trump10 bak

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1219</font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">see impeach</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">see sotu dog whistle xian</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">aha dark side inverse of transaction is retaliation</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">220 bak</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/republicans-who-screamed-about-dictator-obama-nervously-stand-by-as-trump-declares-himself-above-all-law/" rel="bookmark" title="Republicans who screamed about ‘dictator’ Obama nervously stand by as Trump declares himself above all law" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4; display: block; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px; font-weight: 700; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(11, 13, 101) !important;">Republicans who screamed about ‘dictator’ Obama nervously stand by as Trump declares himself above all law</a></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/financial-writer-explains-why-trumps-proposed-federal-budget-would-be-an-economic-calamity-possibly-pushing-the-us-to-the-brink-of-a-recession/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/financial-writer-explains-why-trumps-proposed-federal-budget-would-be-an-economic-calamity-possibly-pushing-the-us-to-the-brink-of-a-recession/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Financial writer explains why Trump’s proposed federal budget would be an ‘economic calamity’ — possibly pushing the US to ‘the brink of a recession’</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Alex Henderson February 20, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">239</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Whoever the Democratic Party ends up nominating for the 2020 presidential election — whether it’s Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg or someone else — President Donald Trump will no doubt be campaigning aggressively on the state of the U.S. economy, claiming that a second Trump term would be synonymous with prosperity and economic growth. But liberal/progressive writer Michael Linden, in a February 20 op-ed for CNN Business’ website, offers a long list of reasons why he believes that the federal budget Trump is proposing would be an “economic calamity.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump’s proposed budget, according to Linden, is “full of outdated ideas that would instantly weaken the economy and undermine our ability to grow and prosper over time.” For example, Linden notes, Trump “proposes massive immediate cuts to the kinds of public services, protections and health care that help propel short-term economic growth by supporting demand for goods and services.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Just last quarter,” Linden observes, “the government was contributing the most to GDP than at any other point since the end of the Great Recession. President Trump’s budget would reverse that, withdrawing critical support at a time when growth has already slowed. The cuts are so deep, so massive and so poorly targeted that they could be large enough to even push us to the brink of a recession.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The CNN Business contributor goes on to point out that “overall economic activity grew by only 2.1% over the last year. Well, Trump’s budget includes roughly $958 billion in total cuts in the first four years. That amounts to about 1% shaved off of total gross domestic product right there.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Deep cuts to social programs, Linden emphasizes, don’t promote economic growth — they harm it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Programs like Medicaid, food stamps and tax credits for low-income families tend to permeate throughout local economies most effectively, and those are exactly the resources that President Trump’s budget envisions cutting to the tune of about $335 billion in the next four years,” Linden explains. “These cuts could reduce overall economic activity by another .3% to .4%. Put it all together, and Trump’s plan would slash the overall economic growth rate down to well under 1% over the next few years — putting us right on the edge of outright economic contraction.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of the things liberal presidents of the past understood — including President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1930s and 1940s and President Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1960s — is that when the American middle class prospers and has more money to spend, that money goes into the U.S. economy. 2020 presidential hopefuls Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren clearly understand those principles of New Deal and Great Society economics.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump’s proposed federal budget, Linden contends, fails to recognize the vital role that “workers and consumers” play in the economy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Workers and consumers are what drive growth and prosperity,” Linden asserts. “When workers have the support and investment they need to do their best work, they innovate, create and do more with less time and fewer resources. When consumers have money in their pockets, they drive demand for goods and services and induce businesses to invest in the future…. Trump’s budget slashes at those very foundations: education, health care, research and development.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/were-staring-into-the-abyss-unhinged-trump-rally-in-colorado-highlights-stakes-of-2020-election/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/were-staring-into-the-abyss-unhinged-trump-rally-in-colorado-highlights-stakes-of-2020-election/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">20k only half could get in? vs bernie 11k? preivew of 202? bash greta time man of year</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><div class="mag-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 19px; padding: 0px; position: relative; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h3 class="magcat-titlte entry-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; letter-spacing: 1px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trump-is-trying-to-break-a-2016-promise-about-the-social-safety-net/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Trump is trying to break a 2016 promise about the social safety net</font></a></h3><div class="grid-post-box-meta mag-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 7px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="author-italic author vcard" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /></font></div></div><div class="mag-excerpt entry-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security are among the most popular federal programs out there. A 2019 Pew Research poll showed majorities across all parties and demographics opposing cuts to Social…</font></p></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">220 40 mos jail, tho djt doing a bunch of pardons and wants to 86 doj input on that.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>
</div><div>Judge in Roger Stone case knocks Trump admin for reducing sentencing guidelines</div></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">jeez grenell DNI authorit</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/heres-why-trumps-incessant-vendetta-against-obama-is-a-losing-proposition/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/heres-why-trumps-incessant-vendetta-against-obama-is-a-losing-proposition/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Here’s why Trump’s incessant vendetta against Obama is a losing proposition</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Image via Wikipedia.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly February 19, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Barack Obama took advantage of an anniversary on Monday to poke at one of the lies being repeated by his successor.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Barack Obama</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@BarackObama</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Eleven years ago today, near the bottom of the worst recession in generations, I signed the Recovery Act, paving the way for more than a decade of economic growth and the longest streak of job creation in American history.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since his administration began, Trump has attacked Obama’s record of job creation and touted his own. Perhaps long-time readers here at the Washington Monthly will enjoy the fact that I intend to expose that lie based on information provided by Steve Benen and Kevin Drum. Here’s Benen:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As we discussed after the release of the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Trump has now been in office for three full years (36 months), and during that time, the economy has created 6.56 million jobs. In the final full three years of Obama’s presidency, the economy created 8.08 million jobs.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Of course, Drum put the specifics into a chart.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It will surprise no one that data means nothing to Trump.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald J. Trump</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@realDonaldTrump</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Did you hear the latest con job? President Obama is now trying to take credit for the Economic Boom taking place under the Trump Administration. He had the WEAKEST recovery since the Great Depression, despite Zero Fed Rate & MASSIVE quantitative easing. NOW, best jobs numbers....</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the saying goes, Obama has taken up residence in Trump’s head—rent-free.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jonathan Chait recently documented another way that Trump’s efforts to undo Obama’s legacy are failing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of the Obama administration’s most effective climate initiatives was tightened regulations of auto emissions, which will reduce carbon emissions by billions of tons. Trump, of course, is trying to roll it back. The good news is that he is almost certainly too incompetent to pull it off in his first term.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When regulatory agencies write new rules, they have to follow some fairly complicated legal procedures, which often have to hold up under judicial scrutiny. Historically, agencies win about 80 percent of the time against legal challenges. But Trump’s regulations lose about 90 percent of the time, because his administration is staffed with incompetent hacks.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The courts will soon be fighting over Trump’s plan to weaken auto-emission standards. Trump is highly likely to lose, because, as two new reports show, the incompetence of his regulators reached almost mind-boggling proportions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The reports Chait referred to come from an article by Robinson Meyer that details how the Trump administration’s attempt to kill the auto-emission standards has been a “complete debacle” and one from Coral Davenport predicting a dead end for Trump’s efforts.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What also caught my eye was the fact that Trump’s regulations (or attempts to roll back Obama’s regulations) have failed in court about 90 percent of the time. That number comes from the Institute for Policy Integrity, which has been tracking this administration’s record in the courts. Of the 70 cases they have followed, Trump has won four and lost 66. As Chait points out, typically federal agencies have won about 80 percent of the time, so this administration’s record is worse than abysmal.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In writing about the effort to roll back Obama’s fuel-efficiency standards, Davenport identified the problem.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In January, administration staff members appointed by President Trump sent a draft of the scaled-back fuel economy standards to the White House, but six people familiar with the documents described them as “Swiss cheese,” sprinkled with glaring numerical and spelling errors (such as “Massachusettes”), with 111 sections marked “text forthcoming.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The cost-benefit analysis showed that consumers would lose more money than they would gain. And, because the new auto pollution rule lacks the detailed technical analyses required by law, the regulations would be unlikely to withstand court challenges…</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More basic issues holding up the regulations point to another problem: the skeleton crew of inexperienced political appointees who are heading the drafting process may not be up to a job that would usually be handled by career federal workers with decades of expertise.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Chait rightfully suggested, Trump’s actual goal of humiliating Obama can’t be included in the analysis. So his incompetent staff are left with trying to manipulate the numbers and the science, which don’t support the president’s goals.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For Trump, things like math, science, and expertise are anathema. His only concern is to prop up his own narcissistic ego and demean anyone he views as a threat. That is why Trump’s vendetta against Obama’s legacy will always be a losing proposition. His incompetence overshadows his malevolence.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nancy LeTourneau is a contributing writer for the Washington Monthly. Follow her on Twitter @Smartypants60.</font></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">wm barr on tv ~ djt tweets/interfere, but he said he can do whatever as he is chief law enforcement officer ("actually" means lying)</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">bunch of pardons, one by funder, rod b gov, said had not thot about roger stone</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">220 dn bernie mike lee utah chris m?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2020/2/14/headlines/senate_passes_resolution_limiting_trump_s_war_powers_authority">https://www.democracynow.org/2020/2/14/headlines/senate_passes_resolution_limiting_trump_s_war_powers_authority</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">220 an</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>
</div><div><b>Nations are rejecting the president’s foreign policy puffery as autocrats ditch Trump and embrace China</b></div><div>
</div><div>Written by Washington Monthly February 18, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>Venezuela is a bipolar nation in the eyes of the world. More than 50 countries recognize the government of interim President Juan Guaidó. The rest of the world — most significantly Russia and China — continue to support and strengthen the grip of President Nicolás Maduro.</div><div>
</div><div>It’s bad enough that the Trump administration has been all bark and no bite, trying to flip the failed Latin American state’s leadership with tough rhetoric and State of the Union ovations. What’s worse is that America under its current leadership has shown that there are neither significant consequences nor consequential actions that can be taken when a foreign country snubs Washington in favor of Moscow or Beijing.</div><div>
</div><div>The latest nation to reject President Trump’s foreign policy puffery? The former American colony and current conflict-ridden country of the Philippines.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Flattery is not foreign policy, and Trump’s fan-boy attitude towards Rodrigo Duterte has not convinced the populist Filipino leader that Manila’s future and his personal power are assured by remaining allied with the United States. Instead, he has chosen to throw in his lot with Xi Jinping and the promise posed by China as a regionally rising economic superpower.</span></div><div>
</div><div>This is not only bad news for America’s strategic rebalancing in the Pacific and for regional security. It is really bad news for those other Southeast Asian nations looking around their neighborhood and trying to figure out how to balance their economic and security interests against their long-standing American trading and security alliance partners.Any way you look at this, Duterte’s move is big. On Tuesday, Duterte let the United States know that he was dumping the 69-year-old treaty alliance that allowed American forces to remain and train in the Philippines.</div><div>
</div><div>It’s not just the carrot of Chinese capital that has attracted Duterte to Beijing. The Philippine president feels insulted and justifies turning away from the United States by saying “America is very rude” to Filipino friends accused of human-rights violations.</div><div>
</div><div>Human rights, however, have never been a priority for the Trump administration. POTUS arrived in the White House ready and willing to toss democratic principles, values, norms and rules in the dumpster.</div><div>
</div><div>Duterte has it all wrong.</div><div>
</div><div>Trump is a true ally who embraces Duterte’s autocratic rhetoric. Trump envies Duterte’s dictatorial style and tough-guy approach to law enforcement and politics. Trump entered office encouraging American law enforcement to use extrajudicial measures —whether slamming perps heads into cop-car roofs or encouraging the illegal actions of Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The latest outrage is Trump’s admiration for summary death penalties for drug dealers.</div><div>
</div><div>Duterte has encouraged vigilantism by everyone from civilians to police to government forces. His approach has been to give a pass to anyone who kills a suspected drug user or dealer. He flaunts his own tough-guy credentials by bragging about personally killing criminals. He waves around guns to prove his seriousness and reinforce his power.</div><div>
</div><div>Trump has tried to court Duterte’s loyalty to — and love for — America. POTUS practices a populism aligning his personal leadership style with Duterte’s. Despite the anti-charm offensive, and regardless of the two countries’ clearly shared interests, the Philippine leader just bet his country’s future on the People’s Republic of China.</div><div>
</div><div>In effect, long-standing military relations have just been reversed, and America has been told to go home.</div><div>
</div><div>The U.S.-Philippine relationship has never really been smooth. Duterte still harbors resentment for a 1906 Moro massacre so fierce and unjust that it drew the attention of Samuel Clemens—Mark Twain. Volcanoes and tightening American budgets in the 1990s shut down Clark Air Base. Entire Filipino communities that relied on employment and business from U.S. bases suddenly were out of luck.</div><div>
</div><div>The two countries’ relationship survived the Marcos regime and the destructive Mt. Pinatubo volcano. In fact, the Yellow Revolution that overthrew full-fledged dictator Ferdinand Marcos brought to power an Aquino family boasting deep American training and credentials. Corazon Aquino felt both grateful and indebted to the United States for supporting the overthrow of the Marcos regime and the successful transition to a civilian-led and functional electoral democracy.</div><div>
</div><div>The bad news? Philippine’s successor democracy gave voters the conditions to sweep into office the tough-talking populist politician Duterte in 2016.</div><div>
</div><div>Philippine democracy is now threatened, in part, because China is happy to support reliable autocratic leaders and because Trump’s feckless and personality-driven foreign policy toward Asia has alienated and pushed away Manila. The Trump administration’s foreign policy lacks strategic coherence. Instead, it favors super-summitry and presidential high-fives.</div><div>
</div><div>From Manila to Caracas, rightist and leftist leaders calculate which allies will serve them best and where to place their bets. Throwing off perceived post-colonial American shackles for neo-colonial Chinese chains is a bad choice. Unfortunately for the West and democracy, both Venezuela and the Philippines have wagered against Trump’s America.</div><div>
</div></div><div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 220</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">no lnx</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">For Republicans in Trump’s cover-up, it was all about the money</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Susan Collins image via MSNBC.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Written by Joan McCarter / Daily Kos February 18, 2020</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In the latest Daily Kos/Civiqs poll, fully 60% of Americans disapprove of how the U.S. Senate conducted Donald Trump’s impeachment trial. The behavior of Senate Republicans following that trial probably won’t get many cheers, either. The three most closely watched Republicans during the trial, those who pretended to be open-minded and committed to doing their jobs, have all popped up in the last few days with slathering praise for the Trump administration which let loose all the money once the trial was done. It turns out the issue wasn’t the threat of heads on pikes at all. It was all about the bribes.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Retiring Sen. Lamar Alexander tweeted to thank Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and Trump for the investment of “$9 million in Tennessee to provide and improve high-speed broadband infrastructure projects for 3,744 rural households, 31 businesses and 41 farms.”</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Sen. Lisa Murkowski had Transportation Secretary and Moscow Mitch spouse Elaine Chao to thank for “a $20M Port Infrastructure Development Program grant to the Port of Alaska to help offset the 1st phase costs of the Port’s desperately-needed modernization program, enabling safe, cost-effective, & reliable Port operations.” That’s a whole 1% of the estimated cost for the port. Was it worth a vote to keep the worst president ever to sit in the Oval Office?</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">You know, of course, who else is getting in on the action:</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Sen. Susan Collins</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">@SenatorCollins</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Great news! 19 Housing Authorities in Maine have been awarded more than $9.5 million to preserve & modernize affordable housing units that serve individuals with disabilities & low-income individuals and families.https://www.collins.senate.gov/newsroom/senator-collins-announces-more-9500000-maine-housing-authorities …</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p></div><div><p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">220</font></p><p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">aha: recessions are periodic, fed no suffic buffer? trump keeps money free to goose stock mkt so can boast 401k; blew up fed deficit, houshold debt and student debt high; <b>authoritarian growing everywhere</b>, what effect of worldwide recession again? Greece?</font></p><p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">what if we get hit by huge agw costs at the same time as worldwide recession?  how wd such costs affect economies?</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/your-tax-dollars-at-work-trumps-new-policies-are-way-more-alarming-than-his-vengeance-campaign-against-perceived-enemies/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/your-tax-dollars-at-work-trumps-new-policies-are-way-more-alarming-than-his-vengeance-campaign-against-perceived-enemies/</a></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">border, fed chair ...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">dirty trick ohio AA rev</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">truscott</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/were-slipping-further-into-fascism-as-trump-indulges-all-his-worst-instincts-with-the-help-of-his-toadies/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/were-slipping-further-into-fascism-as-trump-indulges-all-his-worst-instincts-with-the-help-of-his-toadies/</font></a></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>We’re slipping further into fascism as Trump indulges all his worst instincts — with the help of his toadies</b></font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Donald J. Trump delivers remarks at the 2020 National Prayer Breakfast Thursday, Feb. 6, 2020, at the Washington Hilton in Washington, D.C. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Lucian K. Truscott IV / Salon February 15, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>There will come a time when we look back on this week as the moment in our history when we finally understood that we have a man as president who is acting like a fascist dictator. Just look at the headlines from one day’s New York Times alone: “Alarm in Capital as Axes Swing in Growing Post-Acquittal Purge,” “Justice Dept. Acts to Ease Sentence for a Trump Ally.</b>” If either one of those headlines had run on the front page of a major American newspaper before now, not to mention both of them at once, we would have believed as a people, as a citizenry, that we were facing a national crisis. But this week? Wednesday was just another day in Donald Trump’s America.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The day before that, in what became known as the “Tuesday night massacre,” all four prosecutors in the case against Trump’s longtime friend and political bad boy Roger Stone had resigned in protest of the intervention by Trump and his attorney general, William Barr, to reduce the sentence recommended by the Department of Justice in Stone’s conviction for lying to congressional committees and tampering with witnesses.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">All of this followed closely the “Friday night massacre” of last week, when Trump fired two of the impeachment witnesses against him, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman of the National Security Council and Gordon Sondland, ambassador to the European Union.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But two “massacres” in a row was just the beginning. By mid-week, Trump was suggesting that Army officials with court-martial authority over Vindman should “take a look at” punishing him for testifying at the impeachment hearing. On Thursday, the New York Times front page trumpeted, “U,S. Lawyers Fear Removal of a Guardrail: Sone Case Stirs Worry of What’s to Come.” And by Friday morning, a panel of legal pundits on MSNBC were worrying about what would happen when Trump didn’t merely step in to help allies like Stone but actually began prosecuting his political foes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Folks, let’s not mince words: This is the kind of stuff we read about happening in dictatorships like Russia and North Korea and Iran. And yes, it’s the kind of rule by strong-arm fiat that was practiced by Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Before this week, I would have thought it an exaggeration to compare Trump’s frequent rallies to the infamous Nuremberg rallies Hitler held during the1930s. No longer. Trump’s rallies are unnervingly close to those held in Nuremberg. The MAGA hat has become a kind of Trumpian Nazi  helmet. The denunciations of hated minorities are the same. As is his insane bellowing before a crowd screaming its slavish obeisance.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Let’s just stop for a moment and consider the angry chants of “Lock her up,” first directed at Hillary Clinton, now at Nancy Pelosi. </b>What do Trump’s cheering crowds want his Democratic opponents locked up for? Neither of those women has faced criminal charges, much less been convicted of any crime. Neither is even under investigation for corruption or alleged criminal behavior. But that doesn’t matter to Trump and his rally crowds. This stuff has been going on for so long, it’s clear that they actually do want them locked up. When Trump stands before his screaming fans, raising his arms and smiling, it’s obvious he does, too. To call for the imprisonment of political opponents without trial is not playing with rhetoric for effect. It’s not political gimmickry. It’s not cute. It’s not funny. It’s not clever. Let’s say out loud what it is: It’s pure fascism, plain and simple.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The man who stands before those rallies and encourages such idolatry isn’t merely running for president. He is calling, directly and without apology, for the kind of obedience and loyalty demanded by dictators. He is commanding worship and submission. It must be why he attracts so completely the support of evangelical Christians. He truly is the false idol their Bible warned them against. They have fallen for him in the same way the most conspicuously devout worshipers commit sins. The inevitability of Trump and his evangelical masses is jaw-dropping, and yes, biblical.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By the end of the week, we had the practically comic spectacle of Attorney General Barr scolding Trump publicly for his tweets in an interview with ABC News, saying they “make it impossible for me to do my job.” Within hours, Trump replied — by tweet, naturally enough — that he has the “legal right” to tell Barr what to do in a criminal case, “but I have so far chosen not to!”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Which given the events of the rest of the week is a little bit like reassuring the “Lock her up” minions at his rallies, “Just wait.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">It’s hard to put a finger on the worst thing Trump has done since taking office, but right up there is the complete destruction of the idea that the person in the Oval Office is the president of all the people. He isn’t. He doesn’t want to be. If you didn’t vote for him, if you’re not out there wearing a MAGA hat and screaming at his rallies, you’re a non-person. If your state didn’t go for him in the 2016 election, forget about it. Just ask California, or Puerto Rico, still waiting for federal assistance after natural disasters. Or ask New York, which Trump is now extorting like a domestic Ukraine, by <b>denying New Yorkers access to the “Trusted Traveler” program unless the state “stop all of its unnecessary lawsuits & harrassment” [sic]....</b></font></font></font></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">hookers fr jesus</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trump-admin-grant-to-christian-supporters-ignites-twitter-firestorm-over-taxpayer-funded-religious-coercion/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trump-admin-grant-to-christian-supporters-ignites-twitter-firestorm-over-taxpayer-funded-religious-coercion/</a></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trump-thinks-authoritarian-executions-stop-drug-use-but-hes-totally-wrong/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trump-thinks-authoritarian-executions-stop-drug-use-but-hes-totally-wrong/</a></font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/critics-of-blackwater-mercenary-erik-prince-fear-ag-barr-will-quash-doj-case-against-him-report/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/critics-of-blackwater-mercenary-erik-prince-fear-ag-barr-will-quash-doj-case-against-him-report/</font></a></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Critics of Blackwater mercenary Erik Prince fear AG Barr will ‘quash’ DOJ case against him: report</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Alex Henderson February 12, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">U.S. Attorney General William Barr has been consistently protective of President Donald Trump and his allies, and according to Law & Crime reporter Colin Kalmbacher, one of those allies might be Erik Prince — brother of Betsy DeVos (secretary of education in the Trump Administration) and former head of the infamous private security firm Blackwater.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Kalmbacher reports that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is “reportedly in the 11th hour of its decision-making process on whether to charge professional mercenary Erik Prince with the crime of lying to Congress amid the Russia probe in 2017.”<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> </span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Prince’s critics, Kalmbacher notes, allege that he gave false testimony to the House Intelligence Committee in 2017 “when discussing his meetings with a Russian banker in the Seychelles Islands” earlier that year. Prince described that meeting as a “chance” encounter and told House Intelligence members that he was not acting on Trump’s behalf, but his critics allege that he was.</span></font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>One of Prince’s most vocal critics is Rep. Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who now chairs the House Intelligence Committee (which was in Republican hands back in 2017 during Prince’s testimony)</b>.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Schiff alleges that former special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report for the Russia investigation demonstrates that Prince made “false statements” that “hindered the Committee’s ability to fully understand and examine foreign efforts to undermine our political process and national security.”</span></font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a letter to Barr, Schiff asserted, “As the (Mueller) Report makes clear, evidence obtained by the special counsel…. differs materially from Mr. Prince’s testimony, under oath, before the Committee on November 30, 2017. The Report reveals that Mr. Prince’s testimony before the Committee was replete with manifest and substantial falsehoods that materially impaired the Committee’s investigation.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Schiff added, “In particular, Mr. Prince’s testimony about his January 11, 2017 meeting in the Seychelles with Kirill Dmitriev, the chief executive officer of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, differs from the (Mueller) Report in (several) material respects.”</b></font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But despite Schiff’s allegations against Prince, Kalmbacher reports, the case has “long languished for unclear reasons. And now that prosecutors are getting into position…. to potentially charge Prince, critics of Trump and Barr are largely unconvinced the case will move forward.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On February 11, Prince critic Harry Litman (a Washington Post writer and former federal prosecutor) tweeted, “Prince plainly lied. We are really getting upriver here.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Another Prince critic, Dr. Dena Grayson (who ran for Congress as a Democrat) tweeted that the DOJ has been “weighing” charges of lying to Congress against Prince but noted the possibility that “Barr quashes it.