to seize ventilators, masks and protective gear from private hospitals that aren’t utilizing them.
Meanwhile, federal health authorities are lowering standards.
New guidance from the Food and Drug Administration allows hospitals to use emergency ventilators typically used in ambulances and anesthesia gas machines in place of standard ventilators. The agency also said nightstand CPAP machines used to treat sleep apnea and snoring could also be used to keep coronavirus patients breathing, as a last resort.
The CDC advised health care workers last month to use homemade masks or bandanas if they run out of proper gear. Across the country, hospitals have issued urgent pleas for volunteers who know how to sew.
President Trump provided his own input, suggesting that Americans without access to factory-produced masks could cover their faces with scarves.
“A scarf is highly recommended by the professionals,” Trump said during a White House briefing Wednesday. “And I think, in a certain way, depending on the fabric — I think, in a certain way, a scarf is better. It’s actually better.”
A review of federal purchasing contracts by The Associated Press shows federal agencies largely waited until mid-March to begin placing bulk orders of N95 respirator masks, mechanical ventilators and other equipment needed by front-line health care workers.
By that time, hospitals in several states were treating thousands of infected patients without adequate equipment and were pleading for shipments from the Strategic National Stockpile. That federal cache of supplies was created more than 20 years ago to help bridge gaps in the medical and pharmaceutical supply chains during a national emergency.
Now, three months into the crisis, that stockpile is nearly drained just as the numbers of patients needing critical care is surging. Some state and local officials report receiving broken ventilators and decade-old dry-rotted masks.
“We basically wasted two months,” Kathleen Sebelius, health and human services secretary during the Obama administration, told AP.
As early as mid-January, U.S. officials could see that hospitals in China's Hubei province were overwhelmed with infected patients, with many left dependent on ventilator machines to breathe. Italy soon followed, with hospitals scrambling for doctors, beds and equipment.
HHS did not respond to questions about why federal officials waited to order medical supplies until stocks were running critically low. But President Donald Trump has asserted that the federal government should take a back seat to states when it comes to dealing with the pandemic.
Trump and his appointees have urged state and local governments, and hospitals, to buy their own masks and breathing machines, saying requests to the dwindling national stockpile should be a last resort.
“The notion of the federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be our stockpile,” Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and adviser, said at a White House briefing Thursday. “It’s not supposed to be state stockpiles that they then use.”
---
More than three months after China revealed the first COVID-19 cases, Trump finally relented last week, saying he will order companies to ramp up production of critical supplies. By then, confirmed cases of COVID-19 within the United States had surged to the highest in the world. Now, the number of people infected in the U.S. has climbed to more than 312,000 and deaths have topped 8,500.
Trump spent January and February playing down the threat from the new virus. He derided warnings of pandemic reaching the U.S. as a hoax perpetrated by Democrats and the media. As the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a global public health emergency on Jan. 30, Trump assured the American people that the virus was “very well under control” and he predicted “a very good ending."
His administration was so confident that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced on Feb. 7 that the government had airlifted nearly 18 tons of donated respirator masks, surgical masks, gowns and other medical supplies to China.
On Feb. 24, the White House sent Congress an initial $2.5 billion funding request to address the coronavirus outbreak. The next day, federal health experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that the virus was spreading quickly in the U.S. and predicted that disruptions to daily life could be “severe,” including school and business closures.
Unfazed, HHS Secretary Alex Azar told lawmakers on Feb. 27 that “the immediate risk to the American public remains low.”
During those crucial early weeks when the U.S. could have been tracking the spread of the disease and containing it, hardly anyone was being tested after a series of federal blunders led to a shortage of tests and testing capacity, as AP reported last month.
Without data showing how widespread the disease was, federal and state governments failed to prepare.
By the middle of March, hospitals in New York, Seattle and New Orleans were reporting a surge in sick patients. Doctors and nurses took to social media to express their alarm at dwindling supplies of such basic equipment as masks and gowns.
Trump accused some Democratic governors of exaggerating the need and derided those that criticized the federal response as complainers and snakes.
“I want them to be appreciative,” Trump said on March 27.
---
Federal contracting records show that HHS had made an initial order March 12 for $4.8 million of N95 masks from 3M, the largest U.S.-based manufacturer, which had ramped up production weeks earlier in response to the pandemic. HHS followed up with a larger $173 million order on March 21, but those contracts don't require 3M to start making deliveries to the national stockpile until the end of April. That's after the White House has projected the pandemic will reach its peak.
On Thursday, Trump threatened in a Tweet to “hit 3M hard" through a Defense Production Act order, saying the company “will have a big price to pay!” He gave no specifics.
HHS declined this past week to say how many N95 masks it has on hand. But as of March 31, the White House said more than 11.6 million had been distributed to state and local governments from the national stockpile — about 90% of what was available at the start of the year.
Dr. Robert Kadlec, the assistant secretary for preparedness and response at HHS, testified before Congress last month that the country would need roughly 3.5 billion N-95 respirators to get through the pandemic, but the national supply chain then had just about 1% of that amount.
Greg Burel, director of the Strategic National Stockpile from 2007 until his retirement at the start of this year, said the cache was only ever intended to serve as a short-term “bridge-stock.”
The stockpile was created in 1999 to prevent supply-chain disruptions for the predicted Y2K computer problems. It expanded after 9/11 to prepare for chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear attacks. Congress provided money in 2006 to prepare for a potential influenza pandemic, though Burel said much of that stock was used during the H1N1 flu outbreak three years later.
“There’s never enough money to buy everything that we want to see on those shelves,” said Burel, who stressed the stockpile uses its annual funding to prepare for a wide array of potential threats.
“Most of the time, commercially available products like masks can be bought in quantity at the time of an event.”
This time, it hasn’t worked out that way. As AP reported last month, much of the world’s supply of N95 masks and other basic medical supplies is made in China, the first nation hit by COVID-19. As a result, the Chinese government required its producers to reserve N95 respirators for domestic use. China resumed exports of the precious masks only in recent days.
Experts are now worried the U.S. will also soon exhaust its supply of ventilators, which can cost upward of $12,000 each.
---
Throughout March, governors and mayors of big cities urged Trump to use his authority under the Defense Production Act to direct private companies to ramp up production of ventilators. It wasn't until last week that Trump finally said he would use that power to order General Motors to begin manufacturing ventilators — work the company had already announced was underway. But GM says its first ventilators won’t be available before the summer.
The federal government had made an effort to prepare for a surge in the need for ventilators, but it was allowed to languish. Since 2014, HHS has paid a private company, Respironics Inc., $13.8 million to develop a cheaper, less complicated ventilator that could be bought in bulk to replenish the national stockpile. In September, HHS placed a $32.8 million order with the Dutch-owned company for 10,000 of the new model, set for delivery by 2022, federal contracts show.
Respironics' parent company, Royal Philips, said it's planning to double U.S. production of ventilators to 2,000 a week by the end of May.
Steve Klink, a spokesman for Royal Philips in Amsterdam, said the company is now focused on producing its other commercial models and will deliver the first ventilators to the national stockpile by August, long after the White House projects COVID-19 cases will peak.
Trump, who pledged on March 27 that his administration would ensure that 100,000 additional ventilators would be made available “within 100 days,” said on Thursday that he'll use the Defense Production Act to order Respironics and other ventilator makers to step up production.
It's not clear that Trump's order would translate into the 100,000 new ventilators he promised. In a House Oversight and Reform Committee briefing last week, top Federal Emergency Management Agency officials hedged, saying 100,000 ventilators would be available by late June “at the earliest.”
Cuomo predicted on Friday that New York would run out within days. With coronavirus deaths in his state surging, the governor vowed to use his authority to seize ventilators, masks and protective gear from private hospitals that aren’t utilizing them.
Meanwhile, federal health authorities are lowering standards.
New guidance from the Food and Drug Administration allows hospitals to use emergency ventilators typically used in ambulances and anesthesia gas machines in place of standard ventilators. The agency also said nightstand CPAP machines used to treat sleep apnea and snoring could also be used to keep coronavirus patients breathing, as a last resort.
The CDC advised health care workers last month to use homemade masks or bandanas if they run out of proper gear. Across the country, hospitals have issued urgent pleas for volunteers who know how to sew.
President Trump provided his own input, suggesting that Americans without access to factory-produced masks could cover their faces with scarves.
“A scarf is highly recommended by the professionals,” Trump said during a White House briefing Wednesday. “And I think, in a certain way, depending on the fabric — I think, in a certain way, a scarf is better. It’s actually better.”
AMID CRITICAL SUPPLY SHORTAGE, FEMA IS SPENDING MILLIONS TO PROTECT TRUMP PROPERTIES
Alex Emmons - the intercept
April 4 2020, 2:00 a.m.
THE FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY has provided less than 10 percent of the N95 masks requested by officials in five states and the District of Columbia, according to documents released Thursday by the House Oversight Committee. FEMA also told the committee that the Strategic National Stockpile had only 9,500 remaining ventilators — far short of what will likely be needed to treat a growing number of coronavirus patients.
Although federal officials have known of the shortages for months, they have not been remedied. Yet every year since 2017, Congress has directed FEMA to set aside $41 million of its budget to offset the extraordinary costs of providing security for President Donald Trump’s properties. The “Presidential Residence Assistant Protection Grants” were most recently funded by Congress in an appropriations package in December.
According to memos posted on its website, FEMA has previously identified Trump properties in New York, New Jersey, and Florida as “qualifying residences” and paid out millions of dollars to the New York Police Department and Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, among others. The grant program is limited to reimbursing “operational overtime and backfill overtime” for law enforcement and cannot be used to underwrite salaries or purchase police equipment.
The grant program does not make up a huge part of FEMA’s annual budget or its disaster relief fund, which just received a $45 billion infusion from last month’s stimulus bill. But at a time when every federal dollar counts, some question whether the payout to secure Trump properties is a good use of government resources.
Tyson Slocum, a program director with the advocacy group Public Citizen, told The Intercept by phone that the program “doesn’t seem to be in line with FEMA’s core objectives” and that he had “a financial conflict of interest concern” about it. Public Citizen recently used public records requests to show how much the Secret Service paid to rent rooms at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.
“It’s been well established that President Trump spends an inordinate amount of time at his properties, that he routinely advertises his properties as part of his official duties, and that having this sort of special fund to help offset local security costs is an indirect benefit to the president,” Slocum said. “Allowing reimbursements to those local law enforcement costs could be relieving the Trump businesses of having to provide extra security.”
A former FEMA official who declined to be named for fear of professional reprisal, told The Intercept that the $41 million grant program was created in 2017 to help cover the huge costs of security at Trump’s residences, though it is unclear who in Congress shepherded the language to passage then and in each year since.
The former official pointed out that previous presidents have spent time in private residences — like the vacation home Barack Obama rented on Martha’s Vineyard in 2013, or the private ranch used by George W. Bush while in office — but that neither burdened local law enforcement agencies the way that Trump’s trips to his properties have.
In 2017, for example, a letter from the NYPD to Congress estimated that it had cost the department $24 million to provide security to Trump Tower, the Manhattan property that served as Trump’s headquarters during the transition period between Election Day and his inauguration.
A FEMA spokesperson told The Intercept by email that the money earmarked for security at Trump properties could not be repurposed due to language in the appropriations bills, which requires that the money be used “exclusively” for “protection activities … directly and demonstrably associated with any residence of the President that is designated or identified to be secured by the US Secret Service.”
FEMA is “evaluating changes in the application processes and grant requirements” as a result of the government’s Covid-19 response efforts, the spokesperson said.
Since 2017, the Trump administration’s budget requests have proposed steep cuts to FEMA’s disaster preparedness grants, drawing condemnation from some experts who claim that they are necessary to prepare for future disasters. Last year, the Trump administration also took more than $150 million from FEMA’s disaster relief fund to pay for immigration enforcement along the southern border.
Although federal officials have known of the shortages for months, they have not been remedied. Yet every year since 2017, Congress has directed FEMA to set aside $41 million of its budget to offset the extraordinary costs of providing security for President Donald Trump’s properties. The “Presidential Residence Assistant Protection Grants” were most recently funded by Congress in an appropriations package in December.
According to memos posted on its website, FEMA has previously identified Trump properties in New York, New Jersey, and Florida as “qualifying residences” and paid out millions of dollars to the New York Police Department and Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, among others. The grant program is limited to reimbursing “operational overtime and backfill overtime” for law enforcement and cannot be used to underwrite salaries or purchase police equipment.
The grant program does not make up a huge part of FEMA’s annual budget or its disaster relief fund, which just received a $45 billion infusion from last month’s stimulus bill. But at a time when every federal dollar counts, some question whether the payout to secure Trump properties is a good use of government resources.
Tyson Slocum, a program director with the advocacy group Public Citizen, told The Intercept by phone that the program “doesn’t seem to be in line with FEMA’s core objectives” and that he had “a financial conflict of interest concern” about it. Public Citizen recently used public records requests to show how much the Secret Service paid to rent rooms at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.
“It’s been well established that President Trump spends an inordinate amount of time at his properties, that he routinely advertises his properties as part of his official duties, and that having this sort of special fund to help offset local security costs is an indirect benefit to the president,” Slocum said. “Allowing reimbursements to those local law enforcement costs could be relieving the Trump businesses of having to provide extra security.”
A former FEMA official who declined to be named for fear of professional reprisal, told The Intercept that the $41 million grant program was created in 2017 to help cover the huge costs of security at Trump’s residences, though it is unclear who in Congress shepherded the language to passage then and in each year since.
The former official pointed out that previous presidents have spent time in private residences — like the vacation home Barack Obama rented on Martha’s Vineyard in 2013, or the private ranch used by George W. Bush while in office — but that neither burdened local law enforcement agencies the way that Trump’s trips to his properties have.
In 2017, for example, a letter from the NYPD to Congress estimated that it had cost the department $24 million to provide security to Trump Tower, the Manhattan property that served as Trump’s headquarters during the transition period between Election Day and his inauguration.
A FEMA spokesperson told The Intercept by email that the money earmarked for security at Trump properties could not be repurposed due to language in the appropriations bills, which requires that the money be used “exclusively” for “protection activities … directly and demonstrably associated with any residence of the President that is designated or identified to be secured by the US Secret Service.”
FEMA is “evaluating changes in the application processes and grant requirements” as a result of the government’s Covid-19 response efforts, the spokesperson said.
Since 2017, the Trump administration’s budget requests have proposed steep cuts to FEMA’s disaster preparedness grants, drawing condemnation from some experts who claim that they are necessary to prepare for future disasters. Last year, the Trump administration also took more than $150 million from FEMA’s disaster relief fund to pay for immigration enforcement along the southern border.
Our Dunning-Kruger president: Trump's arrogance and ignorance are killing people
When stupid people think they're smart, they do maximum damage. That's where we are with Trump and the pandemic
CHAUNCEY DEVEGA - salon
APRIL 2, 2020 11:00AM (UTC)
The Dunning-Kruger effect is a term that describes a psychological phenomenon in which stupid people do not know that they are in fact stupid.
Writing at Pacific Standard, psychologist David Dunning — one of the social psychologists who first documented this type of cognitive bias — describes it in more detail:
In many areas of life, incompetent people do not recognize — scratch that, cannot recognize — just how incompetent they are, a phenomenon that has come to be known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. Logic itself almost demands this lack of self-insight: For poor performers to recognize their ineptitude would require them to possess the very expertise they lack. To know how skilled or unskilled you are at using the rules of grammar, for instance, you must have a good working knowledge of those rules, an impossibility among the incompetent. Poor performers — and we are all poor performers at some things — fail to see the flaws in their thinking or the answers they lack. What's curious is that, in many cases, incompetence does not leave people disoriented, perplexed, or cautious. Instead, the incompetent are often blessed with an inappropriate confidence, buoyed by something that feels to them like knowledge.
The Dunning-Kruger effect manifests in the form of the drunk at the bar who weighs in on every conversation with unwanted advice, the online troll who monopolizes comment sections, or the person who reads one book (or perhaps the introduction) and then acts like an authority on the subject.
Visionary science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov signaled to the Dunning-Kruger effect with his famous observation in 1980: "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"
Donald Trump is the Dunning-Kruger president of the United States.
But he is also something much worse than that. Donald Trump is an almost perfect living, breathing example of the Dunning-Kruger effect: a president in a time of plague whose ignorance and stupidity are amplified through apparent and obvious mental illness as well as cruelty, compulsive lying, grand immorality, corruption and evil.
Americans have already died because of Trump's false claims about the novel coronavirus pandemic. Many more will die in the weeks and months ahead.
At Tuesday's coronavirus White House "briefing" (another version of Trump's ego-stroking carnival political rallies) he made another "expert" suggestion about how to defeat the novel coronavirus pandemic: Wear scarves instead of masks for protection.
In fact, scarves offer no protection against the coronavirus.
Several weeks ago, Donald Trump visited the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control where he made this astonishing claim:
You know, my uncle was a great person. He was at MIT. He taught at MIT for, I think, like a record number of years. He was a great super genius. Dr. John Trump. I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors said, 'How do you know so much about this? ' Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.
Apparently, Trump believes he knows more than some of the best trained and experienced doctors and medical researchers in the world.
Trump also believes himself to be an expert on the types of medical equipment needed to fight the novel coronavirus. He has suggested that governors in New York, New Jersey, Michigan and elsewhere are intentionally exaggerating the number of ventilators needed in hospitals to care for victims of the pandemic.
On multiple occasions, Donald Trump has claimed that there is no ventilator shortage in New York. According to him, ventilators and other medical equipment being stolen by doctors, nurses and other medical staff who are selling them, bringing them home for personal use or perhaps even hoarding the equipment in private.
Donald Trump claims to have magical powers. He has repeatedly said that the novel coronavirus will disappear at some future date which only he can predict.
Trump has said he was the first person to label the novel coronavirus a "pandemic." And because he believes himself to be an expert on all things, Trump can pivot without pause, apprehension or doubt from claiming that the novel coronavirus was a "hoax" to embracing the view that it is a dire threat that could kill hundreds of thousands if not millions of Americans.
Trump is also an epidemiologist or virologist, at least in his mind. Last week he said, "You can call it a germ, you can call it a flu, you can call it a virus, you know you can call it many different names. I'm not sure anybody even knows what it is."
Medical professionals know what the novel coronavirus is and have been warning the Trump administration about the threat for months.
Most likely for partisan reasons and also because of racism (Trump's immense disdain for Barack Obama), Trump's administration also ignored the step-by-step suggestions for fighting a pandemic outlined by the National Security Council in 2016.
Donald Trump has evidently made decisions about which Americans should live and which should die based on their perceived partisan loyalty.
The Dunning-Kruger president is an expert in so many things that it is difficult to keep track of them all. Writing at MSNBC, Steven Benen made a valiant effort at cataloguing Trump's claims to preternatural expertise:
About a year ago, for example, Trump was reflecting on technology measures that have been deployed along the U.S./Mexico border, and he assured the public, "I'm a professional at technology."
What kind of technology? He didn't say, but we can probably assume he meant every possible kind.
As we discussed at the time, Trump has also claimed to be the world's foremost authority on everything from terrorism to campaign finance, the judicial system to infrastructure, trade to renewable energy. NowThis prepared a video montage on the subject a while back, and it was amazing to see the many subjects on which the president considers himself a world-class expert.
A belief in their inherent intelligence and great skill in all things is a common trait among authoritarians and other demagogues such as Donald Trump. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, according to national legend, could shoot guns better than a trained sniper at age three. At age eight, he was a daredevil truck driver. Adolf Hitler and his acolytes also made claims to greatness and superhuman abilities.
Trump's embrace of stupidity and ignorance reflects much deeper problems in the United States generally, and the Republican Party and the conservative movement in particular.
Today's Republican Party and conservative movement possess a deep disdain and hostility towards true experts and qualified, proven professionals. Such people are slurred as being "elitists" or not "real Americans," and are suspected of being liberal Democrats who belong to a "deep state" cabal working against Donald Trump and his army of real Americans, with the goal of enslaving them to "political correctness."
Many of Trump's strongest supporters are Christian nationalists who aim to overturn the Constitution and destroy secular, science-based, empirical reality and society. Such people believe in magic, and are the most stalwart, influential and loyal members of Trump's political death cult.
Historian and political scientist Richard Hofstadter famously warned that Republicans and other conservatives had succumbed to the allure and power of anti-intellectualism. Hofstadter's "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life" was written in 1963.
Writing in 1947, Albert Camus reflected on Nazism and authoritarianism through the metaphor of misery and suffering caused by a plague:
The evil in the world comes almost always from ignorance, and goodwill can cause as much damage as ill-will if it is not enlightened. People are more often good than bad, though in fact that is not the question. But they are more or less ignorant and this is what one calls vice or virtue, the most appalling vice being the ignorance that thinks it knows everything and which consequently authorizes itself to kill. The murderer's soul is blind, and there is no true goodness or fine love without the greatest possible degree of clear-sightedness.
Some 70 years later, Camus' warnings resonate in the age of Donald Trump.
People such as Donald Trump are all too common among humanity. Unfortunately, some of them rise to great prominence during the most dangerous and troubled times — times when their ignorance and hubris has the power to kill hundreds, thousands or even millions of people. Such a time is now.
RELATED: Yale psychiatrist: Trump endangers lives by waging war on reality, not the coronavirus
Bandy Lee says Trump has a pattern: "It is no accident that everything he says is the exact opposite of reality"
Writing at Pacific Standard, psychologist David Dunning — one of the social psychologists who first documented this type of cognitive bias — describes it in more detail:
In many areas of life, incompetent people do not recognize — scratch that, cannot recognize — just how incompetent they are, a phenomenon that has come to be known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. Logic itself almost demands this lack of self-insight: For poor performers to recognize their ineptitude would require them to possess the very expertise they lack. To know how skilled or unskilled you are at using the rules of grammar, for instance, you must have a good working knowledge of those rules, an impossibility among the incompetent. Poor performers — and we are all poor performers at some things — fail to see the flaws in their thinking or the answers they lack. What's curious is that, in many cases, incompetence does not leave people disoriented, perplexed, or cautious. Instead, the incompetent are often blessed with an inappropriate confidence, buoyed by something that feels to them like knowledge.
The Dunning-Kruger effect manifests in the form of the drunk at the bar who weighs in on every conversation with unwanted advice, the online troll who monopolizes comment sections, or the person who reads one book (or perhaps the introduction) and then acts like an authority on the subject.
Visionary science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov signaled to the Dunning-Kruger effect with his famous observation in 1980: "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"
Donald Trump is the Dunning-Kruger president of the United States.
But he is also something much worse than that. Donald Trump is an almost perfect living, breathing example of the Dunning-Kruger effect: a president in a time of plague whose ignorance and stupidity are amplified through apparent and obvious mental illness as well as cruelty, compulsive lying, grand immorality, corruption and evil.
Americans have already died because of Trump's false claims about the novel coronavirus pandemic. Many more will die in the weeks and months ahead.
At Tuesday's coronavirus White House "briefing" (another version of Trump's ego-stroking carnival political rallies) he made another "expert" suggestion about how to defeat the novel coronavirus pandemic: Wear scarves instead of masks for protection.
In fact, scarves offer no protection against the coronavirus.
Several weeks ago, Donald Trump visited the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control where he made this astonishing claim:
You know, my uncle was a great person. He was at MIT. He taught at MIT for, I think, like a record number of years. He was a great super genius. Dr. John Trump. I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors said, 'How do you know so much about this? ' Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.
Apparently, Trump believes he knows more than some of the best trained and experienced doctors and medical researchers in the world.
Trump also believes himself to be an expert on the types of medical equipment needed to fight the novel coronavirus. He has suggested that governors in New York, New Jersey, Michigan and elsewhere are intentionally exaggerating the number of ventilators needed in hospitals to care for victims of the pandemic.
On multiple occasions, Donald Trump has claimed that there is no ventilator shortage in New York. According to him, ventilators and other medical equipment being stolen by doctors, nurses and other medical staff who are selling them, bringing them home for personal use or perhaps even hoarding the equipment in private.
Donald Trump claims to have magical powers. He has repeatedly said that the novel coronavirus will disappear at some future date which only he can predict.
Trump has said he was the first person to label the novel coronavirus a "pandemic." And because he believes himself to be an expert on all things, Trump can pivot without pause, apprehension or doubt from claiming that the novel coronavirus was a "hoax" to embracing the view that it is a dire threat that could kill hundreds of thousands if not millions of Americans.
Trump is also an epidemiologist or virologist, at least in his mind. Last week he said, "You can call it a germ, you can call it a flu, you can call it a virus, you know you can call it many different names. I'm not sure anybody even knows what it is."
Medical professionals know what the novel coronavirus is and have been warning the Trump administration about the threat for months.
Most likely for partisan reasons and also because of racism (Trump's immense disdain for Barack Obama), Trump's administration also ignored the step-by-step suggestions for fighting a pandemic outlined by the National Security Council in 2016.
Donald Trump has evidently made decisions about which Americans should live and which should die based on their perceived partisan loyalty.
The Dunning-Kruger president is an expert in so many things that it is difficult to keep track of them all. Writing at MSNBC, Steven Benen made a valiant effort at cataloguing Trump's claims to preternatural expertise:
About a year ago, for example, Trump was reflecting on technology measures that have been deployed along the U.S./Mexico border, and he assured the public, "I'm a professional at technology."
What kind of technology? He didn't say, but we can probably assume he meant every possible kind.
As we discussed at the time, Trump has also claimed to be the world's foremost authority on everything from terrorism to campaign finance, the judicial system to infrastructure, trade to renewable energy. NowThis prepared a video montage on the subject a while back, and it was amazing to see the many subjects on which the president considers himself a world-class expert.
A belief in their inherent intelligence and great skill in all things is a common trait among authoritarians and other demagogues such as Donald Trump. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, according to national legend, could shoot guns better than a trained sniper at age three. At age eight, he was a daredevil truck driver. Adolf Hitler and his acolytes also made claims to greatness and superhuman abilities.
Trump's embrace of stupidity and ignorance reflects much deeper problems in the United States generally, and the Republican Party and the conservative movement in particular.
Today's Republican Party and conservative movement possess a deep disdain and hostility towards true experts and qualified, proven professionals. Such people are slurred as being "elitists" or not "real Americans," and are suspected of being liberal Democrats who belong to a "deep state" cabal working against Donald Trump and his army of real Americans, with the goal of enslaving them to "political correctness."
Many of Trump's strongest supporters are Christian nationalists who aim to overturn the Constitution and destroy secular, science-based, empirical reality and society. Such people believe in magic, and are the most stalwart, influential and loyal members of Trump's political death cult.
Historian and political scientist Richard Hofstadter famously warned that Republicans and other conservatives had succumbed to the allure and power of anti-intellectualism. Hofstadter's "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life" was written in 1963.
Writing in 1947, Albert Camus reflected on Nazism and authoritarianism through the metaphor of misery and suffering caused by a plague:
The evil in the world comes almost always from ignorance, and goodwill can cause as much damage as ill-will if it is not enlightened. People are more often good than bad, though in fact that is not the question. But they are more or less ignorant and this is what one calls vice or virtue, the most appalling vice being the ignorance that thinks it knows everything and which consequently authorizes itself to kill. The murderer's soul is blind, and there is no true goodness or fine love without the greatest possible degree of clear-sightedness.
Some 70 years later, Camus' warnings resonate in the age of Donald Trump.
People such as Donald Trump are all too common among humanity. Unfortunately, some of them rise to great prominence during the most dangerous and troubled times — times when their ignorance and hubris has the power to kill hundreds, thousands or even millions of people. Such a time is now.
RELATED: Yale psychiatrist: Trump endangers lives by waging war on reality, not the coronavirus
Bandy Lee says Trump has a pattern: "It is no accident that everything he says is the exact opposite of reality"
How Trump let coronavirus take over America
In a span of three years, Trump dismantled a top pandemic response team and ignored multiple warnings about the potential fallout from future outbreaks like the one currently ravaging the country.
By Dan Desai Martin - the american independent
April 2, 2020 6:00 PM0
Since 2017, Donald Trump has taken a series of actions that have weakened the ability of the United States to deal with the coronavirus pandemic currently engulfing the nation.
On March 19, Trump defended his slow response to the crisis, claiming during a White House briefing, "Nobody knew there'd be a pandemic or an epidemic of this proportion."
History tells a different story. Trump previously dismantled a group of health experts specifically designed to warn about global health pandemics, tried to cut funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and ignored warnings from both President Barack Obama's team and his own experts at the CDC.
"Donald Trump may not have been expecting this," one senior official told the Washington Post in mid-March, "but a lot of other people in the government were — they just couldn't get him to do anything about it."
Here's how we got here:
2017: Ignored warnings from President Obama
Before leaving office, President Obama's National Security Council staff prepared a 69-page report on how to handle a global health pandemic, Politico reported. The playbook noted personal protective equipment (PPE) and medical supplies that would be needed in response to a global outbreak, as well as steps the federal government could take to mitigate the damage.
The playbook "just sat as a document that people worked on that was thrown onto a shelf," one former U.S. official who served under both Obama and Trump told Politico. "It's hard to tell how much senior leaders at agencies were even aware that this existed."
2017: Failed to fill key CDC positions
By May 2017, the Trump administration had left vacant almost 700 positions at the CDC, including many within the Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response.
Mick Mulvaney, Trump's budget director, described the failing to fill positions across the federal government as "a big part of draining the swamp."
2017-2020: Withdrew CDC staff from China
Between 2017 and 2020, the Trump administration reduced the number of CDC staff in China — the presumed epicenter of the outbreak — from 47 to just 14, Reuters reported on March 25.
"We had a large operation of experts in China who were brought back during this administration, some of them months before the outbreak," a person who witnessed the withdrawal of U.S. personnel said. "You have to consider the possibility that our drawdown made this catastrophe more likely or more difficult to respond to."
2018: Ignored warnings from CDC
On May 7, 2018, the CDC held a daylong conference at Emory University to hear from experts on lessons learned 100 years after the 1918 flu pandemic, Yahoo News reported on Thursday.
"Are we ready to respond to a pandemic?" Dr. Luciana Borio, who at the time was head of the global health section of the National Security Council, asked at the conference. "I fear the answer is no.
"There often is a feeling on the part of policymakers we're talking to in Washington — but also in other states — that something magical will happen when an emergency risk occurs, that we'll just be able to flip a switch and we'll be able to respond as best we could," former CDC associate director John Auerbach said at the conference.
Three days after the conference, Trump appeared to wave off those concerns, disbanding a National Security Council unit tasked with preparing the government to face future pandemics.
2018: Dismantled NSC pandemic response group
Trump disbanded the aforementioned task force on May 10, 2018.
Jeremy Konyndyk, a former official with the U.S. Agency for International Development, told the Washington Post then that the White House's action "seems to actively unlearn the lessons we learned through very hard experience over the last 15 years. These moves make us materially less safe. It’s inexplicable.”
"It is clear that eliminating the office has contributed to the federal government's sluggish domestic response" to the coronavirus pandemic, Beth Cameron, who led the NSC directorate under Obama, wrote in a March 13 Washington Post op-ed. "Our job was to be the smoke alarm — keeping watch to get ahead of emergencies, sounding a warning at the earliest sign of fire — all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm blaze."
2020: Attempted to cut health care funding
In February 2020, Trump released a budget proposing to cut $3 billion from global health programs. The budget called for a 50% cut in U.S. funding of the World Health Organization, a global entity critical to coordinating responses to the coronavirus pandemic.
The budget also called for a 9% cut in funding for the CDC.
The budget is "woefully out of touch when it comes to protecting America's interests," Liz Schrayer of the nonprofit organization U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, said in a statement at the time. "Given the growing threats from the coronavirus to the rise of China and other great powers ... now is not the time to take our diplomats and development tools off the playing field."
2020: Downplayed severity of coronavirus outbreak
Trump downplayed the coronavirus outbreak more than a dozen times in January, February, and March 2020. A few examples include:
As of Thursday morning, more than 214,000 people in the United States had been diagnosed with confirmed cases of COVID-19, and more than 4,800 people had died.
On March 19, Trump defended his slow response to the crisis, claiming during a White House briefing, "Nobody knew there'd be a pandemic or an epidemic of this proportion."
History tells a different story. Trump previously dismantled a group of health experts specifically designed to warn about global health pandemics, tried to cut funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and ignored warnings from both President Barack Obama's team and his own experts at the CDC.
"Donald Trump may not have been expecting this," one senior official told the Washington Post in mid-March, "but a lot of other people in the government were — they just couldn't get him to do anything about it."
Here's how we got here:
2017: Ignored warnings from President Obama
Before leaving office, President Obama's National Security Council staff prepared a 69-page report on how to handle a global health pandemic, Politico reported. The playbook noted personal protective equipment (PPE) and medical supplies that would be needed in response to a global outbreak, as well as steps the federal government could take to mitigate the damage.
The playbook "just sat as a document that people worked on that was thrown onto a shelf," one former U.S. official who served under both Obama and Trump told Politico. "It's hard to tell how much senior leaders at agencies were even aware that this existed."
2017: Failed to fill key CDC positions
By May 2017, the Trump administration had left vacant almost 700 positions at the CDC, including many within the Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response.
Mick Mulvaney, Trump's budget director, described the failing to fill positions across the federal government as "a big part of draining the swamp."
2017-2020: Withdrew CDC staff from China
Between 2017 and 2020, the Trump administration reduced the number of CDC staff in China — the presumed epicenter of the outbreak — from 47 to just 14, Reuters reported on March 25.
"We had a large operation of experts in China who were brought back during this administration, some of them months before the outbreak," a person who witnessed the withdrawal of U.S. personnel said. "You have to consider the possibility that our drawdown made this catastrophe more likely or more difficult to respond to."
2018: Ignored warnings from CDC
On May 7, 2018, the CDC held a daylong conference at Emory University to hear from experts on lessons learned 100 years after the 1918 flu pandemic, Yahoo News reported on Thursday.
"Are we ready to respond to a pandemic?" Dr. Luciana Borio, who at the time was head of the global health section of the National Security Council, asked at the conference. "I fear the answer is no.
"There often is a feeling on the part of policymakers we're talking to in Washington — but also in other states — that something magical will happen when an emergency risk occurs, that we'll just be able to flip a switch and we'll be able to respond as best we could," former CDC associate director John Auerbach said at the conference.
Three days after the conference, Trump appeared to wave off those concerns, disbanding a National Security Council unit tasked with preparing the government to face future pandemics.
2018: Dismantled NSC pandemic response group
Trump disbanded the aforementioned task force on May 10, 2018.
Jeremy Konyndyk, a former official with the U.S. Agency for International Development, told the Washington Post then that the White House's action "seems to actively unlearn the lessons we learned through very hard experience over the last 15 years. These moves make us materially less safe. It’s inexplicable.”
"It is clear that eliminating the office has contributed to the federal government's sluggish domestic response" to the coronavirus pandemic, Beth Cameron, who led the NSC directorate under Obama, wrote in a March 13 Washington Post op-ed. "Our job was to be the smoke alarm — keeping watch to get ahead of emergencies, sounding a warning at the earliest sign of fire — all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm blaze."
2020: Attempted to cut health care funding
In February 2020, Trump released a budget proposing to cut $3 billion from global health programs. The budget called for a 50% cut in U.S. funding of the World Health Organization, a global entity critical to coordinating responses to the coronavirus pandemic.
The budget also called for a 9% cut in funding for the CDC.
The budget is "woefully out of touch when it comes to protecting America's interests," Liz Schrayer of the nonprofit organization U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, said in a statement at the time. "Given the growing threats from the coronavirus to the rise of China and other great powers ... now is not the time to take our diplomats and development tools off the playing field."
