trump10capt

html ends findings"<div>
</div><div><div>trumpX420</div><div>
</div><div>1219</div><div>
</div><div>evil on pseudo populism and weaponization of law</div><div>
</div><div>see impeach</div><div>see sotu dog whistle xian</div><div>
</div><div>see corona covid</div><div>see covid bailout bill</div><div>see covid 4</div><div>
</div><div>aha dark side inverse of transaction is retaliation</div><div>220 bak 420 capt</div><div>=</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/trumps-campaign-files-frivolous-lawsuit-against-tv-station-for-airing-attack-ad-slamming-his-coronavirus-response</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>Trump campaign sues Wisconsin TV station over ad using his words on coronavirus</div><div>By Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America - Donald Trump, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52647057</div><div>Written by Alex Henderson April 14, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>President Donald Trump’s initial response to the coronavirus pandemic has been the subject of various attack ads, including one from the Lincoln Project (a group of Never Trump conservatives that includes attorney George Conway) and one from Priorities USA (a Democratic super PAC). The theme of those ads is that Trump hasfailed to take the coronavirus threat seriously. And in Wisconsin, Trump’s reelection campaign has filed a frivolous lawsuit against WJFW-TV (which airs NBC programming in North-Central Wisconsin) for airing the Priorities USA ad — calling it “false and defamatory,” claiming that the ad takes Trump’s words out of context.</div><div>
</div><div>The campaign filed the lawsuit on Monday, April 13 in Price County Circuit Court. The ad by Priorities USA, called “Existential Threat,” depicts a graph and timeline that uses actual statements Trump made in January and February — for example, “This is their new hoax” and “We have it totally under control.” A variety of Trump critics, from liberals and progressives to centrists to Never Trump conservatives, have been using these quotes to tar and feather Trump and demonstrate that he spent months downplaying the severity of coronavirus. But the Trump campaign, in its lawsuit against WJFW-TV, takes issue with the way Trump’s words “the coronavirus” and “this is their new hoax” are used together — arguing that the ad makes it sound like Trump was saying “the coronavirus, this is their new hoax” as a single sentence. However, the intonation in Trump’s voice makes it sound like two different statements made at different times: Trump’s tone of voice is much lower on “the coronavirus” than it is on “This is their new hoax.”</div><div>
</div><div>Law & Crime reporter Jerry Lambe explains, “The tone and deflection of the speech between the first and second phrases is quite different, but the Trump campaign’s lawsuit suggests the text on the screen contains a comma to connect the phrases in a way which suggests they were uttered together.”</div><div>
</div><div>Trump’s “this is their new hoax” assertion was made at a South Carolina rally on February 28. Downplaying the threat that coronavirus posed in the U.S. — even though it had killed thousands of people in China — the president argued that Democrats were using coronavirus as a “hoax” just as they had used impeachment and the Ukraine scandal as a “hoax.” Trump’s campaign is claiming that he was saying that Democrats were perpetrating a hoax, not that coronavirus itself was a hoax. But clearly, Trump was downplaying coronavirus’ severity and the threat that it posed in the U.S. — where, according to John Hopkins University in Baltimore and CNN’s coronavirus/Hopkins page, it had killed more than 23,600 people as of Tuesday morning, April 14.</div><div>
</div><div>In the lawsuit, Trump’s campaign argues that “Trump’s actual remarks demonstrate that he was specifically referring to the Democrats’ politicization of the coronavirus pandemic when he used the word ‘hoax.’”</div><div>
</div><div>Lambe also points out that although the lawsuit “refers to the defendant as WJFW-NBC,” it “is formally filed against Northland Television, LLC, the corporate owner of the local affiliate. The affiliate is not owned by NBC but broadcasts the network’s programming.”</div><div>
</div><div>The Lincoln Project’s attack ad, titled “Distraction,” is equally scathing. In that ad, anti-Trump conservatives tear apart the absurd claim that Trump, in January and February, was distracted from coronavirus because of his impeachment. That ad argues that when the World Health Organization (WHO) was warning that coronavirus was a “global health emergency,” Trump was too busy with “campaign rallies and golfing” to seriously address the crisis:</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Priorities USA has released an official response to the Wisconsin lawsuit, asserting, “This is pretty simple: Donald Trump doesn’t want voters to hear the truth, and he’s trying to bully TV stations into submission. The truth is that Trump ignored warnings from experts and his own team and downplayed the coronavirus even as it spread unchecked across the country and the world. Americans are now suffering as a result of his inaction. We will never stop airing the facts and holding the president accountable for his actions.”</div><div>
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</div><div></div><div>kush libtard in charge of ppe, stealing them from hosp?!</div><div>=</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/trump-chose-to-do-nothing-for-weeks-now-were-in-a-crisis-with-thousands-of-deaths-and-no-end-in-sight/</div><div>
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</div><div>=</div><div>see blk lung</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/mitch-mcconnell-is-still-refusing-to-rein-in-trump-and-americans-are-paying-the-price-new-yorker</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>Mitch McConnell is still refusing to rein in Trump — and Americans are paying the price: New Yorker</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Sarah K. Burris / Raw Story April 13, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer explained that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is enabling President Donald Trump’s bad behavior at a time that Americans need a leader the most.</div><div>
</div><div>“On Thursday, March 12th, Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, could have insisted that he and his colleagues work through the weekend to hammer out an emergency aid package addressing the coronavirus pandemic,” she wrote. “Instead, he recessed the Senate for a long weekend and returned home to Louisville, Kentucky. McConnell, a seventy-eight-year-old Republican who is about to complete his sixth term as a senator, planned to attend a celebration for a protégé, Justin Walker, a federal judge who was once his Senate intern. McConnell has helped install nearly two hundred conservatives as judges; stocking the judiciary has been his legacy project.”</div><div>
</div><div>Democrats were working with the White House’s Steve Mnuchin, and McConnell was needed for the next step. He was cracking jokes at an event halfway across the country during the crisis. It took McConnell 11 days to come up with a bill.</div><div>
</div><div>“McConnell, who is known as one of the wiliest politicians in Washington, soon reframed the narrative as a personal success story,” The New Yorker said. “In Kentucky, where he is running for reëlection, he launched a campaign ad about the bill’s passage, boasting, ‘One leader brought our divided country together.’ At the same time, he attacked the Democrats, telling a radio host that the impeachment of Trump had ‘diverted the attention of the government’ when the epidemic was in its early stages. In fact, several senators—including Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, and Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut—had raised alarms about the virus nearly two months before the Administration acted, whereas Trump had told reporters around the same time that he was “not concerned at all.” And on February 27th, some three weeks after the impeachment trial ended, McConnell had defended the Administration’s response, accusing Democrats of ‘performative outrage’ when they demanded more emergency funding.”</div><div>
</div><div>The New Yorker explained that McConnell’s worship for Trump is really a kind of “cynical political genius.” He’s both protecting his caucus and covering himself in a deeply red state where Trump is more popular than even he is.</div><div>
</div><div>“When the pandemic took hold, the President’s standing initially rose in national polls, and McConnell and Trump will surely both take credit for the aid package in the coming months,” said the report. “Yet, as covid-19 decimates the economy and kills Americans across the nation, McConnell’s alliance with Trump is looking riskier. Indeed, some critics argue that McConnell bears a singular responsibility for the country’s predicament. They say that he knew from the start that Trump was unequipped to lead in a crisis, but because the President was beloved by the Republican base, McConnell protected him.”</div><div>
</div><div>The report recalled that McConnell even blocked witnesses at the impeachment trial, which basically guaranteed that Trump would remain in office.’</div><div>
</div><div>“There are a lot of people disappointed in him. He could have mobilized the Senate. But the Republican Party changed underneath him, and he wanted to remain in power,” said David Hawpe, the former editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal.</div><div>
</div><div>Columnist and journalism professor Al Cross called McConnell’s partnership with Trump “the most important political relationship in the country.”</div><div>
</div><div>According to The New Yorker, Cross “had hoped that McConnell would push back against Trump. After all, past Republicans have crossed party lines to defend democracy—from censuring Joe McCarthy to forcing the resignation of President Richard Nixon.”’</div><div>
</div><div>“But Trump and McConnell have come to understand each other,” Cross said. “The President needs him to govern. McConnell knows that if their relationship fell apart it would be a disaster for the Republican majority in the Senate. They’re very different in many ways, but fundamentally they’re about the same thing—winning.”</div><div>