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">a little context here too: Prince plainly lied. we are really getting upriver here. https://t.co/fts8iTbka2</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— Harry Litman (@harrylitman) February 11, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">??DOJ is weighing CRIMINAL charges against @BetsyDeVosED’s brother Erik Prince for arms trafficking & LYING to Congress about his secret #Seychelles meet with a close Putin adviser to establish a secret backchannel with #Russia????.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Until Barr quashes it.??https://t.co/2qMdHVNJjg</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— Dr. Dena Grayson (@DrDenaGrayson) February 11, 2020</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/conservative-writer-details-how-evidence-cant-penetrate-the-delusional-trumpian-bubble/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/conservative-writer-details-how-evidence-cant-penetrate-the-delusional-trumpian-bubble/</font></a></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trump-lashes-out-with-a-dangerous-lie-at-the-federal-judge-overseeing-roger-stones-case/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trump-lashes-out-with-a-dangerous-lie-at-the-federal-judge-overseeing-roger-stones-case/</font></a></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Trump lashes out with a dangerous lie at the federal judge overseeing Roger Stone’s case</b></font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Donald J. Trump waves as he disembarks Marine One at Joint Base Andrews, Md. Thursday, Jan. 9, 2020, and is escorted to Air Force One by U.S. Air Force personnel. (Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Cody Fenwick February 12, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Donald Trump lashed out Tuesday night at Amy Berman Jackson, a federal judge who has overseen several key cases that arose from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. She is currently presiding over the case against longtime Trump friend Roger Stone, who is due to be sentenced soon after being found guilty of lying to Congress and attempting to impede its Russia investigation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In response to a tweet naming Jackson, Trump tweeted: “Is this the Judge that put Paul Manafort in SOLITARY CONFINEMENT, something that not even mobster Al Capone had to endure? How did she treat Crooked Hillary Clinton? Just asking!”</b></font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Judge Jackson did send Manafort to prison ahead of his trial in the summer of 2018, finding that he had violated the terms of his release. But judges do not determine the conditions prisoners are kept in; those decisions are made by the prisons and jails that house inmates.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And despite his lawyer’s claims that Manafort was in solitary confinement, prosecutors described his conditions as far more accommodative than is usually imagined when the term is invoked. As Vox reported, a filing from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team said his conditions included:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Manafort “is not confined to a cell”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Between 8:30 am and 10 pm, Manafort “has access to a separate workroom at the jail to meet with his attorneys and legal team”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He has “his own bathroom and shower facility”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He has “his own personal telephone,” which he can use more than 12 hours a day</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Those calls are limited to 15 minutes each, but when they cut off, he can just call the person back immediately</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He’s made nearly 300 phone calls in the last three weeks</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He has a personal laptop he can use in his unit to review materials and prepare for his trial</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He was provided an extension cord to let him use his laptop in either his unit or his workroom</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He’s not allowed to send emails, but he “has developed a workaround” for even that — his legal team brings in a laptop, he drafts the emails on that laptop, and they send them out after they leave.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He’s being treated like a “VIP,” according to his own account on a monitored phone call.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jackson noted at one hearing that Manafort was later moved to another jail in Alexandria, Virginia, because of his team’s complaints. CNN explained:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">She said Manafort “realized the tactic had backfired immediately.” He was in a self-contained (“VIP”) suite in Northern Neck, Jackson added.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I’m not going to split hairs over whether the word solitary was accurate because he had a room of his own,” Jackson said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What Manafort’s detention quarters looks like now: Now he’s in protective confinement, not technically solitary. He has a window, radio, newspapers and view of TV. He’s released for a few hours a day to walk around and be with other people</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Mr. Manafort, I don’t want to belittle or minimize the discomforts of prison for you. It’s hard on everyone, young and old, rich or poor,” she said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In short, Trump’s attack on Jackson was a lie.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It was also extremely dangerous. Jackson’s high-profile cases have already left her vulnerable to public threats; Stone himself posted a disturbing image of the judge ahead of his trial. And Trump’s efforts to attack a judge online are at least an order of magnitude worse. His fans have been known to target the subjects of his public rebukes before, most notably in the case of Cesar Sayoc, who sent pipe bombs to Trump’s perceived enemies. The fact that he is tossing out such inflammatory attacks ahead of his friend’s sentencing in another extreme assault on the rule of law.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cody Fenwick is a senior editor at AlterNet. He writes about politics, media and science. Follow him on Twitter @codytfenwick.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trump-says-he-has-the-absolute-tight-to-tell-the-justice-department-what-to-do/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trump-says-he-has-the-absolute-tight-to-tell-the-justice-department-what-to-do/</font></a></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump says he has the ‘absolute tight’ to tell the Justice Department what to do</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement February 11, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Donald Trump says he has the “absolute right” to direct the Dept. of Justice in who and how it prosecutes, but claims that he didn’t, despite his furious tweet overnight attacking the DOJ and calling prosecutors’ sentencing recommendation of Roger Stone a “miscarriage of justice.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump also called the 7 to 9 year recommendation of jail time for Stone, his ally, confidant, and former campaign advisor, an “insult to our country.” Trump often conflates himself and the nation, as if he is the country.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Saying he did not speak to anyone at DOJ Trump then said, “I’d be able to do it if I wanted I have the absolute right to do it.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Calling the sentencing recommendation “ridiculous” Trump added, “I thought the whole prosecution was ridiculous.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“That was a horrible abberition,” he concluded, apparently meaning “aberration.”</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/the-roger-stone-debacle-is-a-true-crisis-and-the-house-must-force-bill-barr-to-testify/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/the-roger-stone-debacle-is-a-true-crisis-and-the-house-must-force-bill-barr-to-testify/</font></a></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Roger Stone debacle is a true crisis — and the House must force Bill Barr to testify</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Daily Kos February 11, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">by Hunter</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>This cannot go on. Three top prosecutors (which may turn into four) in the Roger Stone case have now withdrawn after Attorney General William Barr’s Department of Justice ordered them to revise their guideline-based recommendations on Stone’s sentencing. This happened the morning after Donald Trump tweeted that he “cannot allow” the prosecutors’ recommended sentencing of Stone, an ally and key stonewaller in the Robert Mueller investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russian government hacking in the 2016 elections.</b></font></font></font></div></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/the-roger-stone-debacle-is-a-true-crisis-and-the-house-must-force-bill-barr-to-testify/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/the-roger-stone-debacle-is-a-true-crisis-and-the-house-must-force-bill-barr-to-testify/</font></a></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Roger Stone debacle is a true crisis — and the House must force Bill Barr to testify</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Daily Kos February 11, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">by Hunter</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>This cannot go on. Three top prosecutors (which may turn into four) in the Roger Stone case have now withdrawn after Attorney General William Barr’s Department of Justice ordered them to revise their guideline-based recommendations on Stone’s sentencing. This happened the morning after Donald Trump tweeted that he “cannot allow” the prosecutors’ recommended sentencing of Stone, an ally and key stonewaller in the Robert Mueller investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russian government hacking in the 2016 elections.</b></font></font></font></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trumps-acquittal-and-the-stunning-history-of-an-intentionally-undemocratic-us-senate/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trumps-acquittal-and-the-stunning-history-of-an-intentionally-undemocratic-us-senate/</font></a></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" /></font><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">see scary end times ppp</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/obama-was-unprepared-for-trump-and-the-gops-total-has-abandonment-of-the-rule-of-law-wapo-editor/"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/obama-was-unprepared-for-trump-and-the-gops-total-has-abandonment-of-the-rule-of-law-wapo-editor/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/white-house-targeting-of-truth-tellers-is-turning-the-intelligence-community-into-a-crowd-of-cowards/"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/white-house-targeting-of-truth-tellers-is-turning-the-intelligence-community-into-a-crowd-of-cowards/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">revenge witch hunt authoritarian</font></div><div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">---</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">QS kill in sotu, but no cas --> headaches --> 50 tbi?! he said isis defunct when his kurd fail let 100's out of prison?!</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">an 220</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/bombshell-report-finds-iraqi-officials-doubt-trumps-basis-for-escalating-to-the-brink-of-war/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/bombshell-report-finds-iraqi-officials-doubt-trumps-basis-for-escalating-to-the-brink-of-war/</font></a></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>‘Bombshell’ report finds Iraqi officials doubt Trump’s basis for escalating to the brink of war</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">President Donald J. Trump, joined by Vice President Mike Pence, senior White House advisors and senior military personnel, delivers remarks during a national televised address Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2020, from the Cross Hall of the White House, responding to the retaliatory missile strikes against U.S. military and coalition forces in Iraq on Tuesday by the Islamic Republic of Iran. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams February 7, 2020</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">In a “bombshell” revelation that calls into question one of the Trump administration’s stated justifications for assassinating Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani—a move that nearly sparked a region-wide military conflict—Iraqi intelligence officials told the New York Times that they believe <b>ISIS, not an Iran-linked militia, was likely responsible for the Dec. 27 rocket attack that killed an American contractor at an airbase near Kirkuk, Iraq.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>The Times reported Thursday that “Iraqi military and intelligence officials have raised doubts about who fired the rockets… saying they believe it is unlikely that the militia the United States blamed for the attack” was responsible.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">“All the indications are that it was Daesh</span>,” Brigadier General Ahmed Adnan, the Iraqi chief of intelligence for the federal police at the K-1 air base, told the Times, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS. “We know Daesh’s movements.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>The Trump administration has not released a single piece of evidence showing that the Iraqi militia Khataib Hezbollah, which has ties to Iran, was responsible for the attack on K-1. The group has denied carrying out the attack.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The U.S. responded to the rocket attack days later with deadly airstrikes on Khataib Hezbollah targets in Iraq and Syria,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"> setting off a dangerous escalatory spiral that brought Iran and the U.S. to the brink of war.</span></b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>On Jan. 2, the U.S. assassinated Soleimani with a drone strike in Baghdad ordered by President Donald Trump. Following the assassination, which was widely condemned as an act of war, the U.S. Department of Defense issued a statement claiming without evidence that Soleimani “orchestrated attacks on coalition bases in Iraq over the last several months—including the attack on December 27th—culminating in the death and wounding of additional American and Iraqi personnel.”</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But Iraqi officials told the Times that “based on circumstantial evidence and long experience in the area where the attack took place,” there is good reason to be skeptical about U.S. claims that Khataib Hezbollah was behind it.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">As the Times reported:</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>The rockets were launched from a Sunni Muslim part of Kirkuk Province notorious for attacks by the Islamic State, a Sunni terrorist group, which would have made the area hostile territory for a Shiite militia like Khataib Hezbollah.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Khataib Hezbollah has not had a presence in Kirkuk Province since 2014.</b></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Islamic State, however, had carried out three attacks relatively close to the base in the 10 days before the attack on K-1. Iraqi intelligence officials sent reports to the Americans in November and December warning that ISIS intended to target K-1, an Iraqi air base in Kirkuk Province that is also used by American forces…</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">These facts all point to the Islamic State, Iraqi officials say.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">“We as Iraqi forces cannot even come to this area unless we have a large force because it is not secure,” Brig. Gen. Adnan said of the area from which the rocket attack was launched. “How could it be that someone who doesn’t know the area could come here and find that firing position and launch an attack?”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">In response to the Times report, Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council, tweeted: “Al-Qaeda attacked the U.S. on 9/11 and we went to war with Iraq. If this report is true, ISIS attacked the U.S. and we nearly went to war with Iran.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">Sina Toossi</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">@SinaToossi</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">This is huge: Iraqi military & intelligence officials say it’s highly unlikely that a rocket attack that killed an Iraqi-American contractor in early January—& led to an escalation cycle that almost started a war—was carried out by an Iran-allied militia.https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/world/middleeast/iraq-iran-hezbollah-evidence.html …</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">Iraqi soldiers at the K-1 base, which was struck by rockets on Dec. 27.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">Was U.S. Wrong About Attack That Nearly Started a War With Iran?</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">Iraqi military and intelligence officials have raised doubts about who fired the rockets that started a dangerous spiral of events.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">nytimes.com</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">184</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">3:57 PM - Feb 6, 2020</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">Twitter Ads info and privacy</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">119 people are talking about this</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">CODEPINK</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">@codepink</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"><b>The US almost started WWIII based on questionable evidence.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">After all of the violence  in the Middle East following the attack on US bases, #Iraqi officials are now questioning the US's claim that the #Iran-backed militia Khataib Hezbollah are to blame. https://buff.ly/31CpWqT </font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">Iraqi soldiers at the K-1 base, which was struck by rockets on Dec. 27.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">Was U.S. Wrong About Attack That Nearly Started a War With Iran?</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">Iraqi military and intelligence officials have raised doubts about who fired the rockets that started a dangerous spiral of events.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">nytimes.com</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">47</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">1:15 PM - Feb 6, 2020</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">Twitter Ads info and privacy</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">44 people are talking about this</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">U.S. officials insisted to the Times that they have “solid evidence” showing that Khataib Hezbollah carried out the attack, but they have not released any of this evidence to the public or to Iraqi officials.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">“We have requested the American side to share with us any information, any evidence, but they have not sent us any information,” Lt. Gen. Muhammad al-Bayati, chief of staff for former Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, told the Times.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">Ilan Goldenberg, Middle East security director at the Center for a New American Security think tank, tweeted that the U.S. Congress “must ask questions about this and get the intel.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">Responsible Statecraft managing editor Benjamin Armbruster agreed.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">“Congress needs to investigate ASAP,” Armbruster tweeted.</font></p><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">ref seidel</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><a href="https://religiondispatches.org/amid-reality-tv-gimmicks-and-xenophobic-rhetoric-trumps-sotu-appeals-to-evangelicals/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;"><font face="Times New Roman">https://religiondispatches.org/amid-reality-tv-gimmicks-and-xenophobic-rhetoric-trumps-sotu-appeals-to-evangelicals/</font></a></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">since late December, 2019, when retiring editor-in-chief of Christianity Today Mark Galli published his infamous “Trump Should Be Removed from Office” editorial, there’s been a great deal of buzz in the pundit class over whether Trump, after a highly publicized impeachment trial, needs to be concerned with possible defections in his white evangelical base. From an analytical standpoint, the buzz is mere noise, horse race politics nonsense from people who don’t understand that most white evangelicals have long since come to regard CT as “too liberal.” As John Stoehr observed on RD back in December, “It’s not going to change much.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">And, what many failed to notice or recall, is that the editorial itself was entirely milquetoast, attacking only Trump’s “gross immorality and ethical incompetence,” while agreeing with Trump-supporting evangelicals that “his Supreme Court nominees, his defense of religious liberty, and his stewardship of the economy” are among “the president’s positives.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Although this editorial was never going to make a dent in the unflagging support Trump counts on from his white evangelical base, he seems to have been scared enough by the furor around it to start ramping up his evangelical outreach. It’s probably no coincidence that Trump recently became the first U.S. president to address the radical anti-choice “March for Life” event in person.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Given that the vast majority of white evangelicals, America’s single most right-wing demographic, are Christian nationalists, we should have expected a substantial presence of Christian nationalist rhetoric in yesterday’s State of the Union Address, along with coded nods to specific evangelical concerns about abortion, schooling, and “religious freedom.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Indeed, all these elements were present in a speech packed chock-full of “lies, damned lies, and statistics,” along with reality-show gimmicks including a surprise reunion of Trump guest Amy Williams and her husband, Sgt. 1st Class Townshend Williams, and<b> awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to right-wing radio charlatan Rush Limbaugh, whose advanced lung cancer diagnosis does nothing to erase his substantial contributions to the destruction of America’s information ecosystem.</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Trump’s appreciation for post-truth bluster and militarism are certainly among the characteristics that endear him to the Christian Right. And while he remains most in his element with the jingoistic rhetoric of borders, “heroes,” economic protectionism, and “criminal” immigrants, over the last few years Trump has become visibly more comfortable using language that more directly appeals to the conservative, mostly white evangelicals and radical traditionalist Catholics who represent his base, and with whom he has surrounded himself.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">To those with “eyes to see,” Trump’s first clear appeal to the Christian Right came in his use of the phrase “failing government schools” in the midst of his calling for the expansion of “school choice” voucher policies. As a few observers on Twitter pointed out, notably religious studies professor Julie Ingersoll, the pejorative term “government schools” is a hallmark of <b>Christian Reconstructionism, </b>a radical theocratic ideology whose exponents believe that public education should be abolished in favor of homeschooling and/or Christian schools.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As Ingersoll’s research demonstrates, such ideas have been mainstreamed in evangelicalism precisely through the spread of Christian schooling and the deregulation of homeschooling, thanks to Christian Reconstructionist influence on curricula.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">julie ingersoll</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">@julieingersoll</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Trump calls public schools "government schools," a dog whistle to evangelicals and an indication of wide-ranging influence of Christian reconstructionism #SOTU @C_Stroop @profagagne</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">389</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">6:43 PM - Feb 4, 2020</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Twitter Ads info and privacy</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">206 people are talking about this</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Chrissy in the Dumbest Dystopia</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">?</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">@C_Stroop</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"> · Feb 4, 2020</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Replying to @cutrightest @julieingersoll</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">They’re not exactly the same thing but Christian Reconstructionism is very racist. But I guess the rhetoric is older:</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">https://t.co/3ng03XqUNY https://twitter.com/julieingersoll/status/1224899037117272065?s=21 …</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">julie ingersoll</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">@julieingersoll</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">I suspect #<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Rushdoony</span> got it from J. Gresham Machen in the 20s. https://twitter.com/C_Stroop/status/1224898284491173888 …</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">julie ingersoll</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">@julieingersoll</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>I'd say that<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"> Rushdoony </span>brought the language into modern popular Evangelical usage as he developed the "biblical" defense of Christian education and the rejection of public education.</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">15</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">7:40 PM - Feb 4, 2020</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Twitter Ads info and privacy</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">See julie ingersoll's other Tweets</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Trump’s subsequent appeals to his white evangelical base were more obvious. </b>Right after touting the confirmation of new federal judges on his watch, including “two brilliant new Supreme Court Justices, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh,” the president boasted about his administration’s “defense of religious liberty, [which] includes the Constitutional right to pray in public schools.” While this right has never in fact been contested, it’s a longstanding evangelical tactic to disingenuously conflate the constitutional ban on school-sponsored prayer with the generic “prayer in schools,” which makes for a more effective rallying cry to agitate the faithful.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">From here, Trump launched into a bizarrely manic description of what “we” do in America, rhetoric that reinforces the authoritarian urge to define “the nation” or “the people” in a way that excludes othered groups:</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In America, we do not punish prayer. We do not tear down crosses. We do not ban symbols of faith. We do not muzzle preachers and pastors. In America, we celebrate faith. We cherish religion. We lift our voices in prayer, and we raise our sights to the Glory of God!</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Few Americans would disagree with the first four sentences, all of which, with certain caveats, represent clearly protected First Amendment freedoms. (If, for example, the proverbial cross happens to be located in a public space that doesn’t permit equal representation to other faiths, then yes, the cross might be removed according to the Constitution.)</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>The last three sentences, however, are a different matter, as they’re clearly meant to define America as a religious nation to the exclusion of non-believers. And, given the proximity of these statements to Trump’s invocation of crosses, it’s no stretch to read these sentences as defining America as a specifically Christian nation.</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Trump’s awkward transition from this Christian nationalist rhetoric to invoking the Second Amendment’s “right to keep and bear arms” may seem out of place to some observers. As I’ve argued previously, however, the coziness of God and guns makes perfect sense to Trump’s Christian Right base.</span> Likewise, Trump’s subsequent lines on “manifest destiny,” “frontiers,” and defeating terrorism are red meat for Christian nationalists (if rather bizarrely thrown together with assertions that America will send the first woman to the moon and be the first nation to plant a flag on Mars).</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Trump drove his speech to a close with more secularized and—despite references to Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman—racist nationalist appeals to “pioneers,” “settl[ing] the New World,” and “the beautiful, beautiful Alamo.” This language of “national greatness,</b>” it’s worth noting, may be regarded as the expression of a type of political religion, an essentially secular expression that Christian nationalists nevertheless embrace enthusiastically. In the end, for those worried about attacks on the separation of church and state and about the unwavering support for Trump among white evangelicals, the 2020 State of the Union will do little to assuage these concerns.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Bio</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Latest Posts</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">fake@gmail.com'</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Chrissy Stroop</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">A prominent ex-evangelical writer, speaker, and advocate, Chrissy Stroop is (with Lauren O’Neal) coeditor of the essay anthology Empty the Pews: Stories of Leaving the Church. A senior correspondent for Religion Dispatches, her work has appeared in Dame Magazine, Foreign Policy, Playboy, Political Research Associates, and other outlets, including peer-reviewed academic journals. Holding a Ph.D. in modern Russian history from Stanford University, Stroop is a Senior Research Associate with the University of Innsbruck’s Postsecular Conflicts project. In 2019 Chrissy came out as a transgender woman and began her journey of medical transition. She resides in Portland, Oregon.</font></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">emolument (zelensky points out staying in trump hotel on (infamous?) phone call]</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trump-charging-secret-service-650-per-room-per-night-to-protect-him-at-his-golf-courses"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trump-charging-secret-service-650-per-room-per-night-to-protect-him-at-his-golf-courses</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">total loyalty or attack thornberry</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/ex-lawmaker-horrified-by-transformation-of-never-trump-republicans-into-presidential-loyalists-whats-happening-now-is-dangerous"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/ex-lawmaker-horrified-by-transformation-of-never-trump-republicans-into-presidential-loyalists-whats-happening-now-is-dangerous</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">steve israel</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">(tears up sotu text, manifesto of misinformation
</font><h3 class="magcat-titlte entry-title"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trump-uses-national-prayer-breakfast-to-slams-pelosi-for-praying-for-him/"><font face="Times New Roman">trump uses National Prayer Breakfast to slam Pelosi for praying for him</font></a></h3><div class="grid-post-box-meta mag-meta"><span class="author-italic author vcard"><font face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/travis-gettys/" title="Posts by Travis Gettys" class="author url fn" rel="author">Travis Gettys</a> / <a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/raw-story/" title="Posts by Raw Story" class="author url fn" rel="author">Raw Story</a></font></span></div><div class="mag-excerpt entry-content"><p><font face="Times New Roman">President Donald Trump attacked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Mitt Romney for justifying their impeachment actions on religious grounds.</font></p></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/white-house-responds-to-acquittal-by-floating-vengeance-threat-at-adam-schiff/"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/white-house-responds-to-acquittal-by-floating-vengeance-threat-at-adam-schiff/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">...White House is out with a first official response to the Senate’s refusal to remove Donald Trump from office. It is mostly the usual claims of “witch hunt” and “full validation” and “exoneration” and a burping out of Trump’s supposed “victories” and accomplishments. It refers to Sen. Mitt Romney only as “one failed Republican presidential candidate.”

But this section is the most noteworthy:
Rep. Adam Schiff lied to Congress and the American people with a totally made up statement about the president’s phone call. Will there be no retribution?
Is that a threat? How could it not be considered one?

While attributed to the still-possibly fictional “press secretary” Stephanie Grisham, these are clearly Trump’s own words. He wrote this. And it does not appear (Susan Collins’ imagination notwithstanding) that this White House has taken anything from the exposure of Trump’s extortion, other than a new zealousness for “retribution” against Dear Leader’s critics.
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</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">day after impeach ended?!