2020: Downplayed severity of coronavirus outbreak
Trump downplayed the coronavirus outbreak more than a dozen times in January, February, and March 2020. A few examples include:
- Jan. 22: "We have it totally under control. It's one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It's going to be just fine," Trump said in an interview with CNBC.
- Feb. 7: Trump tweeted that China's President Xi Jinping would be successful in dealing with the outbreak "as the weather starts to warm & the virus hopefully becomes weaker, and then gone."
- Feb. 24: "The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart," Trump tweeted.
- Feb. 26: "When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done," Trump said at a White House news conference.
- March 4: "Some people will have this at a very light level and won’t even go to a doctor or hospital, and they'll get better. There are many people like that," Trump said at a briefing with the CEOs of some of the country's major airlines.
- March 9: "The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power (it used to be greater!) to inflame the CoronaVirus situation, far beyond what the facts would warrant. Surgeon General, 'The risk is low to the average American,'" Trump tweeted.
- March 10: "We're prepared, and we're doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away," Trump said at a briefing with Republican senators.
- March 24: "We've never closed down the country for the flu. So you say to yourself, 'What is this all about?'" Trump said at a Fox News town hall, wrongly comparing COVID-19 to the seasonal flu.
As of Thursday morning, more than 214,000 people in the United States had been diagnosed with confirmed cases of COVID-19, and more than 4,800 people had died.
ass - kissing repubs never hesitate to lie for this criminal!!!
Trump admits he would have ignored coronavirus even without impeachment
By Emily Singer - the american independent
April 1, 2020 11:34 AM
Republicans have been trying to blame impeachment for the federal government's slow response to the coronavirus, but Trump just contradicted them.
Donald Trump on Tuesday dismissed the spreading Republican excuse that impeachment led to a slow and botched response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
"I don't think I would have done any better had I not been impeached," Trump said at his daily coronavirus news conference from the White House. "And I think that's a great tribute to something — maybe it's a tribute to me — but I don't think I would've acted any differently, or I don't think I would've acted any faster."
A handful of GOP lawmakers have blamed the impeachment proceedings for the Trump administration's failure to take swift action as the coronavirus spread in the United States — an admission that the Trump administration was slow to respond in and of itself.
As news of a potential outbreak surfaced in China last year, the administration ignored guidelines from a National Security Council playbook compiled in 2016 by former President Barack Obama's administration, which laid out steps Trump could have taken to stop a pandemic in its tracks, including ensuring proper diagnostic capability, stockpiling personal protective equipment and other critical tools, and delivering a "unified message" from the beginning.
Following a slow initial response, the Trump administration has faced criticism over the shortage of testing kits, the lack of personal protective equipment for front-line medical workers, and mixed messages from Trump, including how seriously to take the virus.
As that criticism grew, GOP lawmakers unveiled a new strategy to divert attention from Trump's shortcomings.
Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner was one of the first Republicans to blame impeachment for the slow response, saying on March 23: "I had said, 'We have to have a hearing. This sounds very serious. We have to have a hearing. We have to have a briefing.' And guess what was going on in the middle of all this? Impeachment was going on."
Sen. John Cornyn of Texas also said impeachment slowed Trump's response, tweeting on March 24 that Trump "did lose 'precious weeks' forced to defend himself against bogus impeachment charges."
Even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pinned the bungled response on impeachment, telling right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday that impeachment "diverted the attention of the government because everything, every day was all about impeachment."
But as soon as that message appeared to solidify among the GOP rank and file, Trump knocked it down.
"Did it divert my attention? I think I'm getting A-plusses for the way I handled myself during a phony impeachment," Trump said Tuesday.
Donald Trump on Tuesday dismissed the spreading Republican excuse that impeachment led to a slow and botched response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
"I don't think I would have done any better had I not been impeached," Trump said at his daily coronavirus news conference from the White House. "And I think that's a great tribute to something — maybe it's a tribute to me — but I don't think I would've acted any differently, or I don't think I would've acted any faster."
A handful of GOP lawmakers have blamed the impeachment proceedings for the Trump administration's failure to take swift action as the coronavirus spread in the United States — an admission that the Trump administration was slow to respond in and of itself.
As news of a potential outbreak surfaced in China last year, the administration ignored guidelines from a National Security Council playbook compiled in 2016 by former President Barack Obama's administration, which laid out steps Trump could have taken to stop a pandemic in its tracks, including ensuring proper diagnostic capability, stockpiling personal protective equipment and other critical tools, and delivering a "unified message" from the beginning.
Following a slow initial response, the Trump administration has faced criticism over the shortage of testing kits, the lack of personal protective equipment for front-line medical workers, and mixed messages from Trump, including how seriously to take the virus.
As that criticism grew, GOP lawmakers unveiled a new strategy to divert attention from Trump's shortcomings.
Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner was one of the first Republicans to blame impeachment for the slow response, saying on March 23: "I had said, 'We have to have a hearing. This sounds very serious. We have to have a hearing. We have to have a briefing.' And guess what was going on in the middle of all this? Impeachment was going on."
Sen. John Cornyn of Texas also said impeachment slowed Trump's response, tweeting on March 24 that Trump "did lose 'precious weeks' forced to defend himself against bogus impeachment charges."
Even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pinned the bungled response on impeachment, telling right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday that impeachment "diverted the attention of the government because everything, every day was all about impeachment."
But as soon as that message appeared to solidify among the GOP rank and file, Trump knocked it down.
"Did it divert my attention? I think I'm getting A-plusses for the way I handled myself during a phony impeachment," Trump said Tuesday.
Trump team failed to follow NSC’s pandemic playbook
The 69-page document, finished in 2016, provided a step by step list of priorities – which were then ignored by the administration.
By DAN DIAMOND and NAHAL TOOSI
politico
03/25/2020 08:00 PM EDT
The Trump administration, state officials and even individual hospital workers are now racing against each other to get the necessary masks, gloves and other safety equipment to fight coronavirus — a scramble that hospitals and doctors say has come too late and left them at risk. But according to a previously unrevealed White House playbook, the government should’ve begun a federal-wide effort to procure that personal protective equipment at least two months ago.
“Is there sufficient personal protective equipment for healthcare workers who are providing medical care?” the playbook instructs its readers, as one early decision that officials should address when facing a potential pandemic. “If YES: What are the triggers to signal exhaustion of supplies? Are additional supplies available? If NO: Should the Strategic National Stockpile release PPE to states?”
The strategies are among hundreds of tactics and key policy decisions laid out in a 69-page National Security Council playbook on fighting pandemics, which POLITICO is detailing for the first time. Other recommendations include that the government move swiftly to fully detect potential outbreaks, secure supplemental funding and consider invoking the Defense Production Act — all steps in which the Trump administration lagged behind the timeline laid out in the playbook.
“Each section of this playbook includes specific questions that should be asked and decisions that should be made at multiple levels” within the national security apparatus, the playbook urges, repeatedly advising officials to question the numbers on viral spread, ensure appropriate diagnostic capacity and check on the U.S. stockpile of emergency resources.
The playbook also stresses the significant responsibility facing the White House to contain risks of potential pandemics, a stark contrast with the Trump administration’s delays in deploying an all-of-government response and President Donald Trump's recent signals that he might roll back public health recommendations.
“The U.S. government will use all powers at its disposal to prevent, slow or mitigate the spread of an emerging infectious disease threat,” according to the playbook’s built-in “assumptions” about fighting future threats. “The American public will look to the U.S. government for action when multi-state or other significant events occur.”
The guide further calls for a “unified message” on the federal response, in order to best manage the American public's questions and concerns. “Early coordination of risk communications through a single federal spokesperson is critical,” the playbook urges. However, the U.S. response to coronavirus has featured a rotating cast of spokespeople and conflicting messages; Trump already is discussing loosening government recommendations on coronavirus in order to “open” the economy by Easter, despite the objections of public health advisers.
The NSC devised the guide — officially called the Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents, but known colloquially as “the pandemic playbook” — across 2016. The project was driven by career civil servants as well as political appointees, aware that global leaders had initially fumbled their response to the 2014-2015 spread of Ebola and wanting to be sure that the next response to an epidemic was better handled.
The Trump administration was briefed on the playbook’s existence in 2017, said four former officials, but two cautioned that it never went through a full, National Security Council-led interagency process to be approved as Trump administration strategy. Tom Bossert, who was then Trump’s homeland security adviser, expressed enthusiasm about its potential as part of the administration’s broader strategy to fight pandemics, two former officials said.
Bossert declined to comment on any particular document, but told POLITICO that “I engaged actively with my outgoing counterpart and took seriously their transition materials and recommendations on pandemic preparedness.”
The playbook was designed “so there wasn’t piecemeal thinking when trying to fight the next public health battle,” said one former official who contributed to the playbook, warning that “the fog of war” can lead to gaps in strategies.
“These are recommended discussions to be having on all levels, to ensure that there’s a structure to make decisions in real-time,” said a second former official.
An NSC official confirmed the existence of the playbook but dismissed its value. “We are aware of the document, although it’s quite dated and has been superseded by strategic and operational biodefense policies published since,” the official said. “The plan we are executing now is a better fit, more detailed, and applies the relevant lessons learned from the playbook and the most recent Ebola epidemic in the [Democratic Republic of the Congo] to COVID-19.”
A health department spokesperson also said that the NSC playbook was not part of the current coronavirus strategy. “The HHS COVID-19 response was informed by more recent plans such as the foundation of the National Biodefense Strategy (2018), Biological Incident Annex (2017),and panCAP (2018) among other key plans provided by the CDC, White House Task Force, FEMA, and other key federal departments and agencies,” the spokesperson said.
Trump has claimed that his administration could not have foreseen the coronavirus pandemic, which has spread to all 50 states and more than 180 nations, sickening more than 460,000 people around the world. “Nobody ever expected a thing like this,” Trump said in a Fox News interview on Tuesday.
But Trump’s aides were told to expect a potential pandemic, ranging from a tabletop exercise that the outgoing Obama administration prepared for the president’s incoming aides to a “Crimson Contagion” scenario that health officials undertook just last year and modeled out potential risks of a global infectious disease threat. Trump’s deputies also have said that their coronavirus response relies on a federal playbook, specifically referring to a strategy laid out by the Centers for Disease Control.
It is not clear if the administration’s failure to follow the NSC playbook was the result of an oversight or a deliberate decision to follow a different course.
The document rested with NSC officials who dealt with medical preparedness and biodefense in the global health security directorate, which the Trump administration disbanded in 2018, four former officials said. The document was originally overseen by Beth Cameron, a former civil servant who led the directorate before leaving the White House in March 2017. Cameron confirmed to POLITICO that the directorate created a playbook for NSC staff intended to help officials confront a range of potential biological threats.
But under the Trump administration, “it just sat as a document that people worked on that was thrown onto a shelf,” said one former U.S. official, who served in both the Obama and Trump administrations. “It’s hard to tell how much senior leaders at agencies were even aware that this existed” or thought it was just another layer of unnecessary bureaucracy.
The NSC playbook would have been especially useful in helping to drive the administration’s response to coronavirus, given that it was intended to guide urgent decisions and coordinate the all-of-government approach that Trump so far has struggled to muster, said people familiar with the document.
The color-coded playbook contains different sections based on the relative risk — green for normal operations, yellow for elevated threat, orange for credible threat and red once a public health emergency is declared — and details the potential roles of dozens of departments and agencies, from key players like the Health and Human Services department to the Department of Transportation and the FBI. It also includes sample documents intended to be used at coordinating meetings.
“Is there sufficient personal protective equipment for healthcare workers who are providing medical care?” the playbook instructs its readers, as one early decision that officials should address when facing a potential pandemic. “If YES: What are the triggers to signal exhaustion of supplies? Are additional supplies available? If NO: Should the Strategic National Stockpile release PPE to states?”
The strategies are among hundreds of tactics and key policy decisions laid out in a 69-page National Security Council playbook on fighting pandemics, which POLITICO is detailing for the first time. Other recommendations include that the government move swiftly to fully detect potential outbreaks, secure supplemental funding and consider invoking the Defense Production Act — all steps in which the Trump administration lagged behind the timeline laid out in the playbook.
“Each section of this playbook includes specific questions that should be asked and decisions that should be made at multiple levels” within the national security apparatus, the playbook urges, repeatedly advising officials to question the numbers on viral spread, ensure appropriate diagnostic capacity and check on the U.S. stockpile of emergency resources.
The playbook also stresses the significant responsibility facing the White House to contain risks of potential pandemics, a stark contrast with the Trump administration’s delays in deploying an all-of-government response and President Donald Trump's recent signals that he might roll back public health recommendations.
“The U.S. government will use all powers at its disposal to prevent, slow or mitigate the spread of an emerging infectious disease threat,” according to the playbook’s built-in “assumptions” about fighting future threats. “The American public will look to the U.S. government for action when multi-state or other significant events occur.”
The guide further calls for a “unified message” on the federal response, in order to best manage the American public's questions and concerns. “Early coordination of risk communications through a single federal spokesperson is critical,” the playbook urges. However, the U.S. response to coronavirus has featured a rotating cast of spokespeople and conflicting messages; Trump already is discussing loosening government recommendations on coronavirus in order to “open” the economy by Easter, despite the objections of public health advisers.
The NSC devised the guide — officially called the Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents, but known colloquially as “the pandemic playbook” — across 2016. The project was driven by career civil servants as well as political appointees, aware that global leaders had initially fumbled their response to the 2014-2015 spread of Ebola and wanting to be sure that the next response to an epidemic was better handled.
The Trump administration was briefed on the playbook’s existence in 2017, said four former officials, but two cautioned that it never went through a full, National Security Council-led interagency process to be approved as Trump administration strategy. Tom Bossert, who was then Trump’s homeland security adviser, expressed enthusiasm about its potential as part of the administration’s broader strategy to fight pandemics, two former officials said.
Bossert declined to comment on any particular document, but told POLITICO that “I engaged actively with my outgoing counterpart and took seriously their transition materials and recommendations on pandemic preparedness.”
The playbook was designed “so there wasn’t piecemeal thinking when trying to fight the next public health battle,” said one former official who contributed to the playbook, warning that “the fog of war” can lead to gaps in strategies.
“These are recommended discussions to be having on all levels, to ensure that there’s a structure to make decisions in real-time,” said a second former official.
An NSC official confirmed the existence of the playbook but dismissed its value. “We are aware of the document, although it’s quite dated and has been superseded by strategic and operational biodefense policies published since,” the official said. “The plan we are executing now is a better fit, more detailed, and applies the relevant lessons learned from the playbook and the most recent Ebola epidemic in the [Democratic Republic of the Congo] to COVID-19.”
A health department spokesperson also said that the NSC playbook was not part of the current coronavirus strategy. “The HHS COVID-19 response was informed by more recent plans such as the foundation of the National Biodefense Strategy (2018), Biological Incident Annex (2017),and panCAP (2018) among other key plans provided by the CDC, White House Task Force, FEMA, and other key federal departments and agencies,” the spokesperson said.
Trump has claimed that his administration could not have foreseen the coronavirus pandemic, which has spread to all 50 states and more than 180 nations, sickening more than 460,000 people around the world. “Nobody ever expected a thing like this,” Trump said in a Fox News interview on Tuesday.
But Trump’s aides were told to expect a potential pandemic, ranging from a tabletop exercise that the outgoing Obama administration prepared for the president’s incoming aides to a “Crimson Contagion” scenario that health officials undertook just last year and modeled out potential risks of a global infectious disease threat. Trump’s deputies also have said that their coronavirus response relies on a federal playbook, specifically referring to a strategy laid out by the Centers for Disease Control.
It is not clear if the administration’s failure to follow the NSC playbook was the result of an oversight or a deliberate decision to follow a different course.
The document rested with NSC officials who dealt with medical preparedness and biodefense in the global health security directorate, which the Trump administration disbanded in 2018, four former officials said. The document was originally overseen by Beth Cameron, a former civil servant who led the directorate before leaving the White House in March 2017. Cameron confirmed to POLITICO that the directorate created a playbook for NSC staff intended to help officials confront a range of potential biological threats.
But under the Trump administration, “it just sat as a document that people worked on that was thrown onto a shelf,” said one former U.S. official, who served in both the Obama and Trump administrations. “It’s hard to tell how much senior leaders at agencies were even aware that this existed” or thought it was just another layer of unnecessary bureaucracy.
The NSC playbook would have been especially useful in helping to drive the administration’s response to coronavirus, given that it was intended to guide urgent decisions and coordinate the all-of-government approach that Trump so far has struggled to muster, said people familiar with the document.
The color-coded playbook contains different sections based on the relative risk — green for normal operations, yellow for elevated threat, orange for credible threat and red once a public health emergency is declared — and details the potential roles of dozens of departments and agencies, from key players like the Health and Human Services department to the Department of Transportation and the FBI. It also includes sample documents intended to be used at coordinating meetings.
the fool's plan!!!
Trump signals change in coronavirus strategy that could clash with health experts
Trump tweeted late Sunday that the White House would ‘make a decision’ after 15-day period of social distancing ends
Edward Helmore in New York and agencies
the guardian
Mon 23 Mar 2020 09.17 EDT
The Trump administration has signaled a potential change in its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, after Congress failed to back a $1.8tn package to flood the economy with money and amid warnings of a record plunge in economic activity, with unemployment possibly hitting 30%.
Writing in capital letters in a tweet late on Sunday, Donald Trump said: “We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself. At the end of the 15-day period” – of White House guidelines to enforce social distancing and other measures which began a week ago, on 16 March – “we will make a decision as to which way we want to go.”
Mike Pence, who heads the White House coronavirus taskforce, said earlier in the day the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would issue guidance on Monday meant to allow people already exposed to the coronavirus to return to work sooner.
The signals would seem to predict a clash between public health experts and a White House alarmed by economic paralysis in an election year.
“The consequences of this national shutdown, apart from any pandemic, are dire and will not be materially alleviated by any ‘stimulus’ and [government] spending,” tweeted Tom Fitton, a conservative commentator known to influence the president’s thinking. “The only stimulus that will work is opening America back up for business.”
On Monday morning, Trump retweeted a string of similar messages.
The change in tone came as central bankers warned of record economic fallout. The St Louis Fed chief, James Bullard, said US GDP could shrink 50%, with unemployment rising to 30% in the second quarter. On Wall Street, Morgan Stanley saw a 30% contraction, driving unemployment to 12.8%.
“Aggressive efforts must be taken across the public and private sectors to limit the losses to jobs and incomes and to promote a swift recovery once the disruptions abate,” the Federal Reserve said in a Monday morning statement.
The central bank said it was “using its full range of authorities to provide powerful support for the flow of credit to American families and businesses”.
In the Senate, attempts to pass a far-reaching stimulus package floundered – and a Republican senator, Rand Paul of Kentucky, was revealed to have contracted Covid-19.
Democrats said the $1.8tn proposals were weighted toward a corporate bailout at the expense of workers, hospitals and state and local governments. Republicans claimed Democrats were obstructing the bill in the midst of a national emergency. Both sides said they were confident a deal could still be agreed upon and meetings were due to resume at 9am on Monday, with the Senate reconvening at noon.
Trump warned that a rattled American public would take a dim view of an impasse.
“The only reason a deal couldn’t get done is pure politics,” he said on Sunday.
The failure to reach an agreement was immediately felt in the markets, where Dow Jones Industrial Average futures dropped more than 600 points, signaling an immediate freeze on trading when the New York stock exchange opened.
Coronavirus infections in the US have topped 35,070, with 458 deaths. In New York, which contributes close to half of the tally, 15,168 cases, the governor, Andrew Cuomo, said an estimated 40% to 80% of residents could be infected.[...]
Writing in capital letters in a tweet late on Sunday, Donald Trump said: “We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself. At the end of the 15-day period” – of White House guidelines to enforce social distancing and other measures which began a week ago, on 16 March – “we will make a decision as to which way we want to go.”
Mike Pence, who heads the White House coronavirus taskforce, said earlier in the day the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would issue guidance on Monday meant to allow people already exposed to the coronavirus to return to work sooner.
The signals would seem to predict a clash between public health experts and a White House alarmed by economic paralysis in an election year.
“The consequences of this national shutdown, apart from any pandemic, are dire and will not be materially alleviated by any ‘stimulus’ and [government] spending,” tweeted Tom Fitton, a conservative commentator known to influence the president’s thinking. “The only stimulus that will work is opening America back up for business.”
On Monday morning, Trump retweeted a string of similar messages.
The change in tone came as central bankers warned of record economic fallout. The St Louis Fed chief, James Bullard, said US GDP could shrink 50%, with unemployment rising to 30% in the second quarter. On Wall Street, Morgan Stanley saw a 30% contraction, driving unemployment to 12.8%.
“Aggressive efforts must be taken across the public and private sectors to limit the losses to jobs and incomes and to promote a swift recovery once the disruptions abate,” the Federal Reserve said in a Monday morning statement.
The central bank said it was “using its full range of authorities to provide powerful support for the flow of credit to American families and businesses”.
In the Senate, attempts to pass a far-reaching stimulus package floundered – and a Republican senator, Rand Paul of Kentucky, was revealed to have contracted Covid-19.
Democrats said the $1.8tn proposals were weighted toward a corporate bailout at the expense of workers, hospitals and state and local governments. Republicans claimed Democrats were obstructing the bill in the midst of a national emergency. Both sides said they were confident a deal could still be agreed upon and meetings were due to resume at 9am on Monday, with the Senate reconvening at noon.
Trump warned that a rattled American public would take a dim view of an impasse.
“The only reason a deal couldn’t get done is pure politics,” he said on Sunday.
The failure to reach an agreement was immediately felt in the markets, where Dow Jones Industrial Average futures dropped more than 600 points, signaling an immediate freeze on trading when the New York stock exchange opened.
Coronavirus infections in the US have topped 35,070, with 458 deaths. In New York, which contributes close to half of the tally, 15,168 cases, the governor, Andrew Cuomo, said an estimated 40% to 80% of residents could be infected.[...]
They fucking knew!
and did nothing but lie!!!
US Intel issued ‘ominous’ classified warnings on coronavirus — but Trump told the country the opposite: report
March 20, 2020
By Bob Brigham - raw story
New details about the “ominous” warnings about COVID-19 coronavirus were reported by The Washington Post reported Friday.
“U.S. intelligence agencies were issuing ominous, classified warnings in January and February about the global danger posed by the coronavirus while President Trump and lawmakers played down the threat and failed to take action that might have slowed the spread of the pathogen,” the newspaper reported, citing “U.S. officials familiar with spy agency reporting.”
“The intelligence reports didn’t predict when the virus might land on U.S. shores or recommend particular steps that public health officials should take, issues outside the purview of the intelligence agencies. But they did track the spread of the virus in China, and later in other countries, and warned that Chinese officials appeared to be minimizing the severity of the outbreak,” The Post reported.
“Taken together, the reports and warnings painted an early picture of a virus that showed the characteristics of a globe-encircling pandemic that could require governments to take swift actions to contain it. But despite that constant flow of reporting, Trump continued publicly and privately to play down the threat the virus posed to Americans,” the newspaper reported.
A new timeline on the warnings is coming into focus.
“Intelligence agencies ‘have been warning on this since January,’ said a U.S. official who had access to intelligence reporting that was disseminated to members of Congress and their staffs as well as to officials in the Trump administration, and who, along with others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive information,” the newspaper explained.
“Donald Trump may not have been expecting this, but a lot of other people in the government were — they just couldn’t get him to do anything about it,” the official said. “The system was blinking red.”
Philip Rucker✔
@PhilipRucker
U.S. intelligence agencies were issuing ominous, classified warnings in January and February about the global danger posed by the coronavirus while Trump and lawmakers played down the threat and failed to take action that might have slowed the spread https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/us-intelligence-reports-from-january-and-february-warned-about-a-likely-pandemic/2020/03/20/299d8cda-6ad5-11ea-b5f1-a5a804158597_story.html …
“U.S. intelligence agencies were issuing ominous, classified warnings in January and February about the global danger posed by the coronavirus while President Trump and lawmakers played down the threat and failed to take action that might have slowed the spread of the pathogen,” the newspaper reported, citing “U.S. officials familiar with spy agency reporting.”
“The intelligence reports didn’t predict when the virus might land on U.S. shores or recommend particular steps that public health officials should take, issues outside the purview of the intelligence agencies. But they did track the spread of the virus in China, and later in other countries, and warned that Chinese officials appeared to be minimizing the severity of the outbreak,” The Post reported.
“Taken together, the reports and warnings painted an early picture of a virus that showed the characteristics of a globe-encircling pandemic that could require governments to take swift actions to contain it. But despite that constant flow of reporting, Trump continued publicly and privately to play down the threat the virus posed to Americans,” the newspaper reported.
A new timeline on the warnings is coming into focus.
“Intelligence agencies ‘have been warning on this since January,’ said a U.S. official who had access to intelligence reporting that was disseminated to members of Congress and their staffs as well as to officials in the Trump administration, and who, along with others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive information,” the newspaper explained.
“Donald Trump may not have been expecting this, but a lot of other people in the government were — they just couldn’t get him to do anything about it,” the official said. “The system was blinking red.”
Philip Rucker✔
@PhilipRucker
U.S. intelligence agencies were issuing ominous, classified warnings in January and February about the global danger posed by the coronavirus while Trump and lawmakers played down the threat and failed to take action that might have slowed the spread https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/us-intelligence-reports-from-january-and-february-warned-about-a-likely-pandemic/2020/03/20/299d8cda-6ad5-11ea-b5f1-a5a804158597_story.html …
Trump refusing calls to force companies to make critical coronavirus supplies: NYT
March 20, 2020
By Bob Brigham - raw story
President Donald Trump has not yet used the “extraordinary powers to force American industries to produce medical supplies, materials and equipment” needed for health care workers to adequately respond to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, The New York Times reported Friday.
“President Trump and his advisers are resisting calls from congressional Democrats and a growing number of governors to use a federal law to mobilize industry to provide badly needed resources to help halt the spread of the coronavirus, days after the president said he would consider using that authority,” the newspaper reported.
“Some of Mr. Trump’s advisers have privately said they are adhering to longstanding conservative opposition to big government, a view that reflects the administration’s conflicted view of how it should handle a crisis unlike any a modern president has faced,” The Times explained. “But there’s a growing chorus of pleas from Democratic lawmakers and governors to use the act to increase production of masks, ventilators and other supplies.”
The extraordinary powers in the act could help America’s shortages.
“The Defense Production Act, passed by Congress in 1950 at the outset of the Korean War, granted President Truman the power to spur the production of aluminum, titanium and other needed materials during wartime. Since then, it has been used for both the prevention of terrorism and to prepare for natural disasters,” the newspaper reported.
“The act would give the administration the authority to override companies’ existing contracts, and direct supplies to hot spots like New York City or Seattle. It could also help mobilize funds for retooling factories, refitting pharmacy drive-throughs into testing sites, and ramping up production of an eventual vaccine,” The Times explained.
RELATED: The White House Asked Manufacturers for Help, Then Gave Them No Clear Instructions
“President Trump and his advisers are resisting calls from congressional Democrats and a growing number of governors to use a federal law to mobilize industry to provide badly needed resources to help halt the spread of the coronavirus, days after the president said he would consider using that authority,” the newspaper reported.
“Some of Mr. Trump’s advisers have privately said they are adhering to longstanding conservative opposition to big government, a view that reflects the administration’s conflicted view of how it should handle a crisis unlike any a modern president has faced,” The Times explained. “But there’s a growing chorus of pleas from Democratic lawmakers and governors to use the act to increase production of masks, ventilators and other supplies.”
The extraordinary powers in the act could help America’s shortages.
“The Defense Production Act, passed by Congress in 1950 at the outset of the Korean War, granted President Truman the power to spur the production of aluminum, titanium and other needed materials during wartime. Since then, it has been used for both the prevention of terrorism and to prepare for natural disasters,” the newspaper reported.
“The act would give the administration the authority to override companies’ existing contracts, and direct supplies to hot spots like New York City or Seattle. It could also help mobilize funds for retooling factories, refitting pharmacy drive-throughs into testing sites, and ramping up production of an eventual vaccine,” The Times explained.
RELATED: The White House Asked Manufacturers for Help, Then Gave Them No Clear Instructions
when your "leader" is a fool...!!!
It could take 18 months to get coronavirus respirators — because Trump won’t buy any from China
March 19, 2020
By Sarah K. Burris - raw story
Production of 500 million N95 air-filtering respirator masks that President Donald Trump ordered could take up to 18 months to get into the hands of the hospitals and healthcare professionals who desperately need them, because Trump doesn’t want to buy the masks from China.
Bloomberg Law reported Thursday that the grant application revealed the information that hasn’t been distributed to the public.
Currently, hospitals and healthcare workers are being told to reuse masks or make their own out of scarves and bandanas. At the same time, hospitals are also beginning to run out of hand sanitizer in some locations, with medical suppliers unable to refill.
“The government is expecting the masks to be delivered incrementally, according to the application, but will allow those deliveries to occur over 18 months,” said Bloomberg Law. “Manufacturers in China aren’t able to fulfill the request.”
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told companies to produce and distribute the masks using an executive order to invoke the Defense Production Act, but Trump claimed it would only be used as a “worst-case scenario.”
Sewing experts are posting patterns to help people be able to sew some masks for those in need.
Read the full report.
RELATED: Mitch McConnell proposes giving $1,200 per person in coronavirus stimulus: report
RELATED: Lindsey Graham urging Trump not to send direct payments to Americans as part of coronavirus relief
Bloomberg Law reported Thursday that the grant application revealed the information that hasn’t been distributed to the public.
Currently, hospitals and healthcare workers are being told to reuse masks or make their own out of scarves and bandanas. At the same time, hospitals are also beginning to run out of hand sanitizer in some locations, with medical suppliers unable to refill.
“The government is expecting the masks to be delivered incrementally, according to the application, but will allow those deliveries to occur over 18 months,” said Bloomberg Law. “Manufacturers in China aren’t able to fulfill the request.”
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told companies to produce and distribute the masks using an executive order to invoke the Defense Production Act, but Trump claimed it would only be used as a “worst-case scenario.”
Sewing experts are posting patterns to help people be able to sew some masks for those in need.
Read the full report.
RELATED: Mitch McConnell proposes giving $1,200 per person in coronavirus stimulus: report
RELATED: Lindsey Graham urging Trump not to send direct payments to Americans as part of coronavirus relief
trump the racist!!!
Critics rebuke Trump's "dangerous" coronavirus remarks for intensifying racism and xenophobia
"People of Asian ancestry across the globe may face collateral damage," sociology professor Rosalind Chou says
MATTHEW ROZSA - salon
MARCH 17, 2020 3:48PM (UTC)
President Donald Trump referred to COVID-19 as "the Chinese virus" on Tuesday, prompting critics to accuse him not only of "a mean spirited distraction" but also intensifying racism and xenophobia.
"Cuomo wants 'all states to be treated the same,'" Trump tweeted Tuesday. "But all states aren't the same. Some are being hit hard by the Chinese Virus, some are being hit practically not at all. New York is a very big 'hotspot', West Virginia has, thus far, zero cases. Andrew, keep politics out of it...."
China's foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang condemned Trump's remarks, saying at a press briefing that "some U.S. politicians have tried to stigmatize China . . . which China strongly condemns. We urge the U.S. to stop this despicable practice. We are very angry and strongly oppose it [the tweet]."
Salon spoke with a pair of experts by email, who also condemned Trump's tweet.
"It's apt that a president, who takes responsibility for nothing, is the first to place blame on everyone else," Shaughnessy Naughton, board president and founder of 314 Action — a non-profit political action committee that helps scientists run for political office — told Salon. "This is a mean-spirited distraction, when all the administration's attention should be getting this under control and preventing more American deaths."
Rosalind Chou, a sociology professor at Georgia State University, said that the comment was racist.
"The comments made by President Trump intensifies the xenophobia and racism that's become rampant against Asians and Asian Americans globally," Chou said. "He's fueling fears against Chinese, specifically. However, people of Asian ancestry across the globe may face collateral damage. These statements are dangerous and erroneously assign blame to people who are as susceptible to the disease as anyone else worldwide."
Margaret Fung, executive director of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, told Salon by email that "calling COVID-19 a 'Chinese virus' leads to mistaken beliefs that Asian people are more likely to be infected by the coronavirus and should be avoided or quarantined. The virus is not linked to race or ethnicity, but the pandemic has led to a sharp rise in racism and hate violence against Asians and Asian Americans. As we noted in our tweet last night, Trump and other elected officials should be speaking out against the racist and xenophobic attacks that perpetuate dangerous stereotypes about our community."
Trump is not the first prominent Republican to use racist language to describe COVID-19. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., referred to it as the "Chinese coronavirus" in a tweet last week, while Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., described it as the "Wuhan virus." After he was criticized for his remarks, Gosar tweeted that it was "just astoundingly ignorant to have all major media refer to it as #WuhanVirus for months but somehow, today, you've decided that's #racist. If you think this virus cares about your race you probably work for or watch MSNBC. Wuhan Virus. Wuhan Virus. Wuhan Virus."
America has a long history of perpetuating the racist idea that Asians are unclean.
"The idea that Asians are dirty, eat strange foods and are vectors of disease has existed for as long as Asians have been in the U.S., and these ideas continue to exist today," writer and Columbia University professor Marie Myung-Ok Lee wrote last month.
Chinese immigrants became medical scapegoats during a 1876 smallpox outbreak in San Francisco. The stereotype continued as recently as last year, when a Chinese restaurant opened by a white couple in New York advertised itself as "clean."
"The origin of today's novel coronavirus, 2019 n-COV, has not been conclusively determined yet, but it is thought to be transmitted to humans via bats," Lee continued. "With the release of this news, a picture of an East Asian woman eating 'bat soup' quickly went viral, and quickly the virus of racism and xenophobia was reactivated."
"Cuomo wants 'all states to be treated the same,'" Trump tweeted Tuesday. "But all states aren't the same. Some are being hit hard by the Chinese Virus, some are being hit practically not at all. New York is a very big 'hotspot', West Virginia has, thus far, zero cases. Andrew, keep politics out of it...."
China's foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang condemned Trump's remarks, saying at a press briefing that "some U.S. politicians have tried to stigmatize China . . . which China strongly condemns. We urge the U.S. to stop this despicable practice. We are very angry and strongly oppose it [the tweet]."
Salon spoke with a pair of experts by email, who also condemned Trump's tweet.
"It's apt that a president, who takes responsibility for nothing, is the first to place blame on everyone else," Shaughnessy Naughton, board president and founder of 314 Action — a non-profit political action committee that helps scientists run for political office — told Salon. "This is a mean-spirited distraction, when all the administration's attention should be getting this under control and preventing more American deaths."
Rosalind Chou, a sociology professor at Georgia State University, said that the comment was racist.
"The comments made by President Trump intensifies the xenophobia and racism that's become rampant against Asians and Asian Americans globally," Chou said. "He's fueling fears against Chinese, specifically. However, people of Asian ancestry across the globe may face collateral damage. These statements are dangerous and erroneously assign blame to people who are as susceptible to the disease as anyone else worldwide."
Margaret Fung, executive director of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, told Salon by email that "calling COVID-19 a 'Chinese virus' leads to mistaken beliefs that Asian people are more likely to be infected by the coronavirus and should be avoided or quarantined. The virus is not linked to race or ethnicity, but the pandemic has led to a sharp rise in racism and hate violence against Asians and Asian Americans. As we noted in our tweet last night, Trump and other elected officials should be speaking out against the racist and xenophobic attacks that perpetuate dangerous stereotypes about our community."