</div><div>The extensive piece goes on to explain even more ways in which McConnell has sold his soul in further efforts to protect himself in what will likely be one of the most difficult elections of his career. Democrats are still fighting it out in a primary election, but the race has already seen more donations than any other in the country. As the coronavirus creeps into the southern states, McConnell could end up in a desperate situation explaining why he hasn’t done enough while his state is suffering.</div><div>
</div><div>---</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/mitch-mcconnell-calls-trump-nuts-behind-his-back-and-even-compares-him-to-roy-moore-report/</div><div></div><div>drilled 420 there will be fraud?&nbsp; trump only claim 2020 was economy now tanked, so must blame dem govs</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/trump-spent-easter-weekend-calling-friends-about-dr-fauci-as-white-house-allies-begin-smear-campaign-report</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>Trump spent Easter weekend calling friends about Dr. Fauci as White House allies begin smear campaign: report</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Tom Boggioni / Raw Story April 13, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>The Daily Beast is reporting that Donald Trump hunkered down in the White House over the Easter weekend, watching cable news programs and calling friends and allies asking what they think of Dr. Anthony Fauci who has become, for many, the only reliable face on the White House coronavirus task force.</div><div>
</div><div>According to the report, the president thinks he made the infectious disease expert a “star” by featuring him prominently during his almost daily press conferences and is reportedly looking for feedback.</div><div>
</div><div>“’What do you think of Fauci?’ the president repeatedly worked into his phone conversations over the past few days, the three sources said, as he pulsed his broader network of informal advisers, industry allies, and current staff on their opinions on the news of the day,” the Beast’s Asawein Suebsaeng reports. “At one point this weekend, Trump remarked that he’s made Fauci a ‘star’ and that barely anybody would have known who the doctor was were it not for the president putting him front and center in the administration’s coronavirus response, televised press briefings, and media strategy.”</div><div>
</div><div>According to one source, the president, “.. did not sound bitter about it, I wouldn’t say that. It just sounded like he thought it was worth a reminder.”</div><div>
</div><div>What may have set off the president was an appearance by the Fauci on CNN’s “State of the Union,” where, in a roundabout way,the doctor&nbsp; admitted that the White House dropped the ball on getting ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic that has already led to over 22,000 deaths in the U.S.</div><div>
</div><div>“Fauci’s comments did not go over well with certain officials working in the White House or on the president’s campaign, according to multiple aides, or with Trump supporters who are publicly protective of the president and his image,” the report states. “‘ Dr. Fauci needs to be more careful choosing his words on #Coronavirus, & if he’s going to be critical, make clear what he personally could’ve done better,’ Jason Miller, a former senior Trump adviser, posted to Twitter on Sunday.”</div><div>
</div><div>According to the report, Miller was not the only critic of the doctor who is close to Trump and the White House, with Suebsaeng writing, “By Sunday afternoon, prominent Trump allies and surrogates were circulating links and documents showing how Fauci had been inconsistent or made faulty predictions about the virus in recent months, encouraging each other to share them or use them as talking points.”</div><div>
</div><div>Of note, late Sunday the president retweeted a Twitter post that contained the hashtag: #Fire Fauci.</div><div>
</div><div>You can read more here.</div><div>
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</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/bombshell-nyt-expose-flags-8-key-exchanges-in-the-red-dawn-emails-detailing-trumps-faltering-response-to-coronavirus</div><div>
</div><div>email thread by expert/drs in govt and unis</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>GOP governor fact-checks Trump’s lie about states not needing supplies: ‘The president was on the call’</div><div>David Edwards / Raw Story</div><div>Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan on Sunday suggested that the president of the United States had not told the truth.</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/trumps-horrendous-last-ditch-gambit-to-win-re-election-is-scary-as-hell/</div><div>=</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/trumps-horrendous-last-ditch-gambit-to-win-re-election-is-scary-as-hell/</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>Trump’s horrendous last-ditch gambit to win re-election is scary as hell</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Amanda Marcotte / Salon April 10, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>Thursday night, the access journalism team at the Washington Post published a piece declaring that Donald Trump intends to “reopen much of the U.S.” in May.</div><div>
</div><div>“The Trump administration is pushing to reopen much of the country next month,” Matt Zapotosky, Josh Dawsey, Jose A. Del Real and William Wan report, noting that Trump, behind “closed doors,” has “sought a strategy for resuming business activity by May 1.”</div><div>
</div><div>This is, needless to say, scary as hell. We’re nowhere near conquering the coronavirus epidemic and, thanks to Trump’s deliberate negligence — born from his desire to conceal the spread of the virus — we have nothing close to the testing capacity necessary to start letting people congregate safely again. Unsurprisingly, the article caused a lot of panic and anger, and reasonably so: There is nothing but downside to “reopening” the economy without a plan to control the spread of the virus.</div><div>
</div><div>But not to get too 11th-level chess about it, Trump — or at least his allies — probably aren’t serious about this. Instead, the chatter about “reopening” the economy is very likely more of a political gambit than a serious suggestion.</div><div>
</div><div>Trump and his allies know he needs to come up with some argument why the economic devastation we’re facing is not his fault. (It is his fault.) More importantly, they’ll need someone else to blame. This chatter about “reopening” is about laying the groundwork for that. Come fall, Trump will argue that he wanted to save the economy and get everybody back to work, but the “deep state” wouldn’t let him. He’ll try to use this ruined economy as evidence that he should be re-elected to take on this supposed conspiracy of embedded liberal-socialist traitors.</div><div>
</div><div>There are a couple of reasons to believe this is more a political gambit than a serious suggestion. For one thing, Trump doesn’t actually have the power to “reopen” the economy, as national security expert Marcy Wheeler pointed out on Twitter. State governments control those, and while at least some red states will no doubt go along with any loony plan Trump rolls out, states like New York, California, Illinois and Massachusetts — which are critical to the economic well-being of the rest of the country — will not play along with a harebrained scheme that causes the already devastating pandemic roaring back to life.</div><div>
</div><div>There’s also the coronavirus itself. Even if Trump could wave his magic wand and “reopen” the economy, the rapid spread of COVID-19 would probably do as much, if not more, to wreck the economy as the weeks of quarantine did. Piles of bodies and overwhelmed hospitals are not good for the economy, generally speaking! And it’s not like people will suddenly revert to their previously normal lives when a dangerous disease is still spreading all around them.</div><div>
</div><div>Maybe Trump is dumb enough to believe that the economy is like a light you can just switch back on, and everything will then go back to the way it was before. But there are people around him — like Attorney General Bill Barr, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. — who, evil as they may be, understand that there’s no straightforward path “back to normal.” The millions of Americans who’ve become unemployed over the last three weeks won’t magically find new jobs, and recovery from the current economic devastation will be long and difficult.</div><div>
</div><div>Yet Mnuchin has been backing Trump up, saying that he believes the economy can be “reopened” as soon as next month. Barr, too, recently declared that current lockdown orders are “draconian” and suggested that some modified form of “social distancing” can be accomplished without telling “people to go home and hide under their bed.”</div><div>
</div><div>Barr’s wild caricature of the current state of affairs — no one’s under the bed, and we’re all allowed to leave home for grocery shopping and exercise — hints at the fact that this rhetoric is more political than serious. So is his disingenuous proposal for a version of “social distancing” that is somehow different than what people are currently doing. There is, of course, no such thing and Barr is, of course, blowing piping hot air.</div><div>
</div><div>On the propaganda front, we also have the folks at Fox News eagerly pushing this “reopen the economy” line. Some of them, like Sean Hannity, really are diddle-brained fools who don’t realize how bad that would be. But others, like Tucker Carlson, are probably intelligent enough to grasp that such a move would ruin both the economy and public health, and so are floating this as a cynical political ploy rather than an actual policy proposal.</div><div>
</div><div>Indeed, there’s no way around a deeply cynical theory of what’s happening here: Trump and his allies are exploiting access journalism, which speaks to the reader’s desire to feel like they have insider knowledge, to spread a dishonest narrative. That narrative is that Trump wants to “reopen” the economy and save everyone’s jobs, even though that’s impossible. And the goal is that when the economy continues to tank, Trump can paint himself as a victim of nefarious forces who thwarted him from making America great again.</div><div>