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trumps-treasury-department-is-now-helping-a-hunter-biden-probe-while-furiously-protecting-the-president/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trumps-treasury-department-is-now-helping-a-hunter-biden-probe-while-furiously-protecting-the-president/</a>
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</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">AA key to dem win 2020</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trump-faces-backlash-over-super-bowl-ad-on-alice-marie-johnson-that-completely-ignored-the-long-road-ahead-for-criminal-justice-reform/"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trump-faces-backlash-over-super-bowl-ad-on-alice-marie-johnson-that-completely-ignored-the-long-road-ahead-for-criminal-justice-reform/</font></a></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div class="mag-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 19px; padding: 0px; position: relative;"><h3 class="magcat-titlte entry-title" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trump-faces-backlash-over-super-bowl-ad-on-alice-marie-johnson-that-completely-ignored-the-long-road-ahead-for-criminal-justice-reform/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;"><font face="Times New Roman">trump faces backlash over Super Bowl ad on Alice Marie Johnson that completely ignored the long road ahead for criminal justice reform</font></a></h3><div class="grid-post-box-meta mag-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 7px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><span class="author-italic author vcard" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/alex-henderson/" title="Posts by Alex Henderson" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><font face="Times New Roman">Alex Henderson</font></a></span></div></div><div class="mag-excerpt entry-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">Alice Marie Johnson has become a symbol of everything that’s terrible about the War on Drugs and mass incarceration in the United States: before President Donald Trump granted her a…</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">Trump faces backlash over Super Bowl ad on Alice Marie Johnson that completely ignored the long road ahead for criminal justice reform</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">English: A tearful Alice Johnson, who was serving a mandatory life sentence without parole in a nonviolent drug case and was granted clemency by President Donald J. Trump in June of 2018, gestures toward President Trump from the special guests gallery Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2018, during the State of the Union Address at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. Johnson is accompanied (to her left) by Jared Kushner, advisor to the President, and his wife, Ivanka Trump, the President's eldest daughter. (Official White House Photo by Andrea Hanks)</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">Written by Alex Henderson February 3, 2020</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">Alice Marie Johnson has become a symbol of everything that’s terrible about the War on Drugs and mass incarceration in the United States: before President Donald Trump granted her a pardon, she was serving a life sentence in federal prison for a nonviolent drug offense. In a commercial broadcast during the Super Bowl on Sunday, Trump bragged about his role in Johnson’s release. But articles published in Law & Crime and the Daily Beast point out that Trump still has a long way to go when it comes to criminal justice form in the U.S.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Trump’s ad asserted, “Politicians talk about criminal justice reform; President Trump got it done. Thousands of families are being reunited.”</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Johnson’s case was brought to Trump’s attention by Kim Kardashian, who is married to hip-hop star and outspoken Trump supporter Kanye West. Kardashian lobbied for Johnson’s release, and because she was in the federal prison system rather than a state prison, Trump had the power to grant her a pardon.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">I promised to restore hope in America. That includes the least among us. Together, let’s KEEP AMERICA GREAT!</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Text TRUMP to 88022 if you liked our Super Bowl ad!</b> pic.twitter.com/Lgjt53B7QX</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2020</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">Two Super Bowls ago I was sitting in a prison cell.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">Today I am a free woman and my story was featured in a Super Bowl Ad.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">I will spend the rest of my life fighting for the wrongly and unjustly convicted!</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">God Bless America! pic.twitter.com/CGSyk54O37</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">— Alice Marie Johnson (@AliceMarieFree) February 3, 2020</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Legal writer Alberto Luperon, in an article for Law & Crime, notes that in the ad, Trump “brought up a case that had nothing to do with ‘criminal justice form’ in any meaningful sense of the word…. To date, Johnson is one of 24 people to get clemency during the Trump Administration. Was it ‘criminal justice reform?’ No, it was a use of the regular ol’ pardon power. She is out of prison because her sentence was commuted, not as a result of changes to the criminal justice system.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">Luperon points out that law professor Joyce White Vance (a former federal prosecutor) has stressed that Johnson’s case is merely the tip of the iceberg. On Sunday, Vance tweeted, “<b>Alice Johnson is one person who won early release because celebrities brought her to Trump’s attention. She deserved it. But there are thousands more like her in prison. We need a real pardon process that works fairly. We need real criminal justice reform. Don’t be fooled.”</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Nonetheless, Luperon does give Trump some credit, asserting that he “absolutely does have a comprehensive institutional victory under his belt when it comes to criminal justice reform.… It’s called the First Step Act. Trump signed it into law in December 2018, months after Johnson’s sentence was commuted. It was a rare bipartisan victory for an administration characterized by controversy. Among other things, the law increased the amount of good time credit for many kinds of federal inmates, prohibited the use of restraints on pregnant women, and eased criminal punishments on certain kinds of drug offenders.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">Alice Johnson is one person who won early release because celebrities brought her to Trump’s attention. She deserved it. But there are thousands more like her in prison. We need a real pardon process that works fairly. We need real criminal justice reform. Don’t be fooled. https://t.co/rx9TVXRqeI</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) February 3, 2020</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">Journalist Emma Tucker, in a Daily Beast article, notes that Trump’s ad has received some negative reactions on Twitter. For example, Rep. Bakari Sellers of South Carolina tweeted, “That ad was offensive AF….. The ‘I freed a Negro’ ad.” And journalist Judd Legum tweeted that pardoning Johnson was only one act — not full-fledged criminal justice reform. Legum posted, “Interesting that this ad makes it seem like Johnson was released because of criminal justice reform but it had nothing to do with that. Trump granted her clemency after being lobbied by Kim Kardashian.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">...</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-the-transgressor-the-psychological-appeal-of-leaders-who-break-the-rules-130247">https://theconversation.com/trump-the-transgressor-the-psychological-appeal-of-leaders-who-break-the-rules-130247</a></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">interesting long v short, me v we: limit immigrant will hurt economy</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/trumps-most-lasting-legacy-analyst-reveals-the-presidents-worst-mistake-in-economic-policy/"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/trumps-most-lasting-legacy-analyst-reveals-the-presidents-worst-mistake-in-economic-policy/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">...Admitting fewer immigrants generally means less economic growth, since labor force growth is an important element of economic growth,” Anderson explains. “It is economic growth that improves the standard of living in a nation. Using the public charge rule to reduce legal immigration means lower long-term economic growth may be Donald Trump’s most lasting legacy.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Anderson backs up his assertions by citing data from Macroeconomic Advisers as well as economists at Oxford University. Macroeconomic Advisers’ Joel Prakken, Anderson notes, has estimated that cutting legal immigration in half in the U.S. would reduce the country’s rate of economic growth by about 12.5%. And Oxford economists, Anderson observes, have said that the majority of economic gains the U.S. enjoyed from 2011-2016 would have been wiped out without immigration</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Anderson also points out that Ruchir Sharma, chief global strategist for Morgan Stanley, has cited immigration as an importance source of economic growth....</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/republicans-want-to-either-rule-america-or-destroy-it-for-everyone-else-political-scientist"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/republicans-want-to-either-rule-america-or-destroy-it-for-everyone-else-political-scientist</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div><font face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Republicans want to either rule America — or destroy it for everyone else: political scientist</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Written by Tom Boggioni / Raw Story February 2, 2020</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">In a scorching column for the Daily Beast, David Rothkopf writes that the refusal of the Republican-controlled Senate to agree to hear witnesses in the impeachment trial of the Donald Trump is one of the darkest moments in U.S. history — ranking up with the start of the Civil War.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Getting right to the point, he wrote, “Jan. 31, 2020, was the worst day for democracy in America since April 12, 1861, when South Carolina forces opened fire on Fort Sumter. Both days represented a moment when an old guard representing a dying way of life placed their own survival ahead of that of the United States and our Constitution,” before adding, “It is an irony that the GOP was founded as an anti-slavery party, a harbinger of the changes to come in the mid-19th century, and today has become a reactionary force surviving by stoking fears of the massive U.S. social transformation that is already well underway.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Focusing on the Senate impeachment trial that is expected to culminate with the acquittal of the president along party lines, he explained, “What took place in the Senate on Friday when it voted not to hear witnesses in the trial of Donald Trump— when witnesses such as John Bolton were available who could corroborate his guilt—may have been the most damaging blow of all. Because this decision effectively ensured that Trump would not only be acquitted of crimes he certainly committed, it also ensured a number of key points made by Trump and his defenders would in months and years to come be supported by the precedent of the momentous Senate action. These include a virtual ratification of the idea that anything a president might do to win reelection would be acceptable.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">The columnist goes on to state that the Republican Party fears the rising tide of change in the country so they are hell-bent are destroying all norms in a desperate attempt to hold onto power in a deeply divided country.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">“Now they know it is not only OK for them to try put a thumb on the scale of the U.S. elections but that the president and the senate of the United States will ensure they are protected if they do it,” he wrote. “The desperate GOP, seeing the clock running out on their brand of racism- and ignorance-fueled, aging white male-based power, will compound the above with renewed efforts to suppress the vote during the months ahead. Who is going to stop them? The courts they have packed? The Department of Justice? The president and the Republican Party that are rooting for their success?”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">“This election is likely to be the most at risk to foreign and domestic meddling and distortion in modern history,” he continued. ” t is clear that the GOP will stop at nothing, use every legal or semi-legal trick in the book and then, when they run out of those, they will move on, as the president did, to the illegal—and the GOP will seek to find new ways to forgive or even endorse that behavior.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">“Where they can undermine the law and the Constitution to advance their own narrow interests they will continue to do that, without regard for the lasting damage they are doing—because for them there is only now. For them, tomorrow is the enemy and certain defeat,” he concluded.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">You can read the whole piece here (subscription required).</font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">stipulated post aquittal freakouts ~ democ</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/american-fascist-the-u-s-is-a-failing-democracy-and-the-peddlers-of-hope-are-lying-to-us/"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/american-fascist-the-u-s-is-a-failing-democracy-and-the-peddlers-of-hope-are-lying-to-us/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">c d v quite good</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">amanda m</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/how-trump-has-brought-the-entire-republican-party-to-the-point-of-no-return/"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/how-trump-has-brought-the-entire-republican-party-to-the-point-of-no-return/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/investigators-interview-irs-whistleblower-who-warned-of-meddling-in-audit-of-trump-or-pence-report/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/investigators-interview-irs-whistleblower-who-warned-of-meddling-in-audit-of-trump-or-pence-report/</a></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">mofo re wind</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">The <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/trump-administration" target="self" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">Trump administration</a> announced plans Thursday to formally weaken protections for millions of migratory <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/birds" target="self" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">birds</a>.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">an 120 not paul k</font></div><div><h3 class="magcat-titlte entry-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; letter-spacing: 1px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/nobel-prize-winning-economist-heres-why-trump-is-just-wrong-to-claim-his-economic-policies-help-the-middle-class/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="font-weight: normal;">Nobel Prize-winning economist: Here’s why Trump is ‘just wrong’ to claim his economic policies help the middle class</font></a><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/nobel-prize-winning-economist-heres-why-trump-is-just-wrong-to-claim-his-economic-policies-help-the-middle-class/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="font-weight: normal;">
</font></a><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/nobel-prize-winning-economist-heres-why-trump-is-just-wrong-to-claim-his-economic-policies-help-the-middle-class/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;" /><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/alex-henderson/" title="Posts by Alex Henderson" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="text-align: right; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="font-weight: normal;">Alex Hen</font></a></h3></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">omfg land mines 120, </font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/absolutely-horrific-trump-reportedly-prepares-to-roll-back-restrictions-on-use-of-landmines/"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/absolutely-horrific-trump-reportedly-prepares-to-roll-back-restrictions-on-use-of-landmines/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">‘Absolutely horrific’: Trump reportedly prepares to roll back restrictions on use of landmines</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams January 31, 2020</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>President Donald Trump is reportedly preparing to roll back established constraints on the U.S. military’s ability to use landmines overseas despite the weapons’ long history of killing and maiming civilians around the world.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">CNN, citing multiple anonymous Defense Department officials, reported Thursday that the Trump administration is expected to loosen landmine restrictions in the coming days by rescinding a 2014 order by former President Barack Obama that limited U.S. landmine use to the Korean Peninsula.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">“President Obama’s policy brought the U.S. policy closely in line with the obligations of the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty,” Jody Williams, an anti-war activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her work to ban landmines, told Common Dreams in an email. “Mr. Trump’s policy rollback is a step toward the past, like many of his other decisions, and sends exactly the wrong message to those working to rid the world of the scourge of landmines.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">More than 160 nations have ratified the Mine Ban Treaty, also known as the Ottawa Treaty, which prohibits the stockpiling, production, and use of landmines. The United States is one of just 32 U.N. member states that have not ratified the treaty.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">“The beauty of the treaty is that it has established a new norm and even countries outside the treaty felt the stigma related to landmines and changed policies, even if they didn’t join the treaty,” said Williams. “Mr. Trump’s landmine move would be in line with all of his other moves to undercut arms control and disarmament in a world much in need of them. The landmine ban movement will do what it has always done with governments that still remain outside the Mine Ban Treaty—push back and continue the push to universalize the treaty—including the U.S.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">The Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor, a non-governmental research initiative, estimated in a November 2019 report that 130,000 people were killed by landmines between 1999 and 2018. The majority of the deaths were civilians.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">According to CNN, the Trump administration’s new policy will place the authority to use landmines in the hands of “commanders of the U.S. military’s combatant commands, usually a four-star general or admiral, such as the commanders of U.S. Africa Command and U.S. Central Command which oversee operations on the African continent and the Middle East respectively.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">“The new policy… is expected to permit the operational use of landmines only if they have a 30-day self-destruction or self-deactivation feature,” CNN reported. “The new policy would also allow for the development, production, and procurement of landmines only if they have these features.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>The decision to rescind the Obama administration’s 2014 policy was recommended following a Pentagon review launched in 2017 by then-Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">“So horrific that after decades of international efforts to rid the world of landmines, Trump is about to ‘make landmines great again’ by loosening restrictions on their use,” Medea Benjamin, co-founder of anti-war group CodePink, told Common Dreams.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Advocacy group Public Citizen echoed that reaction on Twitter.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">“Is this what Make America Great Again means? Who in their right mind can justify this?” the group asked. “Landmines have a long history of killing and wounding civilians and are banned by more than 160 countries. Absolutely horrific.”</font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div><p class="yiv3129815998headline3" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" margin="margin" padding="padding"><a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://click1.e.alternet.org/qwghfjdydbntnfrrtvsddtdrrvtrygpchbdnsmjshddd_hvbqvfmfzvcmnbfhhfw.html?a=&b=3613&c=21989&d=2"><font face="Times New Roman">‘Apologia for authoritarianism’: Legal analysts slam Trump lawyer for arguing president can do whatever he wants to boost reelection chances</font></a></p><p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-style="font-style" italic="italic" color="color" rgb="rgb" margin="margin" padding="padding"><font face="Times New Roman"> </font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman">"They are saying that abuses of power in order to…</font></p></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">omg geo-fencing</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/the-real-reason-trump-holds-so-many-rallies-is-deeply-disturbing-and-could-be-weaponized-against-him/"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/the-real-reason-trump-holds-so-many-rallies-is-deeply-disturbing-and-could-be-weaponized-against-him/</font></a></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">bibi indicted, elections in march? djt impeached</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/it-is-a-war-plan-trump-netanyahu-deal-decried-as-shameful-attack-on-palestinian-rights"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/it-is-a-war-plan-trump-netanyahu-deal-decried-as-shameful-attack-on-palestinian-rights</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div><font face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">‘It is a war plan’: Trump-Netanyahu deal decried as shameful attack on Palestinian rights</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">President Donald J. Trump delivers remarks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2020, in the East Room of the White House to unveil details of the Trump administration’s Middle East Peace Plan. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)]</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Written by Julia Conley / Common Dreams January 28, 2020</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Human rights advocates condemned U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “annexation plan” for large swaths of Palestinian territory as the two leaders on Tuesday presented what they termed a “peace deal” for Israel and Palestine.</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Critics joined Palestinian leaders in rejecting the premise of the so-called “vision for peace,” which was drafted by the White House and Netanyahu without the input of Palestinians.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">The resulting plan is “shameful and disingenuous,” tweeted Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">They could have guaranteed justice, and brought everyone into this peace deal.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Instead these two embattled heads of state, impeached and indicted, have a “ just us” peace deal.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">It’s shameful and disingenuous! https://t.co/THIniOEv8B</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) January 28, 2020</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">The plan aims to expand and make official Israeli control of Palestinian territories while assuring Palestine that it will be afforded “a pathway to a future state”—but one that will have no military of its own and in which Israel will maintain security control over some areas.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">“This is not a peace plan,” tweeted Yousef Munayyer, executive director of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights. “It is a war plan.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">This is not a peace plan, it is a war plan.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">A war on peace</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">A war on justice</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">A war on freedom</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">A war on equality</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">A war on Palestinian existence</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">— (((YousefMunayyer))) (@YousefMunayyer) January 28, 2020</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">“It’s stunning that Donald Trump doesn’t know that this is insulting to Palestinians,” tweeted James Zogby, founder of the Arab American Institute.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">It’s stunning that @realDonaldTrump doesn’t know that this is insulting to Palestinians. It’s not a “state” it’s a “Bantustan.” Palestinians lose more land w/out sovereignty & independence. Israel gets more land & keeps settlements. It’s Trump’s plan to try to legalize illegality https://t.co/RDE6iJ0krf</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">— James J. Zogby (@jjz1600) January 28, 2020</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>“This plan is simply a rubber stamp for the Israeli government’s continuing violations of international law, separate-and-unequal policies, land grabs, and human rights abuses against the Palestinian people,”</b> said the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights in a statement. “Any attempt to address the Israeli-Palestinian issue that does not begin and end with the full acknowledgment of the Palestinian right to self-determination, freedom, justice, and equality is a non-starter.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Major points within the deal include:</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Jerusalem will be established as Israel’s “undivided” capitol, undermining Palestinians’ aim to recognize East Jerusalem as their capitol;</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">the recognition of the majority of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine;</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">the recognition of the Jordan Valley, which makes up a third of the occupied West Bank, as part of Israel; and</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">the refusal by Israel to grant Palestinians the “right to return” to their homes lost in the Six-Day War and other conflicts.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Palestinians in occupied territories held protests on Tuesday ahead of the deal’s announcement. Larger demonstrations are planned for Wednesday.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">“I am not against peace, but what is being talked about is not peace,” Ahmed Shafiq, a student in Gaza, told The Guardian. “Peace is not imposed on people.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">The so-called “peace deal” amounts to “an endorsement of Israel’s aggression, allowing it to take over whatever Palestinian lands it wants and punishing the victims for daring to object to having their homeland stolen,” said Omar Baddar, deputy director of the Arab American Institute, in a short video the group released.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Want to know why this “ultimate deal” is a sham & a disgrace that will never lead to peace? @OmarBaddar explains:#DealOfTheCentury #Apartheid pic.twitter.com/1k9Ig0q9ND</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">— Arab American Instit. (@AAIUSA) January 28, 2020</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">A map released showing Trump and Netanyahu’s vision for the future of Palestine resembled “a Native American reservation” more than a sovereign state, said entrepreneur Shahed Amanullah.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">This doesn’t look like a state. It looks like a Native American reservation. https://t.co/ZwHMt0L0V7 pic.twitter.com/S2gO5gdV4t</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">— Shahed Amanullah (@shahed) January 28, 2020</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">“This is not a peace plan,” tweeted Omar. “It is theft. It is erasure.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Munayyer of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights called on Americans and the international community to reject Trump’s attempt to “whitewash the apartheid reality alongside his Israeli partners-in-war-crimes.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">“The only suitable response from people of conscience is to reject this effort and demand immediate accountability for Israel’s denial of Palestinian rights,” Munayyer said. “The separate-and-unequal reality the Israeli government has imposed on Palestinians, with the support of the U.S., flies in the face of the values Americans claim to uphold. Freedom, justice, and equality for Palestinians is the only way forward.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from occupied Palestine, slammed Trump and Netanyahu for releasing the plan as both are facing re-election campaigns and legal battles.</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">“It’s fitting that the Trump-Netanyahu plan was released by a forever impeached president on the same day that Netanyahu was indicted for corruption,” Tlaib tweeted. “This political stunt gets us no closer to peace or justice.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">It’s fitting that the @realDonaldTrump–@netanyahu “plan” was released by a forever impeached President on the same day that Netanyahu was indicted for corruption.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">This political stunt gets us no closer to peace or justice. As a member of Congress, I consider it a non-starter. https://t.co/PIYYZ75PWc</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">— Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (@RepRashida) January 28, 2020</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">“This is a political ploy by both leaders to distract from their abuse of power, designed to help Netanyahu win the election in less than six weeks,” Emily Meyer, co-founder of Jewish progressive group If Not Now, said in a statement. “The plan itself is a plan for permanent Israeli military occupation and control, not a plan for peace. It is simply a continuation of Trump’s strategy since entering office: to disenfranchise Palestinians and deny their rights, their agency, and even their identity.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">djt also has problem w/ uppity woman m kelley blood from everywhere, NPR bonus</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/trump-praises-pompeos-swear-filled-rant-to-an-npr-reporter-i-think-you-did-a-good-job-on-her/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/trump-praises-pompeos-swear-filled-rant-to-an-npr-reporter-i-think-you-did-a-good-job-on-her/</a></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p><font face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p class="yiv4077907340headline3" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" margin="margin" px="px" padding="padding"><a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://click1.e.alternet.org/bdpbqszvztdydqmmyjfzzyzmmjymvgcnbtzdfpsfbjlc_epdsrqpqfrbpddbsdsq.html?a=&b=3579&c=21989&d=2"><font face="Times New Roman">Shameful assault on press freedom’: Mike Pompeo denounced for ‘insulting and contemptuous’ statement lashing out at NPR reporter</font></a></p><p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-style="font-style" italic="italic" color="color" rgb="rgb" margin="margin" padding="padding"><font face="Times New Roman"> </font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman">Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lashed out at NPR reporter…</font></p><p class="yiv4077907340headline3" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" margin="margin" px="px" padding="padding"><a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://click1.e.alternet.org/ylccgpvyvzmnmgttnfqvvnvttfntykbwczvmqspqcfqq_epdsrqpqfrbpddbsdsq.html?a=&b=3579&c=21989&d=2"><font face="Times New Roman">Trump hits NPR with veiled threat after Pompeo blow-up with reporter over Ukraine</font></a></p><p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-style="font-style" italic="italic" color="color" rgb="rgb" margin="margin" padding="padding"><font face="Times New Roman"> </font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman">President Donald Trump issued a veiled threat against National Public…</font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman"> </font></p><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/gop-lawmakers-incite-outrage-as-they-push-trump-to-intensify-attacks-on-women-with-global-gag-rule/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/gop-lawmakers-incite-outrage-as-they-push-trump-to-intensify-attacks-on-women-with-global-gag-rule/</a></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">trumpista base held tgether by evil fox trinity: hanty, ingraham and tucker
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</font><div><font face="Times New Roman">aha 1/20 promote primary, evil pending; trump only hope to stay in power, so pander to end times homo trans phobia, 1st anti-abortion march; 2x whammy b/c smash and grab anti BO voodoo tax cut to oligarch and corps
</font><div><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div></div></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/get-rid-of-her-recording-reportedly-shows-trump-fuming-about-fired-ambassador/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/get-rid-of-her-recording-reportedly-shows-trump-fuming-about-fired-ambassador/</a></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/trumps-shocking-and-deeply-disturbing-foreign-conflicts-of-interest-detailed-in-explosive-new-report"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/trumps-shocking-and-deeply-disturbing-foreign-conflicts-of-interest-detailed-in-explosive-new-report</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Trump’s ‘shocking and deeply disturbing’ foreign conflicts of interest detailed in explosive new report</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Written by Brad Reed / Raw Story January 20, 2020</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Even though President Donald Trump has been impeached for his efforts to shake down the Ukrainian government to investigate his political opponents, Democrats in Congress are still working on uncovering information about Trump’s unprecedented conflicts of interests with foreign governments.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A new report from Politico shows just how deep Trump’s foreign conflicts of interest go, and they show multiple potential violations of the Constitution’s so-called emoluments clause that bars the president from taking payments from foreign governments.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Among the conflicts include <b>“state-owned companies in China, Saudi Arabia and South Korea” </b>that are building Trump resorts, as well as countries that “are constructing roads and donating public land for new developments” at Trump properties. The report cites recently disclosed documents showing that “the Trump administration authorized foreign governments to rent condos in Trump World Tower in New York.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">”</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">The Trump administration and the Trump Organization have been infamously uncooperative with congressional investigations and have instead taken a strategy of dragging things out through the courts for as long as possible.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Nonetheless, Congressional Democrats remain determined to get to the bottom of the president’s shady foreign dealings.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">“The level of this is shocking and deeply disturbing,”<b> Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI)</b>, tells Politico. “This president has a habit of doing things out in the open, which are completely improper or even illegal and somehow … the average person thinks, ‘Well, if he’s doing it out in the open it must be OK; I must not completely understand the rules.’ But it’s not.”</font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/you-cannot-expect-anything-but-fascism-pedagogy-theorist-explains-how-trump-legitimated-a-culture-of-lying-cruelty-and-a-collapse-of-social-responsibility/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/you-cannot-expect-anything-but-fascism-pedagogy-theorist-explains-how-trump-legitimated-a-culture-of-lying-cruelty-and-a-collapse-of-social-responsibility/</a></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">see post-truth</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/trumps-top-russia-expert-placed-on-administrative-leave-and-escorted-from-the-white-house-report/"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/trumps-top-russia-expert-placed-on-administrative-leave-and-escorted-from-the-white-house-report/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">andrew peek, going to davos</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">120 2 on AN</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" /><div><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font 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face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times 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lnx</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>