Trump is not the first prominent Republican to use racist language to describe COVID-19. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., referred to it as the "Chinese coronavirus" in a tweet last week, while Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., described it as the "Wuhan virus." After he was criticized for his remarks, Gosar tweeted that it was "just astoundingly ignorant to have all major media refer to it as #WuhanVirus for months but somehow, today, you've decided that's #racist. If you think this virus cares about your race you probably work for or watch MSNBC. Wuhan Virus. Wuhan Virus. Wuhan Virus."
America has a long history of perpetuating the racist idea that Asians are unclean.
"The idea that Asians are dirty, eat strange foods and are vectors of disease has existed for as long as Asians have been in the U.S., and these ideas continue to exist today," writer and Columbia University professor Marie Myung-Ok Lee wrote last month.
Chinese immigrants became medical scapegoats during a 1876 smallpox outbreak in San Francisco. The stereotype continued as recently as last year, when a Chinese restaurant opened by a white couple in New York advertised itself as "clean."
"The origin of today's novel coronavirus, 2019 n-COV, has not been conclusively determined yet, but it is thought to be transmitted to humans via bats," Lee continued. "With the release of this news, a picture of an East Asian woman eating 'bat soup' quickly went viral, and quickly the virus of racism and xenophobia was reactivated."
The markets don’t trust Trump — regardless of what he does: CNN’s John Harwood
March 16, 2020
By Sarah K. Burris - raw story
President Donald Trump is moving his Monday coronavirus briefing to just before the markets close again. But according to CNN’s John Harwood, it’s not going to help.
In his CNN column Monday, Harwood recalled Trump’s victory lap after the markets closed Friday up 1,700 points after he announced a national emergency. But when the president spoke Sunday evening right after the Federal Reserve cut the interest rate, Dow Futures took a nosedive.
“People in the market should be very thrilled,” Trump told reporters Sunday. On Friday, he claimed he was “honored” by the rally the markets had during his Rose Garden briefing. Harwood noted that it was the best say for the Dow since 2008, but it was after the worst day since 1987.
“Yet the President sounded like a manager celebrating one big inning in a game his team keeps losing,” he wrote.
Despite the late surge on Friday, the markets dropped so much Monday morning that the second after the opening bell, the computers were paused for trading.
“That volatility echoed last week’s results. Even after Friday’s late surge, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has declined 10% over the last week, 14% since Trump shook up his administration’s response team in late February, and 20% since the first US coronavirus case was confirmed on January 21,” wrote Harwood.
Trump feels a particular kinship with the stock market. The virus would make the markets fluctuate under any president, but Trump takes it personally. He’s spent the majority of his presidency using the success of the Dow as a representation of his success as a president. Now that it’s bottoming out, he’s scrambling, losing hope in the market’s ability to lift him to reelection.
“The reasons why grow increasingly evident over time. The qualities of leadership nervous investors yearn for — candor, command of facts, stability, and predictability — are qualities that Trump’s record shows him temperamentally incapable of providing,” Harwood explained.
He noted that while in real estate, Trump confessed that he played on people’s dreams.
“People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts,” Trump wrote in The Art of the Deal.
“His grandiosity was probably at its highest point ever a month ago,” said Art of the Deal co-writer Tony Schwartz. “And suddenly, the floor has been pulled out from under him.”
Sunday afternoon, Trump announced that the virus was “very contagious” but that he has “tremendous control” over it. It was evident Monday morning, that fact wasn’t true.
Read his full column at CNN.com.
In his CNN column Monday, Harwood recalled Trump’s victory lap after the markets closed Friday up 1,700 points after he announced a national emergency. But when the president spoke Sunday evening right after the Federal Reserve cut the interest rate, Dow Futures took a nosedive.
“People in the market should be very thrilled,” Trump told reporters Sunday. On Friday, he claimed he was “honored” by the rally the markets had during his Rose Garden briefing. Harwood noted that it was the best say for the Dow since 2008, but it was after the worst day since 1987.
“Yet the President sounded like a manager celebrating one big inning in a game his team keeps losing,” he wrote.
Despite the late surge on Friday, the markets dropped so much Monday morning that the second after the opening bell, the computers were paused for trading.
“That volatility echoed last week’s results. Even after Friday’s late surge, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has declined 10% over the last week, 14% since Trump shook up his administration’s response team in late February, and 20% since the first US coronavirus case was confirmed on January 21,” wrote Harwood.
Trump feels a particular kinship with the stock market. The virus would make the markets fluctuate under any president, but Trump takes it personally. He’s spent the majority of his presidency using the success of the Dow as a representation of his success as a president. Now that it’s bottoming out, he’s scrambling, losing hope in the market’s ability to lift him to reelection.
“The reasons why grow increasingly evident over time. The qualities of leadership nervous investors yearn for — candor, command of facts, stability, and predictability — are qualities that Trump’s record shows him temperamentally incapable of providing,” Harwood explained.
He noted that while in real estate, Trump confessed that he played on people’s dreams.
“People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts,” Trump wrote in The Art of the Deal.
“His grandiosity was probably at its highest point ever a month ago,” said Art of the Deal co-writer Tony Schwartz. “And suddenly, the floor has been pulled out from under him.”
Sunday afternoon, Trump announced that the virus was “very contagious” but that he has “tremendous control” over it. It was evident Monday morning, that fact wasn’t true.
Read his full column at CNN.com.
Trump, Still Hoping to Slash CDC Funds, Blames CDC for Coronavirus Fiasco
He also repeated his lie about Obama and the swine flu.
INAE OH - mother jones
3/13/2020
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention became the latest target of President Donald Trump’s attempts to deflect blame for what is being roundly condemned as a disastrous response by his administration to the coronavirus pandemic.
Trump claimed, without evidence, on Friday that the federal agency had for decades sat idle on efforts to build an adequate testing system—a situation he blamed former President Barack Obama for supposedly exacerbating. Trump’s latest twitter fusillade comes despite the fact that his administration has directly controlled the CDC for more than three years. The president then repeated the lie that his predecessor failed to act on the H1N1 outbreak—commonly known as the swine flu—until thousands had already died.
The truth: The Obama administration acted months before the World Health Organization declared the swine flu a pandemic. On April 26, 2009—with only 20 confirmed cases of the disease and no deaths in the US—Obama’s Health and Human Services chief declared it a public health emergency. “The emergency declaration in the United States lets the government free more money for antiviral drugs and give some previously unapproved tests and drugs to children,” the New York Times reported at the time. “One-quarter of the national stockpile of 50 million courses of antiflu drugs will be released.”
In October of that year, Obama declared it a national emergency—in addition to his earlier designation of a public health emergency—in order to allow the US to greenlight plans that included creating offsite emergency rooms.
Trump now appears to be deliberately distorting the timeline in order to escape the current criticism, adding to an already inflammatory track record of misinformation around the virus. His newest attack against the CDC comes as his administration refuses to drop its plans to slash the agency’s funding, even with the current coronavirus pandemic.
Trump claimed, without evidence, on Friday that the federal agency had for decades sat idle on efforts to build an adequate testing system—a situation he blamed former President Barack Obama for supposedly exacerbating. Trump’s latest twitter fusillade comes despite the fact that his administration has directly controlled the CDC for more than three years. The president then repeated the lie that his predecessor failed to act on the H1N1 outbreak—commonly known as the swine flu—until thousands had already died.
The truth: The Obama administration acted months before the World Health Organization declared the swine flu a pandemic. On April 26, 2009—with only 20 confirmed cases of the disease and no deaths in the US—Obama’s Health and Human Services chief declared it a public health emergency. “The emergency declaration in the United States lets the government free more money for antiviral drugs and give some previously unapproved tests and drugs to children,” the New York Times reported at the time. “One-quarter of the national stockpile of 50 million courses of antiflu drugs will be released.”
In October of that year, Obama declared it a national emergency—in addition to his earlier designation of a public health emergency—in order to allow the US to greenlight plans that included creating offsite emergency rooms.
Trump now appears to be deliberately distorting the timeline in order to escape the current criticism, adding to an already inflammatory track record of misinformation around the virus. His newest attack against the CDC comes as his administration refuses to drop its plans to slash the agency’s funding, even with the current coronavirus pandemic.
White House Knew Coronavirus Would Be A 'Major Threat' — But Response Fell Short
npr
March 12, 20201:20 PM ET
Politico reporter Dan Diamond says infighting at the Department of Health and Human Services and the need to flatter Trump impeded the response to the coronavirus.
...DIAMOND: As one official has said, Terry, the question might not be what went wrong; it's what went right? The Trump administration and health officials knew back in January that this coronavirus was going to be a major threat. They knew that tests needed to be distributed across the country to understand where there might be outbreaks. But across the month of February, as my colleague David Lim at Politico first reported, the tests that they sent out to labs across the country simply did not work. They were coming back with errors.
The CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, recognized that and promised that new tests would be distributed soon. But one day turned into two days turned into three days turned into several weeks, and in the meantime, we know now coronavirus was silently spreading in different communities, like Seattle. By the time that the Trump administration made a decision to allow new tests to be developed by hospitals by clinical laboratories, it was a step that was seen as multiple weeks late. And now as we talk in March, there are concerns that maybe there aren't enough materials to keep producing tests down the line - so a series of planning failures and missed opportunities to really get ahead of a problem.
---
GROSS: Why didn't the U.S. use the World Health Organization's test?
DIAMOND: ...To have someone tip me off because that is a question that I've been trying to solve and my colleagues have been looking to solve, too. The World Health Organization did have a working test. Someone somewhere made the decision that the U.S. was going to go its own way, and that started a chain reaction of not having a working test and then having these delays for weeks - so certainly a failure, not necessarily the worst failure but the one that started us down this path.
---
GROSS: ...So what is your assessment - since you cover the health agencies, what's your assessments of how much - that has gone wrong as a result of, like, bad political decisions, incompetence, just bad luck?
DIAMOND: I don't use this word lightly, Terry, but I'd say that this testing failure and the broader response to the coronavirus has been a catastrophe. The reasons it is a catastrophe, some are on the Trump administration itself; some are simply bureaucratic breakdowns. And if I'm apportioning blame - in the middle of a crisis, it's hard to tell at all times who made what decision when, but certainly, the Trump administration failed to plan for this moment. There were leadership failures, like failing to think through the implications of not having a testing strategy in place. There were leadership failures in allowing feuds to fester for months and months that - in the middle of a crisis, those cracks have widened and caused delays in making simple decisions.
At the same time, there are also low-level bureaucratic failures that are enough to make a person cry. There was a New York Times story this week about the team in Seattle of flu researchers who wanted to use their research to help uncover where coronavirus might be spreading, but because of complicated regulations, they were not technically supposed to use their data that had been collected for the flu to also search for coronavirus. And they tried for weeks to get permission from local leaders, from national leaders, especially, and just couldn't get it. They were being passed from bureaucrat to bureaucrat. Finally, they went ahead and helped uncover the Seattle coronavirus outbreak but then were told to knock it off.
And I look at these decisions and, in the moment, can somewhat understand why a mid-level official might say we have to follow policy and procedure. But in the middle of a crisis, turning to bureaucratic rulebooks is not the way to address this, and that has left the U.S. just a step behind at every step of the way.
GROSS: Trump has made it clear he wants low numbers. He didn't want people who tested positive from a cruise ship to be evacuated and then quarantined because the numbers would go up, and he didn't want those numbers to go up. It would look bad; it would make him look bad. So what do you think the most consequential decisions he's made so far are in terms of the virus, decisions for better or worse?
DIAMOND: When President Trump went on air and did a press conference talking about his concern over the, quote, "numbers" and didn't want a cruise ship with infected Americans to necessarily dock and have the passengers evacuated because he was worried about the numbers, it was a remarkable statement for a president to say. The president has been obsessed with the numbers, obsessed with the optics of how this looks, which is not what you want the U.S. president to be focused on. The president's decisions on coronavirus, Terry, are, I think, an outgrowth of how he has approached government the past three years. There were so many ticking time bombs that never actually exploded, crises that were averted because either the economy was sailing along, the president's tweets were papered over. But now we are in a crisis moment where these decisions matter.
And when I look back on what the president did or did not do, one major piece of behavior is his attack on what some might call the steady state, the career civil servants across the government who work for multiple presidents and bring expertise. The president has driven a lot of those people away. That has weakened the response across government. It has made it harder to coordinate some of these efforts. And in this current moment, there were teams that were either cut or turned away or minimized that could have been useful to fighting a pandemic.[...]
TO READ COMPLETE INTERVIEW, CLICK
...DIAMOND: As one official has said, Terry, the question might not be what went wrong; it's what went right? The Trump administration and health officials knew back in January that this coronavirus was going to be a major threat. They knew that tests needed to be distributed across the country to understand where there might be outbreaks. But across the month of February, as my colleague David Lim at Politico first reported, the tests that they sent out to labs across the country simply did not work. They were coming back with errors.
The CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, recognized that and promised that new tests would be distributed soon. But one day turned into two days turned into three days turned into several weeks, and in the meantime, we know now coronavirus was silently spreading in different communities, like Seattle. By the time that the Trump administration made a decision to allow new tests to be developed by hospitals by clinical laboratories, it was a step that was seen as multiple weeks late. And now as we talk in March, there are concerns that maybe there aren't enough materials to keep producing tests down the line - so a series of planning failures and missed opportunities to really get ahead of a problem.
---
GROSS: Why didn't the U.S. use the World Health Organization's test?
DIAMOND: ...To have someone tip me off because that is a question that I've been trying to solve and my colleagues have been looking to solve, too. The World Health Organization did have a working test. Someone somewhere made the decision that the U.S. was going to go its own way, and that started a chain reaction of not having a working test and then having these delays for weeks - so certainly a failure, not necessarily the worst failure but the one that started us down this path.
---
GROSS: ...So what is your assessment - since you cover the health agencies, what's your assessments of how much - that has gone wrong as a result of, like, bad political decisions, incompetence, just bad luck?
DIAMOND: I don't use this word lightly, Terry, but I'd say that this testing failure and the broader response to the coronavirus has been a catastrophe. The reasons it is a catastrophe, some are on the Trump administration itself; some are simply bureaucratic breakdowns. And if I'm apportioning blame - in the middle of a crisis, it's hard to tell at all times who made what decision when, but certainly, the Trump administration failed to plan for this moment. There were leadership failures, like failing to think through the implications of not having a testing strategy in place. There were leadership failures in allowing feuds to fester for months and months that - in the middle of a crisis, those cracks have widened and caused delays in making simple decisions.
At the same time, there are also low-level bureaucratic failures that are enough to make a person cry. There was a New York Times story this week about the team in Seattle of flu researchers who wanted to use their research to help uncover where coronavirus might be spreading, but because of complicated regulations, they were not technically supposed to use their data that had been collected for the flu to also search for coronavirus. And they tried for weeks to get permission from local leaders, from national leaders, especially, and just couldn't get it. They were being passed from bureaucrat to bureaucrat. Finally, they went ahead and helped uncover the Seattle coronavirus outbreak but then were told to knock it off.
And I look at these decisions and, in the moment, can somewhat understand why a mid-level official might say we have to follow policy and procedure. But in the middle of a crisis, turning to bureaucratic rulebooks is not the way to address this, and that has left the U.S. just a step behind at every step of the way.
GROSS: Trump has made it clear he wants low numbers. He didn't want people who tested positive from a cruise ship to be evacuated and then quarantined because the numbers would go up, and he didn't want those numbers to go up. It would look bad; it would make him look bad. So what do you think the most consequential decisions he's made so far are in terms of the virus, decisions for better or worse?
DIAMOND: When President Trump went on air and did a press conference talking about his concern over the, quote, "numbers" and didn't want a cruise ship with infected Americans to necessarily dock and have the passengers evacuated because he was worried about the numbers, it was a remarkable statement for a president to say. The president has been obsessed with the numbers, obsessed with the optics of how this looks, which is not what you want the U.S. president to be focused on. The president's decisions on coronavirus, Terry, are, I think, an outgrowth of how he has approached government the past three years. There were so many ticking time bombs that never actually exploded, crises that were averted because either the economy was sailing along, the president's tweets were papered over. But now we are in a crisis moment where these decisions matter.
And when I look back on what the president did or did not do, one major piece of behavior is his attack on what some might call the steady state, the career civil servants across the government who work for multiple presidents and bring expertise. The president has driven a lot of those people away. That has weakened the response across government. It has made it harder to coordinate some of these efforts. And in this current moment, there were teams that were either cut or turned away or minimized that could have been useful to fighting a pandemic.[...]
TO READ COMPLETE INTERVIEW, CLICK
The presidency is an actual job: This idiot can't do it
Have we forgotten that being president isn't about posturing and tweeting? Without competent leaders, we're toast
BOB CESCA - salon
MARCH 10, 2020 1:30PM (UTC)
...With a pandemic rapidly circulating the globe, with the first stages of another financial crisis in progress and with a breathtakingly incompetent White House running the show, we're all feeling a bit like we're leaning too far back in our chairs. And we're more or less experiencing that sensation "all the time." So much of it's in reaction to the aforementioned breathtakingly incompetent White House and our even more incompetent president. He's supposed to be handling this with expertise and aplomb, as most previous chief executives have, but he absolutely isn't. In any way.
Instead, it's another crisis in which Donald Trump and his team of ass-kissing henchmen are dealing with it like the Three Stooges trying to fix the plumbing — Curly accidentally trapping himself in a cage of leaky pipes, while geysers of water shoot out of the light fixtures. Trump's total absence of presidential qualifications, like the fuel rods at Chernobyl's No. 4 reactor, are becoming rapidly exposed, precipitating a political, economic and public health meltdown unlike anything we've experienced in the modern age.
For several years now, Trump has managed to bullshit his way through his presidency, walking a narrow path while pretending he knows what's going on, pretending he has a handle on the details and responsibilities involved in serving in such a rarefied position.
Despite his inner delusions and outer bragging, he doesn't.
For three years, Trump leaned heavily on his skills as a well-practiced New York con man, and, accordingly, continued to cultivate the fanboy adulation of his Red Hat cult as his exclusive audience. Thanks in part to the blinding velocity of the firehose of news and a successful whitewashing effort provided by Fox News, previous nightmares such as the president's incompetent, callous and punitive reaction to Hurricane Maria have whizzed on by without Trump experiencing any blunt-force damage to his low-40s approval polling.
But now Americans at large are waking up to a grotesque, unavoidable reality: This isn't new. Trump has always been staggeringly out of his depth as president, routinely overwhelmed by the rigors and requirements of the gig, while appearing to act based solely on his own political and financial desperation.
For those of us who are overwhelmingly aware of his record, Trump's lack of qualifications for such a crucial job have always been blindingly obvious. As the coronavirus expands its reach, however, average voters who are neither political commentators or adoring loyalists deeply embedded inside his cult of tyranny are just now catching up in shocked horror to Trump's inability to handle the job. You can almost hear the sickening thud of jaws dropping at one example after another of the president's laundry list of fumbles in the face of a deadly emergency — job-performance deficiencies that make George W. Bush's presidency seem like Abe Lincoln by way of Capt. Steve Rogers. These bungled and botched reactions are rapidly fusing into our third simultaneous crisis, a "Trump Crisis," inevitably worsening both the pandemic and the stock market free-fall.
While Trump clearly didn't cause the pandemic, his total absence of sober and, most important, trustworthy leadership has worsened it, not unlike the mayor of Amityville's reaction to the shark attacks in "Jaws." This is where it might be nice to have a president who can be trusted, at least as much as Americans have trusted other presidents in a crisis, rather than a buffoon whose very appearance is a lie — a makeup-slathered, badly-coiffed hustler who lies with the same unblinking ease as the Stones performing "Satisfaction," to the tune of nearly 17,000 lies in a little more than three years.
By deceptively telegraphing a false sense of security to his disciples — the last remaining voters who inexplicably trust him — Trump has already endangered American lives, potentially exposing his people to the virus by encouraging them to shop and travel, while also diminishing the threat by inaccurately noting that the coronavirus isn't a big deal. Trump also continued to hold his usual ego-stroking rallies while fanboys infected with the coronavirus attended, potentially infecting Rep. Matt Gaetz, Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Doug Collins, among others, at Trump's CPAC rally.
Trump's grossly pathetic reaction to the pandemic has effectively highlighted an aspect of the presidency that's been lost in the fever swamps of social media and cable news. Despite what some of us have come to believe, the presidency is a real job, one that requires certain skills — skills which, for various reasons, around 40 percent of us just don't prioritize any more.
At some point in recent years, the presidency became so utterly devalued that too many Americans have been led to believe that just about anyone could do it, including the doofus who bankrupted four casinos, the well-known bullshit artist and former host of "Celebrity Apprentice." Too many Americans are badly mistaken.
Perhaps it was the Republican Party's nonsensical pitch about electing someone we'd like to have a beer with, the notion that it was awesome and, indeed, patriotic to elect someone just like us. Frankly, I don't want a president who's just like me, nor should you. Why the hell would we want a surgeon or an airline pilot who's just as undisciplined and as unskilled as we are? For that matter, why would anyone in their right mind allow someone who behaves like Donald Trump to operate on their pancreas or fly them across the Pacific Ocean? Along those lines, why, then, would we allow this badly incapable human to possess the authority to launch nuclear weapons or to manage the response to a global pandemic? There's a different kind of sickness in America these days, a political one, and it has to be eradicated before we pass the zero-barrier between here and idiocracy.
The presidency used to be a job that required unmatched decency, experience, knowledge and discipline. It's supposed to be our job as voters to choose a president, or for any political leadership role for that matter, based on a strong predisposition for these ideals.
As voters, we're hiring an employee to do something almost no one can do. We're hiring a national steward to manage the most colossal and powerful government in human history. We're not hiring a bug-eyed TV pundit to loudly regurgitate all our rants, biases and vendettas. The presidency isn't luggage for stowing our feelings, our grievances or our social media brands. The presidency isn't about our identities, it's not about "owning" the other side and it's not about telling us what we want to hear. It's about rational, steady leadership, and there's none of that in the White House today as the world shuts down around us.
As voters and as employers, we need to stop acting like selfish children, making our selections all about us and our hang-ups, and instead begin to realize that it's a job that only 44 other people have been chosen to occupy. It's a job of significant gravity and solemnity.
The presidency isn't a show, elections aren't a game and the president should never be a game-show host.
The ascendency of Donald Trump, along with this three-year, seemingly endless plasma stream of abnormalcy, now metastasizing into full-on Trump fatigue, is a consequence of this glitch in our fellow Americans' perception of the modern presidency. This week and in the weeks to come, people will die because too many of us forgot what this job ought to signify and what qualities those who occupy it need to possess.
We're all learning hard lessons right now, and one of them is that we urgently need to re-prioritize who we're hiring and especially why we're hiring them. There's no hope for the current president, but there's an election in less than eight months. It's another opportunity to finally lean forward in our chairs — and end this madness before we fall over backward and break our necks.
Instead, it's another crisis in which Donald Trump and his team of ass-kissing henchmen are dealing with it like the Three Stooges trying to fix the plumbing — Curly accidentally trapping himself in a cage of leaky pipes, while geysers of water shoot out of the light fixtures. Trump's total absence of presidential qualifications, like the fuel rods at Chernobyl's No. 4 reactor, are becoming rapidly exposed, precipitating a political, economic and public health meltdown unlike anything we've experienced in the modern age.
For several years now, Trump has managed to bullshit his way through his presidency, walking a narrow path while pretending he knows what's going on, pretending he has a handle on the details and responsibilities involved in serving in such a rarefied position.
Despite his inner delusions and outer bragging, he doesn't.
For three years, Trump leaned heavily on his skills as a well-practiced New York con man, and, accordingly, continued to cultivate the fanboy adulation of his Red Hat cult as his exclusive audience. Thanks in part to the blinding velocity of the firehose of news and a successful whitewashing effort provided by Fox News, previous nightmares such as the president's incompetent, callous and punitive reaction to Hurricane Maria have whizzed on by without Trump experiencing any blunt-force damage to his low-40s approval polling.
But now Americans at large are waking up to a grotesque, unavoidable reality: This isn't new. Trump has always been staggeringly out of his depth as president, routinely overwhelmed by the rigors and requirements of the gig, while appearing to act based solely on his own political and financial desperation.
For those of us who are overwhelmingly aware of his record, Trump's lack of qualifications for such a crucial job have always been blindingly obvious. As the coronavirus expands its reach, however, average voters who are neither political commentators or adoring loyalists deeply embedded inside his cult of tyranny are just now catching up in shocked horror to Trump's inability to handle the job. You can almost hear the sickening thud of jaws dropping at one example after another of the president's laundry list of fumbles in the face of a deadly emergency — job-performance deficiencies that make George W. Bush's presidency seem like Abe Lincoln by way of Capt. Steve Rogers. These bungled and botched reactions are rapidly fusing into our third simultaneous crisis, a "Trump Crisis," inevitably worsening both the pandemic and the stock market free-fall.
While Trump clearly didn't cause the pandemic, his total absence of sober and, most important, trustworthy leadership has worsened it, not unlike the mayor of Amityville's reaction to the shark attacks in "Jaws." This is where it might be nice to have a president who can be trusted, at least as much as Americans have trusted other presidents in a crisis, rather than a buffoon whose very appearance is a lie — a makeup-slathered, badly-coiffed hustler who lies with the same unblinking ease as the Stones performing "Satisfaction," to the tune of nearly 17,000 lies in a little more than three years.
By deceptively telegraphing a false sense of security to his disciples — the last remaining voters who inexplicably trust him — Trump has already endangered American lives, potentially exposing his people to the virus by encouraging them to shop and travel, while also diminishing the threat by inaccurately noting that the coronavirus isn't a big deal. Trump also continued to hold his usual ego-stroking rallies while fanboys infected with the coronavirus attended, potentially infecting Rep. Matt Gaetz, Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Doug Collins, among others, at Trump's CPAC rally.
Trump's grossly pathetic reaction to the pandemic has effectively highlighted an aspect of the presidency that's been lost in the fever swamps of social media and cable news. Despite what some of us have come to believe, the presidency is a real job, one that requires certain skills — skills which, for various reasons, around 40 percent of us just don't prioritize any more.
At some point in recent years, the presidency became so utterly devalued that too many Americans have been led to believe that just about anyone could do it, including the doofus who bankrupted four casinos, the well-known bullshit artist and former host of "Celebrity Apprentice." Too many Americans are badly mistaken.
Perhaps it was the Republican Party's nonsensical pitch about electing someone we'd like to have a beer with, the notion that it was awesome and, indeed, patriotic to elect someone just like us. Frankly, I don't want a president who's just like me, nor should you. Why the hell would we want a surgeon or an airline pilot who's just as undisciplined and as unskilled as we are? For that matter, why would anyone in their right mind allow someone who behaves like Donald Trump to operate on their pancreas or fly them across the Pacific Ocean? Along those lines, why, then, would we allow this badly incapable human to possess the authority to launch nuclear weapons or to manage the response to a global pandemic? There's a different kind of sickness in America these days, a political one, and it has to be eradicated before we pass the zero-barrier between here and idiocracy.
The presidency used to be a job that required unmatched decency, experience, knowledge and discipline. It's supposed to be our job as voters to choose a president, or for any political leadership role for that matter, based on a strong predisposition for these ideals.
As voters, we're hiring an employee to do something almost no one can do. We're hiring a national steward to manage the most colossal and powerful government in human history. We're not hiring a bug-eyed TV pundit to loudly regurgitate all our rants, biases and vendettas. The presidency isn't luggage for stowing our feelings, our grievances or our social media brands. The presidency isn't about our identities, it's not about "owning" the other side and it's not about telling us what we want to hear. It's about rational, steady leadership, and there's none of that in the White House today as the world shuts down around us.
As voters and as employers, we need to stop acting like selfish children, making our selections all about us and our hang-ups, and instead begin to realize that it's a job that only 44 other people have been chosen to occupy. It's a job of significant gravity and solemnity.
The presidency isn't a show, elections aren't a game and the president should never be a game-show host.
The ascendency of Donald Trump, along with this three-year, seemingly endless plasma stream of abnormalcy, now metastasizing into full-on Trump fatigue, is a consequence of this glitch in our fellow Americans' perception of the modern presidency. This week and in the weeks to come, people will die because too many of us forgot what this job ought to signify and what qualities those who occupy it need to possess.
We're all learning hard lessons right now, and one of them is that we urgently need to re-prioritize who we're hiring and especially why we're hiring them. There's no hope for the current president, but there's an election in less than eight months. It's another opportunity to finally lean forward in our chairs — and end this madness before we fall over backward and break our necks.
Trump Org bilked taxpayers for far more than claimed — for the president to golf: report
March 5, 2020
By Bob Brigham - raw story
Newly uncovered documents undermine claims about how much the Trump Organization is receiving from U.S. taxpayers.
“President Trump’s company charged the Secret Service $157,000 more than was previously known — billing taxpayers for rooms at his clubs at rates far higher than his company has claimed, according to a new trove of receipts and billing documents released by the Secret Service,” The Washington Post reported Thursday.
The watchdog group Public Citizen spent three years litigating a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain the documents.
“When added to dozens of charges already reported by The Washington Post, the new documents show that Trump’s company has charged the Secret Service more than $628,000 since he took office in 2017,” the newspaper noted.
According to Trump Golf Count, the president has spent 123 days at Mar-a-Lago, 75 days at Bedminister — with 247 days spent at golf courses.
“The payments show Trump has an unprecedented — and still partially hidden — business relationship with his own government. The full scope of that relationship is still unknown because the publicly available records are largely from 2017 and 2018, leaving huge gaps in the data,” The Post explained.
Eric Trump said they only charge the Secret Service “like 50 bucks” for rooms.
“The new documents include bills from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., showing charges for 177 additional nightly room rentals in 2017, 2018 and 2019,” the newspaper reported. “The rate was $396.15 per night per room, the receipts show.”
David Fahrenthold✔
@Fahrenthold
NEW: We've identified another $157,000 in payments from taxpayers to @realdonaldtrump's company, as Trump Org. charged $396/night to house Trump's own Secret Service agents.
We know about it b/c @Public_Citizen won a 3-year battle for public records.https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/newly-obtained-documents-show-157000-in-additional-payments-by-the-secret-service-to-trump-properties/2020/03/05/7da2a610-5cbd-11ea-b014-4fafa866bb81_story.html …
Mar 5, 2020
“President Trump’s company charged the Secret Service $157,000 more than was previously known — billing taxpayers for rooms at his clubs at rates far higher than his company has claimed, according to a new trove of receipts and billing documents released by the Secret Service,” The Washington Post reported Thursday.
The watchdog group Public Citizen spent three years litigating a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain the documents.
“When added to dozens of charges already reported by The Washington Post, the new documents show that Trump’s company has charged the Secret Service more than $628,000 since he took office in 2017,” the newspaper noted.
According to Trump Golf Count, the president has spent 123 days at Mar-a-Lago, 75 days at Bedminister — with 247 days spent at golf courses.
“The payments show Trump has an unprecedented — and still partially hidden — business relationship with his own government. The full scope of that relationship is still unknown because the publicly available records are largely from 2017 and 2018, leaving huge gaps in the data,” The Post explained.
Eric Trump said they only charge the Secret Service “like 50 bucks” for rooms.
“The new documents include bills from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., showing charges for 177 additional nightly room rentals in 2017, 2018 and 2019,” the newspaper reported. “The rate was $396.15 per night per room, the receipts show.”
David Fahrenthold✔
@Fahrenthold
NEW: We've identified another $157,000 in payments from taxpayers to @realdonaldtrump's company, as Trump Org. charged $396/night to house Trump's own Secret Service agents.
We know about it b/c @Public_Citizen won a 3-year battle for public records.https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/newly-obtained-documents-show-157000-in-additional-payments-by-the-secret-service-to-trump-properties/2020/03/05/7da2a610-5cbd-11ea-b014-4fafa866bb81_story.html …
Mar 5, 2020
Scots ministers told to seek ‘unexplained wealth order’ for Donald Trump resorts
The Scottish Government has been urged to apply for an unexplained wealth order to investigate Donald Trump’s deals to acquire his Scottish properties.
By Martyn McLaughlin - scotmans.com
Thursday, 27th February 2020, 2:59 pm
Patrick Harvie MSP, co-leader of the Scottish Greens, said there were reasonable grounds for suspecting that the US president, or people he is connected with, “have been involved in serious crime.”
He has called on ministers to apply to the Court of Session to seek answers as to how Mr Trump’s bankrolled his multimillion acquisitions of land and property in his mother’s homeland.
Responding at First Minister’s Questions, Nicola Sturgeon stressed she was “no defender” of Mr Trump, but said any allegations of criminality were a matter for Police Scotland and the Crown Office.
An UWO is a relatively new - and rarely used - power which has been designed to target suspected corrupt foreign officials who have potentially laundered stolen money through the UK.
The mechanism, introduced in 2018, is an attempt to force the owners of assets to disclose their wealth. If a suspected corrupt foreign official, or their family, cannot show a legitimate source for their riches, then authorities can apply to a court to seize the property.
Mr Trump and the Trump Organisation have always stressed that they did not require any outside financing for their Scottish resorts.
George Sorial, the Trump Organisation’s former chief compliance counsel, told The Scotsman in 2008 that it had £1bn “sitting in the bank and ready to go” for its inaugural Scottish course, located in Aberdeenshire.
Scotland on Sunday later revealed how the same year, Mr Trump asked the Bank of Scotland for a 15 year mortgage worth £23m, and a £15m construction loan, as part of his efforts to establish a "landmark" hotel at St Andrews in Fife, the home of golf. The bank refused, and Mr Trump's plans were never realised.
Mr Harvie, an avowed critic of Mr Trump and his administration, said that an UWO was “designed precisely for these kinds of situations.”
He told MSPs: “Trump’s known sources of income do not explain where the money came from in these huge cash transactions. There are reasonable grounds for suspecting that his lawfully obtained income was insufficient.
“Trump is a politically exposed person in terms of the law, and there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that he, or people he is connected with, have been involved in serious crime. Some of them have pleaded guilty.”
He added: “We need to be given confidence that the government will show leadership and use the powers available to it.
It is not the first time there have been calls for an UWO in connection to Mr Trump’s Scottish interests.
Avaaz, the non-profit global activism organisation, has urged Scottish ministers to apply for such an order.
Having taken what it described as “expert advice” on financial crime from advocate Bryan Heaney, Avaaz sent a briefing to Ms Sturgeon’s office last April.
The issue of the Avaaz briefing was raised by Mr Harvie today, and Ms Sturgeon said she would be happy to revisit the correspondence and inform Mr Harvie about what, if any, action had been taken. She emphasised the “sensitivity” involved in any potential legal action involving the government, and said issues about alleged criminality were a matter for police and prosecutors.
In its 2019 briefing, Avaaz set out what it described as “enough reasonable suspicion as to the nature of Mr Trump’s cash payments for the Turnberry golf resort to justify Scottish ministers’ application for a UWO to investigate the matter.”
It went on: “It is Mr Trump’s own actions that prompt legitimate questions about his income which, if left unanswered, would call into doubt the Scottish Government’s determination to confront the spectre of money laundering.”
Mr Trump acquired the historic Turnberry resort - a four-time host of golf’s Open championship - from Dubai-based Leisurecorp in April 2014 for £35m.
It has yet to turn a profit under his ownership, and the most recent accounts filed with Companies House show it is reliant on loans of £114.9m to its parent undertaking, the Donald J Trump Revocable Trust, a New York-based state grantor trust.
There have been questions surrounding the finances underpinning Mr Trump’s acquisition of land and property in Scotland for years.
In November 2017, Glenn Simpson, the co-founder of Fusion GPS, told the US Congress he found Mr Trump’s golf courses in Scotland and Ireland to be “concerning.”