</div><div>Trump wouldn’t actually benefit from “reopening” the economy, after all, and on some level he may understand that. It wouldn’t work the way he implies it would, and it would probably lead to even more economic devastation to go along with the public health catastrophe. But he certainly might benefit from sowing a narrative about how his heroic efforts to save us all were crushed by the oppressive forces of the “deep state.”</div><div>
</div><div>There is no evidence that anyone at the White House or in the Republican Party in Congress is even engaging with the various proposed plans out there to reopen the economy. Their lack of interest in taking this seriously is a good sign they are not taking this seriously.</div><div>
</div><div>Viewed in this light, it’s likely that right-wing pundits are being deliberately provocative when they say, as Bill O’Reilly recently did, that many “people who are dying [of this virus], both here and around the world, were on their last legs anyway.”</div><div>
</div><div>The purpose of that is, in large part, to draw the outraged reaction from liberals that can then be characterized as “political correctness.” Conservatives can then cast themselves as hard-nosed realists who are being suppressed by oversensitive liberals who are willing to tank the economy in a hapless bid to save a handful of people who were going to die anyway.</div><div>
</div><div>This simply can’t be stated firmly enough: That’s a horrendous lie. It’s a false dichotomy to pit saving lives against saving the economy. For one thing, you can’t do the latter without doing the former; the viral pandemic is hugely disruptive in and of itself, and not just because of the quarantine. For another, liberals appear to be the only people willing to do what it takes to save the economy, which is not some hasty “reopening,” but a major government stimulus program that pumps in as much money as needed (and then raising taxes the rich to recoup the losses).</div><div>
</div><div>But these provocations from O’Reilly and other conservatives who say they don’t mind letting people die to save the economy are surprisingly effective. They generate the desired outrage from liberals and, more important, they pull the focus away from the urgent discussion this country needs to have, which is about how to save lives and rebuild our economy.</div><div>
</div><div>This narrative about the “deep state” and “political correctness” is Donald Trump’s last-ditch re-election strategy. Perversely, his false dichotomy between saving lives and saving the economy works better if it remains hypothetical, which is to say, if the economy isn’t “reopened.” That way, Trump can spin fantasies of how great things would have been if we had just listened to him, and claim that conditions only got worse because the snowflake liberals got their way. If he actually could “reopen” the economy, the widespread devastation would speak for itself. He benefits far more from leaving that as a fantasy than from making it a reality.</div><div>
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</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/why-trumps-outlandish-beliefs-about-health-made-him-terrible-leader-during-a-pandemic/</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>Why Trump’s outlandish beliefs about health made him terrible leader during a pandemic</div><div>President Donald J. Trump welcomes members of the press to the State Dining Room Monday, January 14, 2019, where the 2018 NCAA Football National Champions, the Clemson Tigers, will be welcomed with food from Domino’s, McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Burger King. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)</div><div>Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly April 10, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>There are some things we knew about Donald Trump since before he was elected that have pretty much been forgotten. But I’ve been reminded of them while we watch him attempt to lead the national response to a pandemic.</div><div>
</div><div>Apparently Trump has always been a germaphobe. As such, some of the recommendations from public health experts about dealing with coronavirus should come naturally to him. For example, in The Art of the Comeback, he said that “I happen to be a clean hands freak. I feel much better after I thoroughly wash my hands, which I do as much as possible.” That is why he referred to the custom of handshaking as “one of the curses of American society.” His distaste for handshaking came up again during the Ebola crisis.</div><div>
</div><div>Donald J. Trump</div><div>@realDonaldTrump</div><div>Something very important, and indeed society changing, may come out of the Ebola epidemic that will be a very good thing: NO SHAKING HANDS!</div><div>
</div><div>798</div><div>10:14 AM - Oct 4, 2014</div><div>Twitter Ads info and privacy</div><div>1,210 people are talking about this</div><div>We don’t know how often Trump washes his hands these days, but the whole idea of avoiding handshakes went out the window a while ago.</div><div>
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</div><div>CNN</div><div>The farewell handshake between President Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron lasted about 25 seconds http://cnn.it/2uqtIWy&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Embedded video</div><div>
</div><div>Most bizarrely, Trump uses his germaphobia to justify his love of fast foods.</div><div>
</div><div>His simplistic palate is a function of his desire for cleanliness. “One bad hamburger, you can destroy McDonald’s,” he explained to CNN’s Anderson Cooper earlier this year. “I’m a very clean person. I like cleanliness, and I think you’re better off going there than maybe someplace that you have no idea where the food’s coming from. It’s a certain standard.”</div><div>
</div><div>That helps explain things like this.</div><div>
</div><div>Laura Figueroa Hernandez</div><div>?</div><div>@Laura_Figueroa</div><div>Fast food spread at the White House for North Dakota State University Football Team. Big Macs and Chick-Fil-A.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>According to Michael Wolff, Trump’s love of McDonalds is also rooted in another phobia.</div><div>
</div><div>Trump “had a longtime fear of being poisoned, one reason why he liked to eat at McDonald’s — nobody knew he was coming and the food was safely premade,” Wolff reports.</div><div>
</div><div>When it comes to unhealthy habits, even more disturbing than his love of fast food is Trump’s belief that exercise will kill you. In their book Trump Revealed, Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher wrote that “Trump believed the human body was like a battery, with a finite amount of energy, which exercise only depleted.”</div><div>
</div><div>When these bizarre beliefs were first reported, it was done in a lighthearted manner because back then, no one really believed that he would become president. There is still a bit of catharsis in pointing and laughing at the idiot who occupies the Oval Office.</div><div>
</div><div>But right now things are deadly serious. The man who is currently leading our national response to a pandemic has a long history of dreaming up outlandish theories to justify his behavior. We’ve certainly seen that happen once or twice over the last three years, haven’t we?</div><div>
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</div><div>see roy cohn for full txt</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/sadism-crime-and-a-love-of-lies-what-3500-lawsuits-reveal-about-trumps-true-nature/</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>Sadism, crime and a love of lies: What 3,500 lawsuits reveal about Trump’s true nature</div><div>
</div><div>Written by History News Network April 11, 2020</div><div>American presidents before Donald Trump had some record of public achievement in politics, government or the military before they were elected. Donald Trump lacked any of those credentials, but brought his astounding history of involvement in thousands of lawsuits to the nation’s highest office. This trove of cases from more than 45 years reflects Trump’s contempt for ethical standards and for the US Constitution and the rule of law, the foundation of American democracy.</div><div>
</div><div>As a perennial litigant, Trump weaponized the law to devastate perceived enemies, to consolidate power, to frustrate opposing parties, as former federal prosecutor and acclaimed author James D. Zirin illuminates in his compelling and disturbing history of Trump’s use and abuse of the law, Plaintiff in Chief: A Portrait of Trump in 3,500 Lawsuits (All Points Books)....</div><div>James D. Zirin: He has continued and I think he will continue. And I think the rule of law has been seriously undermined.</div><div>
</div><div>Our democracy has been seriously compromised because the framers of the Constitution never thought the system would work this way. Republican senators deserve part of the blame because of their need to retain power or whatever, they did not respect the oath they took to be fair and impartial judges of the facts and the law, but instead voted along party lines to acquit him.</div><div>
</div><div>Robin Lindley: Trump said sometime in the 90s, as you note in your book, that “I love to have enemies.” I think most of us wouldn’t feel that way and it seems pathological to me. What did you think when you found that quote from him?&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>James D. Zirin: Most politicians are controversial and have political enemies. I think Trump relishes that perhaps more than others and he loves to attack them personally. We know Biden is “Sleepy Joe” and Elizabeth Warren is “Pocahontas” and Bernie Sanders is “Crazy Bernie.” He has nicknames for everyone and he revels in trashing them rather than addressing the merits of anything they propose.</div><div>
</div><div>Robin Lindley: The mentality of an eight-year-old bully, it seems. You write that Trump’s experience in lawsuits reflects “his inmost ulterior motivation.” This comes out in your responses, but could you sum up your sense of his character, motivation, and morality based on your extensive research?</div><div>
</div><div>James D. Zirin: His virulent combination of anti-science, anti-law, ignorance, irrational conspiracy theorizing, instability, narcissism and vindictiveness has led us to national catastrophe. If he is re-elected, I fear for the republic and the American people.</div><div>