</div><div>Trump’s legal team is a wretched hive of scum and villainy</div><div>Official White House Photo by D. Myles Cullen</div><div>Written by Martin Longman / Washington Monthly January 17, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>From time immemorial, port cities have been “wretched hives of scum and villainy,” so why should spaceports be any different? That was the theory behind Mos Eisley, home of the famous bar scene in the original Star Wars. And why should Trump’s International Hotel in Washington, D.C. be any different? It’s a gathering place for every kind of crook and scoundrel. As Lev Parnas told Rachel Maddow, “It was like a breeding ground at the Trump hotel.”</div><div>
</div><div>And why should Trump’s legal defense team not follow suit?</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>President Donald Trump’s defense team for his Senate impeachment trial will include former independent counsel Ken Starr, who investigated President Bill Clinton, and famed defense attorney Alan Dershowitz, sources familiar with the president’s legal strategy told NBC News Friday.</div><div>
</div><div>Also joining the team is Robert Ray, who succeeded Starr as Clinton special counsel, and Pam Bondi, the former Florida attorney general who joined the White House in November to help manage the messaging around impeachment, the sources said.</div><div>
</div><div>Villainy may be in the eye of the beholder, but the stench of scum is hard to ignore.</div><div>
</div><div>Kenneth Starr is a completely disgraced man, after bringing Baylor University into total disrepute:</div><div>
</div><div>Starr was ousted as president of Baylor University and then resigned as chancellor in 2016 amid an investigation into claims he and school officials mishandled allegations of sexual assault by football players.</div><div>
</div><div>An independent investigation found that under Starr’s leadership the school actively discouraged “some complainants from reporting or participating in student conduct processes and in one instance constituted retaliation against a complainant for reporting sexual assault.”</div><div>
</div><div>Dershowitz has been credibly accused of taking advantage of the services of Jeffrey Epstein’s underage sex slavery empire.</div><div>
</div><div>“I kept my underwear on during the massage… I don’t like massages particularly.”</div><div>
</div><div>— Alan Dershowitz, via Skype, trying to explain why he was in an alleged sex trafficker’s house but was only massaged by an “old, old Russian woman” and had no clue what was going on in the rest of the house. Dershowitz also said: “Were there young women in another part of the house giving massages when I wasn’t around? I have no idea of that.”</div><div>
</div><div>Bondi is a poster girl for public corruption. Further, the worst of the accusations against her actually involves the person she’s supposed to defend in the impeachment trial.</div><div>
</div><div>Bondi was serving as Florida’s attorney general when allegations began to arise that Trump University was a fraud. On the one hand, she publicly said she’d look into it. On the other, she privately asked Trump to fund her reelection campaign. Trump obliged, illegally using his charitable organization to do it. Bondi promptly dropped the investigation into Trump University, and both parties defended the whole arrangement. Then they denied it had been an arrangement at all, with Trump claiming that he had actually donated the money to another organization with a similar name. But that organization never received any money, and Trump was fined by the IRS and his charitable organization was shut down.</div><div>
</div><div>More recently, Bondi has used her access to the president to rake in money from Qatar as a lobbyist. She also appears to disturbingly tight with the Scientologists.</div><div>
</div><div>Then there is Robert Ray. He’s another piece of work.</div><div>
</div><div>The former federal prosecutor who succeeded Kenneth W. Starr as independent counsel in the Whitewater investigation has been charged with stalking his ex-girlfriend, police said.</div><div>
</div><div>Robert W. Ray surrendered to police Thursday. He was ordered to appear in court at a later date and released, police said.</div><div>
</div><div>A complaint filed by Ray’s ex-girlfriend says he e-mailed, called and visited her against her wishes after their relationship ended.</div><div>
</div><div>There are many possible ways to respond to Trump’s choice of defenders.</div><div>
</div><div>Monica Lewinsky</div><div>@MonicaLewinsky</div><div>this is definitely an “are you fucking kidding me?” kinda day.</div><div>
</div><div>As far as I know, Bondi has never been closely associated with sexual misconduct or assault, but I think she’d fit in at the Star Wars cantina just fine. As it is, her lobbying firm regularly sends its clients to Trump’s D.C. hotel.</div><div>
</div><div>Maybe these are the only people who are morally compromised enough to see some advantage in arguing for the president’s innocence, but I hope the House Managers remember to bring their lightsabers to the proceedings.</div><div>
</div><div>Speaking of which, maybe Ponda Baba was an innocent victim and Obi-Wan Kenobi was wrong to cut off his hand. I’m sure Alan Dershowitz would be willing to make that argument.</div></div><div><div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman"> =</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/i-made-a-lot-of-bankers-look-very-good-trump-lets-the-mask-slip-as-wall-street-titans-get-32-billion-tax-windfall/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/i-made-a-lot-of-bankers-look-very-good-trump-lets-the-mask-slip-as-wall-street-titans-get-32-billion-tax-windfall/</font></a></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>‘I made a lot of bankers look very good’: Trump lets the mask slip as Wall Street titans get $32 billion tax windfall</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">Written by Jon Queally / Common Dreams January 17, 2020</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">“I made a lot of bankers look very good,” President Donald Trump boasted this week just before it was reported Thursday that the nation’s six largest banks alone have received an estimated $32 billion windfall thanks to Republican tax cuts.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The figures were generated by Bloomberg News after reviewing the 2019 profits earnings of JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>By looking at the banks’ earnings in relation to effective tax rates that dropped from 20% to 18% last year—and comparing that to the 30% average they paid prior to the tax cut bill passed by Republicans and signed by Trump at the end of 2017—the analysis showed just how well the Wall Street giants have fared even as they <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">cut back their work forces approximately 1,200 people over the same time period.</span></b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>“The tax savings have spurred the banks to record profit,” Bloomberg‘s Yalman Onaran reported. “The six firms posted $120 billion in net income for 2019, inching past 2018’s mark. They had never surpassed $100 billion before the tax cuts.</b>”</font></p></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">...[ask for thx]</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">120 aha</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">kind of scary 6 drivers to war:</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">1) BO remark there's just a penchant/bias for it in DC</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">2) red calf dominionist lunacy 3 p's?!</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">3) general islamophobia, but boosted by bannon clash of of BS</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">terrorism fear/hyped, vote gop to keep you safe/nat'l security traf BS ploy now breaking down?</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">4) djt accuse BO of wag the dog war, so projection, plus IMPEACHMENT</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">5? legit fear of iran hegemony? why do we care? oil? straits of H?</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">7 saudi pals want it kush? mbs?</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">120 icn</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">t<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://insideclimatenews.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7c733794100bcc7e083a163f0&id=f35a306209&e=06876ede6b" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span helvetica="helvetica" neue="neue" arial="arial" verdana="verdana" sans-serif="sans-serif">rump Moves to Erase Climate Change from Environmental Reviews</span></a></font></div><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font style="background-color: inherit;">BY: MARIANNE LAVELLE</font></span><br style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><span helvetica="helvetica" neue="neue" sans-serif="sans-serif" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Critics say he’s undermining a bedrock environmental protection law that established the federal government’s duty as "trustee of the environment for succeeding generations."</span></font><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/fascism-scholar-if-trump-wins-again-america-will-be-ready-for-full-on-authoritarian-rule/"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/fascism-scholar-if-trump-wins-again-america-will-be-ready-for-full-on-authoritarian-rule/</font></a></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Fascism scholar: If Trump wins again, America will be ‘ready for full-on authoritarian rule’</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Written by Chauncey DeVega / Salon January 13, 2020</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that Congress will soon send its articles of impeachment for Donald Trump to the Senate, where Republicans are determined to acquit him on all charges, including abuse of power, obstruction of Congress, and encouraging foreign powers to interfere in the 2020 presidential election.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">No evidence or witnesses will persuade the Senate majority to reach a conclusion consistent with the obvious facts that Donald Trump should be impeached, convicted and removed from office. The Constitution’s mandate that a impeachment should involve an impartial trial and a fair hearing of evidence and witnesses has no meaning in TrumpWorld.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">The Republican Party is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump’s regime and an expression of his personal will and power. To that end,<b> Trump has promised financial support to the Republican senators who will soon be voting at his trial.</b> It has also been reported that Trump ordered the execution of Iranian Maj. Gen.  Qassem Soleimani in order to ensure that Republican senators would support his acquittal.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">In essence, Donald Trump pays political blood money to his supporters. This is more evidence of Trump’s political thuggery and mobster-style behavior that is unbefitting an American president.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Like other dictators, authoritarians, autocrats and political thugs, Donald Trump believes he is above the law. With the support of Attorney General William Barr, this appears increasingly true.</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">The obscenities continue.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Donald Trump has suggested he is “the chosen one” and God’s messenger on earth. White Christian evangelicals believe this to be true and have pledged themselves to his cult.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Writing at USA Today, historian John Fea described the first event of Trump’s “Evangelicals for Trump” campaign, which occurred in Florida two weeks ago:</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">His evangelical supporters loved every minute of it. That night, <b>Christians who claim to be citizens of the Kingdom of God went to church, cheered the depraved words of a president and warmly embraced his offer of political power.</b> Such a display by evangelicals is unprecedented in American history.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">I usually get angry when members of my tribe worship at the feet of Trump. This time, I just felt sad.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Trump and his allies label Democrats, liberals, progressives and anyone else opposing him as traitors and enemies of the United States. The most recent example: at a rally last Thursday in Toledo, Trump said that Democrats were “vicious horrible people.”</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">None of this should be surprising. Trump is following the authoritarian’s playbook almost to the letter in his assault on American democracy, the Constitution and the rule of law. The question is not whether Donald Trump is an authoritarian and would-be dictator but rather whether anything or anyone is capable of stopping him.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">I recently spoke with historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat in an effort to better understand where America is on its road to fascism and authoritarianism in this fourth year of Trump’s regime.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Ben-Ghiat is a professor of history and Italian studies at New York University and an expert in fascism and authoritarianism. She is the author of “Italian Fascism’s Empire Cinema” and other books. Her opinion essays and other writing have been featured by CNN, the Washington Post, The New Yorker and the Atlantic.</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">This conversation has been edited for clarity and length. You can also listen to my full conversation with Ruth Ben-Ghiat through the player embedded below.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">As you watch the Trump regime’s ongoing authoritarian assault on America, how do you feel?</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">I feel very resolute. It is very important not to feel helpless and desperate. In a funny way, I’m not frustrated with the Trump supporters because I understand how the process works. Of course, I’m very upset that there are in fact Trump supporters and I have zero sympathy towards them. But once individuals bond to an authoritarian leader it is a process, like a train that has already departed the station. It is very hard to stop and is well underway.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">How is this constant state of temporary hope and then inevitable disappointment impacting the American people? For example, Trump has been impeached. Yet now he will be acquitted by his servants in the Republican Party. The American people are in a manic state because of Trump’s regime.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">This is all happening a little bit at a time. Surveying the history of authoritarianism, only in a military coup do you really have an instant change. A person leaves the house in the morning and five hours later they are living in a dictatorship and there is mass violence. But otherwise, even Mussolini and Hitler took many years to get into power.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The shoe drops slowly, and it is hard for many people to discern what is really happening.</span> This is especially true when there are multiple things happening at one time. For example, William Barr and his attacks on the rule of law and how he is part of this right-wing Christian counterrevolution in America. Yes, Trump is impeached, and that is a type of pushback against him and his forces. What judges are doing to slow down Trump’s agenda is very important too. It is very important to not give up because that is what authoritarians want the public to do.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Authoritarian leaders want you to believe that resistance is futile and that you should just give up. If we give up and resign ourselves to the conclusion that impeaching Trump is not going to have an effect, then he has won. Impeachment is extremely important because it will be on the record, marked in the history books as opposition to Trump and his agenda.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Three years into Trump’s regime, why are so many Americans still in a state of denial about this crisis?</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">They have no reference point for what is going on in America right now. Providing that reference point is one of the things that motivates my work. Many people are also scared. Many people in the news media are afraid to really engage the fact that Trump is an authoritarian because if they do so then reality becomes too threatening, and therefore they would have to take a different stance publicly.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Is this a lack of historical context and knowledge? Is it cowardice?</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As I said earlier, only in a military coup do we really see sudden change in a society. Most people are not trained to recognize what is going on with Trump’s authoritarian agenda. If these leading media voices admit that they are living in the middle of a fascist, authoritarian takeover, then what are they going to do about it? Compare the United States to Hong Kong. Those incredible human beings are out there in the streets in Hong Kong day after day, month after month, because they know really well what the stakes are. </span>The American people either do not understand those facts or they do not want to inconvenience themselves and disrupt their lives. That lack of mass protest and resistance is also an indictment of a particular American way of life where people are overly comfortable and take too many things for granted about their culture and democracy and their own lives.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Applying your historical framework and expertise about fascism and authoritarianism, what are Donald Trump and his regime an example of?</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Donald Trump is an example of someone who comes up in history, and the way forward has been prepared for him, in this instance by the Tea Party and the Republican Party.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>The road was already prepared for Trump by eight years of Barack Obama and how that created a type of mass anger and rage and panic among many white people. People like Donald Trump appear in history and their role is to undo social and political progress. Trump is a figure who is trying to undo everything that Barack Obama stood for and accomplished.</b> But of course, historical figures such as Donald Trump add something new. Trump comes in and he has a “movement.” Trump does not have a political party. At first, Trump said that he was above politics. This is another common thread among authoritarians.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">When we say that Trumpism is a “movement,” what specifically do we mean?   </font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Donald Trump said, “This isn’t a party, it’s movement.” Trump did this to excite his potential followers and get their loyalty. At a traditional Republican convention or campaign rally, there are not loyalty oaths. There are not MAGA hats. <b>All successful movements have rituals and symbols. Donald Trump is a marketer. He knows that symbols and rituals and having a movement is how you get people excited. Nobody is excited to show up for the Republican Party. But the Tea Party? Donald Trump? MAGA? That is something different. There are actually people who are addicted to Donald Trump’s rallies</b>. They are following a movement. Of course that movement has now taken over the Republican Party — and Trump transcends the GOP.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Trump is establishing what is known as “personalist rule.” This can happen in failing democracies and in actual authoritarian states. Personalist rule is a process wherein the state comes to revolve around the personal agendas and needs of the ruler. This includes the need to defend the ruler’s corruption. To defend the ruler from the law and judicial processes and investigative journalists. Another indicator of personalist rule is when the leader’s personal obsessions, such as Trump’s wall, begin to monopolize and overtake other policies. This would not be possible and sustainable without the leader’s supporters coalescing in a movement.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">There is an obsession in the mainstream news media with Trump’s “white working class” supporters. In that reporting, one of the repeated narratives is that those people feel some type of kinship with him. Somehow, in their delusional minds, Trump’s supporters believe that a supposed billionaire is actually like them. He is “oppressed” and “victimized,” as they are. The premise is absurd. But why is it so compelling for some people? </font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>That is the personality cult. For Trump’s rule to work — as with Putin and other autocrats and authoritarians — the leader must be both an everyman and a superman</b>.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> The leader is a populist in the sense that he speaks the “language of the people.” Almost all of these types of leaders have a <b>sense of humor where they make crude jokes that get people to laugh. Politically incorrect jokes. Their humor is corrosive, of course. But the jokes work in showing that these types of leaders are very much of the people. Donald Trump uses a fourth-grade vocabulary. He is also very visual. He performs with his body. Yet Donald Trump is a billionaire, and supposedly a great success. The combination of all those traits is very attractive to his followers. “He’s a super success story. He’s done this, he’s done that.”</b></span></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Consider the expression “TrumpWorld.” It is an accurate description. The goal of Trump and his allies is to colonize society and the media 24/7. To achieve that goal, they need attention and to<b> get inside people’s heads. This is TrumpWorld. Authoritarian leaders also present themselves as victims of coups or other attacks by their enemies. This makes them look vulnerable. These types of leaders talk about emotion in their speeches. Trump does this. He’s always talking about “love” and “hate,” relative to his friends, enemies and rivals. This makes Trump’s followers bond to him because they feel very emotional and want to take care of their leade</b>r. This is a very successful strategy by authoritarian leaders like Donald Trump.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Part of the power of the Trump cult is how he promises to be their savior, protector, friend and father figure. </font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">It is no accident that during the impeachment process Donald Trump has said that he is going to stay in office for 28 years. Of course, that is not physiologically possible. But what matters is the fantasy, because Trump is terrified right now. Leaders of that type create fortresses around themselves in a million ways. They do this with flatterers, lackeys and family. Authoritarian leaders like Trump do not want to hear any criticism. They also want and need total control over people because that settles the anxiety.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Trump does this in other ways as well. He does not have permanent appointees. This means they do not have to be confirmed by the Senate. Authoritarian leaders are actually terrified and brittle people inside. That is why they retreat inward. Donald Trump will not take any real questions from the news media. The authoritarian leader’s ego will not permit any questions, and the longer they stay in charge the worse it gets for a country because they lose all sense of reality.</span> Leaders like Donald Trump make bad decisions, such as starting wars. One of the things that scares me the most is that Donald Trump is extremely destructive. Authoritarian leaders like Donald Trump delight in being destructive. Sometimes such people are also self-destructive.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">How does authoritarianism impact people’s sense of time and history?</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Part of the experience is the anxiety of the minute. <b>Twitter </b>facilitates this because it is not just how many people check the news, but also journalists drip out news stories in the form of small tweets.<b> This is not just one presentation of a story and the facts. It is not like reading the front page of a newspaper and getting the whole narrative at once.</b> Twitter is a filter for information and experience that is constantly changing. People lose perspective on what is important and what is not.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Our capacity for discernment goes down and our anxiety goes up. Everything is made to feel urgent</b>. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Yet the more time people spend on Twitter the less time they are doing anything about Donald Trump and the crisis</span>.<b> Twitter is just an example of this problem. But it is the prime example because it is an unhelpful mechanism psychologically, emotionally and politically because it’s like a mass venting session without much real world impact.</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">How should we understand the ways that Trump and his movement conflate their love for him with loyalty to the country and what it means to be a “real American”?   </font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>The civil service has been purged and ruined under the Trump administration. The civil service makes government work. The State Department is a particularly sad example. </b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Career civil servants have been purged because of ideological tests. This can take the form of leader loyalty — which is an ideology of loyalty. It could mean Trump removing experts who know that climate change is real. Civil rights as well. For example, <b>The Department of Health and Human Services under Trump now has a “civil rights office” devoted to the “rights” of right-wing Christian evangelicals who believe their freedom is violated by doctors who agree to perform abortions</b>. The state has been hollowed out. Expertise is gone and ideology rules. The state, the government bureaucracy and civil service are now just a vehicle for the authoritarian leader’s goals.</span></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">The end goal is for Trump, Barr, the Republican Party and the conservative movement more generally is to have their own secret police. I keep returning to the question of civil disobedience, protest and corporeal politics as a response to this threat to democracy. Are the American people just cowardly? Have they already surrendered? Is the news media just afraid of the truth? Calm my nerves — or not — about the Trump’s regime’s plans to have political police and other enforcers.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">This brings up the question of madness versus method. One of the objections that gets leveled at people who offer these types of analyses about Trump and authoritarianism is, “No, Trump’s just impulsive.” He’s not mentally ill. He may have some dementia, but he knows exactly what he’s doing. Trump’s spokespeople have been very clear that Trump wants his own intelligence and security services.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Such goals are part of the counterrevolution that has been slowly chipping away at democratic institutions, norms and laws under Trump and the Republican Party. Trump is going after the country’s trust in the FBI and intelligence services. All the relevant structures of government that could obstruct what Trump wants to do are being chipped away. What Trump has been doing up to this point is not at all an accident in that regard.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>It takes a lot of time to prepare the public for such an outcome. It requires information and psychological warfare. Trump is very expert in those areas. Chip away at reality and objectivity, and then the public is ready for full-on authoritarian rule. The Nazis knew this very well. </b>The public must be shaped and prepared. This is what Goebbels excelled at. The Russians excel at it. Once the public is shaped and prepared, the authoritarian regime can do what it wants.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">What is the Trump regime preparing the American people for?</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Not only Trump, but many other people around him, including Republican elected officials, have been speaking like authoritarian thugs. They say things such as, “Hillary Clinton needs to be executed.” That is how fascists speak. Making such threats is a type of trial balloon. If Trump wins in 2020, those trial balloons of fascist threats will be able to be made real. Even with all the horrible things that Trump has said and done, his popularity remains stable. Trump’s followers have not deserted him. The 2020 presidential election is almost a referendum and a mandate for Donald Trump to finally do what he’s been threatening to do all along.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">What were some moments when the rise of Trumpism, and what feels like a type of inevitability and path dependency, could have been stopped?</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">This is called “gatekeeping.” Authoritarian leaders and their movements are very clear about being violent. Authoritarians always tell you what they are going to do. It’s just that the American people are not ready to hear it. We do not want to hear the truth that Donald Trump is not kidding with his violent threats and promises. When Trump would not release his tax returns, that was a damning signal of how imperiled America is and was. When Trump said he could shoot someone on the street without losing any followers, that was another moment where I knew we were stuck on a very dangerous path. No American presidential candidate in modern history has threatened to murder someone as part of his campaign. Such behavior is what political thugs do.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">The Republican Party’s leaders and other influential voices could have prevented the corruption of the system by this violent outsider. That was one path. The other path was and is to accept Donald Trump fully and claim he’s your savior sent from God. That is the path America is now on.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">What comes next with Donald Trump in 2020 and the presidential election?</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Exacerbation of the polarization. The goal is to leave people so confused about the truth that they are more and more dependent on Trump while also being increasingly disaffected. Trump may capitalize on some horrible event happening to the United States. </b>Donald Trump has made some very scary declarations that the way to unite a country is through some catastrophe. Trump says that he hopes such a horrible thing does not happen but that is the way a leader can unite the county. Donald Trump has stripped anti-terrorism programs of their resources. He has defunded many national security programs that combat terrorism. If a calamity took place, Donald Trump would use it to declare martial law or some type of ongoing national emergency.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Chauncey DeVega is a politics staff writer for Salon. His essays can also be found at Chaunceydevega.com. He also hosts a weekly podcast, The Chauncey DeVega Show. Chauncey can be followed on Twitter and Facebook.</font></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/reporters-should-stop-treating-trump-and-his-advisors-as-credible-sources/" rel="bookmark" title="Reporters should stop treating Trump and his advisors as credible sources" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px" font-weight="font-weight" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; line-height: 1.4; display: block;"><font face="Times New Roman">Reporters should stop treating Trump and his advisors as credible sources</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">see for pol</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/trump-has-never-been-anti-war-if-you-understand-the-history-of-gop-foreign-policy-hes-always-been-just-another-republican/"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/trump-has-never-been-anti-war-if-you-understand-the-history-of-gop-foreign-policy-hes-always-been-just-another-republican/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">...Having said that, there is still a crucial difference between our isolationist and interventionist eras — as well as a way of understanding how Donald Trump, for all his efforts to depicting himself as something new on the foreign policy scene, is just a continuation of the status quo that has existed for the last century or so.</font></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman">1. Republican foreign policy was isolationist from the party’s founding through the 1890s...</font></strong></p><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">guts NEPA xl</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-environment-infrastructure-review-2644664081.html"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-environment-infrastructure-review-2644664081.html</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-environment-infrastructure-review-2644664081.html" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" csvg="Csvg" height="%2213%22" width="%2213%22" version="%221.1%22" cg="Cg" transform="%22translate%28-36.467808%2C-258.39005%29%22%3E" cpath="Cpath" d="%22m40.55%2C263.9c0-0.6213%2C0.6213-0.6213%2C0.6213-0.6213%2C1.864%2C0.6213%2C3.107%2C1.864%2C3.728%2C3.728%2C0%2C0%2C0%2C0.6213-0.6213%2C0.6213-1.243-1.864-1.864-2.485-3.728-3.728z%22/%3E" c="C" g="g" e="E" background-position="background-position" right="right" center="center" background-size="background-size" initial="initial" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" repeat="repeat" background-attachment="background-attachment" background-origin="background-origin" background-clip="background-clip" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" font-size="font-size" xmlns="%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22" xmlns:cc="%22http://creativecommons.org/ns%23%22" xmlns:data="data" xmlns:dc="%22http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/%22%3E" xmlns:rdf="%22http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns%23%22">'No Other President Has Had the Gall': Environmental Groups Balk as Trump Proposes Major Rollback of Infrastructure Review Process</a> 1/20.