Addressing the permanent select committee on intelligence at the House of Representatives, Mr Simpson said the accounts filed with UK authorities did not show any Russian involvement, but they did reveal “enormous amounts of capital flowing into these projects from unknown sources.”
He added: “If you’re familiar with Donald Trump’s finances and the litigation over whether he’s really a billionaire, you know, there’s good reason to believe he doesn't have enough money to do this and that he would have had to have outside financial support for these things.”
The Criminal Finances Act sets out a series of requirements which must be met before an UWO can be granted.
They include satisfying the court that a respondent’s” lawfully obtained income would have been insufficient for the purposes of enabling the respondent to obtain the property,” that the respondent is a “politically exposed person,” or that there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that they, or a person connected with them, have been involved in serious crime.
The Trump Organisation has been contacted for comment.
He has called on ministers to apply to the Court of Session to seek answers as to how Mr Trump’s bankrolled his multimillion acquisitions of land and property in his mother’s homeland.
Responding at First Minister’s Questions, Nicola Sturgeon stressed she was “no defender” of Mr Trump, but said any allegations of criminality were a matter for Police Scotland and the Crown Office.
An UWO is a relatively new - and rarely used - power which has been designed to target suspected corrupt foreign officials who have potentially laundered stolen money through the UK.
The mechanism, introduced in 2018, is an attempt to force the owners of assets to disclose their wealth. If a suspected corrupt foreign official, or their family, cannot show a legitimate source for their riches, then authorities can apply to a court to seize the property.
Mr Trump and the Trump Organisation have always stressed that they did not require any outside financing for their Scottish resorts.
George Sorial, the Trump Organisation’s former chief compliance counsel, told The Scotsman in 2008 that it had £1bn “sitting in the bank and ready to go” for its inaugural Scottish course, located in Aberdeenshire.
Scotland on Sunday later revealed how the same year, Mr Trump asked the Bank of Scotland for a 15 year mortgage worth £23m, and a £15m construction loan, as part of his efforts to establish a "landmark" hotel at St Andrews in Fife, the home of golf. The bank refused, and Mr Trump's plans were never realised.
Mr Harvie, an avowed critic of Mr Trump and his administration, said that an UWO was “designed precisely for these kinds of situations.”
He told MSPs: “Trump’s known sources of income do not explain where the money came from in these huge cash transactions. There are reasonable grounds for suspecting that his lawfully obtained income was insufficient.
“Trump is a politically exposed person in terms of the law, and there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that he, or people he is connected with, have been involved in serious crime. Some of them have pleaded guilty.”
He added: “We need to be given confidence that the government will show leadership and use the powers available to it.
It is not the first time there have been calls for an UWO in connection to Mr Trump’s Scottish interests.
Avaaz, the non-profit global activism organisation, has urged Scottish ministers to apply for such an order.
Having taken what it described as “expert advice” on financial crime from advocate Bryan Heaney, Avaaz sent a briefing to Ms Sturgeon’s office last April.
The issue of the Avaaz briefing was raised by Mr Harvie today, and Ms Sturgeon said she would be happy to revisit the correspondence and inform Mr Harvie about what, if any, action had been taken. She emphasised the “sensitivity” involved in any potential legal action involving the government, and said issues about alleged criminality were a matter for police and prosecutors.
In its 2019 briefing, Avaaz set out what it described as “enough reasonable suspicion as to the nature of Mr Trump’s cash payments for the Turnberry golf resort to justify Scottish ministers’ application for a UWO to investigate the matter.”
It went on: “It is Mr Trump’s own actions that prompt legitimate questions about his income which, if left unanswered, would call into doubt the Scottish Government’s determination to confront the spectre of money laundering.”
Mr Trump acquired the historic Turnberry resort - a four-time host of golf’s Open championship - from Dubai-based Leisurecorp in April 2014 for £35m.
It has yet to turn a profit under his ownership, and the most recent accounts filed with Companies House show it is reliant on loans of £114.9m to its parent undertaking, the Donald J Trump Revocable Trust, a New York-based state grantor trust.
There have been questions surrounding the finances underpinning Mr Trump’s acquisition of land and property in Scotland for years.
In November 2017, Glenn Simpson, the co-founder of Fusion GPS, told the US Congress he found Mr Trump’s golf courses in Scotland and Ireland to be “concerning.”
Addressing the permanent select committee on intelligence at the House of Representatives, Mr Simpson said the accounts filed with UK authorities did not show any Russian involvement, but they did reveal “enormous amounts of capital flowing into these projects from unknown sources.”
He added: “If you’re familiar with Donald Trump’s finances and the litigation over whether he’s really a billionaire, you know, there’s good reason to believe he doesn't have enough money to do this and that he would have had to have outside financial support for these things.”
The Criminal Finances Act sets out a series of requirements which must be met before an UWO can be granted.
They include satisfying the court that a respondent’s” lawfully obtained income would have been insufficient for the purposes of enabling the respondent to obtain the property,” that the respondent is a “politically exposed person,” or that there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that they, or a person connected with them, have been involved in serious crime.
The Trump Organisation has been contacted for comment.
Trump administration
america's swamp!!!
Baby-faced assassin: the 29-year old at the heart of Trump's 'deep state' purge
Johnny McEntee, an ex-college quarterback, heads a sweeping White House effort to purge the civil service and install loyalists
Johnny McEntee may never surpass the fame he garnered in 2011 as a college football quarterback starring in a viral trick shot video of him throwing footballs great distances into trash cans that racked up more than 7m views.
Now, as the recently named White House director for presidential personnel, McEntee, 29, has been put in charge by Donald Trump of canning federal employees – not footballs – suspected of harboring secret anti-Trump sentiments.
McEntee summoned cabinet liaisons to the White House last week to tell them to root out Trump critics in their ranks, according to reporting by Axios. McEntee has also put a freeze on political appointments and told colleagues that the White House would be selecting cabinet deputies from now on, according to the New York Times.
The sudden conferral on the young McEntee, a former close personal aide to the president and reported favorite of the first lady, of such broad power over thousands of civil service careers is highly unusual in the history of US government, according to public administration experts.
But as Trump winds up his re-election machinery, McEntee’s elevation is only one among dozens of such moves taking place across the executive branch to install Trump loyalists, purge Trump critics and protect the president’s political wellbeing, whatever the cost.
The gist of Trump’s project, critics say, is to hone the federal government to the one purpose he believes it ought to serve: helping him. It is also a process supercharged by Trump’s acquittal at the end of his impeachment trial.
“The failure to remove the president on impeachment, and the Senate’s malleability and acquiescence to the president’s whims, clearly have emboldened him and inclined him to remove any hint of dissent, clearly in the White House and more widely in the executive branch,” said Jonathan Stevenson, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and former National Security Council official under Barack Obama.
The outflow of civil servants has coincided with an inflow of trusted former Trump deputies, some of whom had previously left the White House in the turbulence of Trump’s first three years.
McEntee was forced out in 2018 by the chief of staff, John Kelly, over a problem with McEntee’s security clearances reportedly relating to online gambling. Now McEntee is back and Kelly is long gone.
The former communications director Hope Hicks, 31, who left the White House in 2018 saying she had tired of Washington, is now returning as an aide to Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, 39. Immigration zealot Stephen Miller, 34, is reprising his starring campaign-season role as the choreographer of Trump’s every move on the issue.
In an occasion for widespread alarm among former intelligence officials, Trump last week installed an avid loyalist, Richard Grenell, as acting director of national intelligence, despite Grenell having no experience as an intelligence officer or in managing a large bureaucracy.
Grenell, 53, was moved into the job after Trump grew enraged that Congress had been briefed by intelligence officials that Russia was interfering in the 2020 election on Trump’s behalf. Intelligence sources later said the briefing had exaggerated the bias of Moscow for Trump specifically.
Grenell is “savvy and smart with a tremendous skill set” but unqualified for the intelligence job, said Mark Groombridge, who worked with Grenell at the US Mission to the United Nations and on Log Cabin Republican issues.
Having “a Trump toady and a sycophant” as director of national intelligence raised national security concerns, said Groombridge.
“The issue is, is there anyone in the administration who will tell truth to power?” said Groombridge. “Who will have the integrity to say, ‘Mr President, you’re wrong,’ or ‘This is something you need to know?’ And that’s the primary concern I think people have with Rick, and I think it’s legitimate.”
In the role of intelligence director, which oversees 17 spy agencies, Grenell has quickly advanced the purge-and-replace project. He expunged the second-ranking official at ODNI, Andrew Hallman, a career intelligence officer, and hired Kashyap Patel, 37, a former White House aide who helped run a series of attacks on the intelligence community over its investigation of the 2016 Trump campaign.
Patel is tasked with “cleaning house” of Trump critics “from top to bottom”, CBS News reported. Grenell did not reply to a request for comment.
Trump’s conspiratorial fixation on the notion that he is under siege from a faceless “deep state” and his insistence on personal loyalty to him across government both appear to have grown stronger since the first days of his presidency, when he told the then FBI director James Comey over dinner, “I need loyalty. I expect loyalty.”
External hard-right groups have encouraged the evolution, dishing Trump lists of supposed enemies and alternative lists of potential loyalist replacements, many familiar from Fox News, Axios reported. In the judgment of the conservative media voices Trump listens to most, even the coronavirus is a plot against the president.
It’s unclear whether there are enough Trump loyalists to replace everyone on the lists of his enemies. Officials purged from executive branch posts since the impeachment acquittal on 5 February include the impeachment witnesses Gordon Sondland and Alexander Vindman, whose brother was also purged from his national security assignment; US attorney Jessie Liu, who opposed prosecution of former FBI official Andrew McCabe, a Trump bugbear; Pentagon official Elaine McCusker, who resisted a White House directive last year to suspend aid to Ukraine; John Rood, a Pentagon official who certified that Ukraine had met anti-corruption benchmarks required for aid to flow; deputy national security adviser Victoria Coates; and Joseph Maguire, Grenell’s predecessor.
“There might be a few people who slip through the cracks, but not many,” said Stevenson of Trump’s purge. “You can’t read everybody’s minds, and there are people I think probably at the National Security Council – I’m sure there are a number of people who question Trump’s leadership and even his suitability for the job, and yet they stay for their own reasons.
“A complete and airtight purge probably is impossible. But substantial headway can be made, and apparently is being made.”
Trump’s defenders in the media and government point out he may choose executive branch employees as he pleases, and they defend his attacks on the traditional separation between politics and career service by weaving ominous tales of plots against the president from within.
Trump’s response has been to dig deeper into his list of loyalists and send Johnny up against the Deep State. It’s a game critics warn that everyone could lose.
Now, as the recently named White House director for presidential personnel, McEntee, 29, has been put in charge by Donald Trump of canning federal employees – not footballs – suspected of harboring secret anti-Trump sentiments.
McEntee summoned cabinet liaisons to the White House last week to tell them to root out Trump critics in their ranks, according to reporting by Axios. McEntee has also put a freeze on political appointments and told colleagues that the White House would be selecting cabinet deputies from now on, according to the New York Times.
The sudden conferral on the young McEntee, a former close personal aide to the president and reported favorite of the first lady, of such broad power over thousands of civil service careers is highly unusual in the history of US government, according to public administration experts.
But as Trump winds up his re-election machinery, McEntee’s elevation is only one among dozens of such moves taking place across the executive branch to install Trump loyalists, purge Trump critics and protect the president’s political wellbeing, whatever the cost.
The gist of Trump’s project, critics say, is to hone the federal government to the one purpose he believes it ought to serve: helping him. It is also a process supercharged by Trump’s acquittal at the end of his impeachment trial.
“The failure to remove the president on impeachment, and the Senate’s malleability and acquiescence to the president’s whims, clearly have emboldened him and inclined him to remove any hint of dissent, clearly in the White House and more widely in the executive branch,” said Jonathan Stevenson, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and former National Security Council official under Barack Obama.
The outflow of civil servants has coincided with an inflow of trusted former Trump deputies, some of whom had previously left the White House in the turbulence of Trump’s first three years.
McEntee was forced out in 2018 by the chief of staff, John Kelly, over a problem with McEntee’s security clearances reportedly relating to online gambling. Now McEntee is back and Kelly is long gone.
The former communications director Hope Hicks, 31, who left the White House in 2018 saying she had tired of Washington, is now returning as an aide to Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, 39. Immigration zealot Stephen Miller, 34, is reprising his starring campaign-season role as the choreographer of Trump’s every move on the issue.
In an occasion for widespread alarm among former intelligence officials, Trump last week installed an avid loyalist, Richard Grenell, as acting director of national intelligence, despite Grenell having no experience as an intelligence officer or in managing a large bureaucracy.
Grenell, 53, was moved into the job after Trump grew enraged that Congress had been briefed by intelligence officials that Russia was interfering in the 2020 election on Trump’s behalf. Intelligence sources later said the briefing had exaggerated the bias of Moscow for Trump specifically.
Grenell is “savvy and smart with a tremendous skill set” but unqualified for the intelligence job, said Mark Groombridge, who worked with Grenell at the US Mission to the United Nations and on Log Cabin Republican issues.
Having “a Trump toady and a sycophant” as director of national intelligence raised national security concerns, said Groombridge.
“The issue is, is there anyone in the administration who will tell truth to power?” said Groombridge. “Who will have the integrity to say, ‘Mr President, you’re wrong,’ or ‘This is something you need to know?’ And that’s the primary concern I think people have with Rick, and I think it’s legitimate.”
In the role of intelligence director, which oversees 17 spy agencies, Grenell has quickly advanced the purge-and-replace project. He expunged the second-ranking official at ODNI, Andrew Hallman, a career intelligence officer, and hired Kashyap Patel, 37, a former White House aide who helped run a series of attacks on the intelligence community over its investigation of the 2016 Trump campaign.
Patel is tasked with “cleaning house” of Trump critics “from top to bottom”, CBS News reported. Grenell did not reply to a request for comment.
Trump’s conspiratorial fixation on the notion that he is under siege from a faceless “deep state” and his insistence on personal loyalty to him across government both appear to have grown stronger since the first days of his presidency, when he told the then FBI director James Comey over dinner, “I need loyalty. I expect loyalty.”
External hard-right groups have encouraged the evolution, dishing Trump lists of supposed enemies and alternative lists of potential loyalist replacements, many familiar from Fox News, Axios reported. In the judgment of the conservative media voices Trump listens to most, even the coronavirus is a plot against the president.
It’s unclear whether there are enough Trump loyalists to replace everyone on the lists of his enemies. Officials purged from executive branch posts since the impeachment acquittal on 5 February include the impeachment witnesses Gordon Sondland and Alexander Vindman, whose brother was also purged from his national security assignment; US attorney Jessie Liu, who opposed prosecution of former FBI official Andrew McCabe, a Trump bugbear; Pentagon official Elaine McCusker, who resisted a White House directive last year to suspend aid to Ukraine; John Rood, a Pentagon official who certified that Ukraine had met anti-corruption benchmarks required for aid to flow; deputy national security adviser Victoria Coates; and Joseph Maguire, Grenell’s predecessor.
“There might be a few people who slip through the cracks, but not many,” said Stevenson of Trump’s purge. “You can’t read everybody’s minds, and there are people I think probably at the National Security Council – I’m sure there are a number of people who question Trump’s leadership and even his suitability for the job, and yet they stay for their own reasons.
“A complete and airtight purge probably is impossible. But substantial headway can be made, and apparently is being made.”
Trump’s defenders in the media and government point out he may choose executive branch employees as he pleases, and they defend his attacks on the traditional separation between politics and career service by weaving ominous tales of plots against the president from within.
Trump’s response has been to dig deeper into his list of loyalists and send Johnny up against the Deep State. It’s a game critics warn that everyone could lose.
Trump Has Now Shifted $1.9 Million From Campaign Donors To His Business
Dan Alexander, Forbes Staff
2/19/2020
Billionaire Donald Trump still has not donated a cent of his own to his 2020 campaign, opting to fund the effort with money from supporters around the country. At the same time, Trump’s private companies are continuing to charge the campaign for expenses like rent and consulting, according to the latest federal filings. That means that since January 20, 2017, the day Trump officially declared his intent to run for reelection, his campaign has put $1.9 million of donor money into the president’s private business.
“This is a man, who when he first said he was going to run for office, was saying that he was going to do this all out of his own pocket,” said Karl Sandstrom, a Democrat who served as a commissioner of the Federal Election Commission from 1998 to 2002. “And now he’s taking money from others and putting it in his pocket.”
Forbes first reported on this arrangement more than a year ago, when Trump had already shifted $1.1 million from his campaign to his business. The amount of money has continued to swell since then.
None of Trump’s businesses have accepted more cash from the campaign than Trump Tower Commercial LLC, an entity that holds office and retail space inside the president’s most famous New York City building. So far, the reelection effort has paid $1.3 million to Trump Tower Commercial, in which the president maintains a 100% interest. The Republican National Committee, working in coordination with the campaign, shelled out an additional $225,000 from September 2017 to January 2018. Of the $1.5 million that Trump Tower Commercial has received from the Trump campaign and the RNC, $113,000 came in the last three months of 2019, the most recent period on record.
An entity named the Trump Corp., which is also owned entirely by the president, has taken in $259,000 of campaign funds since January 2017. The president’s latest financial disclosure report, filed in May 2019, describes the Trump Corp. as a “management company.” FEC filings show it is charging the campaign for legal and IT consulting. It is not clear what specific services the Trump Corp. has provided. Nor is it clear why the president’s reelection campaign is apparently relying on a management company for help with legal and technology issues. The Trump Corp. collected $12,000 in the final quarter of 2019.
The next-biggest beneficiary is the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. The president’s second home on Pennsylvania Avenue has taken in $126,000 of Trump campaign money, according to an analysis of FEC filings. Those payments, however, seem to be slowing down. From October to December of 2019, the campaign paid no money directly to the D.C. hotel.
The campaign did, however, hand about $60,000 to an entity called the Trump Hotel Collection in the final three months of 2019. Those funds covered the cost of facility rentals, according to FEC filings. It is not clear which facilities the campaign rented. Trump’s financial disclosure report shows that the Trump Hotel Collection is the operating name for an entity called Trump International Hotels Management LLC, which does business in New York and Hawaii. Through a series of companies, the president owns 100% of Trump International Hotels Management LLC, according to an analysis of his disclosure report.
More campaign contributions headed to Trump Plaza LLC, which leases a parking garage, retail space and two brownstones near Third Avenue and East 61st Street in Manhattan. So far, Trump Plaza LLC, which the president owns outright, has collected $84,000 from the campaign, according to FEC filings. The documents list those expenses as “rent,” though they do not specify exactly what the Trump campaign is renting. The reelection effort does not seem to be using Trump Plaza LLC’s retail or parking spaces. In November 2018, a Forbes reporter stood outside of the brownstones for 14 hours to ask residents whether they had seen any sign of the campaign inside those buildings. None of them said they had. A 2016 Trump staffer, however, said campaign officials sometimes crashed at a Trump Plaza apartment.
There’s also money flowing into a business called Trump Restaurants LLC. That entity, in which the president holds a 100% interest, appears to be charging the campaign to rent a small souvenir stand in the basement of Trump Tower. Every month, the campaign pays Trump Restaurants LLC $3,000, which suggests annual payments of roughly $600 per square foot. Gucci, which rents a bigger, better location inside Trump Tower, is paying $460 per square foot annually, according to an analysis of a debt prospectus obtained by Forbes. One New York City real estate expert previously said the campaign’s rates seemed high, but two others pointed out that small spaces often charge higher rents on a price-per-square-foot basis.
As long as the Trump campaign is paying fair-market rates, all of these transactions appear to be legal. When asked about the payments, a Trump campaign official ignored a detailed set of questions and issued a general statement. “The campaign pays fair-market value under negotiated rental agreements and other service agreements in compliance with the law,” the statement said. “The campaign works closely with campaign counsel to ensure strict compliance in this regard.”
The payments did not seem to trouble Bradley Smith, a Republican who served as an FEC commissioner from 2000 to 2005. “There’s no problem, so to speak, doing business with yourself, as long as you’re not giving yourself some kind of super-favorable deal that the public can’t get,” he said.
Even if a campaign were breaking rules by paying exorbitant rates, there’s not a lot anyone could do about it right now. The FEC, which examines such things, cannot take any official commission action unless at least four of its six commissioners vote to do so. Since Trump took office, three of the FEC’s commissioners have left their posts. Their seats—which demand presidential appointments and Senate confirmations—have yet to be filled.
“They can’t even meet without four members, because four is a quorum,” said Ann Ravel, a Democrat who left her post as a commissioner in March 2017. “They cannot ask the general counsel’s office to investigate anything. So if a complaint comes in, it will just sit there.”
“This is a man, who when he first said he was going to run for office, was saying that he was going to do this all out of his own pocket,” said Karl Sandstrom, a Democrat who served as a commissioner of the Federal Election Commission from 1998 to 2002. “And now he’s taking money from others and putting it in his pocket.”
Forbes first reported on this arrangement more than a year ago, when Trump had already shifted $1.1 million from his campaign to his business. The amount of money has continued to swell since then.
None of Trump’s businesses have accepted more cash from the campaign than Trump Tower Commercial LLC, an entity that holds office and retail space inside the president’s most famous New York City building. So far, the reelection effort has paid $1.3 million to Trump Tower Commercial, in which the president maintains a 100% interest. The Republican National Committee, working in coordination with the campaign, shelled out an additional $225,000 from September 2017 to January 2018. Of the $1.5 million that Trump Tower Commercial has received from the Trump campaign and the RNC, $113,000 came in the last three months of 2019, the most recent period on record.
An entity named the Trump Corp., which is also owned entirely by the president, has taken in $259,000 of campaign funds since January 2017. The president’s latest financial disclosure report, filed in May 2019, describes the Trump Corp. as a “management company.” FEC filings show it is charging the campaign for legal and IT consulting. It is not clear what specific services the Trump Corp. has provided. Nor is it clear why the president’s reelection campaign is apparently relying on a management company for help with legal and technology issues. The Trump Corp. collected $12,000 in the final quarter of 2019.
The next-biggest beneficiary is the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. The president’s second home on Pennsylvania Avenue has taken in $126,000 of Trump campaign money, according to an analysis of FEC filings. Those payments, however, seem to be slowing down. From October to December of 2019, the campaign paid no money directly to the D.C. hotel.
The campaign did, however, hand about $60,000 to an entity called the Trump Hotel Collection in the final three months of 2019. Those funds covered the cost of facility rentals, according to FEC filings. It is not clear which facilities the campaign rented. Trump’s financial disclosure report shows that the Trump Hotel Collection is the operating name for an entity called Trump International Hotels Management LLC, which does business in New York and Hawaii. Through a series of companies, the president owns 100% of Trump International Hotels Management LLC, according to an analysis of his disclosure report.
More campaign contributions headed to Trump Plaza LLC, which leases a parking garage, retail space and two brownstones near Third Avenue and East 61st Street in Manhattan. So far, Trump Plaza LLC, which the president owns outright, has collected $84,000 from the campaign, according to FEC filings. The documents list those expenses as “rent,” though they do not specify exactly what the Trump campaign is renting. The reelection effort does not seem to be using Trump Plaza LLC’s retail or parking spaces. In November 2018, a Forbes reporter stood outside of the brownstones for 14 hours to ask residents whether they had seen any sign of the campaign inside those buildings. None of them said they had. A 2016 Trump staffer, however, said campaign officials sometimes crashed at a Trump Plaza apartment.
There’s also money flowing into a business called Trump Restaurants LLC. That entity, in which the president holds a 100% interest, appears to be charging the campaign to rent a small souvenir stand in the basement of Trump Tower. Every month, the campaign pays Trump Restaurants LLC $3,000, which suggests annual payments of roughly $600 per square foot. Gucci, which rents a bigger, better location inside Trump Tower, is paying $460 per square foot annually, according to an analysis of a debt prospectus obtained by Forbes. One New York City real estate expert previously said the campaign’s rates seemed high, but two others pointed out that small spaces often charge higher rents on a price-per-square-foot basis.
As long as the Trump campaign is paying fair-market rates, all of these transactions appear to be legal. When asked about the payments, a Trump campaign official ignored a detailed set of questions and issued a general statement. “The campaign pays fair-market value under negotiated rental agreements and other service agreements in compliance with the law,” the statement said. “The campaign works closely with campaign counsel to ensure strict compliance in this regard.”
The payments did not seem to trouble Bradley Smith, a Republican who served as an FEC commissioner from 2000 to 2005. “There’s no problem, so to speak, doing business with yourself, as long as you’re not giving yourself some kind of super-favorable deal that the public can’t get,” he said.
Even if a campaign were breaking rules by paying exorbitant rates, there’s not a lot anyone could do about it right now. The FEC, which examines such things, cannot take any official commission action unless at least four of its six commissioners vote to do so. Since Trump took office, three of the FEC’s commissioners have left their posts. Their seats—which demand presidential appointments and Senate confirmations—have yet to be filled.
“They can’t even meet without four members, because four is a quorum,” said Ann Ravel, a Democrat who left her post as a commissioner in March 2017. “They cannot ask the general counsel’s office to investigate anything. So if a complaint comes in, it will just sit there.”
Your tax dollars at work: Trump admin’s new policies more alarming than president’s vengeance campaign against perceived enemies
By Terry H. Schwadron, DCReport @ RawStory - Commentary
February 16, 2020
So, while Donald Trump has been parading his vengeance campaign against perceived enemies, what’s his actual government been doing?
Inquiring skeptics want to know.
Mostly, once we set aside the pomp of awarding undeserved medals to Rush Limbaugh and continuing to irritate foreign leaders who had considered themselves allies, the answer is that the government continues to pursue the anti-immigrant, anti-science, anti-environmental policies that have marked the last three years.
He is promoting a candidate for the Federal Reserve board who believes in returning the country to valuing the U.S. dollar to the gold standard, a policy rejected decades ago, he is talking about cutting a fifth of U.S. aid to foreign countries, and he is backing an end to fighting fraud in student loans. A deputy secretary of the Department of Veteran Affairs has dismissed, while the department has been spending millions in outside health services with no apparent accountability. And the Pentagon has been ordered to halt a $10 billion computer project because of a lawsuit filed by Amazon that says Trump put his heavy thumb on the scale to keep the contract from going its way.
Or as we call it, Tuesday.
Here are a few other items on the Trump agenda:
–Border Wall. While the White House made sure to publicize the fact that it was seeking only $2 billion more in its new budget proposals for 2021 – down from the $8 billion that it had sought earlier this year, even shutting down the government in a failing effort to get it, the Defense Department is moving ahead and shifting another $3.8 billion from procurement and other operations towards paying for the Wall on the US-Mexican border, according to official documents sent to the Congress showed.
That makes the total $9.9 billion that the Pentagon has been forced by Trump to pony up for construction – despite repeated votes by Congress to block the funding, and a court case to protest the move as against the Constitution.
A federal appeals court temporarily allowed Trump’s diversion of already committed budget funds in January without ruling on the substance; whatever the outcome, the case will surely move to the Supreme Court. Trump had said it was a “national emergency” to stop migrants at the border as justification in moving monies from military base improvements and schools for children of military.
In other words, Trump thinks his powers supersede those of Congress in assigning money to programs.
The Pentagon told Congress it was transferring the $3.8 billion to “counter-drug activities” on the border in support of the Department of Homeland Security. This time, the money is to be taken from programs for buying tactical vehicles for the Army National Guard, vessels for the Navy, and combat and transport aircraft for the Navy and Air Force.
For the record, virtually all the money to date has gone to replace existing border fencing, although, for a new section of Wall, authorities apparently blew up a Native burial grounds that was on the federal side of a border with reservation land. And, among a crackdown nationally, changes in policy to make seeking asylum more difficult and wringing concessions from Mexico and Central American nations into holding migrants on their way to the United States, the number of migrants per month trying for admission has plummeted to 30,000 a month from double that a year ago.
–Federal pay cut. A days after Trump was boasting at the State of the Union address of an economy pumping away at a rate better than any in American history, Trump cut pay raises for federal employees from a planned 2.5% to 1%, adding that the “alternative pay plan decision will not materially affect our ability to attract and retain a well‑qualified federal workforce.”
Again, the justification seems to revolve around the idea of a “national emergency or serious economic conditions affecting the general welfare,” which the White House says authorizes the president to ‘implement alternative plans for pay adjustments.”
There was also a cut in federal employee retirement pay.
It does seem on its face that the White House shouldn’t be able to have it both ways – either we’re in boom times, in with government employees could share in the benefits, or we’re facing a national economic emergency. Which is it?
The answer, of course, is that someone has to pay the for burgeoning national deficit since tax cuts and increased military spending are unpaid for in the White House plans.
–No Imminent Threat. A White House memo offered to the House Foreign Affairs Committee this week to justify the U.S. strike that killed Iranian military leader Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani in January makes no mention of an imminent threat—Donald Trump’s professed rationale for the attack.
The two-page memo made public instead says the Soleimani strike was carried out in response to previous attacks and to deter Iran from conducting or supporting attacks in the future.“ Although the threat of further attack existed, recourse to the inherent right of self-defense was justified sufficiently by the series of attacks that preceded the January 2 strike,” the memo reads.
So much for trust in the White House over the use of the most important decisions.
–Anti-immigrant efforts. Team Trump has started dispatching elite Border Patrol to “sanctuary cities” to find immigrants in the country illegally, has blocked New York residents from renewing or seeking Global Entry and other accelerated travel documents over a state law allowing driver’s licenses without regard to immigration status, and has quietly amplified a program to make it much more difficult to submit asylum requests.
The Washington Post told the story this week of a California woman who finally emerged from the shadows to report a rape, and to seek what is called a U-visa for crime victims. Immigration officials instead rejected her application because her younger son has no middle name – and she left the application space for it blank.
“If that sounds arbitrary and irrelevant, that’s probably by design. Over the past few months, the Trump administration has quietly been rolling out a Kafkaesque new processing policy for select categories of visas: If any fields on a form are left blank, it will automatically be rejected. Even if it makes no sense for the applicant to fill out that field,” reported The Post.
That includes Apartment Number, even if you do not have one.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) offered only a vague statement saying applicants “must provide the specific information requested and answer all the questions asked.”
Rather, it seems a policy aimed at denying visas to legally eligible applicants.
Your government dollars at work.
Inquiring skeptics want to know.
Mostly, once we set aside the pomp of awarding undeserved medals to Rush Limbaugh and continuing to irritate foreign leaders who had considered themselves allies, the answer is that the government continues to pursue the anti-immigrant, anti-science, anti-environmental policies that have marked the last three years.
He is promoting a candidate for the Federal Reserve board who believes in returning the country to valuing the U.S. dollar to the gold standard, a policy rejected decades ago, he is talking about cutting a fifth of U.S. aid to foreign countries, and he is backing an end to fighting fraud in student loans. A deputy secretary of the Department of Veteran Affairs has dismissed, while the department has been spending millions in outside health services with no apparent accountability. And the Pentagon has been ordered to halt a $10 billion computer project because of a lawsuit filed by Amazon that says Trump put his heavy thumb on the scale to keep the contract from going its way.
Or as we call it, Tuesday.
Here are a few other items on the Trump agenda:
–Border Wall. While the White House made sure to publicize the fact that it was seeking only $2 billion more in its new budget proposals for 2021 – down from the $8 billion that it had sought earlier this year, even shutting down the government in a failing effort to get it, the Defense Department is moving ahead and shifting another $3.8 billion from procurement and other operations towards paying for the Wall on the US-Mexican border, according to official documents sent to the Congress showed.
That makes the total $9.9 billion that the Pentagon has been forced by Trump to pony up for construction – despite repeated votes by Congress to block the funding, and a court case to protest the move as against the Constitution.
A federal appeals court temporarily allowed Trump’s diversion of already committed budget funds in January without ruling on the substance; whatever the outcome, the case will surely move to the Supreme Court. Trump had said it was a “national emergency” to stop migrants at the border as justification in moving monies from military base improvements and schools for children of military.
In other words, Trump thinks his powers supersede those of Congress in assigning money to programs.
The Pentagon told Congress it was transferring the $3.8 billion to “counter-drug activities” on the border in support of the Department of Homeland Security. This time, the money is to be taken from programs for buying tactical vehicles for the Army National Guard, vessels for the Navy, and combat and transport aircraft for the Navy and Air Force.
For the record, virtually all the money to date has gone to replace existing border fencing, although, for a new section of Wall, authorities apparently blew up a Native burial grounds that was on the federal side of a border with reservation land. And, among a crackdown nationally, changes in policy to make seeking asylum more difficult and wringing concessions from Mexico and Central American nations into holding migrants on their way to the United States, the number of migrants per month trying for admission has plummeted to 30,000 a month from double that a year ago.
–Federal pay cut. A days after Trump was boasting at the State of the Union address of an economy pumping away at a rate better than any in American history, Trump cut pay raises for federal employees from a planned 2.5% to 1%, adding that the “alternative pay plan decision will not materially affect our ability to attract and retain a well‑qualified federal workforce.”
Again, the justification seems to revolve around the idea of a “national emergency or serious economic conditions affecting the general welfare,” which the White House says authorizes the president to ‘implement alternative plans for pay adjustments.”
There was also a cut in federal employee retirement pay.
It does seem on its face that the White House shouldn’t be able to have it both ways – either we’re in boom times, in with government employees could share in the benefits, or we’re facing a national economic emergency. Which is it?
The answer, of course, is that someone has to pay the for burgeoning national deficit since tax cuts and increased military spending are unpaid for in the White House plans.
–No Imminent Threat. A White House memo offered to the House Foreign Affairs Committee this week to justify the U.S. strike that killed Iranian military leader Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani in January makes no mention of an imminent threat—Donald Trump’s professed rationale for the attack.
The two-page memo made public instead says the Soleimani strike was carried out in response to previous attacks and to deter Iran from conducting or supporting attacks in the future.“ Although the threat of further attack existed, recourse to the inherent right of self-defense was justified sufficiently by the series of attacks that preceded the January 2 strike,” the memo reads.
So much for trust in the White House over the use of the most important decisions.
–Anti-immigrant efforts. Team Trump has started dispatching elite Border Patrol to “sanctuary cities” to find immigrants in the country illegally, has blocked New York residents from renewing or seeking Global Entry and other accelerated travel documents over a state law allowing driver’s licenses without regard to immigration status, and has quietly amplified a program to make it much more difficult to submit asylum requests.
The Washington Post told the story this week of a California woman who finally emerged from the shadows to report a rape, and to seek what is called a U-visa for crime victims. Immigration officials instead rejected her application because her younger son has no middle name – and she left the application space for it blank.
“If that sounds arbitrary and irrelevant, that’s probably by design. Over the past few months, the Trump administration has quietly been rolling out a Kafkaesque new processing policy for select categories of visas: If any fields on a form are left blank, it will automatically be rejected. Even if it makes no sense for the applicant to fill out that field,” reported The Post.
That includes Apartment Number, even if you do not have one.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) offered only a vague statement saying applicants “must provide the specific information requested and answer all the questions asked.”
Rather, it seems a policy aimed at denying visas to legally eligible applicants.
Your government dollars at work.
Donald Trump - infinite stupidity on display!!!
Trump rails against refrigerators and promises cleaner dishes
President bemoans better energy efficiency standards at Milwaukee rally, saying women must wash dishes ‘10 times’
Kenya Evelyn in New York
the guardian
Wed 15 Jan 2020 14.33 EST
Donald Trump unveiled unusual, new campaign promises to a crowd of thousands of his fervent supporters at a Milwaukee campaign rally on Tuesday: better household appliances.