</div><div>Robin Lindley: As you demonstrate, Trump is an anomaly in terms of the adversarial system. Do you have anything to add on his abuse of legal process?&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>James D. Zirin: Look, the adversary system is the crown jewel of our legal system. We got it from the British. The idea is that you had lawyers on both sides who were partisan, who were like the Knights Templar who rode into battle on behalf of somebody or other in the Middle Ages. That has been the best way of getting at the truth. In contrast, in civil law countries like France or Germany, the judge conducts the inquiry. The judge might ask questions of the lawyers, but the lawyers don’t develop the evidence on both sides.</div><div>
</div><div>But adversary doesn’t mean enemy. What Trump has demonstrated is that we have a great legal system and we all have the benefit of it. But there are also limitations for the law and those limitations can be exploited by someone determined to beat the system, and that’s what Trump has done.</div><div>
</div><div>Robin Lindley. Thank you, Mr. Zirin and congratulations on your groundbreaking and compelling book on the life of Donald Trump through the perspective of his thousands of lawsuits. It’s been an honor to talk with you.</div><div>
</div><div>This article was originally published at History News Network</div><div>
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</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/trump-is-working-behind-the-scenes-to-cripple-any-investigations-before-the-november-election-columnist</div><div></div><div>an 420</div><div>
</div><div>What if Trump wins?</div><div>
</div><div>President Donald J. Trump returns to the Oval Office following a White House Coronavirus Task Force coronavirus update briefing Sunday, March 29, 2020, at the White House. (Official White House Photo by Andrea Hanks)</div><div>Written by The Washington Monthly April 10, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>For many people, the prospect of what might happen if Donald Trump wins a second term is too awful to contemplate. But, as we are witnessing with the coronavirus, not contemplating scenarios that have at least some chance of happening is a grave mistake. Indeed, it’s a mistake that helped elect Trump in the first place.</div><div>Ideally, the press corps would be hard at work exploring this question. Alas, it is not. In the thousands of presidential campaign stories that have been published this year, you will be hard pressed to find much reporting or informed speculation about what policies Trump might pursue if he’s reelected, or what the consequences might be if he were successful in enacting them. That’s not because such things aren’t knowable in advance. If that were the problem, political reporters wouldn’t have spent the last six months gaming out which candidates were, say, likely to win which primaries. The real reason campaign journalists don’t do this kind of work is that it’s not what they’re trained to do—and, perhaps, it’s not what most people want to read.</div><div>
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</div><div>We think our readers are different. So we gathered a distinguished group of area experts and beat reporters. We told them to imagine that, come November of 2020, Trump wins the Electoral College and the balance of power in Congress remains unchanged; Republicans hold the Senate and Democrats hold the House. Then, we asked them to think through the hitherto unthinkable: What will Trump aim to do, and what could he realistically get away with, if given another four years in power? —The Editors</div><div>
</div><div>Can The Liberal World Order Survive Another Four Years of Trump?</div><div>Probably not. Here’s why.</div><div>What Would a Second Trump Term Do to the Federal Bureaucracy?</div><div>An EPA stocked with climate change deniers. A Surgeon general sympathetic to anti-vaxxers. It could get grim.</div><div>How Trump Could Take Away Obamacare With a Second Term</div><div>After packing the courts, the president’s use of executive authority will be more effective.</div><div>How Trump Would Gut the Social Safety Net With a Second Term</div><div>There’s a backdoor tactic the administration would use to weaken programs that help the poor.</div><div>How Trump Could Dismantle Workers’ Rights with Another Four Years</div><div>In just his first term, he’s been a fairly effective union buster.</div><div>Trump’s Second Term Immigration Agenda</div><div>Will anyone be allowed into America?</div><div>Can Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Survive a Second Trump Term?</div><div>It’s a proposition better left untested.</div><div>Why a Second Trump Term Will Not Be a Horror Movie</div><div>Let’s hope it doesn’t happen. But if it does, we won’t be helpless.</div><div>Support the Washington Monthly&nbsp;</div><div></div><div>aha djt conflicted b/c action on covid means it's real and he failed before; but then pivot to wartime prez who took quick (xeno) action to shut down flight from china? jared want pvtiz rx supply chain, and fla got all it asked for , but still only invoke dpa as retaliation ~ 3m?! via tucker? kush said sell to foreigners</div><div>=</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/ex-ethics-director-under-trump-says-the-president-is-in-the-late-stage-of-an-authoritarian-coup/</div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div>djt sez he arranged truce betw russia and saudi</div><div>
</div><div>RUS guest: $2 trill bailout = cost of GNP that wd help poor ppl color and transform to grn economy</div><div>
</div><div>paywall</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-pledges-support-for-embattled-oil-industry-11585952507</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>trump Pledges Support for Embattled Oil Industry</div><div>
</div><div>The president promised sector leaders the government would help revive the industry during a much anticipated White House meeting Friday.</div><div>
</div><div>By Timothy Puko and Christopher M. Matthews</div><div>
</div><div>Updated April 3, 2020 6:40 pm ET</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>WASHINGTON—President Trump promised oil-industry leaders the government would help revive the sector during a much anticipated White House meeting Friday.</div><div>
</div><div>Chief executives of Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. and leaders of seven other energy companies joined the president as the new coronavirus pandemic slows the economy and ravages the energy business. Dwindling demand has helped to halve crude prices since January and more than 70 U.S. oil companies, already heavy with debt, are at risk of bankruptcy, energy analytics...</div><div>
</div><div>TO READ THE FULL STORY</div><div>
</div><div></div><div></div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/trump-is-preparing-the-ground-for-a-totalitarian-dictatorship-but-we-can-stop-him/</div><div>
</div><div>... see salon</div><div>
</div><div>Trump’s motives at this point are, for want of a better word, sinister. He appears to be using the playbook of Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban, readying the ground for an election that will have two candidates but only one possible outcome. What we are seeing in Trump’s nightly lies and obfuscations and denunciations of Democrats and the media is the beginnings of a Trumpian totalitarianism.</div><div>
</div><div>He has seized control of the political debate using his nightly virus press conferences, which are more frequent and last longer than his political rallies. He is gaining control over the media in his choices of whose questions he accepts, taking questions from friendly outlets and belittling outfits like NBC, CNN and PBS. (The New York Times and the Washington Post have stopped sending reporters to the briefings, covering them from outside the press room.) He has gone against rules agreed to by the White House Correspondents’ Association by allowing the alleged “reporter” from the OANN network to attend every briefing while representatives of other news organizations have to cycle in and out on a schedule set by rules according to social distancing needs.</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/trump-fires-people-for-telling-the-truth-president-blasted-for-dead-of-night-decision-to-fire-intel-watchdog/</div><div>
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</div><div>fauci nat'l stay at home</div><div>
</div><div>Sanders calls for ‘boldest legislation in history’ to halt spiraling Covid-19 catastrophe</div><div>Common Dreams</div><div>Sen. Bernie Sanders on Friday released his demands for six key priorities that he said must be included in the next round of federal economic relief for suffering Americans as…</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>coi on covid relief, deutsche</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>trump berates woman reporter for ‘very nasty tone’ in misogynistic screed</div><div>David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement</div><div>President Donald Trump unleashed a venomous attack on yet another reporter.</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>OMFG WAG THE DOG IRAN VENEZ</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/journalist-mehdi-hasan-on-trumps-iran-warmongering-what-kind-of-maniac-risks-such-a-war-in-the-middle-of-a-global-pandemic/</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>Journalist Mehdi Hasan on Trump’s Iran warmongering: ‘What kind of maniac risks such a war in the middle of a global pandemic?’</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams April 2, 2020</div><div>The Iranian Foreign Ministry on Wednesday called for an immediate halt to “warmongering during the coronavirus outbreak” as U.S. forces reportedly deployed Patriot missiles to Iraq and President Donald Trump warned—without presenting a shred of evidence—that Tehran is planning a “sneak attack” on American troops in the region.</div><div>
</div><div>Warning that heightened U.S. military activity in Iraq could lead to further “instability and disaster” in the Middle East, Iran’s Foreign Ministry said the Trump administration should “respect the wishes of the Iraqi people and government and leave the country.” The Pentagon insisted in a statement that the Patriot missiles were mobilized for purely defensive purposes.</div><div>