</font></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">1/9/20 NEPA rollback</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">omfg</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2020/1/10/headlines/trump_seeks_to_exempt_large_projects_from_some_environmental_review"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.democracynow.org/2020/1/10/headlines/trump_seeks_to_exempt_large_projects_from_some_environmental_review</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px"><font face="Times New Roman"> Trump is proposing changing the nation’s oldest environmental law to exempt large infrastructure projects, such as pipelines and power plants, from environmental review. If enacted, the changes would exempt agencies from considering the cumulative environmental impacts of projects, which could include studying the climate crisis.</font></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">sort of a ctr-eg of his gener'l MO to stay general, frosh-esque BS/guessing :many ppl are saying, we are looking into...</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">or maybe b/c called on BS/lack of evidence, they make it up?</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/the-evolution-of-a-trump-lie-how-we-got-from-imminent-attack-to-four-embassies-in-9-fact-free-steps/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/the-evolution-of-a-trump-lie-how-we-got-from-imminent-attack-to-four-embassies-in-9-fact-free-steps/</font></a></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>The evolution of a Trump lie: How we got from ‘imminent attack’ to ‘four embassies’ in 9 fact-free steps</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Written by Mark Sumner / Daily Kos January 12, 2020</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Sometimes deception generates a “tangled web,” other times just a hilarious mess. But Donald Trump’s war-triggering assassination and post-drone strike rationalizations show two things: one is how clumsily Trump shifts his lies from day to day, the other is how Mike Pompeo and Fox News hurry along in Trump’s wake, trying to paper over irrational statements with a thin veneer of claims that all fall apart on even the most cursory examination.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">This isn’t even how a little lie spawned a big one. This lie started big and it stayed that way. The only thing that really grew was how obviously Pompeo and others were willing to throw away any pretense of integrity to make it seem that Trump had a passing grasp on the facts. By week’s end, America got to see how Pompeo’s I-can’t-help-smirking-when-I-lie grin had grown larger than the Joker’s.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">1) Donald Trump was not supposed to assassinate Qassem Soleimani. Military planners presented it to Trump as the “far out” option under the silly assumption he would take a more reasoned approach.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>2) What those planners weren’t considering wasn’t just Trump’s disdain for reason, but his need to make a big gesture toward Iran to secure the support of Republican senators in his upcoming impeachment trial.</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">3) So the mission went forward, with a pretense of “improving safety,” even though killing the Iranian general made the situation across the whole Middle East immediately, and obviously less secure.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">4) After initially stating that Soleimani was calling back to Tehran for authorization on a plan that threatened hundreds of Americans, Mike Pompeo continually shifted the target and tried to confuse “imminent attack” with retribution for things that were already past.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">5) When Congress finally got a chance to be briefed on the so-called intelligence behind the attack, even Republicans were shocked at the inability of the White House to produce anything to support their actions in the <b>“worst briefing ever”.</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">6) Then, days after the attack and stinging from complaints by Republicans in House and Senate, Trump dropped [as in animal droppings] the idea that<b> Soleimani had been plotting “to blow up the U.S. embassy” into an interview, while providing absolutely no evidence</b>.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">7) With that new claim on the board, Pompeo hurried to not only try to support Trump’s claim by giving a long list of possible targets, including “embassies,” but flat-out lied by saying Congress had been told about the embassy threat in the briefing — which was quickly contradicted by those in attendance.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>8) Trump expanded on his freshly-generated claim</b> at his rally, telling those in attendance that “Soleimani was … looking very seriously at our embassies, and not just the embassy in Baghdad,” forcing Pompeo to ramp up his lies to match Trump’s latest claims.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">9) Trump reaches into his bag of nonsense to come up with the idea that s<b>pecifically four embassies were under threat by Soleimani.</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Your move, Pompeo. And it goes without saying that, at every step along the line, Fox News has been not just cheering on Trump’s latest claim, but out in front, making suggestions that Trump is underplaying the real threat and that only more attacks can bring peace.</font></div></div><div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman"> =</font></p></div></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">ref 1</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b><font face="Times New Roman">The <span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" font-style="font-style" inherit="inherit" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" font-variant-caps="font-variant-caps" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" em="em">Christianization of U.S. Foreign Policy</span></font></b></div><div class="article-title" data-reactid="119" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px 196.656px; padding: 0px 10px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; flex: 0 0 66.6667%; flex-direction: column; width: 786.656px; max-width: 66.6667%;"><h2 class="article-subhead" data-reactid="122" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0.87em 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 400; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45; vertical-align: baseline;"><span data-reactid="123" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">Behind President Trump's Twitter theatrics, there's a growing theme to American diplomacy.</font></span></h2></div><div class="article-meta" data-reactid="124" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px 196.656px; padding: 0px 10px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; position: relative; flex: 0 0 66.6667%; flex-direction: column; width: 786.656px; max-width: 66.6667%;"><font face="Times New Roman" /><h3 class="article-byline" data-reactid="125" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 1.4em 0px 0px; padding: 0px; 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href="https://newrepublic.com/authors/kathryn-joyce" data-reactid="129" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; text-transform: uppercase;">KATHRYN JOYCE</a><span class="author-list-comma" data-reactid="130" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;" /></span></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div></h3><h5 class="article-date" data-reactid="131" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; border-width: 0px 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: initial; border-left-style: solid; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: initial; border-left-color: rgb(215, 210, 204); border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; display: inline-block;"><time property="dc:date dc:created" itemprop="datePublished" content="2019-03-25" datetime="2019-03-25" data-reactid="132" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">March 25, 2019</time></h5></div><div class="article-meta" data-reactid="124" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px 196.656px; padding: 0px 10px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; position: relative; flex: 0 0 66.6667%; flex-direction: column; width: 786.656px; max-width: 66.6667%;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/153387/christianization-us-foreign-policy"><font face="Times New Roman">https://newrepublic.com/article/153387/christianization-us-foreign-policy</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Last <span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.005em;"> </span><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.005em;">Thursday, Donald Trump</span><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.005em;"> </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/us/politics/golan-heights-trump.html" target="blank" rel="nofollow" style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.005em; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; background-image: linear-gradient(0deg, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 49%, rgb(0, 0, 0) 50%, rgb(0, 0, 0)); background-size: 2px 2px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-position: 0px 97.5%; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.09em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.075em 0px;">announced</a><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.005em;">, via Twitter, a radical shift in foreign policy, saying it was time to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the occupied territory of Golan Heights, seized from Syria in 1981. As international headlines quickly pointed out, the tweet contradicted both international law and a UN resolution; seemed a transparent gift to embattled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, just weeks before he faces re-election amid a corruption scandal; and cheered Israeli conservatives hoping to have Israeli control of the West Bank recognized as well. Upon hearing the news, NBC</span><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.005em;"> </span><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/trump-lends-helping-hand-netanyahu-campaign-trail-n986046?cid=sm_npd_ms_tw_bw" target="blank" rel="nofollow" style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.005em; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; background-image: linear-gradient(0deg, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 49%, rgb(0, 0, 0) 50%, rgb(0, 0, 0)); background-size: 2px 2px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-position: 0px 97.5%; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.09em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.075em 0px;">reported</a><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.005em;">, Netanyahu hugged U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was visiting Israel as part of a five-day tour of the Middle East. Less discussed was the way in which the tweet capped off a week showcasing the Trump administration’s favored relationship with American evangelicals.</span></font></div><div class="article-text-wrap" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; width: 1160px; max-width: 1160px; letter-spacing: -0.1px;"><div class="article-text-grid" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px -10px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><aside id="recirc-0" class="recirc-most-popular pull-right pull-small" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 98.3281px 20px 10px; padding: 0px 10px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; flex: 0 0 25%; flex-direction: column; width: 295px; z-index: 2; max-width: 25%; float: right; clear: right;"><div data-reactroot="" class="article-recirc article-recirc-most-popular" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><h4 class="article-recirc-header" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0.5em 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.25; vertical-align: baseline; letter-spacing: 0.03em; text-transform: uppercase;"><font face="Times New Roman">MOST POPULAR</font></h4><ol class="article-recirc-items" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 1em 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.4; vertical-align: baseline; 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flex: 0 0 66.6667%; flex-direction: column; width: 786.656px; max-width: 66.6667%;"><font face="Times New Roman">The Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), among Pompeo’s traveling press team, sat down with the secretary in Jerusalem, and breathlessly <a href="http://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/israel/2019/march/exclusive-secretary-of-state-pompeo-to-news-god-raised-up-trump-like-he-raised-up-queen-esther" target="blank" rel="nofollow" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; background-image: linear-gradient(0deg, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 49%, rgb(0, 0, 0) 50%, rgb(0, 0, 0)); background-size: 2px 2px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-position: 0px 97.5%; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.09em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.075em 0px;">reported</a> something quite different from the mainstream press’s legalistic coverage: that Trump might just be “a modern-day Esther, poised to defend Israel and save the Jewish people.”<span style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;" /></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 1.5em 0px 1.5em 196.656px; padding: 0px 10px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.55; vertical-align: baseline; letter-spacing: -0.005em; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; flex: 0 0 66.6667%; flex-direction: column; width: 786.656px; max-width: 66.6667%;"><font face="Times New Roman">To convince U.S. evangelicals to overlook Trump’s personal failings, the president has previously been compared to Persian King Cyrus, a nonbeliever in the Bible who nonetheless became an instrument for fulfilling God’s will, conquering Babylon and allowing Jews to return to Israel. The comparison has also resonated elsewhere: Last March, an Israeli organization <a href="https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/3/5/16796892/trump-cyrus-christian-right-bible-cbn-evangelical-propaganda" target="blank" rel="nofollow" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; background-image: linear-gradient(0deg, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 49%, rgb(0, 0, 0) 50%, rgb(0, 0, 0)); background-size: 2px 2px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-position: 0px 97.5%; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.09em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.075em 0px;">minted</a> a coin pairing images of Cyrus and Trump, while Netanyahu underscored the comparison in a Washington, D.C., speech thanking Trump for moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.<span style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;" /></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 1.5em 0px 1.5em 196.656px; padding: 0px 10px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.55; vertical-align: baseline; letter-spacing: -0.005em; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; flex: 0 0 66.6667%; flex-direction: column; width: 786.656px; max-width: 66.6667%;"><font face="Times New Roman">Pompeo’s statement elevated the stakes, referring to the biblical story of Queen Esther, who used her beauty and wiles to prevent a massacre of Persian Jews—a feat commemorated in the annual Jewish holiday of Purim, also celebrated last Thursday. Netanyahu, too, declared Trump’s tweet “a miracle of Purim.”<span style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;" /></font></p></div></div><div class="full-width inserted-dfp ad-container-0" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px calc(-50vw + 50%); padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; width: 100vw; max-width: none; clear: both; letter-spacing: -0.1px;"><div class="article-text-wrap" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; width: 1160px; max-width: 1160px; letter-spacing: -0.1px;"><div class="article-text-grid" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px -10px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 1.5em 0px 1.5em 196.656px; padding: 0px 10px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.55; vertical-align: baseline; letter-spacing: -0.005em; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; flex: 0 0 66.6667%; flex-direction: column; width: 786.656px; max-width: 66.6667%;"><font face="Times New Roman">Republicans have ventured the comparison before, with both <a href="https://prospect.org/article/sarah-palin-anointed" target="blank" rel="nofollow" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; background-image: linear-gradient(0deg, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 49%, rgb(0, 0, 0) 50%, rgb(0, 0, 0)); background-size: 2px 2px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-position: 0px 97.5%; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.09em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.075em 0px;">Sarah Palin</a> and <a href="https://therevealer.org/god-save-the-queen/" target="blank" rel="nofollow" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; background-image: linear-gradient(0deg, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 49%, rgb(0, 0, 0) 50%, rgb(0, 0, 0)); background-size: 2px 2px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-position: 0px 97.5%; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.09em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.075em 0px;">George W. Bush</a>. The story of Esther, journalist Sarah Posner has <a href="https://prospect.org/article/pastor-strangelove" target="blank" rel="nofollow" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; background-image: linear-gradient(0deg, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 49%, rgb(0, 0, 0) 50%, rgb(0, 0, 0)); background-size: 2px 2px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-position: 0px 97.5%; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.09em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.075em 0px;">observed</a>, has long been used by<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Christian Zionists—evangelicals who believe the return of Christ depends on an apocalyptic scenario in which Jews return to Israel, and convert to Christianity—to argue for an invasion of Iran.</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 1.5em 0px 1.5em 196.656px; padding: 0px 10px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.55; vertical-align: baseline; letter-spacing: -0.005em; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; flex: 0 0 66.6667%; flex-direction: column; width: 786.656px; max-width: 66.6667%;"><font face="Times New Roman">For Trump, it’s a particularly audacious comparison. “Esther’s story is that of a young Jewish woman in the ‘harem’ of the Persian king, and through her wit, grace, and charm ends up as queen—and able to avert the bloodlust of an antisemitic minister,” Steven Gardiner, an anthropologist and senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, wrote to me via email. “In other words, Esther was a woman placed in the terrifying and untenable position of sexual servitude, but nonetheless managed to save her people. No one less resembles that position than Donald Trump.</font></p><div class="article-body" itemprop="articleBody" data-reactid="138" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; letter-spacing: normal;"><div class="sidebar-and-content-body" data-reactid="139" style="font-style: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; margin: auto; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.55; vertical-align: baseline; letter-spacing: -0.005em; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; display: inherit; position: relative; width: 1160px; max-width: 1160px;"><div class="content-body" data-reactid="146" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="article-text-wrap" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; width: 1160px; max-width: 1160px;"><div class="article-text-grid" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px -10px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 1.5em 0px 1.5em 196.656px; padding: 0px 10px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.55; vertical-align: baseline; letter-spacing: -0.005em; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; flex: 0 0 66.6667%; flex-direction: column; width: 786.656px; max-width: 66.6667%;"><font face="Times New Roman">Much ink has already been spilled over the bargain Christian leaders in the United States made regarding Trump, backing a candidate with a highly questionable personal life in exchange for Supreme Court seats. Less noticed is how the Trump administration, particularly when it comes to foreign policy under the deeply religious supervision of Mike Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence, continually pitches itself to the Christian Right.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 1.5em 0px 1.5em 196.656px; padding: 0px 10px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.55; vertical-align: baseline; letter-spacing: -0.005em; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; flex: 0 0 66.6667%; flex-direction: column; width: 786.656px; max-width: 66.6667%;"><font face="Times New Roman">Last Monday, just before his departure to the Middle East, Secretary Pompeo held a press call about international religious freedom. Domestically, the Trump administration has chiefly interpreted religious freedom as a matter of exemptions to laws protecting LGBTQ people and women’s healthcare, or efforts to lift restrictions on churches’ political campaigning. Internationally, religious freedom has meant a laser-like focus on Christian persecution, with scant attention to the plight of any other religious minorities: The October <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/pastor-andrew-brunson-meets-trump-after-release-detention-turkey-n919811" target="blank" rel="nofollow" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; background-image: linear-gradient(0deg, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 49%, rgb(0, 0, 0) 50%, rgb(0, 0, 0)); background-size: 2px 2px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-position: 0px 97.5%; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.09em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.075em 0px;">release</a> of North Carolina pastor Andrew Brunson, detained for two years in Turkey on terrorism charges, was one high-profile victory.</font></p></div></div><div class="full-width inserted-dfp ad-container-0" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px calc(-50vw + 50%); padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; width: 100vw; max-width: none; clear: both;"><div class="article-text-wrap" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; width: 1160px; max-width: 1160px;"><div class="article-text-grid" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px -10px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 1.5em 0px 1.5em 196.656px; padding: 0px 10px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.55; vertical-align: baseline; letter-spacing: -0.005em; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; flex: 0 0 66.6667%; flex-direction: column; width: 786.656px; max-width: 66.6667%;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-weight: inherit;">M</span><b>onday’s call excluded the entire State Department press corps, restricting participation to a small group of “faith-based” media outlets</b><span style="font-weight: inherit;">. When an invitation was accidentally sent to a member of the mainstream press and then rescinded, bringing the exclusive briefing </span><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/18/politics/state-department-faith-outlets-briefing/index.html" target="blank" rel="nofollow" style="font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; background-image: linear-gradient(0deg, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 49%, rgb(0, 0, 0) 50%, rgb(0, 0, 0)); background-size: 2px 2px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-position: 0px 97.5%; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.09em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.075em 0px;">to light</a><span style="font-weight: inherit;">, the department doubled down, refusing to provide a transcript of the call or a list of its participants, and arguing that, as a roundtable discussion targeted at “audience-specific media,” it wasn’t subject to normal transparency practices.</span></font></p><p style="font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 1.5em 0px 1.5em 196.656px; padding: 0px 10px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.55; vertical-align: baseline; letter-spacing: -0.005em; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; flex: 0 0 66.6667%; flex-direction: column; width: 786.656px; max-width: 66.6667%;"><font face="Times New Roman">Journalists as well as former State Department spokesperson John Kirby were appalled. “These officials are public servants,” Kirby <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/18/politics/state-department-faith-outlets-briefing/index.html" target="blank" rel="nofollow" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; background-image: linear-gradient(0deg, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 49%, rgb(0, 0, 0) 50%, rgb(0, 0, 0)); background-size: 2px 2px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-position: 0px 97.5%; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.09em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.075em 0px;">told</a> CNN. “What they say—in its entirety—is inherently of public interest.” Particularly, he added, on a topic as “universally relevant as religious freedom in the Middle East.”<span style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;" /></font></p><p style="font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 1.5em 0px 1.5em 196.656px; padding: 0px 10px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.55; vertical-align: baseline; letter-spacing: -0.005em; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; flex: 0 0 66.6667%; flex-direction: column; width: 786.656px; max-width: 66.6667%;"><font face="Times New Roman">One of the media organizations on the call, <a href="https://religionnews.com/2019/03/19/pompeo-all-faiths-will-have-something-to-say-on-forthcoming-peace-plan/" target="blank" rel="nofollow" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; background-image: linear-gradient(0deg, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 49%, rgb(0, 0, 0) 50%, rgb(0, 0, 0)); background-size: 2px 2px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-position: 0px 97.5%; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.09em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.075em 0px;">Religion News Service</a> (not itself a faith-based publication, but a secular outlet that covers the religion beat), reported a partial list of other participants, including the Jewish wire service Jewish Telegraphic Agency; the center-right Jewish magazine <i style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Algemeiner</i>; the evangelical <i style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">World Magazine</i>; and two Catholic publications, <i style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">America </i>magazine and the newspaper of the Catholic Archdiocese of Kansas City.</font></p><p style="font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 1.5em 0px 1.5em 196.656px; padding: 0px 10px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.55; vertical-align: baseline; letter-spacing: -0.005em; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; flex: 0 0 66.6667%; flex-direction: column; width: 786.656px; max-width: 66.6667%;"><font face="Times New Roman">Notably missing from this line-up were any Muslim media organizations, remarkable given the call’s reported inclusion of the administration’s soon-to-be-released Israel-Palestine peace plan.</font></p></div></div><div class="full-width inserted-dfp ad-container-0" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px calc(-50vw + 50%); padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; width: 100vw; max-width: none; clear: both;"><div class="article-text-wrap" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; width: 1160px; max-width: 1160px;"><div class="article-text-grid" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px -10px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><hr class="section-break" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.005em; margin-top: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1.5em; line-height: 1.55; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; height: 1em; border: 0px;" /><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 1.5em 0px 1.5em 196.656px; padding: 0px 10px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.55; vertical-align: baseline; letter-spacing: -0.005em; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; flex: 0 0 66.6667%; flex-direction: column; width: 786.656px; max-width: 66.6667%;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); font-weight: inherit;">Monday’s call wasn’t the first time that Pompeo’s department has privileged faith-based media over mainstream reporters. Last July, just ahead of the department’s first-ever “</span><a href="https://www.christianpost.com/news/first-ever-state-department-ministerial-on-religious-freedom-more-than-talk-pompeo.html" target="blank" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; background-image: linear-gradient(0deg, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 49%, rgb(0, 0, 0) 50%, rgb(0, 0, 0)); background-size: 2px 2px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-position: 0px 97.5%; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.09em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.075em 0px;">ministerial for international religious freedom</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); font-weight: inherit;">,” as </span><i style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">New York Times</i><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); font-weight: inherit;"> religion reporter Elizabeth Dias </span><a href="https://twitter.com/elizabethjdias/status/1020326909404696576" target="blank" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; background-image: linear-gradient(0deg, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 49%, rgb(0, 0, 0) 50%, rgb(0, 0, 0)); background-size: 2px 2px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-position: 0px 97.5%; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.09em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.075em 0px;">noted</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); font-weight: inherit;"> on Twitter, Pompeo had sit-down interviews with four evangelical news outlets, including the </span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN),</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); font-weight: inherit;">before a press conference call where evangelical publications </span><i style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">World Magazine</i><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); font-weight: inherit;"> and </span><i style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Christianity Today</i><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); font-weight: inherit;"> were picked first for questions, and mainstream newspapers, including </span><i style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">The New York Times</i><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); font-weight: inherit;"> and </span><i style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">The Washington Post</i><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); font-weight: inherit;">, were only invited to pose questions at the end of the call</span><span style="font-weight: inherit;">. And evangelical figures have also had enhanced access to policy decisions. In early March, the administration hosted a meeting with evangelical leaders—including prominent (and deeply </span><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/13/politics/hagee-jeffress-us-embassy-jerusalem/index.html" target="blank" rel="nofollow" style="font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; background-image: linear-gradient(0deg, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 49%, rgb(0, 0, 0) 50%, rgb(0, 0, 0)); background-size: 2px 2px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-position: 0px 97.5%; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.09em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.075em 0px;">controversial</a><span style="font-weight: inherit;">) Christian Zionist leaders like Pastor John Hagee—to “hear any concerns and red lines” they might have on a potential Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, </span><a href="https://www.axios.com/trump-kushner-middle-east-peace-plan-evangelicals-5337c4f7-0f91-489c-baad-7799f63baed7.html" target="blank" rel="nofollow" style="font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; background-image: linear-gradient(0deg, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 49%, rgb(0, 0, 0) 50%, rgb(0, 0, 0)); background-size: 2px 2px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-position: 0px 97.5%; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.09em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.075em 0px;">according</a><span style="font-weight: inherit;"> to an Axios source, and to reassure them that any plan would protect Israeli interests.</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 1.5em 0px 1.5em 196.656px; padding: 0px 10px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.55; vertical-align: baseline; letter-spacing: -0.005em; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; flex: 0 0 66.6667%; flex-direction: column; width: 786.656px; max-width: 66.6667%;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>CBN</b><span style="font-weight: inherit;">’s sit-down with Mike Pompeo was only the latest episode in the network’s close relationship with the Trump administration—one that, as Al Jazeera </span><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/listeningpost/2018/11/chosen-trump-christian-broadcasting-network-181103072226078.html" target="blank" rel="nofollow" style="font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; background-image: linear-gradient(0deg, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 49%, rgb(0, 0, 0) 50%, rgb(0, 0, 0)); background-size: 2px 2px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-position: 0px 97.5%; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.09em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.075em 0px;">argued</a><span style="font-weight: inherit;"> last fall, is just as mutually beneficial as the better-known link to Fox & Friends, but is often overlooked as a part of the administration’s effective state media because of the niche audience it targets. CBN’s audience, and its interests, both help explain the administration’s policy moves and may exert influence on them, appealing to a president known for being easily swayed by flattery.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 1.5em 0px 1.5em 196.656px; padding: 0px 10px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.55; vertical-align: baseline; letter-spacing: -0.005em; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; flex: 0 0 66.6667%; flex-direction: column; width: 786.656px; max-width: 66.6667%;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">CBN’s stated mission is to ready the U.S. “for the coming of Jesus Christ.</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); font-weight: inherit;">” To that end, it focuses heavily on Middle East issues.