While Democratic presidential candidates sparred over climate change at their debate in Iowa, Trump offered a contrasting message in the vital swing state of Wisconsin by calling out the Department of Energy for tightening energy efficiency standards for dishwashers, refrigerators, lightbulbs and more.
The rally, held at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Panther Arena, took a strange turn to appliances, with Trump taking particular offense at household items that limit water usage. “Sinks, toilets, and showers – you don’t get any water,” he said.
He also railed into dishwashers and refrigerators, evoking nostalgia for more powerful machines.
“Remember the dishwasher? You’d press it, boom! There’d be, like, an explosion. Five minutes later you open it up, the steam pours out,” he said. Trump then criticized newer models, claiming women – just women – across the country have to now wash their dishes “10 times”.
“Anybody have a new dishwasher? I’m sorry for that,” he told the crowd, promising that under his presidency their “dishes will be beautiful”.
But beneath the surreal prospect of the US president publicly promising better dishwashers lies more disturbing reasoning – which could chime with Trump’s rightwing base.
The rant follows months of increasing criticisms from Republican lawmakers to energy regulators over stricter environmental standards. According to the International Energy Agency, a common critique of energy-efficient appliances is that they are inefficient, resulting in more usage, reversing energy savings effects.
In December, the Trump administration gutted Obama-era standards on energy-saving lightbulbs. The measures mandate a gradual phasing out of incandescent bulbs, which Trump blames for his often carrot-like hue. “I always look orange. And so do you! The light is the worst.”
The criticisms also come just a day after some Republicans condemned bipartisan legislation to gradually eliminate or reduce heat-trapping chemicals in air conditioners and refrigerators. Opponents pinpoint a potential rise in costs for consumers. But the bipartisan legislation has support from environmental advocates and appliance industry leaders even as Trump probably calculates it has appeal to a support base skeptical of environmental causes and hostile to government regulation.
Trump gave the rallying call to a sold-out arena of mostly white attendees. Milwaukee is one of the most segregated cities in America, with minorities concentrated in the city and whites primarily in the suburbs. Chants among the diverse crowd of hundreds of protesters outside the arena called out this irony as more than a dozen organizations representing multiple interests held a demonstration.
“We are letting our government know that no matter what they do, we will never stay silent,” Nadxely Sanchez, of Voces de la Frontera, told the local Fox affiliate WITI.
In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Democratic congresswoman Gwen Moore criticized the president for hosting the rally in “Brew City”, where Democrats will host their Democratic national convention in July, calling it “part of a psychological warfare because his platform is entirely based on emotion”.
“All of this is all part of [a] strategy and of course to draw attention away from our debate,” she said. “What do animals do? They just kind of pee on your carpet.”
While Democratic presidential candidates sparred over climate change at their debate in Iowa, Trump offered a contrasting message in the vital swing state of Wisconsin by calling out the Department of Energy for tightening energy efficiency standards for dishwashers, refrigerators, lightbulbs and more.
The rally, held at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Panther Arena, took a strange turn to appliances, with Trump taking particular offense at household items that limit water usage. “Sinks, toilets, and showers – you don’t get any water,” he said.
He also railed into dishwashers and refrigerators, evoking nostalgia for more powerful machines.
“Remember the dishwasher? You’d press it, boom! There’d be, like, an explosion. Five minutes later you open it up, the steam pours out,” he said. Trump then criticized newer models, claiming women – just women – across the country have to now wash their dishes “10 times”.
“Anybody have a new dishwasher? I’m sorry for that,” he told the crowd, promising that under his presidency their “dishes will be beautiful”.
But beneath the surreal prospect of the US president publicly promising better dishwashers lies more disturbing reasoning – which could chime with Trump’s rightwing base.
The rant follows months of increasing criticisms from Republican lawmakers to energy regulators over stricter environmental standards. According to the International Energy Agency, a common critique of energy-efficient appliances is that they are inefficient, resulting in more usage, reversing energy savings effects.
In December, the Trump administration gutted Obama-era standards on energy-saving lightbulbs. The measures mandate a gradual phasing out of incandescent bulbs, which Trump blames for his often carrot-like hue. “I always look orange. And so do you! The light is the worst.”
The criticisms also come just a day after some Republicans condemned bipartisan legislation to gradually eliminate or reduce heat-trapping chemicals in air conditioners and refrigerators. Opponents pinpoint a potential rise in costs for consumers. But the bipartisan legislation has support from environmental advocates and appliance industry leaders even as Trump probably calculates it has appeal to a support base skeptical of environmental causes and hostile to government regulation.
Trump gave the rallying call to a sold-out arena of mostly white attendees. Milwaukee is one of the most segregated cities in America, with minorities concentrated in the city and whites primarily in the suburbs. Chants among the diverse crowd of hundreds of protesters outside the arena called out this irony as more than a dozen organizations representing multiple interests held a demonstration.
“We are letting our government know that no matter what they do, we will never stay silent,” Nadxely Sanchez, of Voces de la Frontera, told the local Fox affiliate WITI.
In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Democratic congresswoman Gwen Moore criticized the president for hosting the rally in “Brew City”, where Democrats will host their Democratic national convention in July, calling it “part of a psychological warfare because his platform is entirely based on emotion”.
“All of this is all part of [a] strategy and of course to draw attention away from our debate,” she said. “What do animals do? They just kind of pee on your carpet.”
President Trump falsely claims that he "saved" Obamacare's pre-existing condition protections
Americans with pre-existing conditions have protections because of former President Barack Obama's healthcare law
IGOR DERYSH - salon
JANUARY 13, 2020 9:05PM (UTC)
President Donald Trump falsely claimed he "saved" Obamacare's protections for pre-existing conditions despite actively working for years to gut them.
Trump accused former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg of "false advertising" after the Democrat ran ads warning against Trump's attacks on Obamacare.
"I was the person who saved Pre-Existing Conditions in your Healthcare, you have it now, while at the same time winning the fight to rid you of the expensive, unfair and very unpopular Individual Mandate," Trump falsely claimed after trying but failing to dismantle Obamacare and its protections with congressional Republicans.
"If Republicans win in court and take back the House of Represenatives [sic], your healthcare, that I have now brought to the best place in many years, will become the best ever, by far. I will always protect your Pre-Existing Conditions, the Dems will not!" he falsely claimed, referring to a court case in which his administration supports ending Obamacare and its protections for pre-existing conditions.
And Trump's lie could not be any further from the truth.
"People with pre-existing medical problems have health insurance protections because of President Barack Obama's health care law, which Trump is trying to dismantle," The Associated Press stated in its fact-check of Trump's brazen falsehood.
Not only did Trump unsuccessfully push for a repeal of the law, which would have stripped the protections, he also proposed short-term alternatives, which dif not have to cover preexisting conditions, the AP noted.
Trump also seeks to dismantle the protections as part of the court battle that he alluded to in his tweet. His administration sided with states trying to invalidate Obamacare in the case, which would strip protections from people with pre-existing conditions.
Trump's claim that Republicans would act to preserve the protections also falls flat, since the administration has not provided any details in regards to such a plan.
In fact, Democrats asked the Supreme Court to take up the case on an expedited basis while Republicans filed briefs asking the court to hold off on hearing it until after the 2020 elections. About 20 million people are projected to lose their health insurance if Republicans win the case.
"The lawfulness of the act is undoubtedly a matter of the utmost national importance, but the current petitions do not justify immediate, emergency review by the court," a brief filed by Republicans said.
Vox's Katelyn Burns noted the irony of Republicans trying to delay a case they themselves brought to avoid political fallout in the elections.
"If the Supreme Court were to uphold the ACA, Democrats would be able to campaign as the party that defended Obamacare. If it were to be overturned, then Democrats would cast the GOP as the party that dumped 20 million people off their health insurance in an election year," Burns wrote. "It is in Republicans's best interests to avoid that lose-lose scenario, and therefore they have asked the court not to take up the case in the first place."
Crooked Media's Brian Beutler urged Democrats to call out Trump's falsehood, noting that Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., similarly "lied his way into a Senate seat" in his race against former Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.
"An obscene, Orwellian lie, and Dems need to actually make a stink about it rather than just count on fact checkers to do it for them," he wrote. "Otherwise, every other Republican will parrot the lie and the acquiescent media will report that views on who saved pre-ex protections differ."
Trump accused former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg of "false advertising" after the Democrat ran ads warning against Trump's attacks on Obamacare.
"I was the person who saved Pre-Existing Conditions in your Healthcare, you have it now, while at the same time winning the fight to rid you of the expensive, unfair and very unpopular Individual Mandate," Trump falsely claimed after trying but failing to dismantle Obamacare and its protections with congressional Republicans.
"If Republicans win in court and take back the House of Represenatives [sic], your healthcare, that I have now brought to the best place in many years, will become the best ever, by far. I will always protect your Pre-Existing Conditions, the Dems will not!" he falsely claimed, referring to a court case in which his administration supports ending Obamacare and its protections for pre-existing conditions.
And Trump's lie could not be any further from the truth.
"People with pre-existing medical problems have health insurance protections because of President Barack Obama's health care law, which Trump is trying to dismantle," The Associated Press stated in its fact-check of Trump's brazen falsehood.
Not only did Trump unsuccessfully push for a repeal of the law, which would have stripped the protections, he also proposed short-term alternatives, which dif not have to cover preexisting conditions, the AP noted.
Trump also seeks to dismantle the protections as part of the court battle that he alluded to in his tweet. His administration sided with states trying to invalidate Obamacare in the case, which would strip protections from people with pre-existing conditions.
Trump's claim that Republicans would act to preserve the protections also falls flat, since the administration has not provided any details in regards to such a plan.
In fact, Democrats asked the Supreme Court to take up the case on an expedited basis while Republicans filed briefs asking the court to hold off on hearing it until after the 2020 elections. About 20 million people are projected to lose their health insurance if Republicans win the case.
"The lawfulness of the act is undoubtedly a matter of the utmost national importance, but the current petitions do not justify immediate, emergency review by the court," a brief filed by Republicans said.
Vox's Katelyn Burns noted the irony of Republicans trying to delay a case they themselves brought to avoid political fallout in the elections.
"If the Supreme Court were to uphold the ACA, Democrats would be able to campaign as the party that defended Obamacare. If it were to be overturned, then Democrats would cast the GOP as the party that dumped 20 million people off their health insurance in an election year," Burns wrote. "It is in Republicans's best interests to avoid that lose-lose scenario, and therefore they have asked the court not to take up the case in the first place."
Crooked Media's Brian Beutler urged Democrats to call out Trump's falsehood, noting that Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., similarly "lied his way into a Senate seat" in his race against former Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.
"An obscene, Orwellian lie, and Dems need to actually make a stink about it rather than just count on fact checkers to do it for them," he wrote. "Otherwise, every other Republican will parrot the lie and the acquiescent media will report that views on who saved pre-ex protections differ."
itmfa!!!
The list continues to grow on Trump
nmgaucho - demo underground
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He has pressured a foreign leader to interfere in the 2020 American presidential election.
He urged a foreign country to intervene in the 2016 presidential election. He divulged classified information to foreign officials. He publicly undermined American intelligence agents while standing next to a hostile foreign autocrat. He hired a national security adviser whom he knew had secretly worked as a foreign lobbyist. He encourages foreign leaders to enrich him and his family by staying at his hotels. He genuflects to murderous dictators. He has alienated America’s closest allies. He lied to the American people about his company’s business dealings in Russia. He tells new lies virtually every week — about the economy, voter fraud, even the weather. He spends hours on end watching television and days on end staying at resorts. He often declines to read briefing books or perform other basic functions of a president’s job. He has aides, as well as members of his own party in Congress, who mock him behind his back as unfit for office. He has repeatedly denigrated a deceased United States senator who was a war hero. He insulted a Gold Star family — the survivors of American troops killed in action. He described a former first lady, not long after she died, as “nasty.” He described white supremacists as “some very fine people.” He told four women of color, all citizens and members of Congress, to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came.” He made a joke about Pocahontas during a ceremony honoring Native American World War II veterans. He launched his political career by falsely claiming that the first black president was not really American. He launched his presidential campaign by describing Mexicans as “rapists.” |
He has described women, variously, as “a dog,” “a pig” and “horseface,” as well as “bleeding badly from a facelift” and having “blood coming out of her wherever.”
He has been accused of sexual assault or misconduct by multiple women. He enthusiastically campaigned for a Senate candidate who was accused of molesting multiple teenage girls. He waved around his arms, while giving a speech, to ridicule a physically disabled person. He has encouraged his supporters to commit violence against his political opponents. He has called for his opponents and critics to be investigated and jailed. He uses a phrase popular with dictators — “the enemy of the people” — to describe journalists. He attempts to undermine any independent source of information that he does not like, including judges, scientists, journalists, election officials, the F.B.I., the C.I.A., the Congressional Budget Office and the National Weather Service. He has tried to harass the chairman of the Federal Reserve into lowering interest rates. He said that a judge could not be objective because of his Mexican heritage. He obstructed justice by trying to influence an investigation into his presidential campaign. He violated federal law by directing his lawyer to pay $280,000 in hush money to cover up two apparent extramarital affairs. He made his fortune partly through wide-scale financial fraud. He has refused to release his tax returns. He falsely accused his predecessor of wiretapping him. He claimed that federal law-enforcement agents and prosecutors regularly fabricated evidence, thereby damaging the credibility of criminal investigations across the country. He has ordered children to be physically separated from their parents. He has suggested that America is no different from or better than Vladimir Putin’s Russia. He has called America a “hellhole.” |
Records reveal the staggering amount of money Trump-owned businesses have raked in by doing business with Trump’s campaign and Republicans
Alex Henderson - alternet
October 29, 2019
The words “conflict of interest” often come up in connection with President Donald Trump, who hasn’t been shy about encouraging the use of Trump properties for political events. And an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics shows just how profitable that encouragement has been for the president.
HuffPost’s Mary Papenfuss reports that according to the Center’s analysis of federal election spending records, Trump’s political campaigns and associated committees have spent roughly $16.8 million at his businesses since he launched his 2016 presidential campaign. The analysis was based on spending reports to the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
In the 2020 election cycle alone, the Center for Responsive Politics notes, Republican campaigns and political action committees have spent $1.8 million at Trump properties. That $1.8 million, includes — among other things — $1.3 million spent by Trump’s campaign, $123,000 spent by the Republican National Committee (RNC) and $104,000 spent by the political action committee (PAC) Great America.
The Center for Responsive Politics also points out that 48 Republicans in Congress have spent money at Trump businesses through their campaigns and associated committees. That includes $12,000 spent by Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, $8000 spent by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and $14,000 spent by Indiana Rep. Greg Pence — who is the brother of Vice President Mike Pence.[...]
HuffPost’s Mary Papenfuss reports that according to the Center’s analysis of federal election spending records, Trump’s political campaigns and associated committees have spent roughly $16.8 million at his businesses since he launched his 2016 presidential campaign. The analysis was based on spending reports to the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
In the 2020 election cycle alone, the Center for Responsive Politics notes, Republican campaigns and political action committees have spent $1.8 million at Trump properties. That $1.8 million, includes — among other things — $1.3 million spent by Trump’s campaign, $123,000 spent by the Republican National Committee (RNC) and $104,000 spent by the political action committee (PAC) Great America.
The Center for Responsive Politics also points out that 48 Republicans in Congress have spent money at Trump businesses through their campaigns and associated committees. That includes $12,000 spent by Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, $8000 spent by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and $14,000 spent by Indiana Rep. Greg Pence — who is the brother of Vice President Mike Pence.[...]
Trump’s census shenanigans continue — even after Supreme Court defeat
Do Republicans want to count the population or not? Trump's doing everything he can to screw up the census
SOPHIA TESFAYE - salon
OCTOBER 15, 2019 11:00AM (UTC)
One of the first changes Donald Trump made after inheriting the White House from Barack Obama was to hang a portrait of Andrew Jackson in the Oval Office. The president viewed as a vicious racist even by the standards of his time once pushed back at a Supreme Court chief justice following a decision involving Jackson's treatment of the Cherokee nation, saying: “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.”
Almost 200 years later, Trump stood in the White House Rose Garden hours after Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts had voted with the "liberal" justices to stop the administration’s attempt to rig the 2020 census — and declared his own intention to go around that ruling. After a two-year-battle to politicize the census by including a question about citizenship status, which experts say would result in an undercount, the Trump administration dropped its pursuit following the Supreme Court’s decision.
The administration had initially argued it needed citizenship data to help prepare for voting rights cases, but because Trump's Department of Justice had never engaged in such litigation, Roberts determined that rationale “seems to have been contrived.” He remanded the case to lower courts to be reconsidered, but no time was left before scheduled printing began. Instead Trump signed an executive order directing the Commerce Department, which houses the Census Bureau, "to strengthen its efforts ... to obtain State administrative records concerning citizenship."
So in August, the Census Bureau entered a proposal for a general clearance to acquire state administrative records, such as those of recipients of public-assistance programs, into the federal registry. Although the bureau already receives some administrative records from states, it has complained that the records it receives are stripped of identifiable information. With more than a month left open for public comment and consideration on the proposal, the Associated Press reported on Monday that the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators confirmed that nearly every state has recently received additional requests from the Census Bureau for information including citizenship status, race, and home address.
This move is strongly reminiscent of the request for sensitive voter data from every state made by Trump's now-defunct “election integrity” commission, led by notorious vote-suppression guru Kris Kobach, and is clearly meant to serve as an end-run of the Supreme Court’s ruling. While acquiring citizenship data through a direct inquiry on the census was not ruled illegal — Roberts instead determined that bureau officials were not honest in their answers to the district court — collecting citizenship information through the census bureau still presents similar problems.
Experts warn that many households with undocumented immigrants won't complete the necessary census forms for fear of retaliation. This could ultimately lead to a less accurate headcount, as was feared with a question on the Census itself, and deprive cities with large immigrant communities of federal funding and representation. The census serves as the basis for reapportioning seats in the House of Representatives every 10 years as well as for the distribution of social spending.
“The result is going to be fairly similar to including the citizen question directly on the census form,” Jennifer Lee, an associate professor of law at Temple University, told Courthouse News. “It’s really just an act that’s going to instill a lot of fear.”
It is not difficult to imagine how sharing state motor vehicle records with the federal government can increase the amount of uninsured and unregistered drivers on the road. As The New York Times’ Jose A. Del Real noted shortly before the Supreme Court’s ruling on the census question, “the fear engendered by the administration’s immigration policies will make the job of census workers difficult in primarily immigrant neighborhoods, regardless of whether or not the citizenship question is added.”
States, of course, could simply ignore the request for data (a move Trump certainly ought to appreciate). Illinois has already said no. Some states are already planning to supplement the Census Bureau's efforts following reports of widespread disarray under the supervision of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. California is allocating $187 million — nearly 95 times what it did a decade ago — to local outreach groups.
“If you don’t participate in the census, Trump wins,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a Democrat.
Some other states at risk of an undercount, including Florida and Texas, have seen efforts to bulk up community outreach stymied by Republicans in the state's legislatures.
The official census count doesn't get under way until April 2020, but the Trump administration's latest move demonstrates that the president seems determined to disrupt the constitutionally-mandated count as much as possible and as long as possible.
Almost 200 years later, Trump stood in the White House Rose Garden hours after Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts had voted with the "liberal" justices to stop the administration’s attempt to rig the 2020 census — and declared his own intention to go around that ruling. After a two-year-battle to politicize the census by including a question about citizenship status, which experts say would result in an undercount, the Trump administration dropped its pursuit following the Supreme Court’s decision.
The administration had initially argued it needed citizenship data to help prepare for voting rights cases, but because Trump's Department of Justice had never engaged in such litigation, Roberts determined that rationale “seems to have been contrived.” He remanded the case to lower courts to be reconsidered, but no time was left before scheduled printing began. Instead Trump signed an executive order directing the Commerce Department, which houses the Census Bureau, "to strengthen its efforts ... to obtain State administrative records concerning citizenship."
So in August, the Census Bureau entered a proposal for a general clearance to acquire state administrative records, such as those of recipients of public-assistance programs, into the federal registry. Although the bureau already receives some administrative records from states, it has complained that the records it receives are stripped of identifiable information. With more than a month left open for public comment and consideration on the proposal, the Associated Press reported on Monday that the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators confirmed that nearly every state has recently received additional requests from the Census Bureau for information including citizenship status, race, and home address.
This move is strongly reminiscent of the request for sensitive voter data from every state made by Trump's now-defunct “election integrity” commission, led by notorious vote-suppression guru Kris Kobach, and is clearly meant to serve as an end-run of the Supreme Court’s ruling. While acquiring citizenship data through a direct inquiry on the census was not ruled illegal — Roberts instead determined that bureau officials were not honest in their answers to the district court — collecting citizenship information through the census bureau still presents similar problems.
Experts warn that many households with undocumented immigrants won't complete the necessary census forms for fear of retaliation. This could ultimately lead to a less accurate headcount, as was feared with a question on the Census itself, and deprive cities with large immigrant communities of federal funding and representation. The census serves as the basis for reapportioning seats in the House of Representatives every 10 years as well as for the distribution of social spending.
“The result is going to be fairly similar to including the citizen question directly on the census form,” Jennifer Lee, an associate professor of law at Temple University, told Courthouse News. “It’s really just an act that’s going to instill a lot of fear.”
It is not difficult to imagine how sharing state motor vehicle records with the federal government can increase the amount of uninsured and unregistered drivers on the road. As The New York Times’ Jose A. Del Real noted shortly before the Supreme Court’s ruling on the census question, “the fear engendered by the administration’s immigration policies will make the job of census workers difficult in primarily immigrant neighborhoods, regardless of whether or not the citizenship question is added.”
States, of course, could simply ignore the request for data (a move Trump certainly ought to appreciate). Illinois has already said no. Some states are already planning to supplement the Census Bureau's efforts following reports of widespread disarray under the supervision of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. California is allocating $187 million — nearly 95 times what it did a decade ago — to local outreach groups.
“If you don’t participate in the census, Trump wins,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a Democrat.
Some other states at risk of an undercount, including Florida and Texas, have seen efforts to bulk up community outreach stymied by Republicans in the state's legislatures.
The official census count doesn't get under way until April 2020, but the Trump administration's latest move demonstrates that the president seems determined to disrupt the constitutionally-mandated count as much as possible and as long as possible.
Donald Trump
Donald Trump: xenophobe in public, international mobster in private
The founding fathers said betraying America to foreign powers was an impeachable offense. The president must go
ROBERT REICH - the guardian
Sun 13 Oct 2019 01.45 EDT
The most xenophobic and isolationist American president in modern history has been selling America to foreign powers for his own personal benefit.
Trump withdrew American troops from the Syrian-Turkish border, leaving our Kurdish allies to be slaughtered and opening the way for a resurgent Islamic State. Trump’s rationale? He promised to bring our soldiers home.
There could be another reason. Trump never divested from his real estate business, and the Trump Towers Istanbul is the Trump Organization’s first and only office and residential building in Europe. Businesses linked to the Turkish government are also major patrons of the Trump Organization. Which may be why Trump has repeatedly sided with the Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has been intent on eliminating the Kurds.
Back home, Trump has separated families at the border, locked migrant children in cages and tried to ban Muslims from entering the country. He says he wants to protect America’s borders.
But guarding America’s geographic borders isn’t nearly as important as guarding the integrity of American democracy, which Trump has repeatedly compromised for personal political gain. He did this on 25 July when he asked the president of Ukraine to do him a personal “favor” by digging up dirt on Joe Biden, his most likely 2020 opponent.
Trump justifies his trade war with China as protecting America from Chinese predation. But he asked China to start an investigation of Biden, and last week his adviser on China conceded he spoke with Chinese officials about the former vice-president.
During the 2016 election, Trump publicly called on Russia to find Hillary Clinton’s missing emails. Within hours, Russian agents sought to do just that by trying to break into her computer servers.
Special counsel Robert Mueller found that Russia sought to help Trump get elected, and Trump’s campaign welcomed the help.
Now Trump is playing at being a double foreign agent – pushing the prime minister of Australia, among others, to gather information to discredit Mueller.
Rudy Giuliani is Trump’s international thug, arranging deals with foreign powers. On Wednesday, two of Giuliani’s business associates were arrested in connection with a criminal scheme to funnel foreign money to candidates for office, including donations to a Super Pac formed to support Trump.
Under Trump, thuggery has replaced diplomacy. On Friday, in an opening statement for congressional impeachment investigators, Marie Yovanovitch, former US ambassador to Ukraine, said people associated with Giuliani “may well have believed that their personal financial ambitions were stymied by our anti-corruption policy in Ukraine”.
Meanwhile, even as Trump spews conspiracy theories about the Biden family, his own children are openly profiting from foreign deals. Eric and Don Jr have projects in the works in Ireland, India, Indonesia, Uruguay, Turkey and the Philippines.
Trump is pocketing money from foreign governments eager to curry favor by staying at his hotels. The practice has become so routine that during Trump’s 25 July phone call, the Ukrainian president assured him that the “last time I traveled to the United States, I stayed in New York near Central Park and I stayed at the Trump Tower”.
According to a former Trump Organization official, foreign governments spent more than a million dollars at Trump businesses in 2018, mostly at the Trump International hotel in Washington. Trump will make even more money if he carries out his plan to host next year’s G7 meeting at his Doral golf resort, in Florida.
All of this is precisely what the founding fathers sought to prevent.
When they gathered in Philadelphia 232 years ago to write a constitution, a major goal was to protect the new nation from what Alexander Hamilton called the “desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils”.
To ensure no president would “betray his trust to foreign powers”, as James Madison put it, they included an emoluments clause – barring a president from accepting foreign payments.
They also gave Congress the right to impeach a president for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors”. During the Virginia ratifying convention, Edmund Randolph confirmed that a president “may be impeached” if discovered “receiving [help] from foreign powers”.
You don’t have to be an originalist to see the dangers to democracy when a president seeks or receives personal favors from foreign governments. There is no limit to how far a foreign power might go to help a president enlarge his political power and wealth, in exchange for selling out America.
Donald Trump is a xenophobe in public and international mobster in private. He has brazenly sought private gain from foreign governments at the expense of the American people.
This is shameful and criminal. At the very least, it is impeachable.
Trump withdrew American troops from the Syrian-Turkish border, leaving our Kurdish allies to be slaughtered and opening the way for a resurgent Islamic State. Trump’s rationale? He promised to bring our soldiers home.
There could be another reason. Trump never divested from his real estate business, and the Trump Towers Istanbul is the Trump Organization’s first and only office and residential building in Europe. Businesses linked to the Turkish government are also major patrons of the Trump Organization. Which may be why Trump has repeatedly sided with the Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has been intent on eliminating the Kurds.
Back home, Trump has separated families at the border, locked migrant children in cages and tried to ban Muslims from entering the country. He says he wants to protect America’s borders.
But guarding America’s geographic borders isn’t nearly as important as guarding the integrity of American democracy, which Trump has repeatedly compromised for personal political gain. He did this on 25 July when he asked the president of Ukraine to do him a personal “favor” by digging up dirt on Joe Biden, his most likely 2020 opponent.
Trump justifies his trade war with China as protecting America from Chinese predation. But he asked China to start an investigation of Biden, and last week his adviser on China conceded he spoke with Chinese officials about the former vice-president.
During the 2016 election, Trump publicly called on Russia to find Hillary Clinton’s missing emails. Within hours, Russian agents sought to do just that by trying to break into her computer servers.
Special counsel Robert Mueller found that Russia sought to help Trump get elected, and Trump’s campaign welcomed the help.
Now Trump is playing at being a double foreign agent – pushing the prime minister of Australia, among others, to gather information to discredit Mueller.
Rudy Giuliani is Trump’s international thug, arranging deals with foreign powers. On Wednesday, two of Giuliani’s business associates were arrested in connection with a criminal scheme to funnel foreign money to candidates for office, including donations to a Super Pac formed to support Trump.
Under Trump, thuggery has replaced diplomacy. On Friday, in an opening statement for congressional impeachment investigators, Marie Yovanovitch, former US ambassador to Ukraine, said people associated with Giuliani “may well have believed that their personal financial ambitions were stymied by our anti-corruption policy in Ukraine”.
Meanwhile, even as Trump spews conspiracy theories about the Biden family, his own children are openly profiting from foreign deals. Eric and Don Jr have projects in the works in Ireland, India, Indonesia, Uruguay, Turkey and the Philippines.
Trump is pocketing money from foreign governments eager to curry favor by staying at his hotels. The practice has become so routine that during Trump’s 25 July phone call, the Ukrainian president assured him that the “last time I traveled to the United States, I stayed in New York near Central Park and I stayed at the Trump Tower”.
According to a former Trump Organization official, foreign governments spent more than a million dollars at Trump businesses in 2018, mostly at the Trump International hotel in Washington. Trump will make even more money if he carries out his plan to host next year’s G7 meeting at his Doral golf resort, in Florida.
All of this is precisely what the founding fathers sought to prevent.
When they gathered in Philadelphia 232 years ago to write a constitution, a major goal was to protect the new nation from what Alexander Hamilton called the “desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils”.
To ensure no president would “betray his trust to foreign powers”, as James Madison put it, they included an emoluments clause – barring a president from accepting foreign payments.
They also gave Congress the right to impeach a president for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors”. During the Virginia ratifying convention, Edmund Randolph confirmed that a president “may be impeached” if discovered “receiving [help] from foreign powers”.
You don’t have to be an originalist to see the dangers to democracy when a president seeks or receives personal favors from foreign governments. There is no limit to how far a foreign power might go to help a president enlarge his political power and wealth, in exchange for selling out America.
Donald Trump is a xenophobe in public and international mobster in private. He has brazenly sought private gain from foreign governments at the expense of the American people.
This is shameful and criminal. At the very least, it is impeachable.
Maureen Dowd: He is a faux tough guy who lets other people do the fighting for him, a needy brat who never accepts responsibility for his actions, an oaf with no trace of courage, class or chivalry.
The World of Incredible Coincidence
NanceGreggs - demo underground
8/26/19
Trump did not collude with the Russians. The fact that he handed them highly classified information in a closed-door meeting in the Oval Office is just an incredible coincidence.
Trump did not collude with the Russians. The fact that he has done everything in his power to undermine investigations into his possible collusion is just an incredible coincidence.
Trump did not collude with the Russians. The fact that he stood on a stage in Helsinki and took Putin’s ‘word for it’ over the overwhelming evidence presented by our own intelligence agencies of Russia’s attack on the 2016 election is just an incredible coincidence.
Trump did not collude with the Russians. The fact that he, his family members, his staff and his GOP enablers repeatedly lied about contacts with the Russians – until those contacts were proven and rendered undeniable – is just an incredible coincidence.
Trump did not collude with the Russians. The fact that he has never spoken a word against Putin – but instead has praised him at every opportunity – is just an incredible coincidence.
Trump did not collude with the Russians. The fact that he has refused to reveal anything about his one-on-one meetings with Putin – going so far as to confiscate and destroy the translators’ notes of such meetings – is just an incredible coincidence.
Trump did not collude with the Russians. The fact that he and his administration have tried (and sometimes succeeded) in lifting sanctions on Russian oligarchs is just an incredible coincidence.
Trump did not collude with the Russians. The fact that he covered-up/lied about his ongoing efforts to build a Trump hotel in Moscow – a highly lucrative project that represents billions of dollars flowing into Trump’s personal bank account – is just an incredible coincidence.
Trump did not collude with the Russians. The fact that he is now insisting that Russia be invited back into the G-7, thus ignoring what got them booted from what was once the G-8 in the first place, is just an incredible coincidence.
It is ALL just coincidence. There is no reason to believe that Trump has been compromised in any way by the Russians, no reason to believe that he is Putin’s stooge, no reason to believe that his unwavering support of Putin has anything to do with Vlad’s having this “pResident’s” political and financial balls in a vise.
If you believe in incredible coincidences, Trump is a shining example of how such coincidences can be easily explained away – as long as you also believe that what you hear isn't really what you've heard, what you see isn't really what you've seen, and facts simply don’t matter at all.
It is settled fact that Russia is our enemy - just as it is a proven fact that they did everything possible to put Trump in the White House. To dismiss Trump's oh-so-obvious kow-towing to Putin as an 'incredible coincidence' is as ludicrous as dismissing acknowledged facts as 'fake news'.
There is nothing that "pResident Trump" has said or done that hasn't put Russia's interests ahead of the interests of the US, or ahead of the interests of the global community.
The only real coincidence happening here is that the low-info, low IQ, brain-dead voters are the only group that believes in incredible coincidences - which, given their ignorance, is not a coincidence at all.
Trump did not collude with the Russians. The fact that he has done everything in his power to undermine investigations into his possible collusion is just an incredible coincidence.
Trump did not collude with the Russians. The fact that he stood on a stage in Helsinki and took Putin’s ‘word for it’ over the overwhelming evidence presented by our own intelligence agencies of Russia’s attack on the 2016 election is just an incredible coincidence.
Trump did not collude with the Russians. The fact that he, his family members, his staff and his GOP enablers repeatedly lied about contacts with the Russians – until those contacts were proven and rendered undeniable – is just an incredible coincidence.
Trump did not collude with the Russians. The fact that he has never spoken a word against Putin – but instead has praised him at every opportunity – is just an incredible coincidence.
Trump did not collude with the Russians. The fact that he has refused to reveal anything about his one-on-one meetings with Putin – going so far as to confiscate and destroy the translators’ notes of such meetings – is just an incredible coincidence.
Trump did not collude with the Russians. The fact that he and his administration have tried (and sometimes succeeded) in lifting sanctions on Russian oligarchs is just an incredible coincidence.
Trump did not collude with the Russians. The fact that he covered-up/lied about his ongoing efforts to build a Trump hotel in Moscow – a highly lucrative project that represents billions of dollars flowing into Trump’s personal bank account – is just an incredible coincidence.
Trump did not collude with the Russians. The fact that he is now insisting that Russia be invited back into the G-7, thus ignoring what got them booted from what was once the G-8 in the first place, is just an incredible coincidence.
It is ALL just coincidence. There is no reason to believe that Trump has been compromised in any way by the Russians, no reason to believe that he is Putin’s stooge, no reason to believe that his unwavering support of Putin has anything to do with Vlad’s having this “pResident’s” political and financial balls in a vise.
If you believe in incredible coincidences, Trump is a shining example of how such coincidences can be easily explained away – as long as you also believe that what you hear isn't really what you've heard, what you see isn't really what you've seen, and facts simply don’t matter at all.
It is settled fact that Russia is our enemy - just as it is a proven fact that they did everything possible to put Trump in the White House. To dismiss Trump's oh-so-obvious kow-towing to Putin as an 'incredible coincidence' is as ludicrous as dismissing acknowledged facts as 'fake news'.
There is nothing that "pResident Trump" has said or done that hasn't put Russia's interests ahead of the interests of the US, or ahead of the interests of the global community.
The only real coincidence happening here is that the low-info, low IQ, brain-dead voters are the only group that believes in incredible coincidences - which, given their ignorance, is not a coincidence at all.
A Clear And Present Danger To The Republic
Joe Conason - The National Memo
August 21, 2019
Whenever Donald Trump makes a remark that embarrasses our country before the world, conventional analysis suggests that this is yet another instance of his infantile narcissism. So we were told again when the president of the United States insulted Denmark, one of the founding nations of NATO and a dedicated American ally, by canceling his scheduled trip to meet with the Danish prime minister — supposedly because she had deemed his scheme to buy Greenland “absurd,” which of course it is.
His visit to Denmark was originally requested by Trump, which made its abrupt, petulant cancellation all the more insulting to the Danes. The usual anonymous sources explained that he had other reasons to break the date, such as his aversion to flying overseas and his aversion to Barack Obama, who is also scheduled to visit Denmark next month.