</div><div>As Common Dreams reported, Trump on Wednesday threatened Iran with a “very heavy price” if it attacks “U.S. troops and/or assets” in the region, ignoring pleas from advocacy groups and the United Nations for a global ceasefire and international cooperation against the novel coronavirus, which has devastated the U.S. and Iran and is spreading quickly in Iraq.</div><div>
</div><div>Trump’s tweet came just over an hour after he attended an intelligence briefing with U.S. national security officials.</div><div>
</div><div>In a tweet of his own late Wednesday, Iran’s top diplomat Javad Zarif urged Trump “not to be misled by usual warmongers.”</div><div>
</div><div>“Unlike the U.S.—which surreptitiously lies, cheats, assassinates—Iran only acts in self-defense,” said Zarif. “Iran starts no wars, but teaches lessons to those who do.”</div><div>
</div><div>The New York Times reported last week that the Pentagon has issued a directive ordering “military commanders to plan for an escalation of American combat in Iraq” and “prepare a campaign to destroy an Iranian-backed militia group that has threatened more attacks against American troops.”</div><div>
</div><div>“Some top officials, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Robert C. O’Brien, the national security adviser, have been pushing for aggressive new action against Iran and its proxy forces—and see an opportunity to try to destroy Iranian-backed militia groups in Iraq as leaders in Iran are distracted by the pandemic crisis in their country,” according to the Times.</div><div>
</div><div>In response to the Times report, The Intercept‘s Mehdi Hasan urged the U.S. public to “beware of Trump using the coronavirus as a cover for war with Iran.”</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/this-is-the-real-reason-trump-is-finally-admitting-the-coronavirus-will-kill-many-americans/</div><div>
</div><div>2.2 makes 100k kia a win?!</div><div></div><div></div><div>despite massive covid fail 5 pt bump in polls? (govs got much more)</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/trump-is-playing-the-media-with-his-grave-and-grim-new-tone-for-some-absurd-reason-it-seems-to-be-working/</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>Trump is playing the media with his ‘grave’ and ‘grim’ new tone. For some absurd reason, it seems to be working</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Laura Clawson / Daily Kos April 1, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>Donald Trump continues to play the media and the media continues to be willing to be played. Every time he puts on his serious face and admits what he denied for so long about the seriousness of the novel coronavirus, he gets another round of headlines that help him erase months of disastrous denial of the scale of what we face.</div><div>
</div><div>Tuesday’s press briefing was more of the same. It was an event that veteran Trump fact-checker Daniel Dale described as having “featured a dishonest overall narrative—a Trump effort to cast himself as the leader who stood strong against the faction that downplayed the severity of the virus,” in addition to “a barrage of specific false claims” that drew the coverage he was looking for from reporter after reporter.</div><div>
</div><div>“Trump sounding different today. Scale of death appears to have changed his tone, at least,” The New York Times’ Eric Lipton tweeted. According to CNN’s John Harwood, it was “the most effective job of communicating President Trump has done during this crisis.” From ABC News’ Karen Travers: “The tone at this White House coronavirus task force briefing feels different than all prior COVID-19 briefings: grave, sober, grim, realistic.” And so on.</div><div>
</div><div>The New York Times also offered a full-length example of the form. Though the article acknowledges many of the times Trump downplayed the crisis, the sentence reporter Peter Baker chose to tweet was from the Trump-has-changed genre: “The grim-faced president who appeared in the White House briefing room for more than two hours on Tuesday evening beside charts showing death projections of hellacious proportions was coming to grips with a reality he had long refused to accept.”</div><div>
</div><div>Also, we learn, it was “the starkest such effort he has made to prepare the country for the expected wave of disease and death.” The starkest such effort, or a belated attempt to memory-hole his weeks of active denial? Baker acknowledges the weeks of denial, but is credulous—in true Times political coverage style—about the reason for it. Trump is worried about reelection. He’s moving the goalposts to redefine his failure as a success. And when talking about his made-for-the-media tone shift as a real thing, it’s not enough to point to evidence of the ways Trump led us to this disastrous point. Reporters have to be willing to go further. This White House is carefully constructing the latest big lie and coverage of it has to show it for what it is, or the media is failing us more badly than it did in 2016.</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>CAFE smash crisis</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/trump-to-announce-his-most-disastrous-environmental-policy-so-far/</div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/trump-has-filled-the-government-with-his-corrupt-lackeys-spoiler-that-hasnt-worked-out-well-for-the-rest-of-us/</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>Trump has filled the government with his corrupt lackeys. Spoiler: That hasn’t worked out well for the rest of us</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Heather Digby Parton / Salon March 27, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>In February of 2017, in the very early days of the Trump administration, Steve Bannon, then the White House strategic adviser, appeared at the annual gathering of the Conservative Political Action Committee and described the new administration’s three “lines of thought.” The first had to do with sovereignty or “America First.” The second was what he called “economic nationalism” ( Trump’s trade war). And the third he called “the deconstruction of the administrative state.”</div><div>
</div><div>At the time it was assumed that this meant deregulation, a long-held goal of the conservative movement, by another name. And in fact the Trump administration has taken a wrecking ball to environmental and workplace regulation, mostly under the radar. Even the coronavirus pandemic has been used as an opportunity to drastically reduce regulations on pollution.</div><div>
</div><div>But whatever Bannon may have thought, “deconstruction of the administrative state” wasn’t part of any ideological “line of thought,” because Donald Trump doesn’t think that way. What it really meant was the degradation and delegitimization of the nonpolitical career officials who run the federal government on a daily basis. This had nothing to do with some theoretical commitment to small government. It was all about a commitment to Donald Trump.</div><div>
</div><div>These officials, whether in the intelligence community, the Department of Justice, the Pentagon, the EPA, Homeland Security or the State Department, are all tasked with seeing that rules, norms, regulations and laws are followed and impartial facts and data are produced so the government and the private sector can make rational decisions. They had to be marginalized in order to protect this inept, impulsive, narcissistic president, who had no understanding of how government works and no knowledge of what his job entailed.</div><div>
</div><div>Trump’s allies have been relentless in their mission. The turnover in the first three years of this administration has been staggering. When agency heads weren’t forced to leave because of blatant corruption they were pushed out ignominiously for anything from perceived personal slights to jealousy over too much positive attention from the press to differences over his reckless policy decisions. And he has most often decided not to name permanent replacements but to leave “acting” heads in charge, ostensibly because he likes the flexibility. The truth is that he has taken to placing unqualified cronies in important jobs who probably couldn’t get Senate approval, and leaving a large number of jobs unfilled.</div><div>
</div><div>This has left the Justice Department in a state of near-mutiny under the leadership of top Trump henchman Bill Barr, while the intelligence community tries to avoid telling Trump anything he doesn’t want to hear and the State Department is staffed by people who have no idea what American foreign policy is from one day to the next. But I think most Americans assumed that the workings of the federal public health agencies would be beneath the notice of the president and would therefore hum along without much interference. That turns out to be wrong too, and for obvious reasons. The agencies are interlocking, and if one is being undermined they all are.The New York Times recently reported that Trump’s propensity for hiring loyalists without experience and leaving many positions unfilled has made the response to the coronavirus pandemic erratic and incompetent at all levels of government.&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>At Homeland Security, 20 senior positions are either vacant or filled by acting officials, including acting secretary Chad Wolf, who appeared completely clueless in a recent Senate hearing. Workers in the Department of Veterans Affairs had to order medical supplies from Amazon because their leaders are so inexperienced in disasters they didn’t plan ahead for patients at VA hospitals during the pandemic.And if you’re wondering what went wrong at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ProPublica reported on Thursday that from the beginning that agency was in total chaos trying to deal with the pandemic, a crisis that is specifically in its wheelhouse. It wasn’t just that the tests they developed didn’t work or that they inexplicably refused to use the test German scientists had developed for the World Health Organization. The agency was failing at its most basic function.:</div><div>