</span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> It airs the weekly program Jerusalem Dateline, and regularly features guests like Joel Rosenberg, the author of a series of Middle East-set evangelical apocalyptic or political thriller novels and </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/26/magazine/mike-pompeo-translates-trump.html" target="blank" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; background-image: linear-gradient(0deg, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 49%, rgb(0, 0, 0) 50%, rgb(0, 0, 0)); background-size: 2px 2px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-position: 0px 97.5%; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.09em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.075em 0px;">a member of Pompeo’s inner circle</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">, who has helped broker interviews between the Secretary and the network. Earlier this month, Rosenberg </span><a href="http://www1.cbn.com/video/I7C031319_JoelRosenberg/author-rosenberg-previews-the-persian-gamble" target="blank" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; background-image: linear-gradient(0deg, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 49%, rgb(0, 0, 0) 50%, rgb(0, 0, 0)); background-size: 2px 2px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-position: 0px 97.5%; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.09em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.075em 0px;">appeared</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> on CBN to discuss his latest work of</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">fiction, <i style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">The Persian Gamble,</i> which posits that Iran used U.S. money to buy North Korean nukes. Rosenberg said he’d recently explained the book’s plot to </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">President Trump.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"> “How do you know that’s not happening already?” Trump apparently replied.</span></b><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit;" /></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 1.5em 0px 1.5em 196.656px; padding: 0px 10px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.55; vertical-align: baseline; letter-spacing: -0.005em; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; flex: 0 0 66.6667%; flex-direction: column; width: 786.656px; max-width: 66.6667%;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>The steady undercurrent to CBN’s focus is the Christian Zionist conviction that the return of Christ depends on a specific scenario involving the return of Jews to Israel. <span style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s a belief that Pompeo seems to share, having </span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/11/trump-administration-evangelical-influence-support" target="blank" rel="nofollow" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; background-image: linear-gradient(0deg, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 49%, rgb(0, 0, 0) 50%, rgb(0, 0, 0)); background-size: 2px 2px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-position: 0px 97.5%; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.09em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.075em 0px;">told</a><span style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"> a Kansas church audience in 2015 to keep fighting “until the rapture.”</span></b></font></p></div></div><div class="full-width inserted-dfp ad-container-0" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px calc(-50vw + 50%); padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; width: 100vw; max-width: none; clear: both;"><div class="article-text-wrap" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; width: 1160px; max-width: 1160px;"><div class="article-text-grid" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px -10px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 1.5em 0px 1.5em 196.656px; padding: 0px 10px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.55; vertical-align: baseline; letter-spacing: -0.005em; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; flex: 0 0 66.6667%; flex-direction: column; width: 786.656px; max-width: 66.6667%;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"><span style="font-weight: inherit;">Even amid an administration stacked with evangelical staffers and </span><a href="https://www.au.org/church-state/october-2018-church-state/cover-story/all-the-presidents-men-and-women-members-of" target="blank" rel="nofollow" style="font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; background-image: linear-gradient(0deg, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 49%, rgb(0, 0, 0) 50%, rgb(0, 0, 0)); background-size: 2px 2px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-position: 0px 97.5%; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.09em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.075em 0px;">advisors</a><span style="font-weight: inherit;">, Pompeo stands out. As former CIA director he described the “</span><b>war on terror” as a <a href="https://theintercept.com/2016/11/23/mike-pompeo-religious-war/" target="blank" rel="nofollow" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; background-image: linear-gradient(0deg, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 49%, rgb(0, 0, 0) 50%, rgb(0, 0, 0)); background-size: 2px 2px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-position: 0px 97.5%; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.09em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.075em 0px;">holy war</a> and <a href="https://www.aclu.org/blog/religious-liberty/free-exercise-religion/senators-must-hold-mike-pompeo-accountable-his" target="blank" rel="nofollow" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; background-image: linear-gradient(0deg, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 49%, rgb(0, 0, 0) 50%, rgb(0, 0, 0)); background-size: 2px 2px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-position: 0px 97.5%; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.09em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.075em 0px;">said</a> the U.S. “worshipped other gods and called it multiculturalism.”</b><span style="font-weight: inherit;"> He now readily </span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/11/trump-administration-evangelical-influence-support" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" style="font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; background-image: linear-gradient(0deg, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 49%, rgb(0, 0, 0) 50%, rgb(0, 0, 0)); background-size: 2px 2px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-position: 0px 97.5%; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.03em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.05em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.09em 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.075em 0px;">tells</a><span style="font-weight: inherit;"> audiences about how he keeps a Bible open on his State Department desk to remind him of God’s truth. One of the driving motivators of Pompeo’s State Department increasingly seems to be what Gardiner calls “well-documented beliefs in the prophetic necessity of the establishment of a ‘Greater Israel’ in order to usher in the End Times”—hardly a stabilizing central principle in an era of nuclear risk. Meanwhile, holding “separate interviews with religious broadcasters,” Gardiner pointed out, means “reaching the white evangelicals who are the single most unwavering part of the voting base of an embattled president.”</span></font></p><p style="font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 1.5em 0px 1.5em 196.656px; padding: 0px 10px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.55; vertical-align: baseline; letter-spacing: -0.005em; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; flex: 0 0 66.6667%; flex-direction: column; width: 786.656px; max-width: 66.6667%;"><font face="Times New Roman">It’s easy to get distracted by the secular spectacle of Trump’s manic Twitter feed, filled with arbitrary bits of outrage or lavish praise, depending on whichever leader has flattered him lately. But as last week showed, better than others, there’s a more disciplined administrative force at work behind the scenes, crafting an intensely ideological foreign policy.</font></p></div></div></div></div></div><footer class="article-footer-wrap" data-reactid="147" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto 3rem; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; width: 1160px; clear: both; max-width: 1160px; letter-spacing: normal;"><div class="article-author-bio" data-reactid="148" style="font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px -10px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; display: flex; flex-flow: row wrap;"><div class="bio-body" data-reactid="149" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 1.5em 0px 0px 196.656px; padding: 0px 10px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.4; vertical-align: baseline; flex: 0 0 66.6667%; flex-direction: column; width: 786.656px; max-width: 66.6667%;"><div class="bio-text" data-reactid="150" style="font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; display: inline;"><p style="font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0.7em 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; display: inline;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-style: inherit;">Kathryn Joyce is a contributing editor at</span> <span style="font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The New Republic </span>and author of<span style="font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking and the New Gospel of Adoption</span></font></p></div></div></div></footer></div></div><div style="font-style: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: inherit;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-style: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: inherit;"><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: inherit;"><div class="mag-header" style="font-style: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 19px; padding: 0px; position: relative;"><h3 class="magcat-titlte entry-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; letter-spacing: 1px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/trump-privately-admits-he-killed-suleimani-under-pressure-from-upcoming-impeachment-trial-report/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;"><font face="Times New Roman">Trump privately admits he killed Suleimani ‘under pressure’ from upcoming impeachment trial: report</font></a></h3><div class="grid-post-box-meta mag-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 7px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><span class="author-italic author vcard" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/igor-derysh/" title="Posts by Igor Derysh" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Igor Derysh</a> / <a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/salon/" title="Posts by Salon " class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Salon</a></font></span></div></div><div class="mag-excerpt entry-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman">President Donald Trump privately told associates that his upcoming impeachment trial factored heavily into his decision to kill top Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, The Wall Street Journal reports. “Trump, after the…</font></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/trump-assassinated-soleimani-to-gain-favor-with-key-gop-senators-vital-to-supporting-him-during-impeachment-trial-wsj/"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/trump-assassinated-soleimani-to-gain-favor-with-key-gop-senators-vital-to-supporting-him-during-impeachment-trial-wsj/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Trump assassinated Soleimani to gain favor with key GOP senators vital to supporting him during impeachment trial: WSJ</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Written by David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement January 10, 2020</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">It has long been said that President Trump only acts in his own self-interest, not the nation’s. And while in recent days President Trump has described the Iranian general he assassinated, Qasem Soleimani, as a “sadistic mass murderer,” and lambasted his predecessors for not having killed him earlier, the truth is few Americans had ever heard of Soleimani before his death, and not once had Trump, at least publicly, ever mentioned his name.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">So why was he assassinated, and why now?</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">The administration and President Trump on and off have claimed there was an “imminent threat” of an attack against the U.S. personnel or U.S. Armed Forces. Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday insisted any evidence to support that claim is far too sensitive to share, even with top members of Congress, sworn to secrecy, in a classified briefing.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Numerous reports put Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, an end-times Christian extremist who believes the Middle East is a hotbed of Biblical proportions, as the driving force behind the killing of Soleimani.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">“We will continue to fight these battles,” Pompeo said in 2015, insisting there is a “never-ending struggle” until “the rapture.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">But like all things Trump, it boils down to self-protection and self-interest.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">The Wall Street Journal published a deep dive Thursday night, headlined, “Trump’s New National Security Team Made Fast Work of Iran Strike.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>And buried in the center of the article, dozens of paragraphs in, is the devastating revelation that President Trump ordered the assassination of a top Iranian general to gain favor with key Republicans whose support is vital to winning his impeachment trial:</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Mr. Trump, after the strike, told associates he was under pressure to deal with Gen. Soleimani from GOP senators he views as important supporters in his coming impeachment trial in the Senate, associates said.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Some have just started to weigh in on the grotesque news.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Michelangelo Signorile</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">@MSignorile</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Let’s be clear re: this WSJ story:</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Trump assassinated Soleimani based on no imminent threat to please GOP Senators who were pressuring him & who he needed re: impeachment.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Terribly corrupt and, well, impeachable. https://twitter.com/JoeSudbay/status/1215636962079657984 …</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Joe Sudbay</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">@JoeSudbay</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">So, yeah, it was about impeachment --> "Trump, after the strike, told associates he was under pressure to deal with Gen. Soleimani from GOP senators he views as important supporters in his coming impeachment trial in the Senate, associates said" https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-new-national-security-team-made-fast-work-of-iran-strike-11578619195 … via @WSJ</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Dennis Mersereau</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">?</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">@wxdam</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">It takes until the 29th paragraph in this story to mention that Trump told people his looming impeachment trial was a factor in his greenlighting the strike against Soleimani.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"> https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-new-national-security-team-made-fast-work-of-iran-strike-11578619195 …</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Trump’s New National Security Team Made Fast Work of Iran Strike</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">White House advisers were cohesive and less inclined than their predecessors to push back against the president’s wishes. They also were less likely to consult in advance with others, including...</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">wsj.com</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font face="Times New Roman">ets</font></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Eric Columbus</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">?</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">@EricColumbus</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">And there it is. https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-new-national-security-team-made-fast-work-of-iran-strike-11578619195 …</font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">ref see xian above</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><a href="https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/01/07/pompeo-aligns-u-s-foreign-policy-with-the-christian-zionists/"><font face="Times New Roman">https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/01/07/pompeo-aligns-u-s-foreign-policy-with-the-christian-zionists/</font></a></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/heres-how-trump-weaponizes-crackpot-ideas-to-maintain-a-firm-grip-on-his-maga-base"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/heres-how-trump-weaponizes-crackpot-ideas-to-maintain-a-firm-grip-on-his-maga-base</font></a></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Here’s how Trump weaponizes crackpot ideas to maintain a firm grip on his MAGA base</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Written by Alex Henderson January 10, 2020</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>If President Donald Trump is reelected in November, it won’t be because the majority of Americans share his views, but because of his ability to fire up his MAGA base, whip them into a frenzy, address their grievances and get them to the polls in large numbers</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">. Trump, journalist Michael Kruse explains in a Politico article headlined “Trump’s Art of the Seal,” knows and understands his audience — and one of the things that has kept that audience excited is his ability to take fringe ideas, get them discussed in mainstream venues and weaponize them.</span></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Trump has inspired widespread discussion of crackpot conspiracy theories ranging from birtherism (the racist claim that President Barack Obama was really born in Kenya instead of the U.S.) to the CrowdStrike theory — a belief that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 presidential election. It was Trump’s pursuit of the CrowdStrike theory, Kruse explains, that led to him being impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">During President Barack Obama’s first term, Kruse explains, Trump’s “proto-political operation was essentially a two-man team” consisting of veteran GOP operative </span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Roger Stone and his protégé Sam Nunberg</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">.</span></b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“One of Nunberg’s self-appointed tasks was to help Trump understand what the masses on the right really wanted, and one way he did that was by listening to </font><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Mark</font><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Levin’</font><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">s increasingly popular radio show</font><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">,” Kruse recalls. “The people who were tuning in most intently to Levin, Nunberg thought, were the people most likely to vote for Trump if he launched an actual bid.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Nunberg, according to Kruse, helped Trump realize that the far-right Tea Party movement was as angry at the GOP establishment as it was at Democrats.</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>“The Tea Party, in the estimation of Levin and his listeners, didn’t start as a reaction to the liberal outrages of President Barack Obama — it started as a reaction to what they viewed as the inconsistently hardline conservative policies of President George W. Bush,” Kruse observes. “Amnesty for immigrants, for instance? An absolute no-go.”</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As Trump’s movement grew, Kruse notes, it didn’t do so by appealing to conservative intellectuals.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“For the better part of the past half-century, Trump, 73, has extracted from an array of similar sources — from the New York Post’s dishy Page Six to the toxicity of Twitter to far-right websites and lowbrow TV — a knack for knowing what people want. Not all people, but many people.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Poll after poll has demonstrated that Trump is unpopular with the majority of Americans. But among his hardcore MAGA base, he is still quite popular. And Kruse wraps up his Politico article by describing the stranglehold Trump maintains on the Republican Party in 2020.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">“If Trump began his political ascent as a follower —  cannily co-opting ideas that resonated with a certain segment of the electorate — in doing so, he clearly has proceeded to forge a following of his own,” Kruse explains. “He has become a leader of those who are willing to be led in this way, solidifying lockstep support from the agenda-setting base of his party as well as its kingpins and figureheads, who parrot him the way he once did Levin.”</font></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">ref</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/01/10/donald-trump-art-of-the-steal-096841"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/01/10/donald-trump-art-of-the-steal-096841</font></a></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">POLITICO</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">no lnx many</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Trump’s Art of the Steal</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">How Donald Trump rode to power by parroting other people’s fringe ideas, got himself impeached for it—and might prevail anyway.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">By MICHAEL KRUSE</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">01/10/2020 05:09 AM EST</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Michael Kruse is a senior staff writer for POLITICO.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Sometime soon, Donald Trump, the third president in the history of the United States to be impeached, is expected to face a trial in the Senate, charged with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Traced back to its roots, this is a crisis entirely of his own creation: He came across a sketchy scrap of information, a debunked piece of Russian propaganda relating to Ukraine, and he saw it as something he could use, to help himself and to hurt an opponent. He latched onto it, pumped it up, and passed it along.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Anyone wondering how the president could make this kind of mistake has missed something important about Trump’s rise. For as long as he has been in politics—in fact, for longer—he has been a ruthlessly effective practitioner of the art of parroting others’ most provocative, salacious ideas. “There are a lot of people that think …” “That’s what I heard …” “Some people even say …” His gossipy M.O. was a staple of his campaign, propelling his historic victory, but it also has driven the scandal that has consumed his presidency—“I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike,” he said on the now well-known call last July with President Volodymyr Zelensky.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">If what he was referencing sounded kind of like a dodgy talk radio rant, that’s not an accident. It’s a deliberate tactic, one that Trump was developing, and exploiting, from the moment he first seriously started to consider a run for the White House.</font></div><div><b><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></b></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>In the early to middle part of the previous decade, Trump’s proto-political operation was essentially a two-man team—there was Roger Stone, now a felon, and there was Stone’s protégé, Sam Nunberg.</b> One of Nunberg’s self-appointed tasks was to help Trump understand what the masses on the right really wanted. And one way he did that was by listening to Mark Levin’s increasingly popular radio show. The people who were tuning in most intently to Levin, Nunberg thought, were the people most likely to vote for Trump if he launched an actual bid. “Donald Trump,” Nunberg told me, meaning his candidacy, meaning his victory, “would never have happened without Mark Levin.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">[Billionaire real estate developer Donald Trump, left, walks to the Federal Courthouse in Newark, N.J., with Roger Stone, the director of Trump's presidential exploratory committee Monday, Oct. 25, 1999, for the swearing-in of Trump's sister as a federal appeals court judge. In a prelude to his possible presidential bid, Trump quit the Republican Party Monday and joined New York's wing of the Reform Party setting the stage for a possible presidential nomination battle with Pat Buchanan.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Donald Trump, photographed in Oct. 1999, with Roger Stone, the director of his presidential exploratory committee, walking behind him. | AP Photo]</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Nunberg’s frequent emails to Trump, sent via an assistant in Trump’s office and which have not been reported on before, were accounts of the many grievances that animated Levin and his listeners.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> </span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Union members resented union leaders. Republican rank and file loathed Republican elites. The Tea Party, in the estimation of Levin and his listeners, didn’t start as a reaction to the liberal outrages of President Barack Obama—it started as a reaction to what they viewed as the inconsistently hard-line conservative policies of President George W. Bush. Amnesty for immigrants, for instance? An absolute no-go. Trump, Nunberg stressed when we talked, didn’t want to be told what to say, but Nunberg nonetheless made his pitch for him as an insurgent outsider: “</span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">This is all marketing and </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">you’re a great product … in a new type of market,”</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> he said he told Trump. “Help me help you sell gold to these people that normally buy gold.”</span></b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Trump started listening to the show.</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>“He would call me up sometimes,” Nunberg recalled. “‘Oh, did you just hear what Levin said?’”</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>For the better part of the past half-century, <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Trump, 73, has extracted from an array of similar sources—from the New York Post’s dishy Page Six to the toxicity of Twitter to far-right websites and lowbrow TV—a knack for knowing what people want. </span>Not all people but many people. And not what they say they want, but what they really want. Ostentatious and aspirational glitz. Plain talk to the point of crude talk. Conflict.</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Employees, executives, aides and others who’ve known <b>Trump well say he’s not a book-reader so much as a room-reader, “sucking in information that he finds valuable,” grabbing “nuggets” that he thinks can help him get what he covets, which is some slurry of wealth, attention, respect and power. “A creature of feel,”</b>the late strategist Pat Caddell described him to me in the summer of 2018, “a visceral stimulus creature”—who could repackage what he took in and sell it back to the hoi polloi.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">In 2010, for example, he recognized a lightning-rod issue torquing emotions and jumped right in, gleaning buzz for himself with his offer to purchase the site of the so-called “<b>Ground Zero Mosque”—which alerted him to the potential potency of anti-Obama birtherism</b>, which paved the way for his anger-girded, fear-mongering presidential candidacy. <b>Trump is in this way less a thinker and more a megaphone, an amplifier of the ideas of others, the value of those ideas in his mind based not on veracity so much as utility. Which is another way of saying he’s not so much a leader as he is a follower. Perhaps the ultimate follower. Trump is the Follower of the Free World.</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">[Top: People protest a mosque construction near Ground Zero during a New York City Landmarks Commission vote in 2010. Bottom: A copy of President Barack Obama's long form birth certificate sits on a reporter's lap in the White House Briefing Room on April 27, 2011, after the administration released the document following extended criticism by those who did not believe he was born in the United States.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Top: People protest a mosque construction near Ground Zero during a New York City Landmarks Commission vote in 2010. Bottom: A copy of President Barack Obama's long form birth certificate sits on a reporter's lap in the White House Briefing Room on April 27, 2011, after the administration released the document following extended criticism by those who did not believe he was born in the United States. | Getty Images]</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>“Donald was never a CEO. He was a brand manager—you know, how do I appeal to the masses?” former Trump publicist Alan Marcus told me recently. “It’s like Elmer Gantry. It’s the carnival barker. It’s what every pitchman has always done. Tell the people what they want to hear.”</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">“<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Taking the information he wants or needs,” former Trump casino exec Jack O’Donnell said.</span></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Whether it’s true or not,” former Trump Organization exec Barbara Res said.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Taking it in. Sending it out. Over and over. Again and again.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">This, regardless of whatever else it is or means, is a remarkable and undeniable talent: hoovering others’ ideas, making them his, and in doing <b>so growing a following uniquely his own that far exceeds the size of the even considerable original audience.</b>  <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">AMP</span> It’s what got him elected. In some ways, too, it’s what got him impeached.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“There’s no question,” presidential historian Doug Brinkley told me last week. “He just trolls around and looks for weird stories that grab his attention, and he figures, ‘I know the American psyche, and this’ll grab their attention,’ and he throws it out there.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">But effective as cherrypicking and amplifying the most emotionally and politically useful tidbits has been for Trump throughout his life, it has proved an uneasy fit when practiced from the inside of an office that is supposed to represent the accumulated knowledge and official position of the entire U.S. government. In some sense, the entire impeachment process is a collision between Trump’s magnification of random, unverified rumors and an official regime of fact and process. The outcome will determine more than whether Trump is removed from office. <b>It may well establish a new standard for what our government defines as true.</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Speedy with job-site arithmetic but dismissive of academics, whom he considered weak and effete, Fred Trump Sr. of Queens, N.Y., bestowed upon his middle son and eventual heir not just extravagant riches but an anti-elitist, expertise-averse worldview. At New York Military Academy, at Fordham University in the Bronx and then the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, classmates have said, a young Donald Trump was a “disinterested,” skyscraper-doodling student, “loath to really study much,” <b>game to “bluff his way through.”</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">But the fact that he wasn’t a scholar didn’t mean that he was stupid, according to people who worked with or watched him closely over the decades of his professional existence.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">[Donald Trump (L), owner of the New Jersey Generals of the U.S. Football League, said his league’s $1.32 billion antitrust suit against the National Football League will crack “one of the great monopolies in the is country.” At right is his attorney Roy Cohn.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Donald Trump and his attorney Roy Cohn in October, 1984. | Getty Images]</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">“If he’s willing to listen, he’s a quick learner,” Res said.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">“A quick study,” biographer Gwenda Blair concurred.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">“Donald just absorbs, absorbs, absorbs,” former Trump Organization executive Louise Sunshine said. “He can extract so much information from his awareness of his surroundings and of the world around him.”</font></div><div><b><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></b></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Starting in the 1970s, he learned, of course, how to fight dirty and win from his antagonistic attorney and mentor, Roy Cohn</b>.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>In the ’80s, he learned from Stone</b>, and from watching George Steinbrenner, Ed Koch and Ronald Reagan, too. Steinbrenner, the bombastic owner of the New York Yankees, led as a loner. His secretary frequently could be heard saying, “Mr. Steinbrenner, Trump on line 2”.</span> Koch won three terms as the mayor of New York in part “by playing the kibitzer,” wrote Martin Shefter, “the brash fellow who has an opinion on everything.” The formula for success, Koch thought, was relatively uncomplicated: Get attention to get votes. “And you can only do that,” he once said, “by being bigger than life. It’s theatrics.” Staging news conference after news conference, Koch packed the way he talked with superlatives, “best this” and “best that.” Reporters joked about having to join gyms just to keep up with him. But he seldom left them wanting for material. He called foes “wackos” and “kooks.” He called the city council “a gaggle of clowns.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Reagan, meanwhile, won the Oval Office in one way not dissimilar to Koch’s path to Gracie Mansion—by winning over blue-collar, disaffected Democrats, who sought “safety” in the face of the changing, increasingly diverse society surrounding them.</b> Reagan spent the decade blurring the lines between politics and entertainment, wondering at times how anybody could be an effective president without having been an actor first.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">For Trump, the “visceral stimulus creature,” Steinbrenner, Koch and Reagan provided daily tutorials of sorts. And while his political affiliations were elastic and his overall ideology embryonic, Trump demonstrated early his acumen for tearing pages from proven playbooks and giving them his own signature twists—with blaring full-page newspaper ads in the late ’80s, criticizing American foreign policy and calling for the death penalty for (the innocent) Central Park Five. <b>AA</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">[Top: At the June 1978 launching ceremony of the new New York Hyatt Hotel/Convention facility that will be built on the site of the former Commodore Hotel are, from left: Donald Trump, Mayor Ed Koch, Gov. Hugh Carey and Robert T. Dormer, executive vice president of the Urban Development Corp. Bottom right: President Reagan shakes hands with Donald Trump at a White House reception for members of the Friends of Art and Preservation in Embassies Foundation. Bottom left: New York Yankees manager Billy Martin, standing, meets developer Donald Trump at Municipal Stadium in West Palm Beach in March 1988. Seated with Trump are his son Donald, 10, with a ball given to him by Martin, and Yankees owner George Steinbrenner.