When Trump appears to lose control — and follows up by suggesting that he is “the chosen one” or “the King of Israel” — it seems natural to worry that he is mentally ill. And that is one way to interpret his behavior.
But it isn’t the only explanation.
We consider Trump’s behavior bizarre because it is so incongruous with what we expect from an American president — whose sworn duty, after all, is to act in the national interest. But what if he is consciously acting against the national interest? That disturbing question arises again and again, as it did during the Russia investigation, because almost everything Trump does can be viewed as inimical to the nation. The Danish incident is only the latest example in the long list that shows a certain method to his supposed “madness.”
In one way or another, Trump has denigrated or undermined American relationships with nearly all of our traditional allies, sometimes repeatedly. He has complained publicly about the French, the Germans, the British, the Australians, to name a few of the most important, and slammed the European Union as a trading and military partner. Indeed, he has strenuously sought to destroy the EU while befriending the so-called populist far right — the heirs of our fascist enemy. That approach to European affairs just happens to coincide perfectly with the political aims of the Russian Federation.
Meanwhile Trump has abandoned long-standing US policy on human rights, not only committing violations on our border but encouraging dictators around the world. Within the space of a few days this year he berated the Canadian prime minister, our friend and ally, while praising the murderous dictator of North Korea. Maybe that was just crazy, or maybe it was something else.
At home, Trump never stops promoting the same divisive themes that pollute our political system, courtesy of the Russian bots sent by his friend Vladimir Putin. For some reason, Trump won’t allow anyone to record his meetings with Putin as would normally be the case. Perhaps he doesn’t want anyone to hear the Russian dictator expressing appreciation for Trump’s long campaign to undermine the FBI counter-intelligence division, which exists to thwart Kremlin espionage.
But then Trump has sought to discredit and disorganize the entire intelligence apparatus of the United States, most recently with his attempted appointment of a lunatic Congressman from Texas as the director of national intelligence. Putin must also be quite grateful for Trump’s systematic effort to destroy American diplomatic capacity, by appointing non-entities to run the State Department while leaving half of its posts unfilled.
Like the trade war that is decimating our agricultural heartland — among the US economy’s most vital sectors — these recurring acts of sabotage are cited by his supporters as evidence of his “nationalism.” They are nothing of the kind. They are inflicting damage that our most determined enemies could never have dreamed possible before he entered the Oval Office.
You can tell yourself it’s all merely proof of his mental instability, his narcissistic compulsions, his ignorance and stupidity. Or you can wonder, as I sometimes do, whether something rational and sinister lies behind this troubling pattern.
Either way, Trump is a clear and present danger to our republic.
His visit to Denmark was originally requested by Trump, which made its abrupt, petulant cancellation all the more insulting to the Danes. The usual anonymous sources explained that he had other reasons to break the date, such as his aversion to flying overseas and his aversion to Barack Obama, who is also scheduled to visit Denmark next month.
When Trump appears to lose control — and follows up by suggesting that he is “the chosen one” or “the King of Israel” — it seems natural to worry that he is mentally ill. And that is one way to interpret his behavior.
But it isn’t the only explanation.
We consider Trump’s behavior bizarre because it is so incongruous with what we expect from an American president — whose sworn duty, after all, is to act in the national interest. But what if he is consciously acting against the national interest? That disturbing question arises again and again, as it did during the Russia investigation, because almost everything Trump does can be viewed as inimical to the nation. The Danish incident is only the latest example in the long list that shows a certain method to his supposed “madness.”
In one way or another, Trump has denigrated or undermined American relationships with nearly all of our traditional allies, sometimes repeatedly. He has complained publicly about the French, the Germans, the British, the Australians, to name a few of the most important, and slammed the European Union as a trading and military partner. Indeed, he has strenuously sought to destroy the EU while befriending the so-called populist far right — the heirs of our fascist enemy. That approach to European affairs just happens to coincide perfectly with the political aims of the Russian Federation.
Meanwhile Trump has abandoned long-standing US policy on human rights, not only committing violations on our border but encouraging dictators around the world. Within the space of a few days this year he berated the Canadian prime minister, our friend and ally, while praising the murderous dictator of North Korea. Maybe that was just crazy, or maybe it was something else.
At home, Trump never stops promoting the same divisive themes that pollute our political system, courtesy of the Russian bots sent by his friend Vladimir Putin. For some reason, Trump won’t allow anyone to record his meetings with Putin as would normally be the case. Perhaps he doesn’t want anyone to hear the Russian dictator expressing appreciation for Trump’s long campaign to undermine the FBI counter-intelligence division, which exists to thwart Kremlin espionage.
But then Trump has sought to discredit and disorganize the entire intelligence apparatus of the United States, most recently with his attempted appointment of a lunatic Congressman from Texas as the director of national intelligence. Putin must also be quite grateful for Trump’s systematic effort to destroy American diplomatic capacity, by appointing non-entities to run the State Department while leaving half of its posts unfilled.
Like the trade war that is decimating our agricultural heartland — among the US economy’s most vital sectors — these recurring acts of sabotage are cited by his supporters as evidence of his “nationalism.” They are nothing of the kind. They are inflicting damage that our most determined enemies could never have dreamed possible before he entered the Oval Office.
You can tell yourself it’s all merely proof of his mental instability, his narcissistic compulsions, his ignorance and stupidity. Or you can wonder, as I sometimes do, whether something rational and sinister lies behind this troubling pattern.
Either way, Trump is a clear and present danger to our republic.
Virginia winemaker Eric Trump has a big grin on his face — and one of daddy’s signature issues may be the reason why
August 7, 2019
By Dana Kennedy, DCReport @ RawStory - Commentary
Is Trump hoping that his threatened new tax on French wine might benefit his son’s poorly-reviewed Trump Winery in the vineyards of Virginia?
No one inside the lush halls of the Miraval winery, co-owned by Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt with a French partner and located in Provence, wanted to answer that question this week. But the French receptionist who picked up the phone kept laughing. “C’est amusant,” she said.
What was so funny? The international catfight—call it the wine wars—between President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron that’s erupted over a new 3% tax to be levied on the revenues earned by big U.S. digital companies in France.
Trump was furious—or at least he pretended to be—by the so-called GAFA (stands for Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple) tax and retaliated by threatening to impose tariffs on French wine which he called inferior to the American brand.
The U.S. has also launched a Section 301 investigation into France’s new digital tax, marking a new low in Franco-American relations.
‘Always Liked American Wines’
“They shouldn’t have done this,” Trump said. “I told them, I said, ‘Don’t do it because if you do it, I’m going to tax your wine.'”
He added, “I’ve always liked American wines better than French wines—even though I don’t drink wine.”
Trump called Macron out for his “foolishness” in enacting the tax and the French Agricultural Minister Didier Guillaume fired back on local TV a few days later.
“It’s absurd, in terms of having a political and economic debate, to say that if you tax the ‘GAFAs’, I’ll tax wine. It’s completely moronic,” Guillaume told BFM TV. “American wine is not better than French wine,” he added.
‘Grape Jelly’
Some suggested that Eric Trump’s vineyards in Charlottesville could benefit if the president slaps a tax on French wine. However, Trump Winery was savaged in a Vanity Fair review that described the wine taste as “Welch’s grape jelly with alcohol.”
It’s unlikely, then, that Trump wine will get a boost over French wines like the Jolie-Pitt Miraval rosé, a shock bestseller in the U.S. since it was rolled out in 2012 and now consistently ranked one of the best wines in the world.
“French wine is sold as a premium,” said Rémi Bourgeot, an economist at IRIS, the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs. “Even if Trump targets it, he won’t have that much of an impact. People aren’t going to stop buying French wine.”
A Smokescreen
Bourgeot said that the wine kerfuffle may actually be a smokescreen for Trump’s more overarching ambitions in his trade wars with Europe.
For one thing, Trump has no right to be angry at Macron. America’s Big Tech gets away with information highway robbery in countries like France. They avoid paying the same taxes as local companies via complicated, shady-sounding schemes that European economists like to call “financial engineering” but which are all legal, thanks to the European Union’s lack of a unified tax code.
Certain countries, notably Luxembourg and Ireland, offer bargain corporate taxes of between 10% and 14% to woo big US digital and multinational companies.
Facebook, Google, Apple and Airbnb, among others, have their European headquarters in Dublin or Cork. Since 2003, Amazon Europe has been based in Luxembourg, once called the “financial secrecy death star” by the Tax Justice Network. So Amazon gets to sell products in France, but it avoids the roughly 32% French corporate income tax by going through Luxembourg.
Trump knows this, said Bourgeot, who believes his real goal is to force the EU to reduce the German trade surplus and lower trade barriers between the U.S. and Europe.
“The real issue is the German trade surplus, especially German cars,” Bourgeot said. “It’s caused a big imbalance in Europe but every time Trump criticizes the Germans, Macron defends them. So now he’s leaning on Macron by threatening a wine tax over GAFA. This is all very tit for tat trade bargaining. Trump’s base may applaud him for taxing French wine but he’s got ulterior motives. He’s been focusing on China but those of us in Europe knew we were next in line.”
No one inside the lush halls of the Miraval winery, co-owned by Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt with a French partner and located in Provence, wanted to answer that question this week. But the French receptionist who picked up the phone kept laughing. “C’est amusant,” she said.
What was so funny? The international catfight—call it the wine wars—between President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron that’s erupted over a new 3% tax to be levied on the revenues earned by big U.S. digital companies in France.
Trump was furious—or at least he pretended to be—by the so-called GAFA (stands for Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple) tax and retaliated by threatening to impose tariffs on French wine which he called inferior to the American brand.
The U.S. has also launched a Section 301 investigation into France’s new digital tax, marking a new low in Franco-American relations.
‘Always Liked American Wines’
“They shouldn’t have done this,” Trump said. “I told them, I said, ‘Don’t do it because if you do it, I’m going to tax your wine.'”
He added, “I’ve always liked American wines better than French wines—even though I don’t drink wine.”
Trump called Macron out for his “foolishness” in enacting the tax and the French Agricultural Minister Didier Guillaume fired back on local TV a few days later.
“It’s absurd, in terms of having a political and economic debate, to say that if you tax the ‘GAFAs’, I’ll tax wine. It’s completely moronic,” Guillaume told BFM TV. “American wine is not better than French wine,” he added.
‘Grape Jelly’
Some suggested that Eric Trump’s vineyards in Charlottesville could benefit if the president slaps a tax on French wine. However, Trump Winery was savaged in a Vanity Fair review that described the wine taste as “Welch’s grape jelly with alcohol.”
It’s unlikely, then, that Trump wine will get a boost over French wines like the Jolie-Pitt Miraval rosé, a shock bestseller in the U.S. since it was rolled out in 2012 and now consistently ranked one of the best wines in the world.
“French wine is sold as a premium,” said Rémi Bourgeot, an economist at IRIS, the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs. “Even if Trump targets it, he won’t have that much of an impact. People aren’t going to stop buying French wine.”
A Smokescreen
Bourgeot said that the wine kerfuffle may actually be a smokescreen for Trump’s more overarching ambitions in his trade wars with Europe.
For one thing, Trump has no right to be angry at Macron. America’s Big Tech gets away with information highway robbery in countries like France. They avoid paying the same taxes as local companies via complicated, shady-sounding schemes that European economists like to call “financial engineering” but which are all legal, thanks to the European Union’s lack of a unified tax code.
Certain countries, notably Luxembourg and Ireland, offer bargain corporate taxes of between 10% and 14% to woo big US digital and multinational companies.
Facebook, Google, Apple and Airbnb, among others, have their European headquarters in Dublin or Cork. Since 2003, Amazon Europe has been based in Luxembourg, once called the “financial secrecy death star” by the Tax Justice Network. So Amazon gets to sell products in France, but it avoids the roughly 32% French corporate income tax by going through Luxembourg.
Trump knows this, said Bourgeot, who believes his real goal is to force the EU to reduce the German trade surplus and lower trade barriers between the U.S. and Europe.
“The real issue is the German trade surplus, especially German cars,” Bourgeot said. “It’s caused a big imbalance in Europe but every time Trump criticizes the Germans, Macron defends them. So now he’s leaning on Macron by threatening a wine tax over GAFA. This is all very tit for tat trade bargaining. Trump’s base may applaud him for taxing French wine but he’s got ulterior motives. He’s been focusing on China but those of us in Europe knew we were next in line.”
Trump encouraged his own daughter to release a sex tape: New York Magazine
August 5, 2019
By Sarah K. Burris - Raw Story
A recent profile on Ivanka Trump has revealed a lot about her self-obsession and lack of self-awareness, as well as her obsession with an Ayn Rand character who used her beauty to outwit her opponents. But it also divulged the president’s fascination with Paris Hilton’s sex tape, reported New York Magazine.
The piece talked about Ivanka’s perfected roll as the “dutiful daughter,” who “never talked back or even rolled her eyes,” even when he does cringe-worthy things.
“Among the members of New York society in the ’90s and early aughts, [Donald Trump] was seen as a credit clown, a joke, but never to Ivanka,” the profile outlined. “His chauvinism frustrated her, however, and she was repelled by the way he talked about women’s bodies — who was fat, who was not.”
But after Paris Hilton’s sex tape was posted to the internet in 2003, the president couldn’t stop talking about it.
“Paris is laughing all the way to the bank, she’s got the last laugh, she’s marvelous,” Trump allegedly said.
“Ivanka could not believe her father was not only idolizing an airhead heiress caught blowing a guy on a night-vision video but encouraging her to follow Paris’s lead.”
When asked about the recollection, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham denied the account, calling it “untrue and disgusting.”
“The thing with Paris hurt Ivanka a lot,” a friend told New York Magazine. “He was heartbreaking to her at times.”
The piece said that she “buried her feelings and moved on,” thinking her father’s feelings about women were “complicated.”
“Donald hired many women at the Trump Organization, she knew, and these women weren’t universally pretty; he wanted to employ women with traditionally masculine attitudes and almost enjoyed feeling discomfited by them, having them boss him around,” the piece continued. “Her father may have had issues with women, she felt, but he did not meet the textbook definition of a misogynist — a belief she seems to hold to the present day.”
Read the full piece in New York Magazine.
The piece talked about Ivanka’s perfected roll as the “dutiful daughter,” who “never talked back or even rolled her eyes,” even when he does cringe-worthy things.
“Among the members of New York society in the ’90s and early aughts, [Donald Trump] was seen as a credit clown, a joke, but never to Ivanka,” the profile outlined. “His chauvinism frustrated her, however, and she was repelled by the way he talked about women’s bodies — who was fat, who was not.”
But after Paris Hilton’s sex tape was posted to the internet in 2003, the president couldn’t stop talking about it.
“Paris is laughing all the way to the bank, she’s got the last laugh, she’s marvelous,” Trump allegedly said.
“Ivanka could not believe her father was not only idolizing an airhead heiress caught blowing a guy on a night-vision video but encouraging her to follow Paris’s lead.”
When asked about the recollection, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham denied the account, calling it “untrue and disgusting.”
“The thing with Paris hurt Ivanka a lot,” a friend told New York Magazine. “He was heartbreaking to her at times.”
The piece said that she “buried her feelings and moved on,” thinking her father’s feelings about women were “complicated.”
“Donald hired many women at the Trump Organization, she knew, and these women weren’t universally pretty; he wanted to employ women with traditionally masculine attitudes and almost enjoyed feeling discomfited by them, having them boss him around,” the piece continued. “Her father may have had issues with women, she felt, but he did not meet the textbook definition of a misogynist — a belief she seems to hold to the present day.”
Read the full piece in New York Magazine.
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Racism, Inc.: How Donald Trump profits from xenophobia
Until we understand how Trump profits from his racism, we won’t be able to effectively counter it
SOPHIA A. MCCLENNEN - Salon
JULY 21, 2019 10:00AM (UTC)
...The more racist Trump is; the more successful he is. As disturbing as this may be to process, it is simply true. This means that calling out Trump for his racism, as important and ethically necessary and self-satisfying as it may be, is not going to make any sort of difference. But what might be of interest — and what might work as a counter-strategy — is calling attention to the various ways that he has profited from these tactics.
Trump benefits from his racism in four key ways. If we want to take his fascist tendencies seriously, we first need to understand how they work.
Trump’s racism bolsters his media coverage and his control of the media narrative
Every time Trump goes on a racist rant he dominates the media coverage. Each racist meltdown allows him to turn the news media focus entirely to him. From there, Trump and his supporters come to occupy a tremendous amount — if not all — of the news cycle. In fact, well before Trump was a political candidate his birther attacks on President Barack Obama gave him a significant stream of media coverage — one that may well have helped position him to win the Republican primary.[...]
Trump’s racism builds up strength with his supporters
The blatant racism of a number of Trump supporters has been an uncomfortable truth, but, again, these facts have been open and present for years now. Each time Trump has the gall to voice his racism publicly it only stokes and energizes the racist segments of society that support him.
---
But perhaps the most perplexing part of the story is the way this behavior plays with those Trump supporters who are not racist, or at least not openly and unashamedly racist. Recall when Samantha Bee interviewed a series of college-educated Trump supporters in March 2016, well before the general election. Her goal was to try to understand how this group of people could make a case for supporting Trump.
In case we need reminding, at the time, Trump was openly calling for his Muslim ban and he was also already associated with KKK leader David Duke. When Bee asked about those connections, the college-educated Trump supporters immediately came up with excuses for him. Then, when she asked the one African American member of the group about Trump’s openly racist comments, the interviewee simply answered that Trump “speaks in an old way.”
What she found, and what has since been confirmed in various studies, is that those Trump voters who don’t agree with his racism just brush it off, make excuses for it, blame negative media coverage, or say that they don’t think he really means it. What happens with this group is a classic case of confirmation bias. Thinking of Trump as racist is incongruent for these supporters, so they just won’t do it.
This means that when he goes off on a xenophobic rant he is able to energize his racist base while being ignored by his other supporters. He literally has nothing to lose.
Trump’s racism allows him to sow division and build loyalty
The one silver lining to Trump’s mainstreaming of racism may be the way that it can mobilize unity among the left. Days before his recent racist rant, the Democratic Party was in conflict with Nancy Pelosi expressing disdain for the very same congresswomen Trump would later attack. Trump’s attack on them, though, pulled the party back behind them in an effort to offer a united front.
---
Trump makes money off of his racism
Much of the critical focus on Trump’s racism centers on identity politics, political values, and notions of democracy. But possibly the strongest case against Trump’s racism is the way he makes money from it. While many Democratic politicians have called out Trump for his outrageous comments, few have underscored the way that Trump’s racism has had tangible economic benefits for him.
The Trump administration’s immigration policies have created a multi-billion dollar industry. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) uses a slew of private contractors, many of which have contributed to Trump’s campaign. As Truthout reports, ICE contracts with private security corporations to run some of the 250 immigrant detention facilities across the United States. And In These Times reports that ICE spent $1.7 billion on close to 5,000 contractors in 2017.
The top two private companies contracted to manage detained immigrants include The GEO Group and CoreCivic. Both have contributed to the Trump campaign.
Whether or not Trump is a direct recipient of campaign funds from these companies is less the point, though, because the overall move to privatize public operations is in keeping with Trump’s pro-corporate political agenda. While the privatization of prisons and detention facilities pre-dates the Trump era, there is little doubt that his administration has accelerated and expanded its reach. According to Bianca Tylek, director of the Corrections Accountability Project, “The immigration system is used as a vehicle to extract wealth from communities, or at the very least as a vehicle to launder taxpayer money into the private sector.”
Democratic presidential contender Elizabeth Warren has been one of the few candidates to emphasize that the core problem here is that of profit. As long as private contractors can generate revenue from this system, they will spend money on lobbyists and politicians to protect their business and they, too, can potentially stoke the racist flames that keep their business thriving.
One way to counter this trend is to call it out and to protest the companies connected to the detention industry. A growing group of protesters and activists has turned their focus to highlighting how various companies are profiting economically from institutionalized racism. A recent protest held in New York City, for example, centered on drawing attention to the ties between JPMorgan and the detention industry. In These Times reports that since Trump took office, JPMorgan has increased its stockholdings in Geo Group and CoreCivic 15,600 percent. They also reveal that JPMorgan has provided at least $167.5 million in debt financing to the two companies. Protests like the one held in New York help educate the public about these practices. Any effort to counteract Trump’s racist agenda will depend on making racist revenue more visible.
Trump profits from his racism, then, in four key ways. It helps him control the media, build loyalty, sow division, and make money while advancing his pro-corporate agenda. Until we grasp the various ways he benefits from racism, we aren’t going to make any progress in stopping it. That means that calling Trump racist isn't enough. It wasn't enough in 2016 and it will be even less so in 2020.
Trump benefits from his racism in four key ways. If we want to take his fascist tendencies seriously, we first need to understand how they work.
Trump’s racism bolsters his media coverage and his control of the media narrative
Every time Trump goes on a racist rant he dominates the media coverage. Each racist meltdown allows him to turn the news media focus entirely to him. From there, Trump and his supporters come to occupy a tremendous amount — if not all — of the news cycle. In fact, well before Trump was a political candidate his birther attacks on President Barack Obama gave him a significant stream of media coverage — one that may well have helped position him to win the Republican primary.[...]
Trump’s racism builds up strength with his supporters
The blatant racism of a number of Trump supporters has been an uncomfortable truth, but, again, these facts have been open and present for years now. Each time Trump has the gall to voice his racism publicly it only stokes and energizes the racist segments of society that support him.
---
But perhaps the most perplexing part of the story is the way this behavior plays with those Trump supporters who are not racist, or at least not openly and unashamedly racist. Recall when Samantha Bee interviewed a series of college-educated Trump supporters in March 2016, well before the general election. Her goal was to try to understand how this group of people could make a case for supporting Trump.
In case we need reminding, at the time, Trump was openly calling for his Muslim ban and he was also already associated with KKK leader David Duke. When Bee asked about those connections, the college-educated Trump supporters immediately came up with excuses for him. Then, when she asked the one African American member of the group about Trump’s openly racist comments, the interviewee simply answered that Trump “speaks in an old way.”
What she found, and what has since been confirmed in various studies, is that those Trump voters who don’t agree with his racism just brush it off, make excuses for it, blame negative media coverage, or say that they don’t think he really means it. What happens with this group is a classic case of confirmation bias. Thinking of Trump as racist is incongruent for these supporters, so they just won’t do it.
This means that when he goes off on a xenophobic rant he is able to energize his racist base while being ignored by his other supporters. He literally has nothing to lose.
Trump’s racism allows him to sow division and build loyalty
The one silver lining to Trump’s mainstreaming of racism may be the way that it can mobilize unity among the left. Days before his recent racist rant, the Democratic Party was in conflict with Nancy Pelosi expressing disdain for the very same congresswomen Trump would later attack. Trump’s attack on them, though, pulled the party back behind them in an effort to offer a united front.
---
Trump makes money off of his racism
Much of the critical focus on Trump’s racism centers on identity politics, political values, and notions of democracy. But possibly the strongest case against Trump’s racism is the way he makes money from it. While many Democratic politicians have called out Trump for his outrageous comments, few have underscored the way that Trump’s racism has had tangible economic benefits for him.
The Trump administration’s immigration policies have created a multi-billion dollar industry. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) uses a slew of private contractors, many of which have contributed to Trump’s campaign. As Truthout reports, ICE contracts with private security corporations to run some of the 250 immigrant detention facilities across the United States. And In These Times reports that ICE spent $1.7 billion on close to 5,000 contractors in 2017.
The top two private companies contracted to manage detained immigrants include The GEO Group and CoreCivic. Both have contributed to the Trump campaign.
Whether or not Trump is a direct recipient of campaign funds from these companies is less the point, though, because the overall move to privatize public operations is in keeping with Trump’s pro-corporate political agenda. While the privatization of prisons and detention facilities pre-dates the Trump era, there is little doubt that his administration has accelerated and expanded its reach. According to Bianca Tylek, director of the Corrections Accountability Project, “The immigration system is used as a vehicle to extract wealth from communities, or at the very least as a vehicle to launder taxpayer money into the private sector.”
Democratic presidential contender Elizabeth Warren has been one of the few candidates to emphasize that the core problem here is that of profit. As long as private contractors can generate revenue from this system, they will spend money on lobbyists and politicians to protect their business and they, too, can potentially stoke the racist flames that keep their business thriving.
One way to counter this trend is to call it out and to protest the companies connected to the detention industry. A growing group of protesters and activists has turned their focus to highlighting how various companies are profiting economically from institutionalized racism. A recent protest held in New York City, for example, centered on drawing attention to the ties between JPMorgan and the detention industry. In These Times reports that since Trump took office, JPMorgan has increased its stockholdings in Geo Group and CoreCivic 15,600 percent. They also reveal that JPMorgan has provided at least $167.5 million in debt financing to the two companies. Protests like the one held in New York help educate the public about these practices. Any effort to counteract Trump’s racist agenda will depend on making racist revenue more visible.
Trump profits from his racism, then, in four key ways. It helps him control the media, build loyalty, sow division, and make money while advancing his pro-corporate agenda. Until we grasp the various ways he benefits from racism, we aren’t going to make any progress in stopping it. That means that calling Trump racist isn't enough. It wasn't enough in 2016 and it will be even less so in 2020.
A Canadian cartoonist was fired for this cartoon. Demovictory9 - Demo Undergound
Trump has brought ‘naked racism to the White House’ — and ‘Republicans absolutely love him for it’: Charles Blow
July 15, 2019
By Travis Gettys - Raw Story
President Donald Trump has long ago removed any doubt that he’s a “raging racist,” said columnist Charles Blow, but he continues to offer new reminders to appeal to the racists who support him.
The president launched racist attacks Sunday morning at the four Democratic lawmakers feuding with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Blow wrote in his New York Times column argued that Trump’s tweets betrayed his white nationalist ideology.
“The central framing of this kind of thinking is that this is a white country, founded and built by white men, and destined to be maintained as a white country,” Blow wrote. “For anyone to be accepted as truly American they must assimilate and acquiesce to that narrative, to bow to that heritage and bend to those customs.”
White supremacy is based on a lie, Blow wrote, because the United States expanded through bloodshed and broken treaties with Native Americans, and built its wealth through enslaving blacks, and he argued that anti-Muslim bigotry and xenophobia were being folded into the anti-black racism that had always existed.
“White people and whiteness are the center of the Trump presidency,” Blow wrote. “His primary concern is to defend, protect and promote it. All that threatens it must be attacked and assaulted. Trump is bringing the force of the American presidency to the rescue of white supremacy. And, self-identified Republicans absolutely love him for it.”
“We are watching a very dark chapter in this nation’s history unfold in real time,” he added. “We are watching as a president returns naked racism to the White House. And we are watching as fellow citizens — possibly a third of them — reveal to us their open animus for us through their continued support of him.”
The president launched racist attacks Sunday morning at the four Democratic lawmakers feuding with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Blow wrote in his New York Times column argued that Trump’s tweets betrayed his white nationalist ideology.
“The central framing of this kind of thinking is that this is a white country, founded and built by white men, and destined to be maintained as a white country,” Blow wrote. “For anyone to be accepted as truly American they must assimilate and acquiesce to that narrative, to bow to that heritage and bend to those customs.”
White supremacy is based on a lie, Blow wrote, because the United States expanded through bloodshed and broken treaties with Native Americans, and built its wealth through enslaving blacks, and he argued that anti-Muslim bigotry and xenophobia were being folded into the anti-black racism that had always existed.
“White people and whiteness are the center of the Trump presidency,” Blow wrote. “His primary concern is to defend, protect and promote it. All that threatens it must be attacked and assaulted. Trump is bringing the force of the American presidency to the rescue of white supremacy. And, self-identified Republicans absolutely love him for it.”
“We are watching a very dark chapter in this nation’s history unfold in real time,” he added. “We are watching as a president returns naked racism to the White House. And we are watching as fellow citizens — possibly a third of them — reveal to us their open animus for us through their continued support of him.”
Trump cruising to big Electoral College loss — according to model that predicted the 2018 blue wave
on July 1, 2019
By Travis Gettys - Raw Story
An election model that accurately predicted Democratic congressional gains last year is forecasting a big loss for President Donald Trump next year.
The election forecast model designed by Rachel Bitecofer, assistant director of the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University, predicts Trump will fall well short of the 270 electoral votes necessary to win re-election, reported the Washington Examiner.
Bitecofer’s model sees Trump losing the Electoral College by a 297-197 total after three key states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — flip back to the Democrats.
“Trump’s 2016 path to the White House was the political equivalent of getting dealt a Royal Flush in poker,” Bitecofer said. “It’s probably not replicable in 2020 with an agitated Democratic electorate.”
An energized Democratic base would most likely drown out a predicted increase in Republican voters in 2020, according to Bitecofer.
“The country’s hyperpartisan and polarized environment has largely set the conditions of the 2020 election in stone,” Bitecofer said. “The complacent electorate of 2016, who were convinced Trump would never be president, has been replaced with the terrified electorate of 2020. Under my model, that distinction is not only important, it is everything,” she added.
Bitecofer’s model accurately predicted a 42-seat pickup for Democrats in the House, where they actually gained 40 seats.
The election forecast model designed by Rachel Bitecofer, assistant director of the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University, predicts Trump will fall well short of the 270 electoral votes necessary to win re-election, reported the Washington Examiner.
Bitecofer’s model sees Trump losing the Electoral College by a 297-197 total after three key states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — flip back to the Democrats.
“Trump’s 2016 path to the White House was the political equivalent of getting dealt a Royal Flush in poker,” Bitecofer said. “It’s probably not replicable in 2020 with an agitated Democratic electorate.”
An energized Democratic base would most likely drown out a predicted increase in Republican voters in 2020, according to Bitecofer.
“The country’s hyperpartisan and polarized environment has largely set the conditions of the 2020 election in stone,” Bitecofer said. “The complacent electorate of 2016, who were convinced Trump would never be president, has been replaced with the terrified electorate of 2020. Under my model, that distinction is not only important, it is everything,” she added.
Bitecofer’s model accurately predicted a 42-seat pickup for Democrats in the House, where they actually gained 40 seats.
Soph0571 - demo underground. ....a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit.
These are the 7 biggest failures of Trumponomics
June 11, 2019
By Robert Reich - Commentary - Raw Story
Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress keep crowing about the economy, when in reality Trumponomics has been a disaster. Here are its 7 biggest failures:
1. Trump promised to bring down America’s trade deficit “as fast as possible.” Instead, the trade deficit has hit an all-time high. The United States is now purchasing more goods and services from the rest of the world than we sell abroad than at any time in history.
2. As a presidential candidate in 2016, he said he could completely eliminate the federal debt in 8 years. Instead, the federal debt has exploded thanksto Trump and the GOP’s $1.9 trillion tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. They’re already using the growing debt to threaten cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
3. He promised to boost the wages of American workers, including a $4,000 pay raise for the average American family. Instead, wages for most Americans have been flat, adjusted for inflation. Meanwhile, over the same period, corporate profits have soared and the rich have become far richer, but the gains haven’t trickled down.
4. His administration said that corporations would invest their savings from tax cuts. Instead, corporations spent more money buying back shares of their own stock in 2018 than they invested in new equipment or facilities. These stock buybacks provide no real benefit for the economy, but boost executive bonuses and payouts for wealthy investors.
5. He promised a tax cut for middle-class families. Instead most Americans will end up paying more by 2027.
6. He promised to keep jobs in America and crack down on companies that ship jobs overseas. Instead, his tax law has created financial incentives for corporations to expand their operations abroad. Trump’s trade wars have also encouraged companies like Harley Davidson to move production overseas.
7. He promised to “drain the swamp” of Washington lobbyists. Instead, he’s put them in charge of health, safety, and environmental protections–which has endangered most Americans while increasing corporate profits even further.
The real recipe for economic growth is to invest in Americans–in their health, education, job training, and infrastructure.
But Trumponomics has exploded the deficit, hurt ordinary Americans, and lined the pockets of the wealthy and corporations.
Don’t let Trump and Republicans claim otherwise.
1. Trump promised to bring down America’s trade deficit “as fast as possible.” Instead, the trade deficit has hit an all-time high. The United States is now purchasing more goods and services from the rest of the world than we sell abroad than at any time in history.
2. As a presidential candidate in 2016, he said he could completely eliminate the federal debt in 8 years. Instead, the federal debt has exploded thanksto Trump and the GOP’s $1.9 trillion tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. They’re already using the growing debt to threaten cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
3. He promised to boost the wages of American workers, including a $4,000 pay raise for the average American family. Instead, wages for most Americans have been flat, adjusted for inflation. Meanwhile, over the same period, corporate profits have soared and the rich have become far richer, but the gains haven’t trickled down.
4. His administration said that corporations would invest their savings from tax cuts. Instead, corporations spent more money buying back shares of their own stock in 2018 than they invested in new equipment or facilities. These stock buybacks provide no real benefit for the economy, but boost executive bonuses and payouts for wealthy investors.
5. He promised a tax cut for middle-class families. Instead most Americans will end up paying more by 2027.
6. He promised to keep jobs in America and crack down on companies that ship jobs overseas. Instead, his tax law has created financial incentives for corporations to expand their operations abroad. Trump’s trade wars have also encouraged companies like Harley Davidson to move production overseas.
7. He promised to “drain the swamp” of Washington lobbyists. Instead, he’s put them in charge of health, safety, and environmental protections–which has endangered most Americans while increasing corporate profits even further.
The real recipe for economic growth is to invest in Americans–in their health, education, job training, and infrastructure.
But Trumponomics has exploded the deficit, hurt ordinary Americans, and lined the pockets of the wealthy and corporations.
Don’t let Trump and Republicans claim otherwise.
COHEN: TRUMP IS A RACIST, A CON MAN, AND A CHEAT!!!
How bad does Trump have to get before he’s forced from office?
COMMON DREAMS - COMMENTARY - raw story
28 APR 2019 AT 13:25 ET
#BROKEAHONTAS
The Tyranny Of Donald J. Trump
Two Generations of Tax Cheating, and Now He Holds Himself and His Family Above the Law
By David Cay Johnston, DCReport Editor-in-Chief
4/11/19
Donald J. Trump and his team have now openly declared that he is above the law rather than, as our Constitution provides, a public servant whose duty is to faithfully execute the law.
His administration is taking numerous steps that move us in the direction of a Trumpian dictatorship by defeating the rule of law, something I’ve warned about since 2016. We’ll look at one aspect of this today: Trump family taxes.
Trump and his team insist that no one is ever going to see his tax returns, which he promised voters he would make public as every president has done back to Richard Nixon.
Now his sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, has scurried away from the investigative spotlight of her fellow federal judges, who were looking into whether she was a tax cheat in black robes. By resigning from the federal bench, Trump’s older sister ends that inquiry, the kind of legal favor our system affords those in positions of power to escape scrutiny.
As for defiance of the law, Trump, his personal lawyers and the White House acting chief of staff all declared in recent days that they will defy a 1924 anti-corruption statute that gives certain members of Congress, and one Congressional employee, the unqualified authority to examine any tax return.
Trump claims that “the law is 100% on my side” in refusing the turn over the documents. In fact, the law is 100% against Trump. When I asked a half dozen former top Congressional tax-writing staffers about Trump’s claim some of them laughed out loud, while others said in sober turns that there is no legal argument on Trump’s side – none.
The most direct Trump declaration that he is above the law is his directing the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service to keep his federal income tax returns locked up. No previous president has defied this statute and no document request has ever been refused, a host of people who worked for the tax-writing committees on Capitol Hill told me.
Trump’s arguments are mere political rhetoric. But it gets worse than that.