</div><div>On Feb. 13, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent out an email with what the author described as an “URGENT” call for help. The agency was struggling with one of its most important duties: keeping track of Americans suspected of having the novel coronavirus. It had “an ongoing issue” with organizing — and sometimes flat-out losing — forms sent by local agencies about people thought to be infected. The email listed job postings for people who could track or retrieve this paperwork.</div><div>
</div><div>Trump has insisted over and over again that no one could have predicted that something like this, which of course is complete nonsense. The Obama administration had set up a pandemic team within the National Security Council, which ran potential scenarios for the incoming administration in January of 2017 as part of a legally required transition exercise. Roughly two-thirds of the Trump representatives who attended that meeting are no longer serving in the administration anyway, another example of how the huge turnover has contributed to the botched response. In any case, former national security adviser John Bolton disbanded the team when he joined the White House, so there is hardly anyone around who would have benefited from those briefings anyway.</div><div>
</div><div>But according to Politico, the Obama folks left a “playbook” behind that outlined everything the new administration needed to know to begin the coordination of the various agencies and distribution of materials as well as other helpful guidance. Apparently, that guidance was thrown onto a shelf somewhere, and has been gathering dust ever since.</div><div>
</div><div>None of that is surprising. When Trump was asked at one of his White House coronavirus campaign rallies if he’d called any of the former presidents for advice, he replied that he thinks he’s doing an incredible job and said, “I don’t think I’m going to learn much.”</div><div>
</div><div>On Thursday, he blamed the Obama administration for his own lack of preparation, garnering this response:</div><div>
</div><div>https://twitter.com/JeremyKonyndyk/status/1243299159890894854</div><div>
</div><div>Trump’s habit from the beginning has been to fire anyone who follows the law or science if he feels that threatens him in any way. So this Washington Post story about the “cadre of right-wing news sites” who are agitating for the firing of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases chief Dr. Anthony Fauci is all too predictable, considering Trump’s track record. They object to Fauci’s insistence that the data and the course of the virus must determine when the guidelines for social distancing can be lifted. Why? Because he is “an agent of the ‘deep state’ that Trump has vowed to dismantle.” Of course.</div><div>
</div><div>And so the administrative state continues to be deconstructed, one dead American at a time.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div></div><div></div><div>https://www.npr.org/2020/03/14/815039722/trump-steps-in-to-help-oil-industry-facing-its-own-coronavirus-crisis</div><div>
</div><div>he tried to play it like shrewd bottom feed strat but actually bailout to frakkers?</div><div>npr 3/14?</div><div>...Oil prices bounced back a bit after President Trump said the Department of Energy would buy crude for the nation's strategic petroleum reserve.</div><div>"We're going to fill it right to the top," Trump said Friday in a wide-ranging news conference at the White House. He said it will save taxpayers "billions and billions of dollars" while helping an industry that's been reeling.</div><div>
</div><div>While oil prices increased nearly 5% after Friday's announcement, that was just a fraction of the amount they lost earlier in the week.</div><div>
</div><div>In South Texas, Rudy Martinez immediately experienced the effects of the past week's collapse in crude oil prices.</div><div>
</div><div>"I actually have a little man camp and these guys are on the way out because they lost contracts," says Martinez, who has eight rooms he rents to out-of-town oilfield workers in Karnes City, Texas.</div><div>
</div><div>"The workers get their per-diem and I charge them $100 a person [per week]. Actually I'd like to charge them a little more than that, but now that it's tapered off, it's hard to charge them that because they can't pay it," he says.</div><div>
</div><div>The Coronavirus Crisis</div><div>Back when the oil business was really booming in Karnes City, Martinez says he could charge up to $2000 a week per person.</div><div>
</div><div>This is one small example of what declining oil prices mean for the rural communities that depend on the oil business. And there's a lot at stake for the U.S., the world's largest producer of crude oil.</div><div>
</div><div>Oil prices had been falling out of fears the coronavirus epidemic threatened world economic growth. Demand was also down as large gatherings were canceled and people started staying home to avoid getting sick.</div><div>
</div><div>Then prices plunged after Saudi Arabia and Russia failed to agree on production cuts and instead entered a price war last Sunday. In a stunning reversal, Saudi Arabia said it would actually boost oil production and offer a massive discount for its customers.</div><div>
</div><div>U.S. oil companies, especially smaller ones, are now looking to make deep cuts. Industry analysts warn of possible bankruptcies, especially if oil remains where it's fallen to, in the $30 per barrel range. Companies operating in Texas's Eagle Ford Shale need prices between $40 to $60 a barrel to remain profitable....</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/wartime-president-trump-has-found-his-2020-strategy-posing-as-the-real-thing-on-television/</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>‘Wartime President’ Trump has found his 2020 strategy — posing as the real thing on television</div><div>
</div><div>President Donald J. Trump, joined by Vice President Mike Pence and members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, delivers remarks at a coronavirus update briefing Sunday, March 15, 2020, in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Andrea Hanks)]</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Bob Cesca / Salon March 24, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>Like every other petty con man, from back-alley hustlers to Wall Street fraudsters, Donald Trump is a thief and he’ll always be a thief. Now the president is clearly stealing from the George W. Bush playbook in one particularly awful way. Specifically, Trump appears to be desperately envious of Bush’s approval polls after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to the point of recently declaring himself to be a war president in the face of the global COVID-19 pandemic. And it could absolutely get him re-elected.</div><div>
</div><div>As of the past several days, Trump’s been marketing COVID-19 as an “invisible enemy.” He can’t stop repeating the bellicose platitude that America is at war against the virus, even though he spent the first two months of this catastrophe telling us it was no big deal.</div><div>
</div><div>Yet during the Sunday edition of the Trump Show, the president said, “In a true sense we’re at war.” On top of not understanding the definition of “war” or “true,” Trump is also struggling to present himself with a patina of unity and cooperation (which he and his people routinely contradict with obnoxious cracks and tweets about his political opponents), while conspicuously thanking “first responders,” as in the days and weeks following 9/11.</div><div>
</div><div>The lead-up to the Iraq war in 2002 and early 2003 saw the Republicans pick up seats in Congress, while Bush was handily re-elected in 2004 due primarily to being a war president — that whole “don’t change horses midstream” yarn. Trump is starving for some of that adoration now, and he’ll steal whatever he needs to steal in order to get it. Why? It’s what he does, and it’s because he knows that if he loses in November, there’s a reasonable chance he’ll be indicted for one or more crimes. The stakes for the president, as well as Donald Jr., Eric, Ivanka and Jared Kushner, couldn’t be greater. If winning means recycling the Bush-Cheney approach from the war on terrorism, he’ll do it. He’ll do anything.</div><div>
</div><div>Just in case American voters don’t particularly buy into the notion of a faceless microorganism as a terrorist-like villain, the administration is sending out the word that the human enemy in this alleged war is China. Breitbart News and Donald Trump Jr. are accusing China of spreading disinformation about the virus — and even accusing the World Health Organization of being on China’s payroll.</div><div>
</div><div>So if you’re keeping score, the COVID-19 virus is Trump’s al-Qaida, while China is Trump’s Taliban and/or Iraq. In fact, I keep expecting Trump, during one of his daily Trump Show episodes, to crumple up a photo of COVID-19, throw it onto the ground, grab the nearest bullhorn and announce, “I can hear you, and the coronavirus will hear from all of us soon!” Cue the Lee Greenwood anthem.</div><div>
</div><div>In truth, this is a “war” in the same way Trump University was a “college.”</div><div>
</div><div>Based on recent history alone, Trump knows that too many of us, the sucker demographic, will eat up his chocolate-fountain of nonsense with a giant Trump-branded ladle. It doesn’t matter whether this is an actual war. Trump has to package himself as the bone-spurred generalissimo, wrapping himself in commander-in-chief powers, because while he understands very little about the so-called enemy, he at least understands that Americans tend to re-elect presidents who fight and win wars.</div><div>
</div><div>We don’t need to worry that Trump will actually launch a fighting war against China. He’s too much of a coward for that. In this case, though, he doesn’t have to. This is nothing more than a PR war. All he needs to do is to declare China to be the enemy, repeat and repeat, then declare victory and stage a victory parade. At least 40 percent of us will suck it down like Trump Vodka. It’ll all happen, irrespective of whether COVID-19 cases are on the decline. In fact, the president is already talking about lifting some of the isolation orders when his randomly-designated 15-day period is over, potentially worsening the spread of the virus. Reality, in this non-war war, is totally irrelevant, just as it’s been totally irrelevant since Inauguration Day.</div><div>