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Top: At the June 1978 launching ceremony of the new New York Hyatt Hotel/Convention facility that will be built on the site of the former Commodore Hotel are, from left: Donald Trump, Mayor Ed Koch, Gov. Hugh Carey and Robert T. Dormer, executive vice president of the Urban Development Corp. Bottom right: President Reagan shakes hands with Donald Trump at a White House reception for members of the Friends of Art and Preservation in Embassies Foundation. Bottom left: New York Yankees manager Billy Martin, standing, meets developer Donald Trump at Municipal Stadium in West Palm Beach in March 1988. Seated with Trump are his son Donald, 10, with a ball given to him by Martin, and Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. | AP/Ronald Reagan Presidential Library/Getty]</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>And in the ’90s, Trump learned from watching Ross Perot run for president (and lose) and Jesse Ventura run for governor of Minnesota (and win). “The nutty billionaire and the wrestler,</b>” he called them, according to Stone. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">He watched <b>Newt Gingrich weaponize words</b> in the political arena in a new and virulent manner, labeling Democrats “traitors” and “sick,” urging his fellow Republicans to do the same. He watched the rise of<b> partisanship on cable TV, MSNBC on the left, Fox News on the right, and the spiking clamor for conservative talk radio—from 240 all-talk stations in the country in 1987 to 900 in ’92 to 1,130 in ’95. Rush Limbaugh, the trailblazer, the precursor to somebody like Mark Levin, railed away about “feminazis” and “commie-libs”—and his listeners loved it. “He’s saying what I think,” they thought.</b></span></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">And Trump in 2011 seized on what people, some people—misguided, bigoted or both—thought about the country’s <b>first black president. The birtherism</b> campaign he began to wage was the distillation of his scattershot but resolute education as the kibitzer, the gossip hound, the insurgent outsider, the nascent politician, the feeder off the fever swamps. The follower.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>“I’m starting to wonder</b> myself whether or not he was born in this country,” he said on Fox News in March of that year.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“He doesn’t have a birth certificate,” he told talker<b> Laura Ingraham</b> two days later.<b> “Somebody told me …”</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>“A lot of people do not think </b>it was an authentic certificate,” he said on CNN in 2012, long after the White House released Obama’s “long form” birth certificate.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">[Mark Levin speaks, with President Donald Trump behind him, during a ceremony to present the Presidential Medal of Freedom to former Attorney General Edwin Meese, in the Oval Office of the White House, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2019, in Washington.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Mark Levin speaks during a ceremony at the White House in 2019. | Alex Brandon/AP Photo]</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Was it a birth certificate<b>? </b>You tell me,” he told ABC News in 2013. <b>“Some people say </b>that was not his birth certificate.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>That same year, Nunberg arranged for Trump to make his Levin show debut,</b> preparing a memo “to familiarize Mr. Trump with Mark Levin,” he wrote—deploying tried-and-true ways to pique Trump’s interest. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Nunberg emphasized Levin’s ratings history (“In the first 18 months on the air, the program jumped to #1 in the time slot”), the company he kept (considers<b> Sean Hannity “his best friend”), </b>his reach (books Liberty and Tyranny and Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America sold more than a million copies, Nunberg noted), and his compensation </span>(“a reported annual salary of $12.5 million a year”). Nunberg mentioned, too, that what he said on the air often was disseminated on a variety of <b>websites like TheRightScoop.com</b>. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">People, in other words, “some people,” “many people,” “a lot of people,” were listening to what Levin was saying.</span></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Armed with this advance work, the memo as well as the emails, Trump fit in well with Levin.</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> In addition to<b> shilling for the upcoming season of “The Celebrity Apprentice”—“Trace Adkins, La Toya Jackson, Dennis Rodman”</b>—Trump delivered to Levin’s listeners what they wanted—which essentially was … Levin’s ideas, studiously collected by Nunberg, consumed by Trump and regurgitated back to the host.</span></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“If the Republicans are going to win,” Trump said, “they’re going to have to</span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> break away from the Karl Roves of the world and, frankly, get more involved—you know, the Tea Party, these people are great. I’ve done some speeches in front of the </b><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Tea Party. </b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">They are great Americans, they love this country, they work so hard, and they have been so mistreated by … the liberal media. … They truly are not treated with proper respect.”</span></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>And he landed especially hard on immigration and any notions of amnesty for undocumented immigrants.</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">“I watched last night,” he continued, referring to Obama’s State of the Union that year, “as <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Senator McCain and everybody were jumping up and down, you know, applauding—I never saw him move so fast, you know, nice guy, but he jumped up—and was applauding as soon as the immigration became a part of the discussion, a part of the speech.”</span></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">“Immigration,” Trump said, “will be the next thing, based on what I’m watching.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Trump and Levin wrapped up by exchanging compliments.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">“I’m extremely impressed with what you’re doing,” Levin said.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">“You just have a great show,” Trump said. “I’m always listening.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">“Donald Trump,” Levin told his listeners after Trump signed off.<b> “</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>See that, folks? Very solid. Very conservative. To the right of the Republican establishment. Strong supporter of the Tea Party. </b>I’m telling you. I’ve been watching this. I’ve been listening. People have been sending me his tweets.”</span></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">There was a reason for that. “He’s putting stuff out there,” Nunberg told me of Trump’s tweets at the time, some of which Nunberg was suggesting, “that sounds like Mark Levin.” </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">FEEDBACK </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">LITERALLY</span></b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">In the few months before his interview with Levin:</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Donald J. Trump</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">@realDonaldTrump</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Obama weak on immigration. All words, no action. He's been Prez 4 years.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">197</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">6:12 PM - Oct 16, 2012</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Twitter Ads info and privacy</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">987 people are talking about this</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Donald J. Trump</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">@realDonaldTrump</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Obama is laughing at Karl Rove & all the losers who spent hundreds of millions of dollars and didn’t win one race, including the big one!</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">63</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">1:05 PM - Dec 3, 2012</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Twitter Ads info and privacy</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">349 people are talking about this</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">And in the few months after:</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Donald J. Trump</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">?</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">@realDonaldTrump</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Whether you like it or not, Bush also gave us Obama!</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">54</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">8:12 AM - Jun 27, 2013</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Twitter Ads info and privacy</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">190 people are talking about this</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">This ear-to-the-proverbial-ground political ramp-up wasn’t limited to Levin and talk radio. It was around this time as well that Trump began to give more and more talks on the pre-presidential hustings, GOP chicken dinners in places like Iowa and New Hampshire.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>He talked to Pat Caddell about what he was picking up on the trail. </b>“He would put forth his position or his feelings, and he would judge the level of the response to it, and that helped him organize, I suppose to whatever degree it was organized, his views about issues,” Caddell told me in 2018. “Things he said that didn’t go over disappeared. Things that did stayed.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Twitter, too, increasingly served a similar purpose.</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>“He glommed onto it like it was an oxygen source,</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">” Caddell explained. “And he would tweet what he believed, and people would retweet or answer or whatever, and it was kind of his ongoing focus group.”</span></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>“He loved it,” Nunberg said. “He doesn’t trust the political people who do the focus groups.” Instead: “<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">What are we getting the most retweets on?”</span></b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In 2014 and ’15—well before Trump came down the escalator and announced his intention to run—<b>Nunberg sent Trump nearly daily updates of snippets of news and possible topics and wordings for tweets. At the tops of the documents he showed the number of Trump’s Twitter followers ticking up</b> (a snapshot from December of 2014: 2,751,488 … 2,753,548 … 2,757,190 …) and the number of days left until the GOP primary debate at the Reagan library and the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primaries ticking down.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">A month into the presidential campaign, after the Vietnam-avoiding Trump insulted McCain by saying he was “not a war hero” and that he liked people “who weren’t captured,” he refused to apologize. That, Nunberg said, partly was because of what he had internalized by listening to Levin. Nunberg told Trump it was going to help him. (It certainly didn’t hurt him.) “He said, ‘Why?’” Nunberg said. “And I said, <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>‘Because our people despise John McCain.</b> They despise the fact that McCain hides behind his military record to shit on Republicans and you can’t criticize him on anything because of his military record. I said, ‘John McCain—he is hated almost as much as Barack Obama on talk radio.’ … I said, ‘He might as well be Barack Obama on talk radio.’”</span></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Talk radio led the way. Trump followed.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Theoretically, Trump could have changed.</b> As successful as this pattern of behavior had been in the years preceding his run and during the campaign itself—he was, after all, elected president—Trump could have adjusted once he took office, <b>having at his disposal, suddenly and quite unexpectedly, the world’s preeminent intelligence-gathering apparatus.</b> But no—sticking to “that gossip kind of mentality,” said O’Donnell, the casino exec, <b>Trump has continued to mine Twitter, plucking what he wants, “very comfortable with half thoughts,” “always looking for tidbits of information that he can use to his advantage.”</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“He sees the ones that are the most popular,” former Fox News anchor Eric Bolling, identified by Time as someone who speaks regularly to Trump, told the magazine in June of 2018, “and getting the most [of the] zeitgeist, most attention on social media.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">And then? The last and most important piece of this by now almost rote process?</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>“He repeats it,</b></span>” Bolling said.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">[BEDMINSTER TOWNSHIP, NJ - NOVEMBER 20: (L to R) President-elect Donald Trump and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani shake hands following their meeting at Trump International Golf Club, November 20, 2016 in Bedminster Township, New Jersey. Trump and his transition team are in the process of filling cabinet and other high level positions for the new administration. </font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">President-elect Donald Trump and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani shake hands at Trump International Golf Club in New Jersey, days after the election in Nov. 2016. Giuliani would go on to become President Trump's personal attorney. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images]</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>And for as long as he’s occupied the Oval Office, Trump’s been thinking about Ukraine. </b>“Ukraine,” Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said a couple months back, “has always been problematic, from Day One. He’s <b>heard a lot </b>about Ukraine from a lot of people.” He’s<b><u> heard about it, according to reports, from Rudy</u></b>Giuliani, from his <b>favored right-wing media outlets, from Vladimir Putin.</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">He started spreading it almost immediately.AMP</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>“I heard</b> it’s owned by a very rich Ukrainian,” he said of CrowdStrike, incorrectly, in an interview with The Associated Press in April of 2017. <b>“That’s what I heard.”</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Officials have insisted to the president the CrowdStrike conspiracy is just that. He has not heeded their counsel.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">It’s what led to the call with Ukraine’s Zelensky that led to the series of events that led to his impeachment. “The server,” Trump said, “<b>they say</b> Ukraine has it.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“It’s combustible because <b>Trump’s only looking for news stories and information that suits his persona, that build his persona up,” </b>Brinkley, the presidential historian, told me last week. “And by doing that he is following the trolls down an ugly path.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">There are those who predict Trump’s tendencies will ultimately undo him. Thomas Bossert, who was Trump’s first homeland security adviser, logged a warning on a Sunday morning <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">last fall</span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">. </span>“If he continues to focus on that white whale,” Bossert said of Trump’s questionable Ukraine theory, “it’s going to bring him down.”</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">But it is hard to see that happening now. It’s virtually assured that Trump’s impeachment will end not with his ouster but with an acquittal by the Republican-controlled Senate. This purported ordeal could even be a boost. In fundraising, and in some polling, it already has been. And come November, he absolutely could win again. And if that happens,<b> Trump in some sense would possess more power than any president ever—subjected to the gravest constitutional check, then given by voters another four years.</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">If Trump began his political ascent as a follower, cannily co-opting ideas that resonated with a certain segment of the electorate, in doing so he clearly has proceeded to forge a following of his own. He has become a leader of those who are willing to be led in this way—solidifying lockstep support from the agenda-setting base of his party as well as its kingpins and figureheads, who parrot him the way he once did Levin. </span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The result: </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">a crescendoing feedback loop, </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">in which followers are leaders and leaders are followers, perpetuating ideas based on what works rather than what’s real.</span></b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">“One of the sacred principles in U.S. history has been that presidents are supposed to tell the public the truth,” Brinkley said. “So this is a new kind of Republican that refuses to ever admit culpability or a mistake and is <b>willing to destroy not just institutions but fact-based thinking, empirical thinking.</b>” Trump? “He doesn’t care whether it’s true or not true, whether it destroys somebody or not—there’s no morality into it. It’s just a strange, weird bit of information—‘and it helps me, and I’m going to <b>propagate it.’</b>”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">grift</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/investors-balked-at-trumps-plan-to-personally-make-2-million-per-room-leasing-government-building-wsj/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/investors-balked-at-trumps-plan-to-personally-make-2-million-per-room-leasing-government-building-wsj/</a></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><h3 class="magcat-titlte entry-title" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px" color="color" rgb="rgb" background-color="background-color" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/the-vilification-of-enemies-is-all-that-matters-in-trumps-gop/" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;"><font face="Times New Roman"> vilification of enemies is all that matters in Trump’s GOP</font></a><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/the-vilification-of-enemies-is-all-that-matters-in-trumps-gop/" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;"><font face="Times New Roman" /></a><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/nancy-letourneau/" title="Posts by Nancy LeTourneau" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; text-align: right; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Nancy LeTourneau</a><span style="text-align: right;"> </span><span style="text-align: right;">/</span><span style="text-align: right;"> </span><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/washington-monthly/" title="Posts by Washington Monthly" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; text-align: right; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Washington Mont</a></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></h3></div><div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></font></font></font></font></p></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/trump-actually-does-have-a-strategy-for-iran-and-its-deeply-disturbing/"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/trump-actually-does-have-a-strategy-for-iran-and-its-deeply-disturbing/</font></a></font></font></font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">wa mo for pol</font></font></font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></font></font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">threatens to hit 52 sites (one for each hostage) cultural ? he thinks this increases tough guy threat/pose? not JUST mil? [a bomb list kyoto?]</font></font></font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></font></font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/world-war-iii-trends-as-hawks-rejoice-at-trump-decision-to-assassinate-iranian-military-leader/"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/world-war-iii-trends-as-hawks-rejoice-at-trump-decision-to-assassinate-iranian-military-leader/</font></a></font></font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" /></font></font></font></font><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New 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face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times 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Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>‘World War III’ trends as hawks rejoice at Trump decision to assassinate Iranian military leader</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams January 3, 2020</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">As peace advocates voiced alarm at the very real prospect of all-out conflict with Iran following the assassination Thursday night of that country’s top military leader on orders from U.S. President Donald Trump, war hawks who have had their crosshairs trained on Iran for years enthusiastically celebrated Trump’s decision—and even suggested the president should go further by targeting the nation’s oil refineries.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“To the Iranian government:  If you want to stay in the oil business leave America and our allies alone and stop being the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world,” tweeted Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a longtime supporter of regime change in Iran.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Republican Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.), Tom Cotton (Ark.), Jim Risch (R.-Idaho), and Ben Sasse (Neb.) joined the chorus of applause, hailing Trump for taking “decisive action.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Trita Parsi, executive vice president at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, tweeted in response to the torrent of praise that “hawks are celebrating [Qassem] Soleimani’s assassination not because they believe it weakened Iran. Or the IRGC. Or that Iran will lose in Iraq. But because they believe we have passed an irreversible point of escalation.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>“From here, war is unavoidable, they believe,” Parsi added. “And celebrate.”</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The likely unlawful U.S. assassination of Soleimani—and the jingoistic applause it provoked—led many to express fears of a global conflict, briefly catapulting “World War III” to the top of Twitter’s trending list. Trump, for his part, simply tweeted an image of an American flag following the strike:</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
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</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Donald J. Trump</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">?</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">@realDonaldTrump</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Trump’s decision to kill Soleimani, as well as at least six others, with a drone strike in Baghdad came after the Pentagon threatened Iran with preemptive action in response to supposed indications it was planning attacks on U.S. forces in the region.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Though the Pentagon did not offer a shred of evidence that Soleimani or militia groups were planning attacks, corporate media outlets dutifully echoed the Trump administration’s line, leading some commentators to see parallels with the buildup to the Bush administration’s 2003 invasion of Iraq.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“I don’t see any way to stop what is coming, war from the Mediterranean to the Indus and harsh repression in the U.S. that may vitiate the 2020 election,” said Barnett Rubin of the Center on International Cooperation. “This is the test for the Democrats: have our leaders learned anything since 2003? I fear the answer.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Observers warned the U.S. assassination of Soleimani, on top of the Trump administration’s violation of the nuclear accord last year and other aggressive actions, effectively foreclosed the possibility of peaceful negotiations with Iran.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Whatever happens next, understand and never stop pointing out that Donald Trump walked into office with no crisis with Iran,” said Stephen Miles, executive director of Win Without War. “He then filled his cabinet with warmongers, walked away from a multilateral diplomatic accord, and purposefully engaged in ‘maximum pressure.’ He owns this.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei quickly vowed “harsh retaliation” in response to Soleimani’s assassination, and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif accused the U.S. of committing “an act of state terrorism.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Amid fears of revenge attacks, the State Department on Friday urged U.S. citizens to leave Iraq immediately.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Trump’s Iran policy has been seeking to incite war with Iran since he reneged on the nuclear deal in May 2018,” said Sina Toossi, senior research analyst with the National Iranian American Council. “If a war breaks out, the blame lies squarely with this disastrous policy and its proponents.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>“Trump thinks he got his Bin Laden moment in an election year,” Toossi added. “In reality, he’s made the worst strategic mistake by an American leader since the Iraq invasion. The consequences will be felt for years to come.”</b></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/donald-trump-and-the-embarrassment-gap-in-american-politics/"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/donald-trump-and-the-embarrassment-gap-in-american-politics/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Donald Trump and the ’embarrassment gap’ in American politics</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Written by Joshua Holland / Raw Story January 4, 2020</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">This article was paid for by AlterNet subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Welcome to another edition of What Fresh Hell?, Raw Story’s roundup of news items that might have become controversies under another regime, but got buried – or were at least under-appreciated – due to the daily firehose of political pratfalls, unhinged tweet storms and other sundry embarrassments coming out of the current White House.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">We often talk about various cleavages in the American polity. In partisan politics, there’s a significant gender-gap and an educational gap that has become far more pronounced since the emergence of Trumpism. We talk about racial politics, the urban-rural divide and the chasm between working people and the wealthy.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">But in an era when crackpot authoritarianism is on the rise around the world, it may be the embarrassment gap that most sharply divides those who love and loathe Donald Trump. Whether you find Trump’s buffoonery utterly disgraceful or a sign of authenticity may mark our central political divide today.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">This was thrown into relief last month, when the White House released a rambling letter Trump had written to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi protesting his impeachment. Jonathan Chait described it like this:</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">If you worked in print media, you became accustomed to receiving long, unhinged letters from agitated members of the general public. Often these letters tied together facts, pseudo-facts, paranoid insinuations, dramatic though false legal interpretations, unconventional punctuation, and occasionally, threats. It is at this point unsurprising, though still quite unsettling, to read one of these letters from the hand of the president of the United States.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">The document wasn’t just remarkable for its incoherence. What made it truly striking was that it wasn’t one of Trump’s dumb tweets–it was an official document that had presumably been lawyered and proofread and discussed among Trump’s senior advisors. And they then released it to the public with no sense of shame.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As is often the case these days, the Fox News set welcomed the letter as a sign of Trump getting tough with Democrats and pushing back against the Derp Deep State, while much of “blue” America recoiled at the idea that the kind of simpleton who’d write and then choose to make such a missive public holds the nuclear codes.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>That was the embarrassment gap in a nutshell. One camp of Americans finds it utterly humiliating that a goofy former reality TV star leads the country—a laughingstock to the rest of the world who requires briefings heavy with pictures and light on text and can’t string together a coherent sentence</b>, much less a cogent argument. We cringe at his silly tweets and random capitalization and are appalled that someone so obviously lacking basic knowledge of the world outside his little bubble has gotten this far. We find his penchant for referring to himself in the third person and his compulsive lying about even the most insignificant things to be a source of shame for the country.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The other sees in those same traits a</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"> genuineness </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">that is more important to than a president* knowing what he or she is doing. They see an everyman—a guy who reminds them of their uncle or old football coach. We see Trump’s appalling misogyny as a sign of his narcissism and unearned sense of privilege, while they perceive it as the </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">mark of a real, red-meat-eating manly-man</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">. They see in Trump a living, breathing rebuke of all the smarty-pants eggheads who look down on them.</span></b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The embarrassment gap is obviously a proxy for other cleavages in our society. Being appalled at his disdain for reading and inability to write clear, grammatical English is at least tangentially related to the education gap that’s been a feature of his public image. It’s also a reflection of media polarization—if you consume mostly conservative media, you have a very different picture of Trump’s political skills than you would if your news diet were more balanced. And it’s tangentially related to the right’s habitual anti-governmentalism. If you believe that public service is easy and trivial and that most people who work for the government are incompetents, then your standards for public service are naturally going to be low.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">On some level, Trump’s most dedicated fans must have at least a sense of how embarrassing he is to those outside their movement. The rise of QAnon—the moronic conspiracy-cult that sees Trump as some combination of Machiavelli and James Bond deftly pulling unseen strings of government behind the scenes—is at least in part a response to those of us who call out his clownishness. After all, could a moron who won the sperm lottery and then parlayed his inheritance into power through relentless self-promotion be the architect of a top-secret scheme to save America from baby-eating pedophiles?</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>With that, let’s move on to the first roundup of the new year.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Trump is claiming that E. Jean Carroll, who accused him of raping her, can’t sue him for defaming her in a New York court because the allegedly defamatory statements were made in DC.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">According to Bloomberg…</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan said Trump is misstating the law around personal jurisdiction to avoid having to turn over documents in the case, which a judge ordered him to start doing.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">“When E. Jean’s case was filed, Donald Trump maintained a home in New York, was registered to vote in New York, paid taxes in New York, and had been sued in New York on numerous occasions — including since 2016 — without any objection,” Kaplan said in an email. “Tellingly, as his papers make clear, what this motion is really about is a transparent effort to avoid discovery at all costs in a case involving a sexual assault.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">The Trump foreign policy doctrine–“do as much stupid shit as possible”–is paying off in North Korea just as it is with Iran.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, said his country no longer felt bound by its self-imposed moratorium on testing nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles, its official media reported on Wednesday, the strongest indication yet that the country could soon resume such tests…</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">North Korea has not conducted a long-range missile test or a nuclear test in more than two years. Mr. Kim had announced his moratorium at a time when he hoped negotiations with the United States — and his budding personal relationship with President Trump — would prompt the United States to begin lifting crippling sanctions.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Mr. Trump, who has met Mr. Kim three times, has often cited the North’s restraint as a major diplomatic achievement.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