Trump lawyer William S. Consovoy in an April 5 letter asked Treasury to hold back the documents. Consovoy asserted mind-reading powers in his letter: “His request is a transparent effort by one political party to harass an official from the other party because they dislike his politics and speech.”
Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, declared on Fox News Sunday that the Trump administration will “never” comply with the law.
‘Party of the Lawless’
Mulvaney’s words show how the political party that once sold itself as the party of law and order has, under Trump, become the party of lawlessness, at least for those in power.
“They knew they are not going to get these taxes,” Mulvaney said, referring not to the Democratic chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee who alone would receive the documents, but Democrats as a whole.
These declarations require diligence by Congress and the federal courts, as well as by New York state and Manhattan authorities if we are to preserve the rule of law. The duty of these officials, under law and the oaths they swore, is to thoroughly investigate Trump’s business dealings, taxes and other matters to see how they affect his fitness for office, whether he committed tax and other crimes and whether the IRS is properly auditing the tax returns of the president.
Think of judge Trump Barry’s resignation as one of the many ways American government is infected by institutionalized corruption, an issue explored deeply by Zephyr Teachout in her revealing and concise book Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United.
While the federal judiciary is letting Judge Trump slither away, the prosecutorial authorities still have the power to investigate whether she and her siblings engaged in years of calculated tax cheating, as The New York Times persuasively demonstrated last October.
The Cheating Goes On
There is no statute of limitations on criminal tax fraud and there is reason aplenty to believe Trump family tax cheating has continued up to this day.
At issue are Trump’s last six years of tax returns and related “tax information.” Representative Richard Neal (D-Mass), who is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee requested the returns and related information in an April 3 letter.
Steve Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, called the request “unprecedented” – it’s not – and said he needed time to consult the law. Treasury posted the letter on Twitter.
The law is crystal clear that the Treasury secretary or his designee, the IRS commissioner, “shall” produce the returns “on written request.” Every request has been honored until now.
Mnuchin is a former Goldman Sachs-er, hedge fund operator, mortgage foreclosure mogul and Hollywood movie producer (The Lego Movie; Suicide Squad), exactly the kind of swamp dweller who Trump told voters he would rid Washington of by “draining the swamp.”
Presidents take an oath to faithfully execute their office, which includes complying with all federal laws, while dictators are by definition above the law.
Trump’s declaration should alarm all American, but especially those Republicans who claim to support strict interpretations of the clear meaning of both statutes and Constitutional principles.
Even Richard Nixon complied with this law during Watergate more than four decades ago, resulting in a second IRS audit of his returns as well as scrutiny by Congressional tax experts.
Nixon Complied with the Law
That second audit turned up a fraudulent tax deduction which saved Nixon $500,000 in taxes, about $3.4 million in today’s money. Chairman Neal’s request specifically cites the quality of IRS audits of presidential tax returns as a justification for examination of them by his committee, which oversees the IRS.
“In all of my years of public life. I have never profited. Never profited from public service I’ve earned every cent,” Nixon said in 1973. “And — all of my years of public life. I have never obstructed justice. And I think to that I could say that in my years of public life. That I welcome this kind of examination because people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook, I’ve earned everything I’ve got.”
Actually, he was a crook, but his handpicked successor Gerald Ford pardoned him.
Trump takes a different approach, asserting that voters have no interest in his tax returns.
Mulvaney takes a similar tack, ignoring the law in favor of presumed political passions.
“That’s an issue that was already litigated during the election,” Mulvaney said. “Voters knew the president could have given his tax returns. They knew that he didn’t, and they elected him anyway.”
Of course, the voters chose Trump’s opponent by three million votes. It was the Electoral College that chose Trump. But only the enablers of a tyrant would argue that popular passions, not law, govern official conduct.
His administration is taking numerous steps that move us in the direction of a Trumpian dictatorship by defeating the rule of law, something I’ve warned about since 2016. We’ll look at one aspect of this today: Trump family taxes.
Trump and his team insist that no one is ever going to see his tax returns, which he promised voters he would make public as every president has done back to Richard Nixon.
Now his sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, has scurried away from the investigative spotlight of her fellow federal judges, who were looking into whether she was a tax cheat in black robes. By resigning from the federal bench, Trump’s older sister ends that inquiry, the kind of legal favor our system affords those in positions of power to escape scrutiny.
As for defiance of the law, Trump, his personal lawyers and the White House acting chief of staff all declared in recent days that they will defy a 1924 anti-corruption statute that gives certain members of Congress, and one Congressional employee, the unqualified authority to examine any tax return.
Trump claims that “the law is 100% on my side” in refusing the turn over the documents. In fact, the law is 100% against Trump. When I asked a half dozen former top Congressional tax-writing staffers about Trump’s claim some of them laughed out loud, while others said in sober turns that there is no legal argument on Trump’s side – none.
The most direct Trump declaration that he is above the law is his directing the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service to keep his federal income tax returns locked up. No previous president has defied this statute and no document request has ever been refused, a host of people who worked for the tax-writing committees on Capitol Hill told me.
Trump’s arguments are mere political rhetoric. But it gets worse than that.
Trump lawyer William S. Consovoy in an April 5 letter asked Treasury to hold back the documents. Consovoy asserted mind-reading powers in his letter: “His request is a transparent effort by one political party to harass an official from the other party because they dislike his politics and speech.”
Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, declared on Fox News Sunday that the Trump administration will “never” comply with the law.
‘Party of the Lawless’
Mulvaney’s words show how the political party that once sold itself as the party of law and order has, under Trump, become the party of lawlessness, at least for those in power.
“They knew they are not going to get these taxes,” Mulvaney said, referring not to the Democratic chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee who alone would receive the documents, but Democrats as a whole.
These declarations require diligence by Congress and the federal courts, as well as by New York state and Manhattan authorities if we are to preserve the rule of law. The duty of these officials, under law and the oaths they swore, is to thoroughly investigate Trump’s business dealings, taxes and other matters to see how they affect his fitness for office, whether he committed tax and other crimes and whether the IRS is properly auditing the tax returns of the president.
Think of judge Trump Barry’s resignation as one of the many ways American government is infected by institutionalized corruption, an issue explored deeply by Zephyr Teachout in her revealing and concise book Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United.
While the federal judiciary is letting Judge Trump slither away, the prosecutorial authorities still have the power to investigate whether she and her siblings engaged in years of calculated tax cheating, as The New York Times persuasively demonstrated last October.
The Cheating Goes On
There is no statute of limitations on criminal tax fraud and there is reason aplenty to believe Trump family tax cheating has continued up to this day.
At issue are Trump’s last six years of tax returns and related “tax information.” Representative Richard Neal (D-Mass), who is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee requested the returns and related information in an April 3 letter.
Steve Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, called the request “unprecedented” – it’s not – and said he needed time to consult the law. Treasury posted the letter on Twitter.
The law is crystal clear that the Treasury secretary or his designee, the IRS commissioner, “shall” produce the returns “on written request.” Every request has been honored until now.
Mnuchin is a former Goldman Sachs-er, hedge fund operator, mortgage foreclosure mogul and Hollywood movie producer (The Lego Movie; Suicide Squad), exactly the kind of swamp dweller who Trump told voters he would rid Washington of by “draining the swamp.”
Presidents take an oath to faithfully execute their office, which includes complying with all federal laws, while dictators are by definition above the law.
Trump’s declaration should alarm all American, but especially those Republicans who claim to support strict interpretations of the clear meaning of both statutes and Constitutional principles.
Even Richard Nixon complied with this law during Watergate more than four decades ago, resulting in a second IRS audit of his returns as well as scrutiny by Congressional tax experts.
Nixon Complied with the Law
That second audit turned up a fraudulent tax deduction which saved Nixon $500,000 in taxes, about $3.4 million in today’s money. Chairman Neal’s request specifically cites the quality of IRS audits of presidential tax returns as a justification for examination of them by his committee, which oversees the IRS.
“In all of my years of public life. I have never profited. Never profited from public service I’ve earned every cent,” Nixon said in 1973. “And — all of my years of public life. I have never obstructed justice. And I think to that I could say that in my years of public life. That I welcome this kind of examination because people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook, I’ve earned everything I’ve got.”
Actually, he was a crook, but his handpicked successor Gerald Ford pardoned him.
Trump takes a different approach, asserting that voters have no interest in his tax returns.
Mulvaney takes a similar tack, ignoring the law in favor of presumed political passions.
“That’s an issue that was already litigated during the election,” Mulvaney said. “Voters knew the president could have given his tax returns. They knew that he didn’t, and they elected him anyway.”
Of course, the voters chose Trump’s opponent by three million votes. It was the Electoral College that chose Trump. But only the enablers of a tyrant would argue that popular passions, not law, govern official conduct.
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Bombshell report links Trump’s Azerbaijan hotel to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard
Travis Gettys - raw story
08 APR 2019 AT 11:07 ET
The Trump administration on Monday officially designated Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. But reporting from The New Yorker indicates that President Donald Trump could have business entanglements with the foreign military group.
Trump and his eldest daughter developed a hotel in Azerbaijan that appears to be a corrupt operation run by a family known as “the Corleones of the Caspian” with links to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
The Trump International Hotel & Tower Baku — conceived in 2008 as a luxury apartment building but converted in 2014 into a hotel — has never opened, and both local observers and international experts are baffled by the building’s existence, reported The New Yorker in 2017.
The project was intended as an “ultra-luxury property” with both hotel and residential space, but both its location and timing are odd, according to the report.
Trump Tower Baku is located in an underdeveloped part of the city’s downtown, across the street from a discount shopping center and miles away from the main business district.
“Why would someone put a luxury hotel there?” said former top official in Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Tourism. “Nobody who can afford to stay there would want to be in that neighborhood.”
The Trump Organization announced the project would be converted into just a hotel in 2014, after a construction boom had ended in Baku and luxury hotel occupancy rate hovered around 35 percent, the magazine reported.
A Cornell University expert told The New Yorker that developers of five-star hotels typically must demonstrate an average occupancy rate of at least 60 percent over 10 years.
Newsweek‘s Kurt Eichenwald reported in September 2017 that Trump’s financial filings show he’s partners in the Baku deal with the son of Azerbaijan’s transportation minister.
U.S. officials believe that official, Ziya Mammadov, laundered money for the Iranian military, although no formal charges were brought against him or his son, Anar Mammadov — who is Trump’s partner in the Baku hotel venture.
The New Yorker examined Trump’s ties to Ziya Mammadov — one of the wealthiest and most powerful oligarchs in one of the world’s most corrupt nations — and his brother, Elton Mammadov, an influential member of the Azerbaijani parliament, who signed contracts for the project and founded Baku XXI Century, which owns the tower.
The Mammadov family, described by Foreign Policy magazine as “The Corleones of the Caspian,” has a reputation for using their government positions to enrich themselves and their partners — which includes construction firms tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
The Trump administration has now condemned that group — which has been accused of drug trafficking, sponsoring terrorism abroad and money laundering — as a terrorist organization.
“This unprecedented step, led by the Department of State, recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a State Sponsor of Terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft,” Trump said in a statement.
The Baku development was the subject of numerous reports after Trump announced his presidential campaign in 2015, and the Trump Organization’s chief legal officer, Alan Garten, dismissed any concerns by saying the company never engaged directly with Mammadov.
Garten claimed Trump played only a passive role in the Baku development by licensing his name for use by Mammadov’s son, for which he was paid at least $2.8 million, according to limited public filings.
Other documents suggest Trump was paid an additional $2.5 million for the use of his name in 2012, and the future U.S. president also signed a contract to manage the hotel after it opened for an undisclosed fee tied to the venture’s performance.
Garten announced a month after Trump’s election that the Trump Organization had severed ties with the hotel, but The New Yorker reported those claims were incomplete and inaccurate.
Jan deRoos, the Cornell professor, said the Trump Organization’s interest in the Baku project — which was overseen by Ivanka Trump — was atypical and “very, very intense.”
That close involvement may open up the Trump Organization to criminal prosecution under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which was passed in 1977 to forbid American companies from rewarding corrupt foreign officials — even if they did so unwittingly.
Garten all but admitted corruption was involved with the project — “I’m not going to sit here and defend the Mammadovs,” he said — but he insisted the Trump Organization should be exempt from prosecution because the company didn’t control the project and didn’t pay money to anyone.
However, a legal expert who specializes in the foreign corruption law dismissed those claims as nonsense.
“You can’t go into business deals in Azerbaijan assuming that you are immune from the FCPA, nor can you escape liability by looking the other way,” said Jessica Tillipman, an assistant dean at George Washington University Law School. “The entire Baku deal is a giant red flag — the direct involvement of foreign government officials and their relatives in Azerbaijan with ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Corruption warning signs are rarely more obvious.”
Trump complained about the law during a phone-in appearance on CNBC in May 2012, the month before the Baku deal was completed.
“Every other country goes into these places and they do what they have to do,” Trump said. “It’s a horrible law and it should be changed.”
He complained that American companies that refused to give bribes — and The New Yorker reports on duffel bags of cash changing hands during construction — would “do business nowhere.”
“There is one answer — go to your room, close the door, go to sleep and don’t do any deals, because that’s the only way,” Trump whined to CNBC. “The only way you’re going to do it is the other way.”
Trump and his eldest daughter developed a hotel in Azerbaijan that appears to be a corrupt operation run by a family known as “the Corleones of the Caspian” with links to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
The Trump International Hotel & Tower Baku — conceived in 2008 as a luxury apartment building but converted in 2014 into a hotel — has never opened, and both local observers and international experts are baffled by the building’s existence, reported The New Yorker in 2017.
The project was intended as an “ultra-luxury property” with both hotel and residential space, but both its location and timing are odd, according to the report.
Trump Tower Baku is located in an underdeveloped part of the city’s downtown, across the street from a discount shopping center and miles away from the main business district.
“Why would someone put a luxury hotel there?” said former top official in Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Tourism. “Nobody who can afford to stay there would want to be in that neighborhood.”
The Trump Organization announced the project would be converted into just a hotel in 2014, after a construction boom had ended in Baku and luxury hotel occupancy rate hovered around 35 percent, the magazine reported.
A Cornell University expert told The New Yorker that developers of five-star hotels typically must demonstrate an average occupancy rate of at least 60 percent over 10 years.
Newsweek‘s Kurt Eichenwald reported in September 2017 that Trump’s financial filings show he’s partners in the Baku deal with the son of Azerbaijan’s transportation minister.
U.S. officials believe that official, Ziya Mammadov, laundered money for the Iranian military, although no formal charges were brought against him or his son, Anar Mammadov — who is Trump’s partner in the Baku hotel venture.
The New Yorker examined Trump’s ties to Ziya Mammadov — one of the wealthiest and most powerful oligarchs in one of the world’s most corrupt nations — and his brother, Elton Mammadov, an influential member of the Azerbaijani parliament, who signed contracts for the project and founded Baku XXI Century, which owns the tower.
The Mammadov family, described by Foreign Policy magazine as “The Corleones of the Caspian,” has a reputation for using their government positions to enrich themselves and their partners — which includes construction firms tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
The Trump administration has now condemned that group — which has been accused of drug trafficking, sponsoring terrorism abroad and money laundering — as a terrorist organization.
“This unprecedented step, led by the Department of State, recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a State Sponsor of Terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft,” Trump said in a statement.
The Baku development was the subject of numerous reports after Trump announced his presidential campaign in 2015, and the Trump Organization’s chief legal officer, Alan Garten, dismissed any concerns by saying the company never engaged directly with Mammadov.
Garten claimed Trump played only a passive role in the Baku development by licensing his name for use by Mammadov’s son, for which he was paid at least $2.8 million, according to limited public filings.
Other documents suggest Trump was paid an additional $2.5 million for the use of his name in 2012, and the future U.S. president also signed a contract to manage the hotel after it opened for an undisclosed fee tied to the venture’s performance.
Garten announced a month after Trump’s election that the Trump Organization had severed ties with the hotel, but The New Yorker reported those claims were incomplete and inaccurate.
Jan deRoos, the Cornell professor, said the Trump Organization’s interest in the Baku project — which was overseen by Ivanka Trump — was atypical and “very, very intense.”
That close involvement may open up the Trump Organization to criminal prosecution under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which was passed in 1977 to forbid American companies from rewarding corrupt foreign officials — even if they did so unwittingly.
Garten all but admitted corruption was involved with the project — “I’m not going to sit here and defend the Mammadovs,” he said — but he insisted the Trump Organization should be exempt from prosecution because the company didn’t control the project and didn’t pay money to anyone.
However, a legal expert who specializes in the foreign corruption law dismissed those claims as nonsense.
“You can’t go into business deals in Azerbaijan assuming that you are immune from the FCPA, nor can you escape liability by looking the other way,” said Jessica Tillipman, an assistant dean at George Washington University Law School. “The entire Baku deal is a giant red flag — the direct involvement of foreign government officials and their relatives in Azerbaijan with ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Corruption warning signs are rarely more obvious.”
Trump complained about the law during a phone-in appearance on CNBC in May 2012, the month before the Baku deal was completed.
“Every other country goes into these places and they do what they have to do,” Trump said. “It’s a horrible law and it should be changed.”
He complained that American companies that refused to give bribes — and The New Yorker reports on duffel bags of cash changing hands during construction — would “do business nowhere.”
“There is one answer — go to your room, close the door, go to sleep and don’t do any deals, because that’s the only way,” Trump whined to CNBC. “The only way you’re going to do it is the other way.”
I am I, Don Trumpote, The Lord of la 'Murica, My destiny calls and I go
Making us proud to be Americans!!!
Trump Statuettes Spotted On Brooklyn Sidewalks.
A treat for our canine friends
The Planners Of The Trump Tower Meeting Moved Millions, And Mueller Is Now Investigating
Documents show suspicious transfers began six days before the controversial meeting.
Anthony Cormier
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Jason Leopold
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on September 21, 2018, at 10:45 a.m. ET
On June 3, 2016, Donald Trump Jr. received one of the most striking emails of the presidential campaign, offering dirt on Hillary Clinton as part of the Russian government’s “support for Mr. Trump.”
Trump Jr. responded 17 minutes later: “if it’s what you say I love it.”
That email led to a meeting at Trump Tower that has become a central focus of the investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.
But the very day that email was sent, another exchange was taking place behind the scenes.
Documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News show that $3.3 million began moving on June 3 between two of the men who orchestrated the meeting: Aras Agalarov, a billionaire real estate developer close to both Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump, and Irakly “Ike” Kaveladze, a longtime Agalarov employee once investigated for money laundering.
That money is on top of the more than $20 million that was flagged as suspicious, BuzzFeed News revealed earlier this month, after the money ricocheted among the planners and participants of the Trump Tower meeting. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, which has been investigating whether any individuals colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election, is examining the suspicious transactions, four federal law enforcement officials said. A spokesperson for Mueller’s office declined to comment.
Although the documents do not directly link the $3.3 million to the meeting, they show that officials at three separate banks raised red flags about the funds. Many of the transfers seemed to have no legitimate purpose, bankers noted. Kaveladze quickly moved money to other accounts he controlled, and appeared to use some of it to make payments on Agalarov’s behalf — including more than $700,000 to pay off American Express charges.
Scott Balber, an attorney for Agalarov and Kaveladze, said each of these transactions was legitimate and there is nothing improper with their financial activity. Balber explained that Agalarov sent funds to Kaveladze, an employee, to pay various business or personal expenses in the US.
“What is suspicious, or insidious, about a billionaire who pays his employee in the US to pay his business or domestic bills?” Balber said. “This looks like complete nonsense.”
“It’s obvious the events of June 2016 have been a focal point of the special counsel’s investigation, various congressional inquiries, tremendous media attention and the like,” Balber said. “We are in the lens of that reality, so it doesn’t surprise me that there’s been some flyspecking, some gross overreporting by a number of financial institutions. They won’t be criticized for overreporting suspicious activity.”
None of these transactions was discovered until 2017, after the New York Times revealed the Trump Tower meeting. Shortly after those reports, investigators asked financial institutions to look back at their accounts to learn how money flowed among the people who planned and attended the meeting: Agalarov; Kaveladze; Agalarov’s pop star son, Emin; their employee, Rob Goldstone, who sent the original email to Trump Jr.; and others.
To unearth connections between some of their accounts, banks took an extraordinary step: They invoked a provision of the Patriot Act — a post-9/11 law that included new tools to track money laundering and terrorist financing. That provision, rarely used in the Trump-Russia investigation, allowed the banks to share information about customers with one another.
Three financial institutions — Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley — discovered the $3.3 million that flowed from Agalarov to Kaveladze.
They also learned that Kaveladze had given different banks radically different descriptions of one of his main companies, Corsy International. To JP Morgan Chase, Kaveladze said Corsy was a “transportation equipment and supplies merchant wholesaler.” He told Citibank it was a “music promotion company.” Agalarov gave yet another description to Morgan Stanley, calling the firm a “service provider” for his vast real estate company, Crocus Group.
Balber, the attorney, said that there are two separate businesses, both named “Corsy International,” that Kaveladze controlled. One is based in California and is involved in “procurement” issues related to Agalarov’s business empire. The other is based in New York and is largely involved with the music career of Emin Agalarov.
That lack of transparency made it difficult for bankers to know the true purpose of the funds into the company’s accounts. Examiners also became concerned with how Kaveladze handled the money.
On June 3, the day of the email exchange with Donald Trump Jr., Kaveladze began depositing checks into his JP Morgan Chase Platinum business checking account in California. He used three different branches in Huntington Beach, California, and the five checks totaled about $397,000. Each originated with Agalarov and referred to “compensation Amex expenses.”
Then on June 6, Agalarov started sending checks through an account at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management to Kaveladze’s company.
Those funds totaled about $971,000.
When they reviewed these accounts, bank examiners became suspicious because it was unclear exactly how the money was supposed to be used.
For instance, at JP Morgan Chase, Kaveladze transferred money from one of his companies’ accounts to another and ultimately sent 24 payments over 15 months to American Express for a total of $725,000 — a red flag to bankers because they said it appeared Kaveladze was making the payments for Agalarov. The documents do not say what expenses were charged to American Express, and three federal law enforcement agents said investigators are still trying to figure it out. Balber said these transactions were legitimate personal and business expenses for Agalarov.
The details unearthed by bankers were compiled in “suspicious activity reports” sent to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which shared them with other law enforcement agencies investigating Russian interference.
Suspicious activity reports are not evidence of wrongdoing, but they can provide valuable information to investigators looking into possible money laundering, fraud, tax evasion, or other financial misconduct.
During their reviews in 2017, some banks noticed behavior that they had not previously flagged. Bank of America, for example, noted about $7.8 million that was sent from Corsy International to another of Kaveladze’s businesses, Promomed, between 2012 and 2014. Bankers said they were concerned that by transferring funds from one company to another, Kaveladze was trying to obscure the original source of the money.
Citibank went far back into its accounts to search for suspicious activity by Kaveladze and the Agalarov family. Examiners “elevated” about $11.9 million in transactions that began in 2015, largely because the transactions originated in “high-risk jurisdictions,” or locations that are known as havens for money laundering, and because the funds were sent for “unknown purposes.”
Kaveladze had popped up on Citibank’s radar in September 2015, when he applied for a $100,000 line of credit for Corsy International. At that time, he told bankers that the company had $8 million in sales the previous year and that it had about $240,000 in available funds — but when Citibank investigated further, examiners learned that Corsy International’s account was actually overdrawn.
Citibank denied the loan.
Balber, Kaveladze’s attorney, said that his client did nothing improper, and that he doesn’t recall telling the bank about Corsy International’s available funds.
All three banks cited a 2000 report by the Government Accountability Office, in which Kaveladze was investigated as part of a Russian money laundering scheme. Kaveladze, that report found, established more than 2,000 corporations in Delaware for Russian real estate brokers, then set up US bank accounts for them. The brokers used these accounts to transfer about $1.4 billion, the report found.
Kaveladze was never charged with a crime and called the GAO’s inquiry a “witch hunt.”
Trump Jr. responded 17 minutes later: “if it’s what you say I love it.”
That email led to a meeting at Trump Tower that has become a central focus of the investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.
But the very day that email was sent, another exchange was taking place behind the scenes.
Documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News show that $3.3 million began moving on June 3 between two of the men who orchestrated the meeting: Aras Agalarov, a billionaire real estate developer close to both Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump, and Irakly “Ike” Kaveladze, a longtime Agalarov employee once investigated for money laundering.
That money is on top of the more than $20 million that was flagged as suspicious, BuzzFeed News revealed earlier this month, after the money ricocheted among the planners and participants of the Trump Tower meeting. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, which has been investigating whether any individuals colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election, is examining the suspicious transactions, four federal law enforcement officials said. A spokesperson for Mueller’s office declined to comment.
Although the documents do not directly link the $3.3 million to the meeting, they show that officials at three separate banks raised red flags about the funds. Many of the transfers seemed to have no legitimate purpose, bankers noted. Kaveladze quickly moved money to other accounts he controlled, and appeared to use some of it to make payments on Agalarov’s behalf — including more than $700,000 to pay off American Express charges.
Scott Balber, an attorney for Agalarov and Kaveladze, said each of these transactions was legitimate and there is nothing improper with their financial activity. Balber explained that Agalarov sent funds to Kaveladze, an employee, to pay various business or personal expenses in the US.
“What is suspicious, or insidious, about a billionaire who pays his employee in the US to pay his business or domestic bills?” Balber said. “This looks like complete nonsense.”
“It’s obvious the events of June 2016 have been a focal point of the special counsel’s investigation, various congressional inquiries, tremendous media attention and the like,” Balber said. “We are in the lens of that reality, so it doesn’t surprise me that there’s been some flyspecking, some gross overreporting by a number of financial institutions. They won’t be criticized for overreporting suspicious activity.”
None of these transactions was discovered until 2017, after the New York Times revealed the Trump Tower meeting. Shortly after those reports, investigators asked financial institutions to look back at their accounts to learn how money flowed among the people who planned and attended the meeting: Agalarov; Kaveladze; Agalarov’s pop star son, Emin; their employee, Rob Goldstone, who sent the original email to Trump Jr.; and others.
To unearth connections between some of their accounts, banks took an extraordinary step: They invoked a provision of the Patriot Act — a post-9/11 law that included new tools to track money laundering and terrorist financing. That provision, rarely used in the Trump-Russia investigation, allowed the banks to share information about customers with one another.
Three financial institutions — Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley — discovered the $3.3 million that flowed from Agalarov to Kaveladze.
They also learned that Kaveladze had given different banks radically different descriptions of one of his main companies, Corsy International. To JP Morgan Chase, Kaveladze said Corsy was a “transportation equipment and supplies merchant wholesaler.” He told Citibank it was a “music promotion company.” Agalarov gave yet another description to Morgan Stanley, calling the firm a “service provider” for his vast real estate company, Crocus Group.
Balber, the attorney, said that there are two separate businesses, both named “Corsy International,” that Kaveladze controlled. One is based in California and is involved in “procurement” issues related to Agalarov’s business empire. The other is based in New York and is largely involved with the music career of Emin Agalarov.
That lack of transparency made it difficult for bankers to know the true purpose of the funds into the company’s accounts. Examiners also became concerned with how Kaveladze handled the money.
On June 3, the day of the email exchange with Donald Trump Jr., Kaveladze began depositing checks into his JP Morgan Chase Platinum business checking account in California. He used three different branches in Huntington Beach, California, and the five checks totaled about $397,000. Each originated with Agalarov and referred to “compensation Amex expenses.”
Then on June 6, Agalarov started sending checks through an account at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management to Kaveladze’s company.
Those funds totaled about $971,000.
When they reviewed these accounts, bank examiners became suspicious because it was unclear exactly how the money was supposed to be used.
For instance, at JP Morgan Chase, Kaveladze transferred money from one of his companies’ accounts to another and ultimately sent 24 payments over 15 months to American Express for a total of $725,000 — a red flag to bankers because they said it appeared Kaveladze was making the payments for Agalarov. The documents do not say what expenses were charged to American Express, and three federal law enforcement agents said investigators are still trying to figure it out. Balber said these transactions were legitimate personal and business expenses for Agalarov.
The details unearthed by bankers were compiled in “suspicious activity reports” sent to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which shared them with other law enforcement agencies investigating Russian interference.
Suspicious activity reports are not evidence of wrongdoing, but they can provide valuable information to investigators looking into possible money laundering, fraud, tax evasion, or other financial misconduct.
During their reviews in 2017, some banks noticed behavior that they had not previously flagged. Bank of America, for example, noted about $7.8 million that was sent from Corsy International to another of Kaveladze’s businesses, Promomed, between 2012 and 2014. Bankers said they were concerned that by transferring funds from one company to another, Kaveladze was trying to obscure the original source of the money.
Citibank went far back into its accounts to search for suspicious activity by Kaveladze and the Agalarov family. Examiners “elevated” about $11.9 million in transactions that began in 2015, largely because the transactions originated in “high-risk jurisdictions,” or locations that are known as havens for money laundering, and because the funds were sent for “unknown purposes.”
Kaveladze had popped up on Citibank’s radar in September 2015, when he applied for a $100,000 line of credit for Corsy International. At that time, he told bankers that the company had $8 million in sales the previous year and that it had about $240,000 in available funds — but when Citibank investigated further, examiners learned that Corsy International’s account was actually overdrawn.
Citibank denied the loan.
Balber, Kaveladze’s attorney, said that his client did nothing improper, and that he doesn’t recall telling the bank about Corsy International’s available funds.
All three banks cited a 2000 report by the Government Accountability Office, in which Kaveladze was investigated as part of a Russian money laundering scheme. Kaveladze, that report found, established more than 2,000 corporations in Delaware for Russian real estate brokers, then set up US bank accounts for them. The brokers used these accounts to transfer about $1.4 billion, the report found.
Kaveladze was never charged with a crime and called the GAO’s inquiry a “witch hunt.”
Trump said that condemning Charlottesville neo-Nazis was ‘the biggest fUcking mistake I’ve made’: Bob Woodward
Brad Reed - RAW STORY
04 SEP 2018 AT 11:50 ET
Bob Woodward’s new book on President Donald Trump — titled “Fear: Inside the Trump White House” — is filled with explosive revelations about Trump’s presidency.
One of the most explosive has to do with the president’s handling of the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in the summer of 2017, in which the president said that there were “very fine people” on “both sides” of the demonstration.
According to a leaked excerpt obtained by the Washington Post, Trump deeply resented being forced to come out and specifically condemn white nationalists after being advised by aides that he needed to do so to make clear that he was opposed to racism.
“That was the biggest f*cking mistake I’ve made,” Trump told advisers shortly after giving a speech that condemned Nazis, according to Woodward’s sources, who also say Trump called the speech “the worst” he’d ever given.
Woodward also reports that former Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn, who is Jewish, threatened to resign after Trump’s Charlottesville performance, but was convinced to stay aboard by the president, who accused him of “treason” for thinking of stepping down.
Chief of staff John Kelly, whom Woodward also reports believes Trump is an “idiot,”told Cohn that he was similarly horrified by Trump’s performance and also considered resigning from his post.
RELATED: Trump’s staff staged a ‘coup’ to stop him from destroying nation: Woodward
Pr*sdent’s own staff staged a quiet “coup” to prevent “a nervous breakdown of the executive power of the most powerful country in the world,” according to a new book by Pulitzer-winning Watergate reporter Bob Woodward.
One of the most explosive has to do with the president’s handling of the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in the summer of 2017, in which the president said that there were “very fine people” on “both sides” of the demonstration.
According to a leaked excerpt obtained by the Washington Post, Trump deeply resented being forced to come out and specifically condemn white nationalists after being advised by aides that he needed to do so to make clear that he was opposed to racism.
“That was the biggest f*cking mistake I’ve made,” Trump told advisers shortly after giving a speech that condemned Nazis, according to Woodward’s sources, who also say Trump called the speech “the worst” he’d ever given.
Woodward also reports that former Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn, who is Jewish, threatened to resign after Trump’s Charlottesville performance, but was convinced to stay aboard by the president, who accused him of “treason” for thinking of stepping down.
Chief of staff John Kelly, whom Woodward also reports believes Trump is an “idiot,”told Cohn that he was similarly horrified by Trump’s performance and also considered resigning from his post.
RELATED: Trump’s staff staged a ‘coup’ to stop him from destroying nation: Woodward
Pr*sdent’s own staff staged a quiet “coup” to prevent “a nervous breakdown of the executive power of the most powerful country in the world,” according to a new book by Pulitzer-winning Watergate reporter Bob Woodward.
Trump was involved in scuttling FBI building across from Trump’s DC Hotel: Inspector General report
Bob Brigham - raw story
27 AUG 2018 AT 16:19 ET
The Inspector General of the General Services Administration on Monday released an in-depth report showing President Donald Trump was involved in scuttling plans by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to build a new headquarters.
The president was mentioned over three dozen times in the report.
The Inspector General report found that GSA Administrator Emily Murphy’s testimony before Congress on the scandal, “was incomplete and may have left the misleading impression that she had no discussions with the President or senior White House officials in the decision-making process about the project.”
The Trump administration invoked executive privilege to prevent the inspector general from learning exactly what was said when President Trump allegedly intervened in the rebuilding process.
The FBI plan would have created a large construction zone across the street from Trump’s luxury DC hotel.
The investigation was initiated by Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), the Vice Ranking Member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
“This IG report demonstrates that Administration officials obscured the White House’s involvement in the FBI headquarters project,” Connolly concluded.
“When we began this investigation, the prospect that President Trump was personally involved in the government-led redevelopment of a property in close proximity to the Trump Hotel was dismissed as a conspiracy theory,” he added. “Now, the president’s involvement in this multi-billion-dollar government procurement which will directly impact his bottom line has been confirmed by the White House Press Secretary and government photographs.”
Connolly also urged further investigation.
“This IG report is only the beginning. We must develop a comprehensive understanding of the President’s involvement in this procurement and what it has cost the United States in terms of both national security and taxpayer dollars. I am calling on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee to convene immediate hearings on this matter and to subpoena any GSA officials who are suspected of misleading Congress,” he demanded.
Read the full report (PDF).
The president was mentioned over three dozen times in the report.
The Inspector General report found that GSA Administrator Emily Murphy’s testimony before Congress on the scandal, “was incomplete and may have left the misleading impression that she had no discussions with the President or senior White House officials in the decision-making process about the project.”
The Trump administration invoked executive privilege to prevent the inspector general from learning exactly what was said when President Trump allegedly intervened in the rebuilding process.
The FBI plan would have created a large construction zone across the street from Trump’s luxury DC hotel.
The investigation was initiated by Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), the Vice Ranking Member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
“This IG report demonstrates that Administration officials obscured the White House’s involvement in the FBI headquarters project,” Connolly concluded.
“When we began this investigation, the prospect that President Trump was personally involved in the government-led redevelopment of a property in close proximity to the Trump Hotel was dismissed as a conspiracy theory,” he added. “Now, the president’s involvement in this multi-billion-dollar government procurement which will directly impact his bottom line has been confirmed by the White House Press Secretary and government photographs.”
Connolly also urged further investigation.
“This IG report is only the beginning. We must develop a comprehensive understanding of the President’s involvement in this procurement and what it has cost the United States in terms of both national security and taxpayer dollars. I am calling on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee to convene immediate hearings on this matter and to subpoena any GSA officials who are suspected of misleading Congress,” he demanded.
Read the full report (PDF).
Trump's future
Here’s how the Russian mob used cash from a multi-billion dollar gas scam to get their hooks into Trump
Travis Gettys - raw story
16 AUG 2018 AT 08:55 ET
President Donald Trump got his start laundering money for the Russian mob more than 30 years ago as part of one of the biggest scams in U.S. history, according to a new book.