</div><div>At risk of burying the lede, the X-factor in Trump’s war plan, as it was during the lead-up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, once again involves the cable news networks — yes, all of them — as well as the news divisions of the four major broadcast networks. News directors across the TV dial are, for reasons that confound logic, gifting the president with free airtime, live, every single day, to spread disinformation and brag about his self-proclaimed heroism and the fighting of a war he denied even existed a few weeks ago.</div><div>
</div><div>To be clear, the big four broadcast networks, including ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox (proper), are interrupting regular programming to do this. It’s not just the cable networks.</div><div>
</div><div>It would be one thing if these news conferences were delivering actual news, but a good 90 percent of the Trump Show is nothing but gratuitous fluffing of the president’s brittle ego; Trump inventing non-facts about medicine and the virus, such as urging people to use untested meds; and, of course, a few minutes in which the pre-pandemic Rally Trump appears, complete with “Chinese virus” dog-whistles and the like, reassuring his bigoted fanboys that their TV-crush is still there for them.</div><div>
</div><div>Of course the TV news people know this, and they’re letting him get away with it by continuing to air these ass-kissing sessions like actual news. It’s not news, and airing it live needs to stop, now. Remember those empty-podium shots during the 2016 election, the ones that preceded the live airing of Trump’s rallies nearly every day? It’s happening all over again, now, during this election cycle. This is how Trump will win again.</div><div>
</div><div>A few weeks ago, I mentioned the electoral model formulated by political scientist Rachel Bitecofer, who has forecast that 2020 will be another wave election for the Democrats, barring any “shocks to the system.” Well, system? Meet shocks — every day for at least an hour, while American TV viewers, locked in their homes as captive audiences, are fed bucketloads of Trump agitprop and rah-rah patriotic warmongering directed against a virus, televised live from the White House. Almost as much as the virus and the economic calamity it’s manifesting, we should be deeply concerned about this particular “shock to the system” and the way it’s fueling Trump’s re-election campaign.</div><div>
</div><div>These televised press conferences are extended free-of-charge campaign commercials. Nothing more.</div><div>
</div><div>The cruel and obvious irony here is that the alleged “enemy of the people” could help to re-elect the man who’s responsible for calling them that.</div><div>
</div><div>I used to believe it was valuable to show Trump for who he is: an unrepentant ghoul who, over this past weekend, gleefully mocked Mitt Romney for being in quarantine (so much for unity and cooperation). Unfortunately, I was wrong to assume that American television viewers — some of whom are wrestling strangers for toilet paper — were sophisticated enough to smell a clown-faced rat. I was also wrong to assume that cable news people wouldn’t repeat their participation in the run-up to Iraq or their empty-podium mistakes from 2016, and yet here we are again. As I wrote last week, it’s like Groundhog Day, over and over and over.</div><div>
</div><div>A non-war war to rally around, and a handful of TV networks to broadcast it, could be more than enough to overcome Trump fatigue, and could easily overwhelm this year’s edition of an electoral “blue wave.” The semi-hopeful news is that Trump’s spent the last five years relentlessly trolling and demonizing anyone who isn’t a sworn disciple in his whine-and-rage cult, so it’s unlikely he’ll ever accumulate the kind of popular support George W. Bush received after 9/11. But he doesn’t need to. All he needs are a few thousand extra votes in several swing states — enough to game the Electoral College yet again — and our descent into fascist idiocracy will be dramatically accelerated, thanks in part to Donald Trump’s unwitting accomplices in TV news.</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>----</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>never waste a crisis?&nbsp; // dis cap'lism?</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/donald-trump-is-exploiting-the-coronavirus-pandemic-to-advance-truly-disgraceful-union-busting-effort/</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Donald Trump is exploiting the coronavirus pandemic to advance ‘truly disgraceful’ union-busting effort</div><div>
</div><div>Union workers and supporters cheer at a "Build it Here" rally Monday, Nov. 18, 2013, in downtown Seattle. The Washington State Labor Council called for the rally, saying it wanted to show Boeing and state leaders it supports Machinists union members who voted last week to reject contract concessions Boeing said it needed to build the new 777X in Washington. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams March 20, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>President Donald Trump is not letting the global coronavirus pandemic stand in the way of his administration’s assault on what’s left of organized labor in the United States.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>In fact, as the New York Times reported Friday, the Trump administration is actively using the outbreak as a pretext to ram through union-busting policies and other right-wing agenda items that would likely draw closer scrutiny and public outrage under normal circumstances.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>“The White House, under the guise of its coronavirus response, is quietly advancing policies that President Trump has long advocated, from tougher border controls to an assault on organized labor to the stonewalling of congressional oversight,” the Times reported. “Administration officials insist that such long-sought policies are necessary to stem the outbreak. But opportunism is clearly in play.”...</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/a-weak-man-with-delusions-of-competence-trump-buried-for-lying-his-way-through-the-daily-pandemic-press-conferences</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>‘A weak man with delusions of competence’: Trump buried for lying his way through the daily pandemic press conferences</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Tom Boggioni / Raw Story March 21, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>In a brutally blunt piece for the New York Times, columnist Jennifer Senior went scorched earth on Donald Trump for his lie-filled performances in the now daily press briefings on the coronavirus pandemic — suggesting the media call them what they are: presidential “propaganda.”</div><div>
</div><div>Following a day when the combative Trump attacked NBC reporter Peter Alexander for merely asking what he could say to the public that is living in fear of the pandemic, Senior said enough is enough.</div><div>
</div><div>“In a time of global emergency, we need calm, directness and, above all, hard facts. Only the opposite is on offer from the Trump White House. It is therefore time to call the president’s news conferences for what they are: propaganda,” she wrote. “We may as well be watching newsreels approved by the Soviet Politburo. We’re witnessing the falsification of history in real time. When Donald Trump, under the guise of social distancing, told the White House press corps on Thursday that he ought to get rid of 75 to 80 percent of them — reserving the privilege only for those he liked — it may have been chilling, but it wasn’t surprising. He wants to thin out their ranks until there’s only Pravda in the room.”</div><div>
</div><div>According to the columnist, Trump’s press conferences are full of bluster and lies and stand in stark contrast with those being held by Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY).</div><div>
</div><div>For many, Friday’s contentious press conference should be the tipping point for most journalists.</div><div>
</div><div>“At his Thursday news conference, a discussion of chloroquine and other experimental therapies formed the core of his remarks, when those drugs and therapies are untested and unproven and, in some cases, won’t be ready for several months, as NBC’s Peter Alexander pointed out the following day,” she recalled. “‘What do you say to Americans who are scared?’ Alexander pressed. ‘I say that you’re a terrible reporter,’ Trump answered. Only a liar — and a weak man with delusions of competence — would be so unnerved by the facts.”</div><div>
</div><div>“Most dangerous of all is Trump’s insistence that things are fine, or will be shortly, that they’ll be stronger and better and greater than ever. We don’t have any evidence that this is true, and the president finds any suggestion to the contrary quite rude. When a journalist pointed out to him on Thursday that the economy had all but ground to halt, Trump cut him off,” she explained. “Here’s the truth: Things might be hard — unfathomably hard — for months, perhaps even north of a year. Anyone who’s reading or listening to other sources of news besides the president knows that. It takes sensitivity and strength and intelligence to speak truthfully to the public about imminent hardship, the prospect of enduring pain.”</div><div>
</div><div>Then came the Cuomo comparison.</div><div>
</div><div>“I listen to Cuomo, who says the same thing. His news conference on Friday was about the practical things, knowing the entire state — country, globe — had just taken a precipitous slide down Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, with food, shelter and safety now topmost on many people’s minds. No one can evict you for 90 days. We’re getting hospital beds. We’re recruiting doctors and nurses in training to fight this fight, and we’re coaxing medical professionals out of retirement,” she wrote. “Then he spoke from the heart. One of his daughters was in quarantine. ‘To tell you the truth, I had some of the best conversations with her that I’ve ever had,’ Cuomo said. She was alone for two weeks. ‘We talked about things in depth that we didn’t have time to talk about in the past,’ he continued, ‘or we didn’t have the courage or the strength to talk about in the past — feelings I had, about mistakes I had made along the way that I wanted to express my regret and talk through with her.'”</div><div>
</div><div>“He was expressing fallibility. Imagine that,” she concluded.</div><div>