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</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>We knew that Trump’s 2017 tax scam was a massive give-away to big businesses and his donors and family, but according to The New York Times, it was much worse than we knew at the time</b>. That’s because such laws are “carried out by federal agencies that first must formalize them via rules and regulations,” and “the process of writing the rules, conducted largely out of public view, can determine who wins and who loses.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Starting in early 2018, senior officials in President Trump’s Treasury Department were swarmed by lobbyists seeking to insulate companies from the few parts of the tax law that would have required them to pay more. The crush of meetings was so intense that some top Treasury officials had little time to do their jobs…</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Thanks in part to the chaotic manner in which the bill was rushed through Congress — a situation that gave the Treasury Department extra latitude to interpret a law that was, by all accounts, sloppily written — the corporate lobbying campaign was a resounding success.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">As a result, “the federal government may collect hundreds of billions of dollars less over the coming decade than previously projected.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Let’s not become inured to Trump’s authoritarianism.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Jonathan Chait (again):</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Trump has made two major attempts (so far) to use his power to intimidate and control independent media.<b> The second attempt was his intervention to deny Amazon a $10 billion Pentagon contract as retribution against the Washington Post. The first was ordering the Justice Department to block an AT&T merger, </b>in order to punish CNN. And while the courts ultimately stymied the latter move, Trump is attempting to keep up public pressure on AT&T and its ownership of CNN.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Or the grifting.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>WaPo reported that, “of the 1,075 days on which he has been president, he has visited Mar-a-Lago or a Trump Something-or-other on 331 of them, 31 percent of the time.” On each of those occasions, Trump pockets a bundle of tax-payer cash to house staff and security.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>“Erik Prince, a major Republican donor and founder of controversial security firm Blackwater,</b> has been referred to the U.S. Treasury Department for possible sanctions violations tied to his recent trip to Venezuela for a meeting with a top aide of President <b>Nicolas Maduro,</b>” according to the AP.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">WaPo also reported that Rudy Giuliani was involved in a back-channel negotiation with Maduro that would “reopen resource-rich Venezuela to business.” The effort, according to the report, “provides another example of how Giuliani used his private role to insert himself into foreign diplomacy, alarming administration officials confused about whose interests he was representing.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Speaking of idiocracy, The Daily Beast reported this week that when some junior staffer at the U.S. mission to the European Union liked a tweet by Chelsea Clinton that was critical of Trump, it set off an international manhunt by regime officials determined to ferret out the identity of the perpetrator. According to the report, talk of the offending “like” reached the West Wing and “the micromanaging [that resulted] is still causing headaches for staffers and officials at top American outposts who are trying to navigate the task of pleasing both the State Department and the White House simultaneously—a mission that at times requires two completely different strategies, those sources said.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>We want to note a few stories about the abuses of power for which Trump is being impeached</b> lest they get lost in the turmoil in Iraq.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">The New York Times:</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">The Trump administration disclosed on Friday that there were 20 emails between a top aide to President Trump’s acting chief of staff and a colleague at the White House’s Office of Management and Budget discussing the freeze of a congressionally mandated military aid package for Ukraine.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">But in response to a court order that it swiftly process those pages in response to a Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, lawsuit filed by The New York Times, the Office of Management and Budget delivered a terse letter saying it would not turn over any of the 40 pages of emails — not even with redactions.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">“All 20 documents are being withheld in full,” wrote Dionne Hardy, the office’s Freedom of Information Act officer.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">WaPo:</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Just Security’s Kate Brannen was able to view unredacted emails in which the Office of Management and Budget and the Defense Department discussed the withholding of military aid. </b>The big new takeaway is that there was significant concern within the Pentagon about the legality and sustainability of the hold. Despite that, according to one email from top OMB official Michael Duffey on Aug. 30, there was “clear direction from POTUS to continue to hold.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">The even bigger takeaway, though, may be how much this fact was obscured. The emails were previously released in redacted form, but many of the redaction choices are puzzling and even suspicious. The redactions include repeated references to legal problems with withholding the aid, basic questions about that subject, and warnings that waiting until too late in the fiscal year (which ended Sept. 30) might mean that some of the funds would never get to Ukraine.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">And then there’s this tibit, from The Daily Beast…</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Paul Manafort said he used Fox News host Sean Hannity to receive backchannel messages from President Donald Trump</b> while prosecutors investigated him for financial crimes… Manafort described Hannity as a close friend and “certainly a backchannel” to Trump, saying that he understood Hannity was in communication with the president.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">*</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">The wildfires that have set large swaths of Australia ablaze have killed an estimated half-billion animals and “could change the country forever.” Norway recorded a 66-degree day this week that marked the highest temperature in January on record. And this disaster has barely registered in the American press:</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Horrific #ClimateChange emergency now unfolding in #<b>Jakarta, where officials say ‘this is not ordinary rain’.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">21 dead so far, 30,000 evacuated.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Do keep on saying it’s ‘just weather’ though. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">One day, there’ll be trials for climate criminals.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> #Indonesiapic.twitter.com/qcDZtFJC8x</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">— Brendan May (@bmay) January 2, 2020</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Meanwhile, <b>The NYT reports that “federal agencies would no longer have to take climate change into account when they assess the environmental impacts of highways, pipelines and other major infrastructure projects,</b> according to a Trump administration plan that would weaken the nation’s benchmark environmental law.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">And according to the WaPo, the EPA “is pushing ahead with [that and other] sweeping changes to roll back environmental regulations despite sharp criticism from a panel of scientific advisers, most of whom were appointed by President Trump.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The changes would weaken standards that govern waterways and wetlands across the country, as well as those that dictate gas mileage for U.S. automobiles. Another change would restrict the kinds of scientific studies that can be used when writing new environmental regulations, while a fourth would change how the EPA calculates the benefits of limiting air pollutants from coal-fired power plants.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Three of the four draft reports, posted online Tuesday, suggest that the administration’s proposals conflict with established science. They were prepared by members of the EPA’s Scientific Advisory Board, a panel of experts created by Congress in 1978 to review the agency’s scientific methods.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">The planet requires Trump’s defeat this November.</font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></p></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" /><div><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New 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face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">1/20 an</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>..Trump ranted that his indicted and imprisoned associates were the victims of the “crime of the century” in an early morning Twitter rant.</div><div>
</div><div>The president, who’s still vacationing at his Mar-A-Lago resort, wailed about his associates who’ve been prosecuted for various crimes since his election and attacked the “filthy” law enforcement officers who busted them.</div><div>
</div><div><b>“A lot of very good people were taken down by a small group of Dirty (Filthy) Cops,</b> politicians, government officials, and an investigation that was illegally started & that SPIED on my campaign,” Trump tweeted.</div><div>
</div><div>“The Witch Hunt is sputtering badly, but still going on (Ukraine Hoax!),” he added. “If this had happened to a Presidential candidate, or President, who was a Democrat, everybody involved would long ago be in jail for<b> treason </b>(and more), and it would be considered the CRIME OF THE CENTURY, far bigger and more sinister than Watergate!”</div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="header-list-style" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;"><h2 class="entry-title grid-title" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/fact-checker-reveals-trump-stole-credit-from-obama-with-1-outrageous-lie-56-times-in-2019/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; letter-spacing: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman">Fact checker reveals Trump stole credit from Obama with 1 outrageous lie 56 times in 2019</font></a></h2><div class="grid-post-box-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 12px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span class="author-italic author vcard" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/travis-gettys/" title="Posts by Travis Gettys" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Travis Gettys</a> / <a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/raw-story/" title="Posts by Raw Story" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Raw Story</a></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">January 1, 2020</span></font></div></div><div class="item-content entry-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 18px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font face="Times New Roman">President Donald Trump has repeatedly lied about a veterans bill that was actually signed by his predecessor. The president claimed credit for giving veterans a new health care option in…</font></p></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/the-press-finally-tried-and-failed-to-stand-up-to-trump"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/the-press-finally-tried-and-failed-to-stand-up-to-trump</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>The press finally tried—and failed—to stand up to Trump</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Written by Eric Boehlert / Daily Kos December 31, 2019</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">With Donald Trump becoming the first American president to be impeached in his first term, while holed up in the White House tweeting endless attacks around the clock like some internet troll, 2019 should have been the year the Beltway media finally shed its signature timidity and forcefully stood up to him. This should have been the year the press worked up the courage to disband the pointless protocols newsroom had established for covering Trump (he’s not a “liar,” he’s not a “racist”), and simply started telling the hard truths about him. <b>And while there were some welcome flashes of truth-telling, especially surrounding the Ukraine scandal and the impeachment, for the most part the D.C. press still hasn’t signaled that’s it’s ready, or willing, to take the necessary steps needed to cover Trump.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">There continues to be a collective reluctance to grapple with today’s difficult reality. Unfamiliar with covering authoritarian regimes or how to respond to them, many news outlets remain committed to treating Trump’s spectacle as a reality TV show.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Trump remains the most deeply radical player in American politics, yet the press corps is still trying to cover him as a traditional political figure, which means if the president of the United States makes some sort of public statement on a pressing issue of the day, you quote him under the assumption that he’s telling the truth and not just making stuff up. But he’s not, and he is. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Trump in 2019 continued to benefit from press coverage that obediently pretended that he’s an honest broker. Wash, rinse, repeat. This, while Trump maintains his dangerous campaign to paint the press as the “enemy of the people.”</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Oddly committed to<b> normalizing </b>Trump by scrubbing off his hateful and dangerous rough edges, many in the Beltway press continue to play a strange game in which they refuse to describe what they clearly see in front of them. Whether it’s the fear of Trump Twitter attacks or the nearly five-decade-long GOP campaign to demonize the “liberal media,” newsrooms today nearly uniformly refuse to address the mounting, obvious signs that Trump is a deeply unstable man. Journalists watch Trump hole up in the White House spamming Twitter on some weekends with hundreds of illogical posts and then politely look away.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Incredibly, as I noted in August, this represented one 48-hour period in 2019:</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">He quoted a rabid conspiracy theorist radio host who declared that Israeli Jews love Trump as if he were the “King of Israel” and “the second coming of God,” while Trump himself accused American Jews of “great disloyalty” if they voted for Democrats. He attacked the prime minister of Denmark (“nasty”) because she will not sell him Greenland and she mocked the very idea as “absurd.” He suggested he might serve more than two terms in office. He slurred his words while reading a speech off a teleprompter. He accused journalists of trying to ruin the U.S. economy. He claimed Google had “manipulated” millions of votes in Hillary Clinton’s favor during the 2016 election. He suggested giving himself a Medal of Honor. He said doctors in El Paso, Texas, left their operating rooms mid-surgery in order to greet him during his visit there following a local gun massacre. And he referred to the NRA as if it were a co-equal branch of the federal government.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Compared to all previous American presidents, that would have easily surpassed the irrational missteps they made during an entire time in office. For Trump, it was just his vacation week. Yet the press remains consistently timid in dealing with Trump’s blatantly unstable behavior. Newsrooms today nearly uniformly refuse to address the mounting, obvious signs that Trump remains a deeply troubled man.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>What does it mean for the most powerful leader in the free world to be acting in a bizarre and often seemingly schizophrenic fashion? </b>And how is every administration official who appears on television not immediately and repeatedly asked whether Trump is mentally fit to hold office, and whether he poses a danger to this country? If the same journalists watched a foreign leader behaving as erratically as Trump does, that would be the first question they posed to officials.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">The fact that a sitting president has unleashed so many bizarre public performances, punctuated by so many incomprehensible non sequiturs, means his stability and capacity ought to be questioned—and it ought to be a constant news story. But it’s still not.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Of course, 2019 was the year that White House press briefings were officially canceled.</b> In a move that once would have been considered an unthinkable act by any White House, the Trump team simply pulled the plug, leaving White House reporters with extremely limited access to officials who are willing to answer even the simplest questions about the administration’s policies and agenda. In the face of that drastic action, news outlets took no collective action in response. They could have used their clout to send a powerful message if they had pulled their reporters out and signaled they weren’t going to be used as props for the press charades the White House plays.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Instead, reporters dutifully gathered outside the White House to shout questions at Trump during his so-called “Chopper Talk” sessions</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> </span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">as he approached the presidential helicopter on the White House grounds. The controlled chaos of those sessions, where reporters yell simplistic questions, allows Trump to pick and choose reporters at random, and to ignore questions he doesn’t like. He’s also immune from follow-up questions and is free once again to lie indiscriminately, without being held accountable. All of which cable news outlets air in its entirety under the guise of “news.”</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">And that’s when the press wasn’t being willingly duped in 2019 by Trump’s team, and especially his attorney general, William Barr. In a signature press failure for the year, reporters for days played along with Department of Justice propaganda about the Mueller report and how it had supposedly exonerated Trump. But the only person claiming that at the time was Barr, who wouldn’t allow reporters to see the full report.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Undeterred, journalists simply took Barr’s untrustworthy four-page press release and treated that as the full report. The New York Times rushed to report that Trump had been exonerated and that Mueller’s conclusions had provided Trump with a “powerful boost” toward re-election. Reminder: Nobody at the Times had read a single page of the Mueller report. News outlets everywhere scrambled to produce pro-Trump headlines based on Barr’s propaganda: “Mueller finds no conspiracy” (The Washington Post), “Mueller finds no Trump-Russia conspiracy” (The New York Times), “Mueller finds no Trump-Russia conspiracy” (Politico), “Mueller doesn’t find Trump campaign conspired with Russia” (The Wall Street Journal), “Mueller finds no Trump collusion, leaves obstruction open” (Associated Press).</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">They all soon discovered the obvious reality: Trump and his team had simply lied about the contents of the Mueller report, hoping (knowing?) that the press would fall for the false spin, which too many outlets did.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">The key to covering Trump isn’t some deep mystery for news organizations, and it doesn’t require much sacrifice. It simply demands honesty and a willingness to be clear about what’s happening in this country. Sadly, that was lacking in 2019.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Eric Boehlert is a veteran progressive writer and media analyst, formerly with Media Matters and Salon. He is the author of Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush and Bloggers on the Bus. You can follow him on Twitter @EricBoehlert.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a data-ga-action="Home Headlines: Headline" href="https://www.democracynow.org/2019/12/31/headlines/nyt_top_officials_failed_to_convince_trump_to_release_withheld_ukraine_aid" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-weight="font-weight" text-align="text-align" center="center" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgb(241, 242, 243); text-decoration-line: none; border: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">NYT</span>: Top Officials Failed to Convince Trump to Release Withheld Ukraine Aid</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">dn </font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/the-evangelical-meeting-that-convinced-trump-he-is-the-chosen-one-and-why-i-believe-it-to-be-true/"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/the-evangelical-meeting-that-convinced-trump-he-is-the-chosen-one-and-why-i-believe-it-to-be-true/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/trumps-defenders-must-be-voted-out-to-protect-the-constitution/"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/trumps-defenders-must-be-voted-out-to-protect-the-constitution/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">editorial</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">deutche ivanka jared epstein?</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/heres-why-congress-wants-to-look-inside-the-bank-that-fronted-donald-trump-2-billion/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/heres-why-congress-wants-to-look-inside-the-bank-that-fronted-donald-trump-2-billion/</a></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/trump-retweets-the-deletes-article-outing-name-of-alleged-ukraine-whistleblower/" rel="bookmark" title="Trump retweets — the deletes — article outing name of alleged Ukraine whistleblower" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px" font-weight="font-weight" color="color" rgb="rgb" important="important" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; line-height: 1.4; display: block;"><font face="Times New Roman">trump retweets — the deletes — article outing name of alleged Ukraine whistleblower</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/trump-runs-the-country-just-like-his-bankrupted-businesses-the-national-debt-is-skyrocketing-while-economic-growth-lags-behind/"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/trump-runs-the-country-just-like-his-bankrupted-businesses-the-national-debt-is-skyrocketing-while-economic-growth-lags-behind/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Trump runs the country just like his bankrupted businesses: The national debt is skyrocketing while economic growth lags behind</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Written by<b> DC Report December 29, 2019</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">“How do you impeach a president who has created the greatest Economy in the history of our Country?” Donald Trump tweeted in September. Trump has repeatedly claimed big economic benefits from his presidency. And this claim undergirds a lot of Trump’s popular support.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">But the truth is that Trump is a failure economically, both in his business career and in his actions as president. It is time to connect the dots of Trump’s economic failures—in a way that everyone understands.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">A powerful way to communicate Trump’s true economic legacy is to brand him as “Bankrupter-in-Chief Trump.”  This is the real bottom line of Trump’s business career, and it is what he is actually doing to the country and to individual Americans. To drive home this message, “Bankrupter-in-Chief Trump” should be repeated after each new Trump claim, policy, action and report that illustrates this message—until most Americans understand this as Trump’s true legacy.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">The country’s economic resources are being wasted, while its future economic health is endangered.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Trump campaigned on the promise of eliminating the federal debt within eight years, but what his economic policies have actually been doing is bankrupting the country.  The U.S. government’s budget deficit ballooned to almost $1 trillion in 2019, which is nearly a 50 percent increase during Trump’s time in office.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Debt to Top $4.1 Trillion</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Trump’s overall contribution to the national debt, for the bills he has signed into law, is projected to top $4.1 trillion, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. The largest portion of this increase is coming from Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, which are projected to boost the nation’s debt by $1.8 trillion, according to this group’s analysis.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Trump promised this his economic policies would lead to growth in the economy of between 3 and 4 percent per year, but the reality is that the economy has been growing at barely 2 percent over the past year. And the average economic growth since Trump took office has been a little more than 2.25 percent per year. The promised benefits from the massive tax cut have not materialized, and in fact the United States has now had two consecutive quarters of negative investment growth.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Not only are Trump’s tax cuts not boosting business investment as promised, but they are also bankrupting the country’s economic future. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that deficits will remain massive each year going forward until the total federal government debt reaches nearly 100 percent of the country’s GDP (gross domestic product): “Under current law, the federal government is projected to borrow an additional $13.6 trillion from the end of 2018 through 2029, boosting debt held by the public to $29.3 trillion.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Squandered Stimulus</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">The country’s ability to weather economic downturns has also been compromised because the tools of economic stimulus needed to pull the country out of a recession have already been squandered at a time when they were not needed. The country’s economic resources are being wasted with minimal benefit, while its future economic health is endangered.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Another of Trump’s great promises was that he would eliminate the U.S. trade deficit.  Here again, Trump’s performance has been disastrous.  Far from declining, the U.S. trade deficit is now running some 40 percent above the level it was running when Trump first assumed office.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Trump points to the rise in stock prices as evidence that his economic policies are working.  But the truth is that stock prices have increased during Trump’s presidency at about half the pace that they increased during President Obama’s first three years in office.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Bankrupting Individual Americans</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Trump administration policies are leading to bankruptcy for large numbers of Americans. Farmers have been hit especially hard. Farm bankruptcies grew to the highest level since 2011, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>“Farm debt in 2019 is projected to be a record-high $416 billion,</b>” the Farm Bureau reported in October, while farm income is 29 percent lower than in the record year of 2013.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">And this is happening despite the Trump administration directing nearly $30 billion to farmers in bailout programs, which, along with other disaster aid and insurance indemnities, now accounts for nearly 40 percent of farmers’ income. And a lot of that aid has yet to actually reach farmers.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Trump promised that his tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations would lead to more jobs and higher wages for all Americans. But here again, Trump has not delivered on his promises.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Tax Cuts an ‘Enormous Flop’</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">“From a purely economic standpoint, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 has been an enormous flop,” writes Michael Linden, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative. Average U.S. job creation per month has actually declined in the nearly two years since the law passed. And wage growth has been only a small fraction of what the White House promised.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">During his campaign and in his inaugural address, Trump promised to protect the “forgotten man and woman.”  He has actually been doing just the opposite by systematically dismantling many protections for individual consumers, protections for individual investors, protections for people preparing for retirement and protections for other Americans.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">“The Trump administration is probably the most anti-investor and consumer protection administration in decades, if not ever,” said Dennis Kelleher, president and CEO of Better Markets, an investor and consumer watchdog group.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Not only have protections for individual Americans been stripped from regulations and policies, but enforcement of remaining laws and regulations has also plummeted.  The result, concludes Public Citizen, is that while Trump “once asserted that he was ‘not going to let Wall Street get away with murder,’ he now is allowing industry after industry to get away with just about anything.”  This, too, will cause bankruptcies for large numbers of individual Americans.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Trump also wants to take away access to health insurance for millions by undoing the Affordable Care Act. This would be especially damaging to those with pre-existing conditions, many of whom could not buy health insurance before that law took effect. And if Trump succeeds in undermining the Affordable Care Act, this would cause financial ruin to many more people, given that medical issues and costs are the number one reason Americans file for bankruptcy.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>A Career of Business Bankruptcies</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Trump cultivates a mythology that he has been tremendously successful in business. The reality is that public records show that six times Trump filed Chapter 11 bankruptcies for his companies. Yes, not once, not twice, but six times! And even in cases where Trump was able to avoid bankruptcy, there were many business failures. For example, “Trump defaulted on the debt of his airline, Trump Shuttle, turning it over to U.S. Airways.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">The full extent of Trump’s failures in business has been largely hidden by this refusal to release his tax returns. But The New York Times was able to obtain tax information from 1985 to 1994 and these records revealed $1.17 billion in business losses in these 10 years alone.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">“In fact, year after year, Mr. Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer,” The Times concluded, comparing his losses to publicly available IRS information. These revelations led to newspaper and magazine headlines like this one: “As a Businessman, Trump Was the Biggest Loser of All.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">How was Trump able to stay in business despite many bankruptcies and losing so much money? The answer is that Trump was able to structure his deals so that he was losing other people’s money—that of banks, bond investors, governments and others—more than his own money.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Passing Losses to Others</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">[pix Trump and his failed airline. ]</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">In other words, Trump was passing financial losses to those who supported him. Not surprisingly, this led many banks and other financial institutions to stop providing financing to Trump.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The principal exception has been Deutsche Bank of Germany: “Over the past two decades, it was the only mainstream financial institution consistently willing to do business with Mr. Trump, who had a history of defaulting on loans. The bank lent him a total of more than $2 billion, about $350 million of which was outstanding when he was sworn in as president.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">This is the same bank that was fined $630 million in 2017 by American and British banking regulators in connection with “around $10 billion in suspicious trades being <b>laundered out of Russia.”</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">It’s not just banks that have failed to receive payments due from Trump. Hundreds of small businesses, individual contractors, laborers and other ordinary Americans have alleged that Trump has not paid them.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Numerous reports have documented these claims, such as this USA Today story: “Hundreds allege Donald Trump doesn’t pay his bills.” And this Wall Street Journal article, “Donald Trump’s Business Plan Left a Trail of Unpaid Bills.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Then there is Trump University, which Trump shut down after he settled two class-action lawsuits and a civil lawsuit accusing him of cheating thousands of Americans out of millions of dollars through what many called a “sham.”  Unfortunately, some of the 7,000 potential beneficiaries of the $25 million lawsuit settlement passed away before receiving any refund, such as Boyce Chair of Springfield, N.J., who lost $34,995 on so-called mentorship program tuition.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">The bottom line is that just as Trump bankrupted business-after-business and built his fortune by passing debt and losses from his failing enterprises on to others, so too is Trump today bankrupting the country and passing the debt and losses from his failing economic policies on to ordinary Americans and to future generations.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Steven Piersanti is a senior editor at Berrett-Koehler Publishers, a leading independent publisher of books that promote positive change at all levels—individual, organizational and societal. Before founding Berrett-Koehler in 1992, he was CEO of Jossey-Bass Publishers. He is seeking collaborators to expand and communicate themes of this article in various ways.</font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">an 1219</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/trump-runs-the-country-just-like-his-bankrupted-businesses-the-national-debt-is-skyrocketing-while-economic-growth-lags-behind/" rel="bookmark" title="Trump runs the country just like his bankrupted businesses: The national debt is skyrocketing while economic growth lags behind" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px" font-weight="font-weight" color="color" rgb="rgb" important="important" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; line-height: 1.4; display: block;"><font face="Times New Roman">Trump runs the country just like his bankrupted businesses: The national debt is skyrocketing while economic growth lags behind</font></a><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/trump-runs-the-country-just-like-his-bankrupted-businesses-the-national-debt-is-skyrocketing-while-economic-growth-lags-behind/" rel="bookmark" title="Trump runs the country just like his bankrupted businesses: The national debt is skyrocketing while economic growth lags behind" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px" font-weight="font-weight" color="color" rgb="rgb" important="important" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; line-height: 1.4; display: block;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">w<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/why-trumps-embrace-of-eddie-gallagher-is-so-dangerous/" rel="bookmark" title="Why Trump’s embrace of Eddie Gallagher is so dangerous" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px" font-weight="font-weight" display="display" inline="inline" important="important" color="color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; line-height: 1.4;">hy Trump’s embrace of Eddie Gallagher is so dangerous</a></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">an 1219</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/how-trumps-trade-war-hurt-the-very-individuals-it-was-supposed-to-help/"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/how-trumps-trade-war-hurt-the-very-individuals-it-was-supposed-to-help/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>How Trump’s trade war hurt the very individuals it was supposed to help</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Written by Sarah Toce / Salon December 30, 2019</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">President Donald Trump’s trade war raised prices for consumers and hurt the manufacturing industry, according to a report from economists on the Federal Reserve Board.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“The first comprehensive estimates” of the trade war’s effect on American manufacturers show that the tariffs have hurt the industry more than they helped, wrote Aaron Flaaen and Justin Pierce, two senior economists at the Federal Reserve’s Industrial Output Section.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“We find that U.S. manufacturing industries more exposed to tariff increases experience relative reductions in employment as a positive effect from import protection is offset by larger negative effects from rising input costs and retaliatory tariffs,” the report said.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>In short, the economists concluded that the tariffs gave a “small boost” to manufacturers, which was “offset by larger drags from the effects” of rising costs and retaliatory tariffs.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Mother Jones summarized the main findings in a handy chart:</font></div></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div></div>