Investigative reporter Craig Unger has described Trump Tower as a “cathedral to money laundering,” and his new book — “House of Trump, House of Putin” — examines the depth of the president’s relationship with the Russian mafia, which he says has no meaningful distinction from the country’s intelligence agencies.
Unger traces the links between Trump and the Russian mob back to at least 1984, when a Soviet refugee David Bogatin was looking for a place to stash the millions he was raking in from a gasoline tax scam he was running with the Colombo crime family.
That scam, the largest of its kind in American history, was busted up by federal investigators as part of Operation Red Daisy, which resulted in the indictment of 15 Russian nationals and 10 others for evading more than $140 million in fuel excise taxes.
Bogatin and two associates, Michael Markowitz and Lev Persits, approached Michael Franzese, the son of a notorious underboss in the Colombo organization, in 1980 asking for protection for their own network of sketchy gas stations.
“These Russians were having trouble collecting money owed them,” Franzese later recalled. “They were also having problems obtaining and holding on to the licenses they needed to keep the gas tax scam going.”
Franzese, the son of mob enforcer John “Sonny” Franzese, was not initially impressed by the Russians — he mocked Markowitz’s disco-styled attire and thought Bogatin looked more like an accountant than a mafioso — but agreed to work for them in exchange for 75 percent of their take in the scheme, Unger wrote.
The lopsided deal proved spectacularly successful for both sides, as profits soared to $100 million a month and more than $1 billion a year — but the conspirators needed a place to launder their ill-gotten cash.
“After seven years in New York, Bogatin had stashed away enough money to buy real estate anywhere he wanted,” Unger wrote. “For roughly a decade, thousands of Russian Jews like him had been pouring into Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. But Bogatin had his eyes on something more prestigious.”
Bogatin became fixated on a “garish” 58-story building that had opened a year before — Trump Tower — and he paid $6 million in cash from his fuel tax scheme for five apartments there.
Unger tracked more than 1,300 similar cash transactions at Trump Tower over the next three decades involving mobsters that ensnared the future president in the closely tied web of Russian spies and mobsters.
“Russian Mafia and Russian intelligence operatives successfully targeted, compromised, and implanted either a willfully ignorant or an inexplicably unaware Russian asset in the White House as the most powerful man on earth,” Unger concludes.
“In doing so, without firing a shot, the Russians helped put in power a man who would immediately begin to undermine the Western Alliance,” he added, “which has been the foundation of American national security for more than 70 years; who would start massive trade wars with America’s longtime allies; fuel right‐wing anti‐immigrant populism; and assault the rule of law in the United States.”
Investigative reporter Craig Unger has described Trump Tower as a “cathedral to money laundering,” and his new book — “House of Trump, House of Putin” — examines the depth of the president’s relationship with the Russian mafia, which he says has no meaningful distinction from the country’s intelligence agencies.
Unger traces the links between Trump and the Russian mob back to at least 1984, when a Soviet refugee David Bogatin was looking for a place to stash the millions he was raking in from a gasoline tax scam he was running with the Colombo crime family.
That scam, the largest of its kind in American history, was busted up by federal investigators as part of Operation Red Daisy, which resulted in the indictment of 15 Russian nationals and 10 others for evading more than $140 million in fuel excise taxes.
Bogatin and two associates, Michael Markowitz and Lev Persits, approached Michael Franzese, the son of a notorious underboss in the Colombo organization, in 1980 asking for protection for their own network of sketchy gas stations.
“These Russians were having trouble collecting money owed them,” Franzese later recalled. “They were also having problems obtaining and holding on to the licenses they needed to keep the gas tax scam going.”
Franzese, the son of mob enforcer John “Sonny” Franzese, was not initially impressed by the Russians — he mocked Markowitz’s disco-styled attire and thought Bogatin looked more like an accountant than a mafioso — but agreed to work for them in exchange for 75 percent of their take in the scheme, Unger wrote.
The lopsided deal proved spectacularly successful for both sides, as profits soared to $100 million a month and more than $1 billion a year — but the conspirators needed a place to launder their ill-gotten cash.
“After seven years in New York, Bogatin had stashed away enough money to buy real estate anywhere he wanted,” Unger wrote. “For roughly a decade, thousands of Russian Jews like him had been pouring into Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. But Bogatin had his eyes on something more prestigious.”
Bogatin became fixated on a “garish” 58-story building that had opened a year before — Trump Tower — and he paid $6 million in cash from his fuel tax scheme for five apartments there.
Unger tracked more than 1,300 similar cash transactions at Trump Tower over the next three decades involving mobsters that ensnared the future president in the closely tied web of Russian spies and mobsters.
“Russian Mafia and Russian intelligence operatives successfully targeted, compromised, and implanted either a willfully ignorant or an inexplicably unaware Russian asset in the White House as the most powerful man on earth,” Unger concludes.
“In doing so, without firing a shot, the Russians helped put in power a man who would immediately begin to undermine the Western Alliance,” he added, “which has been the foundation of American national security for more than 70 years; who would start massive trade wars with America’s longtime allies; fuel right‐wing anti‐immigrant populism; and assault the rule of law in the United States.”
Trump- Putin Summit
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trump funnies
When an Idiot is in charge!!!
trump family values
Donald Trump’s grandfather Friedrich Trump ran a restaurant, bar, and brothel in British Columbia.
America's Criminal-in-Chief
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But her emails
trade fool!!!
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NARCO-A-LAGO: MONEY LAUNDERING AT THE TRUMP OCEAN CLUB PANAMA
You can download the PDF version of this report here.
From Global Witness: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
“Every other country goes into these places and they do what they have to do… It’s a horrible law and [the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act] should be changed.”
In the early 2000s, a series of bankruptcies meant Donald J. Trump was shunned by most lenders. Struggling for credit, he started selling his name to high-end real estate projects. This report examines in detail the criminal connections that propelled one such project – the Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower in Panama – and how this case bears some of the same disturbing hallmarks as other Trump developments.
Since he became President of the United States, numerous investigations and articles have probed Trump’s business dealings and his alleged links to criminals and other shadowy characters. It is understood that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation under the Department of Justice will also examine his real estate business. This is important because it seems likely that, following his various bankruptcies, at least a part of Trump’s business empire has been built on untraceable funds, some apparently linked to Russian criminal networks.
Trump may not have deliberately set out to facilitate criminal activity in his business dealings. But, as this Global Witness investigation shows, licensing his brand to the luxurious Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower in Panama aligned Trump’s financial interests with those of crooks looking to launder ill-gotten gains. Trump seems to have done little to nothing to prevent this. What is clear is that proceeds from Colombian cartels’ narcotics trafficking were laundered through the Trump Ocean Club and that Donald Trump was one of the beneficiaries.
One key player in the laundering of drug money at the Trump Ocean Club was notorious fraudster David Eduardo Helmut Murcia Guzmán, whom a U.S. court subsequently sentenced to nine years for laundering millions of dollars' worth of illicit funds, including narcotics proceeds, through companies and real estate.
Another was Murcia Guzmán’s business associate, Alexandre Henrique Ventura Nogueira, who brokered nearly a third of the 666 pre-construction unit sales at the Trump Ocean Club and claims to have sold 350-400 units overall. Ventura Nogueira’s sales brokerage was critical to ensuring the project’s lift-off and Trump’s ability to earn tens of millions of dollars.
The warning signs were there from the outset. The Trump Ocean Club, one of Trump’s most lucrative licensing deals to date, was announced in 2006 and launched in 2011, a period when Panama was known as one of the best places in the world to launder money. Whole neighborhoods in Panama City were taken over by organized crime groups, and luxury developments were built with the purpose of serving as money laundering vehicles.
Moreover, investing in luxury properties is a tried and trusted way for criminals to move tainted cash into the legitimate financial system, where they can spend it freely. Once scrubbed clean in this way, vast profits from criminal activities like trafficking people and drugs, organized crime, and terrorism can find their way into the U.S. and elsewhere. In most countries, regulation is notoriously lax in the real estate sector. Cash payments are subject to hardly any scrutiny, giving opportunistic and unprincipled developers free rein to accept dirty money.
In the case of the Trump Ocean Club, accepting easy – and possibly dirty – money early on would have been in Trump’s interest; a certain volume of pre-construction sales was necessary to secure financing for the project, which stood to net him $75.4 million by the end of 2010. Trump received a percentage of the financing he helped secure, and a cut on the sale of every unit at the development.
He and his family have made millions of dollars more from management fees and likely continue to profit from the Trump Ocean Club. Eager for the project’s success, Trump and his children have participated directly in marketing, management, and even project design. According to broker Ventura Nogueira, Trump’s daughter Ivanka attended at least 10 meetings with him and project developer Roger Khafif.
A large number of those involved with the Trump Ocean Club in its early phase were Russian and Eastern European citizens or diaspora members. In an interview with NBC and Reuters, Ventura Nogueira said that 50 percent of his buyers were Russian, and that some had “questionable backgrounds.” He added that he found out later that some were part of the Russian Mafia.
Since the Russian government’s alleged interference in the 2016 election, a lot has been made of Trump’s heavy reliance on funds from Russia for his licensing deals. Trump relying on funds from Russia is not in itself a problem – some of these funds are no doubt from legitimate sources. What is deeply problematic, however, is the fact that some of this money appears to have come from criminal networks.
Donald Trump has incessantly promoted himself as a successful and viable businessman, and this was critical to his success in the 2016 presidential election. But this report presents evidence that this façade was built, at least in part, on ventures used to launder cash generated by criminal activities. Trump’s unscrupulous business dealings and blindness to potential illegality raise serious questions about his suitability to govern the most powerful country in the world.
The dubious dealings of Trump the businessman also raise questions about the commitment of Trump the President to tackling crime and corruption. Trump got elected by repeatedly pledging to “drain the swamp”, but in the nine months since his inauguration he has actually taken steps that could worsen corruption in the U.S. and internationally. Indeed, one of his administration’s few legislative successes to date has been to overturn the implementing regulation of a ground-breaking anti-corruption law.[...]
“Every other country goes into these places and they do what they have to do… It’s a horrible law and [the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act] should be changed.”
In the early 2000s, a series of bankruptcies meant Donald J. Trump was shunned by most lenders. Struggling for credit, he started selling his name to high-end real estate projects. This report examines in detail the criminal connections that propelled one such project – the Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower in Panama – and how this case bears some of the same disturbing hallmarks as other Trump developments.
Since he became President of the United States, numerous investigations and articles have probed Trump’s business dealings and his alleged links to criminals and other shadowy characters. It is understood that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation under the Department of Justice will also examine his real estate business. This is important because it seems likely that, following his various bankruptcies, at least a part of Trump’s business empire has been built on untraceable funds, some apparently linked to Russian criminal networks.
Trump may not have deliberately set out to facilitate criminal activity in his business dealings. But, as this Global Witness investigation shows, licensing his brand to the luxurious Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower in Panama aligned Trump’s financial interests with those of crooks looking to launder ill-gotten gains. Trump seems to have done little to nothing to prevent this. What is clear is that proceeds from Colombian cartels’ narcotics trafficking were laundered through the Trump Ocean Club and that Donald Trump was one of the beneficiaries.
One key player in the laundering of drug money at the Trump Ocean Club was notorious fraudster David Eduardo Helmut Murcia Guzmán, whom a U.S. court subsequently sentenced to nine years for laundering millions of dollars' worth of illicit funds, including narcotics proceeds, through companies and real estate.
Another was Murcia Guzmán’s business associate, Alexandre Henrique Ventura Nogueira, who brokered nearly a third of the 666 pre-construction unit sales at the Trump Ocean Club and claims to have sold 350-400 units overall. Ventura Nogueira’s sales brokerage was critical to ensuring the project’s lift-off and Trump’s ability to earn tens of millions of dollars.
The warning signs were there from the outset. The Trump Ocean Club, one of Trump’s most lucrative licensing deals to date, was announced in 2006 and launched in 2011, a period when Panama was known as one of the best places in the world to launder money. Whole neighborhoods in Panama City were taken over by organized crime groups, and luxury developments were built with the purpose of serving as money laundering vehicles.
Moreover, investing in luxury properties is a tried and trusted way for criminals to move tainted cash into the legitimate financial system, where they can spend it freely. Once scrubbed clean in this way, vast profits from criminal activities like trafficking people and drugs, organized crime, and terrorism can find their way into the U.S. and elsewhere. In most countries, regulation is notoriously lax in the real estate sector. Cash payments are subject to hardly any scrutiny, giving opportunistic and unprincipled developers free rein to accept dirty money.
In the case of the Trump Ocean Club, accepting easy – and possibly dirty – money early on would have been in Trump’s interest; a certain volume of pre-construction sales was necessary to secure financing for the project, which stood to net him $75.4 million by the end of 2010. Trump received a percentage of the financing he helped secure, and a cut on the sale of every unit at the development.
He and his family have made millions of dollars more from management fees and likely continue to profit from the Trump Ocean Club. Eager for the project’s success, Trump and his children have participated directly in marketing, management, and even project design. According to broker Ventura Nogueira, Trump’s daughter Ivanka attended at least 10 meetings with him and project developer Roger Khafif.
A large number of those involved with the Trump Ocean Club in its early phase were Russian and Eastern European citizens or diaspora members. In an interview with NBC and Reuters, Ventura Nogueira said that 50 percent of his buyers were Russian, and that some had “questionable backgrounds.” He added that he found out later that some were part of the Russian Mafia.
Since the Russian government’s alleged interference in the 2016 election, a lot has been made of Trump’s heavy reliance on funds from Russia for his licensing deals. Trump relying on funds from Russia is not in itself a problem – some of these funds are no doubt from legitimate sources. What is deeply problematic, however, is the fact that some of this money appears to have come from criminal networks.
Donald Trump has incessantly promoted himself as a successful and viable businessman, and this was critical to his success in the 2016 presidential election. But this report presents evidence that this façade was built, at least in part, on ventures used to launder cash generated by criminal activities. Trump’s unscrupulous business dealings and blindness to potential illegality raise serious questions about his suitability to govern the most powerful country in the world.
The dubious dealings of Trump the businessman also raise questions about the commitment of Trump the President to tackling crime and corruption. Trump got elected by repeatedly pledging to “drain the swamp”, but in the nine months since his inauguration he has actually taken steps that could worsen corruption in the U.S. and internationally. Indeed, one of his administration’s few legislative successes to date has been to overturn the implementing regulation of a ground-breaking anti-corruption law.[...]
Trump’s appearance in Panama Papers revealed
International Business Times
25 NOV 2017 AT 08:12 ET
From Raw Story: The instance of President Donald Trump’s appearance in the Panama Papers – the massive trove of leaked documents, reveals in detail how the world’s richest people hide their business dealings from scrutiny and taxation.
A real estate deal from the early 1990s is the first instance of President Trump’s name being mentioned in the Panama Papers.
An investigative reporter, Jake Bernstein, Friday afternoon flagged the discovery that involves the purchase and subsequent sale of a unit at the newly constructed Trump Palace on the Upper East Side in the 1990s. This deal involved a Panamanian company named Process Consultants, Inc., that purchased a 16th floor condo at the Trump skyscraper in 1991.
Process Consultants was owned through bearer shares. These share certificates indicate that whoever physically possessed the papers owned the company. The bearer shares could be used to transfer assets completely anonymously and were favorite tools among money launderers.
Three year after the purchase in 1994, the Process Consultants decided to sell this condo at the Trump Palace. Trump Corporation was the exclusive broker for this. According to a contract document, which provided the details of an agreement, the apartment was sold for apartment for $395,000. However, later, the price appeared to have been cut down to $355,000. It is believed a woman from Hong Kong, whose name has appeared in other leaked documents had purchased the apartment, reported the New York daily News.
However, the New York City Department of Finance online database Automated City Registered Information System has information on the apartment only after 2005, which pointed out during this time, the condo was owned by a Brazilian from Sao Paolo. He sold the unit for $795,400, that year.
But with most Panama Papers revelations, there has been no indication of who is actually behind Process Consultants or from where that person’s money came. According to the New York Daily News, using bearer shares doesn’t prove that Process Consultants was involved in something dubious, the quick turnover seems to be a characteristic of money laundering.
The publication reported that if Trump’s company knowingly facilitated the condo sale for the purpose of laundering money then the president himself could land in difficulty.
As part of his investigation into Russian election meddling, special prosecutor Robert Mueller had been looking into Trump’s sprawling real estate empire. It's unclear if the Process Consultants deal is of interest in the probe.
The Trump condo contract is one among the thousands of documents that were leaked in 2015 from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm that sold anonymous shell companies around the globe and had created more than 160,000 offshore entities by the year 2008. Some of the world’s richest people were able to conduct dubious business deals by hiding behind the law firm’s offshore companies.
The founders behind Mossack Fonseca were arrested after the massive leak. The firm is under investigation across the world.
Last month, the Paradise Papers leak revealed Trump’s Commerce Secretary Wibur Ross had been involved in doing million dollar business deals with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law, Kirill Shamalov.
A real estate deal from the early 1990s is the first instance of President Trump’s name being mentioned in the Panama Papers.
An investigative reporter, Jake Bernstein, Friday afternoon flagged the discovery that involves the purchase and subsequent sale of a unit at the newly constructed Trump Palace on the Upper East Side in the 1990s. This deal involved a Panamanian company named Process Consultants, Inc., that purchased a 16th floor condo at the Trump skyscraper in 1991.
Process Consultants was owned through bearer shares. These share certificates indicate that whoever physically possessed the papers owned the company. The bearer shares could be used to transfer assets completely anonymously and were favorite tools among money launderers.
Three year after the purchase in 1994, the Process Consultants decided to sell this condo at the Trump Palace. Trump Corporation was the exclusive broker for this. According to a contract document, which provided the details of an agreement, the apartment was sold for apartment for $395,000. However, later, the price appeared to have been cut down to $355,000. It is believed a woman from Hong Kong, whose name has appeared in other leaked documents had purchased the apartment, reported the New York daily News.
However, the New York City Department of Finance online database Automated City Registered Information System has information on the apartment only after 2005, which pointed out during this time, the condo was owned by a Brazilian from Sao Paolo. He sold the unit for $795,400, that year.
But with most Panama Papers revelations, there has been no indication of who is actually behind Process Consultants or from where that person’s money came. According to the New York Daily News, using bearer shares doesn’t prove that Process Consultants was involved in something dubious, the quick turnover seems to be a characteristic of money laundering.
The publication reported that if Trump’s company knowingly facilitated the condo sale for the purpose of laundering money then the president himself could land in difficulty.
As part of his investigation into Russian election meddling, special prosecutor Robert Mueller had been looking into Trump’s sprawling real estate empire. It's unclear if the Process Consultants deal is of interest in the probe.
The Trump condo contract is one among the thousands of documents that were leaked in 2015 from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm that sold anonymous shell companies around the globe and had created more than 160,000 offshore entities by the year 2008. Some of the world’s richest people were able to conduct dubious business deals by hiding behind the law firm’s offshore companies.
The founders behind Mossack Fonseca were arrested after the massive leak. The firm is under investigation across the world.
Last month, the Paradise Papers leak revealed Trump’s Commerce Secretary Wibur Ross had been involved in doing million dollar business deals with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law, Kirill Shamalov.
The Trump Family Made Millions from Drug Cartels and the Russian Mafia in Panama City: Report
Maybe we should start calling the president's Florida estate "Mar-a-Narco."
By Liz Posner / AlterNet November 17, 2017, 9:04 AM GMT
Robert Mueller has some new material to work with as he continues his investigation of the Trump administration's ties to Russia. A new report shows that for 10 years, a Trump property in Panama City collected millions of dollars from the Russian mafia and Colombian drug cartels. An investigation from Global Witness, an international NGO that probes corruption and money laundering, reveals how the Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower turned a blind eye to crime lords looking for a safe haven to stash their blood money.
The property, which the lead broker Alexandre Ventura Nogueira describes as “Ivanka Trump’s baby,” listed units for three times the going rate in Panama City, thanks to the Trump name. Nogueira worked closely with the Trump family; he claims he attended at least 10 meetings with Ivanka Trump, who challenged him to sell 100 units in the building.
“The agreement was, I had a week to sell 100 units,” Nogueira told Reuters. “I said, ‘I’m going to do better, I’m going to sell without telling (the buyers) the price.'”
Nogueira later fled Panama after he was arrested for unrelated charges of real estate fraud. From his European asylum, he told NBC that at least half of his Trump Ocean Club customers were Russians, including some with “questionable backgrounds." Only later did he learn of their ties to Russian organized crime circles.
NBC reports that Mauricio Ceballos, a former prosecutor in Panama who investigated Trump’s business associates for financial crimes, called the Trump Ocean Club “a vehicle for money laundering.”
Among the shady buyers are:
By 2010, Donald Trump had made approximately $74.2 million through his association with the hotel. From 2014-2017, he was paid as much as $13.9 million.
As Global Witness explains:
“The warning signs were there from the outset. The Trump Ocean Club, one of Trump’s most lucrative licensing deals to date, was announced in 2006 and launched in 2011, a period when Panama was known as one of the best places in the world to launder money. Whole neighborhoods in Panama City were taken over by organized crime groups, and luxury developments were built with the purpose of serving as money laundering vehicles.
“Moreover, investing in luxury properties is a tried and trusted way for criminals to move tainted cash into the legitimate financial system, where they can spend it freely. Once scrubbed clean in this way, vast profits from criminal activities like trafficking people and drugs, organized crime, and terrorism can find their way into the U.S. and elsewhere.”
The Trump Organization has shrugged off responsibility in a statement following the news, but legal experts say it should have done its due diligence into the backgrounds of buyers. Arthur Middlemiss, a former Manhattan assistant district attorney and a former head of the global anti-corruption program at JPMorgan, blames the Trumps directly:
“Those who do business there should perform due diligence on others involved in their ventures. If they fail to do so, they risk being liable under U.S. law of turning a blind eye to wrongdoing.”
The property, which the lead broker Alexandre Ventura Nogueira describes as “Ivanka Trump’s baby,” listed units for three times the going rate in Panama City, thanks to the Trump name. Nogueira worked closely with the Trump family; he claims he attended at least 10 meetings with Ivanka Trump, who challenged him to sell 100 units in the building.
“The agreement was, I had a week to sell 100 units,” Nogueira told Reuters. “I said, ‘I’m going to do better, I’m going to sell without telling (the buyers) the price.'”
Nogueira later fled Panama after he was arrested for unrelated charges of real estate fraud. From his European asylum, he told NBC that at least half of his Trump Ocean Club customers were Russians, including some with “questionable backgrounds." Only later did he learn of their ties to Russian organized crime circles.
NBC reports that Mauricio Ceballos, a former prosecutor in Panama who investigated Trump’s business associates for financial crimes, called the Trump Ocean Club “a vehicle for money laundering.”
Among the shady buyers are:
- David Murcia Guzmán, founder of a large Colombian marketing company, who purchased 10 units in the Trump Ocean Club. Guzmán is now in U.S. custody, convicted of laundering money on behalf of drug cartels, and will be extradited to Colombia. Guzmán also has financial ties to the terrorist organization FARC.
- Louis Pargiolas, who pleaded guilty in 2009 in Miami to conspiracy to import cocaine.
- Stanislav Kavalenka, a Russian national charged in Canada for compelling women into prostitution.
- Arkady Vodovozov, convicted in Israel of kidnapping, according to Reuters.
By 2010, Donald Trump had made approximately $74.2 million through his association with the hotel. From 2014-2017, he was paid as much as $13.9 million.
As Global Witness explains:
“The warning signs were there from the outset. The Trump Ocean Club, one of Trump’s most lucrative licensing deals to date, was announced in 2006 and launched in 2011, a period when Panama was known as one of the best places in the world to launder money. Whole neighborhoods in Panama City were taken over by organized crime groups, and luxury developments were built with the purpose of serving as money laundering vehicles.
“Moreover, investing in luxury properties is a tried and trusted way for criminals to move tainted cash into the legitimate financial system, where they can spend it freely. Once scrubbed clean in this way, vast profits from criminal activities like trafficking people and drugs, organized crime, and terrorism can find their way into the U.S. and elsewhere.”
The Trump Organization has shrugged off responsibility in a statement following the news, but legal experts say it should have done its due diligence into the backgrounds of buyers. Arthur Middlemiss, a former Manhattan assistant district attorney and a former head of the global anti-corruption program at JPMorgan, blames the Trumps directly:
“Those who do business there should perform due diligence on others involved in their ventures. If they fail to do so, they risk being liable under U.S. law of turning a blind eye to wrongdoing.”
Here are the 5 biggest links connecting Trump to Manafort and Russian money laundering
Brad Reed
30 OCT 2017 AT 11:51 ET
From Raw Story: The Trump White House is claiming victory in the wake of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s indictment on money laundering charges on the grounds that the indictment did not specifically mention Manafort’s work in the Trump campaign in 2016.
However, the nature of the charges against Manafort serves as a basis for establishing links between President Donald Trump and the Russian mob.
Here are the five biggest links that connect Trump, Manafort and Russian organized crime operations.
However, the nature of the charges against Manafort serves as a basis for establishing links between President Donald Trump and the Russian mob.
Here are the five biggest links that connect Trump, Manafort and Russian organized crime operations.
- The indictment against Manafort alleges he was laundering money he earned from his work for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine. Specifically, the indictment states that, “in order to hide Ukraine payments from United States authorities, from approximately 2006 through at least 2016, Manafort and Gates laundered money through scores of United States and foreign corporations, partnerships and bank accounts.”
- Long before he ran Trump’s campaign, Manafort lived in an apartment in Trump Tower. Manafort first purchased an apartment in Trump Tower in 2006, which WNYC notes was right around the time that his lobbying firm signed a $10 million contract with a Kremlin-linked Russian oligarch named Oleg Deripaska — the same man whom Manafort agreed to give personal briefings about the state of Trump’s presidential campaign to in 2016.
- In 2013, the FBI obtained a search warrant to eavesdrop on what it believed to be a massive Russian money laundering operation — and which also happened to be running out of Trump Tower. As ABC News reported earlier this year, the investigation into the operation led “to a federal grand jury indictment of more than 30 people, including one of the world’s most notorious Russian mafia bosses, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov.”
- Another figure allegedly involved in the Russian money laundering business is Felix Sater — a longtime Trump associate. Sater’s financial relationship with Trump dates back to at least 2003, when the Trump Organization rented out office space to Sater’s former company. Even though Trump initially tried to distance himself from Sater after news of his criminal past came to light in 2007, he subsequently tapped Sater in 2010 to scout out real estate. This is notable because Sater is reportedly cooperating with an investigation into money laundering that used American properties to help hide money.
- Sater’s company, Bayrock Capital, also operated out of Trump Tower — and may have used Trump properties to launder Russian money. A Bloomberg report from earlier this year reveals that a former Bayrock insider, Jody Kriss, now claims that Sater’s firm was all an elaborate money laundering operation. In 2007, Trump teamed with Bayrock to secure funding for the Trump Soho hotel via FL Group, an Icelandic bank that was regularly used by Russians to launder money.
*IN 1927, 1,000 WHITE-ROBED KLANSMEN RIOTED IN QUEENS. TRUMP'S FATHER WAS ARRESTED IN THAT INCIDENT.
bigtree
From Demo. Underground: Joy Reid @JoyAnnReid 3h3 hours ago
...this story creeps out of the memory hole, and gains new and chilling resonance.
Donald Trump's father was arrested at Ku Klux Klan riot in New York in 1927, records reveal
_____The predication for the Klan to march, according to a flier passed around Jamaica beforehand, was that “Native-born Protestant Americans” were being “assaulted by Roman Catholic police of New York City.” “Liberty and Democracy have been trampled upon,” it continued, “when native-born Protestant Americans dare to organise to protect one flag, the American flag; one school, the public school; and one language, the English language.”
It's not clear from the context what role Fred Trump played in the brawl. The news article simply notes that seven men were arrested in the “near-riot of the parade,” all of whom were represented by the same lawyers. Update: A contemporaneous article from the Daily Star notes that Trump was detained “on a charge of refusing to disperse from a parade when ordered to do so.”
When news of the old report surfaced last year, Donald Trump vehemently denied his father's arrest. “He was never arrested. He has nothing to do with this. This never happened. This is nonsense and it never happened,” he said to the Daily Mail. “This never happened. Never took place. He was never arrested, never convicted, never even charged. It's a completely false, ridiculous story. He was never there! It never happened. Never took place.”
...It's worth noting that Trump's comments came one day after another Klan brawl, this time in Anaheim, Calif. Thirteen people were arrested and three were stabbed after a Klan rally turned violent. And it's worth noting, too, as did Jonathan Chait at New York magazine, that Trump's claim to “know nothing” about white supremacists echoes the language of the 19th-century “Know Nothing” party — a nativist group that supported only Protestants for public office...
read: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/charlottesville-latest-donald-trump-father-fred-arrested-ku-klux-klan-kkk-rally-riot-queens-new-york-a7891701.html
...this story creeps out of the memory hole, and gains new and chilling resonance.
Donald Trump's father was arrested at Ku Klux Klan riot in New York in 1927, records reveal
_____The predication for the Klan to march, according to a flier passed around Jamaica beforehand, was that “Native-born Protestant Americans” were being “assaulted by Roman Catholic police of New York City.” “Liberty and Democracy have been trampled upon,” it continued, “when native-born Protestant Americans dare to organise to protect one flag, the American flag; one school, the public school; and one language, the English language.”
It's not clear from the context what role Fred Trump played in the brawl. The news article simply notes that seven men were arrested in the “near-riot of the parade,” all of whom were represented by the same lawyers. Update: A contemporaneous article from the Daily Star notes that Trump was detained “on a charge of refusing to disperse from a parade when ordered to do so.”
When news of the old report surfaced last year, Donald Trump vehemently denied his father's arrest. “He was never arrested. He has nothing to do with this. This never happened. This is nonsense and it never happened,” he said to the Daily Mail. “This never happened. Never took place. He was never arrested, never convicted, never even charged. It's a completely false, ridiculous story. He was never there! It never happened. Never took place.”
...It's worth noting that Trump's comments came one day after another Klan brawl, this time in Anaheim, Calif. Thirteen people were arrested and three were stabbed after a Klan rally turned violent. And it's worth noting, too, as did Jonathan Chait at New York magazine, that Trump's claim to “know nothing” about white supremacists echoes the language of the 19th-century “Know Nothing” party — a nativist group that supported only Protestants for public office...
read: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/charlottesville-latest-donald-trump-father-fred-arrested-ku-klux-klan-kkk-rally-riot-queens-new-york-a7891701.html
no shit
pbmus -demo. underground
Donald Trump admitted in 2007 that he had invested in Russia
In a deposition in 2007, Trump said something he and his family would later deny repeatedly
MATTHEW ROZSA
From Salon: Pr*sident Donald Trump may want the headaches associated with the Russia scandal to go away, but a new report has drawn attention to yet another controversial aspect of Trump’s relationship with that country’s financial elite.
Although Trump told NBC in May, “I am not involved in Russia,” he admitted in a 2007 deposition that a real estate development firm known as the Bayrock Group had brought Russian investors to Trump Tower to discuss investing in Moscow, according to a report by Bloomberg.
“It’s ridiculous that I wouldn’t be investing in Russia,” Trump said. “Russia is one of the hottest places in the world for investment.”
Bloomberg also reported that one of the principals at Bayrock is businessman Felix Sater, who reportedly has ties to organized crime in both the United States and Russia. Although Trump has repeatedly insisted that he is only passingly acquainted with Sater, former Bayrock employees insist that Sater often met with Trump at his business empire’s New York City headquarters and guided Trump’s children around Moscow.
They also report that Sater is still in contact with the president and some of his advisers. It is worth noting that the Bayrock Group itself also had an office located in Trump Tower.
While the president likes to downplay his business ties to Russia, his son Donald Trump Jr. once admitted to a real estate conference in 2008 that Trump built a tower in Panama for wealthy Russian clients, according to a report by Time.
“Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia,” Trump told the crowd.
Although Trump told NBC in May, “I am not involved in Russia,” he admitted in a 2007 deposition that a real estate development firm known as the Bayrock Group had brought Russian investors to Trump Tower to discuss investing in Moscow, according to a report by Bloomberg.
“It’s ridiculous that I wouldn’t be investing in Russia,” Trump said. “Russia is one of the hottest places in the world for investment.”
Bloomberg also reported that one of the principals at Bayrock is businessman Felix Sater, who reportedly has ties to organized crime in both the United States and Russia. Although Trump has repeatedly insisted that he is only passingly acquainted with Sater, former Bayrock employees insist that Sater often met with Trump at his business empire’s New York City headquarters and guided Trump’s children around Moscow.
They also report that Sater is still in contact with the president and some of his advisers. It is worth noting that the Bayrock Group itself also had an office located in Trump Tower.
While the president likes to downplay his business ties to Russia, his son Donald Trump Jr. once admitted to a real estate conference in 2008 that Trump built a tower in Panama for wealthy Russian clients, according to a report by Time.
“Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia,” Trump told the crowd.
taking the former leader of the free world for a stroll!!
charlyvi - from Demo Underground
On this President's Day, congratulations to James Buchanan on finally moving out of the bottom spot in the presidential rankings.
Thanks to Ignorant Americans, this Loser is now "President"
America's Next GOP Presidential Traitor joining Nixon, Reagan, Bush 1 & 2
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Trump's Cabinet, etc
the trailer trash adminstration
(archives - for description & news of swamp members)
Puerto Rico salutes Trump...
DonViejo
From Demo Underground: Pendejo =
adjective
stupid
estúpido, pendejo, bruto, atontado, estulto, bozal
noun
motherfucker
hijo de puta, pendejo, coño
coward
cobarde, gallina, temeroso, pendejo, asqueroso, rajado
berk
imbécil, idiota, pendejo
Word Origin and History for berk. n. "fool," 1936, abbreviation of Berkshire Hunt (or Berkeley Hunt), rhyming slang for cunt but typically applied only to contemptible persons, not to the body part. This is not an objective, anatomical term, neither does it imply coitus.
adjective
stupid
estúpido, pendejo, bruto, atontado, estulto, bozal
noun
motherfucker
hijo de puta, pendejo, coño
coward
cobarde, gallina, temeroso, pendejo, asqueroso, rajado
berk
imbécil, idiota, pendejo
Word Origin and History for berk. n. "fool," 1936, abbreviation of Berkshire Hunt (or Berkeley Hunt), rhyming slang for cunt but typically applied only to contemptible persons, not to the body part. This is not an objective, anatomical term, neither does it imply coitus.
white house concerns
trump: the "escape from la" pr*sident
PRESIDENT TRUMP:
CHILD MOLESTER, RACIST, SEXIST, CRIMINAL, KLAN SYMPATHIZER, MAFIA ASSOCIATE, TAX FRAUD, FASCIST, RUSSIAN MOLE
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Trump exhibits the same level of gravitas as, say, a spoiled child wearing a cardboard crown from Burger King. His tacky, garish displays of wealth, his clownish stab at a normal head of hair, and his ridiculously ill-fitting suits utterly fail to convey a basic sense of taste, much less gravitas. The other day, for example, Trump referred to third-party candidate Evan McMullin as “Evan McMuffin.” Petty insults like this one (along with “Crooked Hillary,” “Crazy Bernie,” “Lyin’ Ted,” etc.) convey a level of gravitas equal to purple-nurples during recess. And while Trump insists that he’ll be a very, very terrific president and, literally, the greatest jobs president God ever created, no one with a sense of history who believes he’s going to be any of those things.
tough guy!!!
Hillary Weighs In
Demo Underground
John Adams: “Obsta principiis, nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers press upon them so fast, that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachment upon the American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality, become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole society.”
trump - i never did it