</div><div>You can read the whole piece here.</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>3/17 pompeo ups sntions on iran?! release americans, fund terror</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/how-little-trump-cares-for-workers-and-how-much-he-values-corporate-swamp-monsters-is-now-on-full-display/</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>How little Trump cares for workers — and how much he values corporate swamp monsters — is now on full display</div><div>
</div><div>Written by David Cay Johnson / DC Report, Raw Story March 17, 2020</div><div>This article was paid for by Raw Story subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here.</div><div>
</div><div>The Trump pandemic response stimulus plan, shown first to Senate Republicans, proposes $100 billion for workers. The thin gruel Trump’s team proposes recalls famous 1980 Boston Globe headline mocking President Jimmy Carter: More Mush from the Wimp.</div><div>
</div><div>Donald Trump may have finally realized the coronavirus pandemic is real, but he hasn’t a clue about the price in lost wages, not to mention lost lives, that Americans workers will pay for his lethargic incompetence.</div><div>
</div><div>Workers would get maybe $100 billion, corporations $850 billion. Airlines would get $50 billion, half as much as workers, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told Senate Republicans.</div><div>
</div><div>While $100 billion sounds like a big number, its bupkis compared to the scope of the job loss problem.</div><div>
</div><div>American workers gross about $150 billion per week, IRS Table 1.4 shows.</div><div>
</div><div>Distribute $100 billion equally to the 168 million or so people who earn from $1 to more than $100 million in annual wages and it’s not enough to replace a week’s wages.</div><div>
</div><div>Restricting help to the bottom half of workers, who made just under $33,000 in 2018, wouldn’t be much better. Trump’s plan would not even replace two weeks of pay to the more than 83 million low-paid workers.</div><div>
</div><div>Trump said Monday that he expected the pandemic to continue into July and August. That would be 24 weeks, not two.</div><div>
</div><div>We’ve already seen the Federal Reserve jump in with help for Wall Street, where the large spoons with which bankers used to take in welfare have been replaced with giant buckets.</div><div>
</div><div>The Fed slashed bank borrowing rates to as little as zero while offering to trade as much as $700 billion in cash for other securities to ensure financial firms can cover their obligations. Heaven forbid the bankers set aside enough reserves to cover a rainy day or a pandemic.</div><div>
</div><div>Bankers first, American workers last is not a Trump era creation. But it is promoted with gusto. And it contradicts the core promise on which Trump beguiled almost 63 million people into casting ballots for him.</div><div>
</div><div>Trump was all about “the forgotten men and women” of America, both as a candidate and in his inaugural address.</div><div>
</div><div>In accepting the Republican nomination for president in July 2016 Trump declared, “The forgotten men and women of our country — people who work hard but no longer have a voice: I am your voice.”</div><div>
</div><div>That promise died as soon as he left the Capitol for the White House.</div><div>
</div><div>The man who tried to con us with his absurd claim that coronavirus was a hoax, a “foreign virus,” and that the initial first 15 coronavirus cases in America would soon be zero, and who insisted over the weekend that virus was “under tremendous control” doesn’t have a clue.</div><div>
</div><div>Many Americans will die because of his incompetence and denial of reality.</div><div>
</div><div>For the majority who survive, even with state jobless benefits, which most workers don’t qualify for, Trump’s economic stimulus is itself a hoax.</div><div>
</div><div>Its money aplenty for the swamp monsters Trump promised to slay and starvation wage replacement for their prey.</div><div>
</div><div>So maybe instead of “More Mush from the Wimp,” the smart headline would be:&nbsp; Trump Feeds Workers to the Swamp Monsters.</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>see knee jerk</div><div>mma 320</div><div>
</div><div>2018, Donald Trump and then-national security adviser John Bolton fired the “entire pandemic response chain of command” implemented by former President Barack Obama following the 2014 Ebola crisis. Broadcast news programs on ABC, CBS, and NBC have ignored the firings. In fact, Democratic presidential candidates were the only people to mention the firings -- so in practice, these networks are turning Trump's incompetence and irresponsibility into a partisan issue.</div><div></div><div>=</div><div>everything is a transaction? tried to buy Greenland?</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/depraved-trump-offered-german-scientists-large-sum-for-exclusive-us-rights-to-coronavirus-vaccine-german-government-confirms/</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/how-the-kushner-family-is-cashing-in-on-covid-19</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/trump-promised-to-bring-back-manufacturing-in-pennsylvania-he-didnt-but-will-it-cost-him/</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>an 320</div><div>
</div><div>we need to plan now in case Trump loses in November — but refuses to leave the White House</div><div>
</div><div>Thom Hartmann / Independent Media Institute</div><div>The Constitution provides a couple of mechanisms for Trump to lose the 2020 election—both the popular vote and the Electoral College—and still hold the office of president for a second term. It’s…</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>
</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/as-coronavirus-pandemic-sweeps-the-globe-trump-authorizes-new-bombing-campaign-in-the-middle-east</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>As coronavirus pandemic sweeps the globe, Trump authorizes new bombing campaign in the Middle East</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams March 13, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>Authorized by President Donald Trump, U.S. forces late Thursday carried out a wave of airstrikes across Iraq purportedly targeting an Iran-linked militia that the Pentagon claims was behind a rocket attack that killed two American servicemembers earlier this week.</div><div>
</div><div>The airstrikes risk sparking yet another dangerous escalation of military tensions between the U.S. and Iran at a uniquely perilous moment: Both nations are struggling to contain and combat the novel coronavirus, with Iran hit particularly hard by the pandemic as it works to muster adequate medical resources while in the vice grip of Trump administration sanctions.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>The Trump White House, meanwhile, is under fire for bungling its response the the outbreak and failing to devote sufficient government resources to fighting COVID-19, which has infected over 1,400 people in the United States—a number that experts say is likely to rise dramatically in the coming days as the disease spreads and the remarkably slow rate of testing picks up speed.</div><div>
</div><div>“This moment is the last three decades of U.S. foreign policy in miniature: spare nothing for war and military dominance and find little to spare for true threats like climate change and pandemic disease,” tweeted Stephen Wertheim, deputy director of research and policy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.</div><div>
</div><div>Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, noted Thursday that “the annual Pentagon budget is $738,000,000,000.”</div><div>
</div><div>“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is 1.5% the size,” Sanders tweeted. “If we can find money on bombs and missiles to kill people, we can damn well afford to protect everyone’s health and take care of each other.”</div><div>
</div><div>A senior Trump administration official told the Washington Post late Thursday that the president directed U.S. forces to bomb five Kataib Hezbollah weapons facilities with the stated goal of reducing the group’s “ability to carry out future attacks.”</div><div>
</div><div>Kataib Hezbollah is the same Iran-linked militia group that the Trump administration blamed—falsely, according to Iraqi officials—for a rocket attack last December that the White House used as a justification to assassinate Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani with a drone strike in Baghdad, a move that nearly sparked an all-out war.</div><div>
</div><div>It is not clear whether there were any casualties from the latest round of U.S. airstrikes in Iraq. Harakat al-Nujaba, a separate Iran-backed militia, “accused the United States of hitting militia and Iraqi army headquarters, as well as a civilian airport,” the Post reported.</div><div>
</div><div>“In the middle of a global pandemic—while people across the country quarantine in fear and struggle to pay their rent—Trump is bailing out fossil fuel corporations and bombing the Middle East,” tweeted Michael Galant, senior communications associate with advocacy group Win Without War. “It’s all laid bare. For everyone to see.”</div><div>
</div><div>Assal Rad</div><div>@AssalRad</div><div>Remember escalation w/#Iran is Trump’s manufactured crisis.</div><div>
</div><div>Stories from #Italy & Iran describe fight against #CODVID19 like war. All hands on deck needed. This is when we’re reminded of real crisis & global challenges. We need diplomacy & cooperation now more than ever.</div><div>
</div><div>?????? https://twitter.com/katekizer/status/1238130441359679492 …</div><div>
</div><div>Kate Kizer ??</div><div>@KateKizer</div><div>escalating into a direct conflict with Iran is the last thing the U.S., Iran, and the world needs right now. https://twitter.com/JackDetsch_ALM/status/1238128480581234691 …</div><div>
</div><div>Ryan Costello, policy director with the National Iranian American Council, said in a statement late Thursday that “without a radical change in U.S. policy, we risk repeating the escalatory cycle, threatening to plunge the region in yet another conflict and sucking the U.S. into another endless war.”</div><div>
</div><div>“Fortunately, Congress just sent a bipartisan resolution to the president’s desk clarifying that he does not have authority to start a war with Iran and urging him to withdraw troops in hostilities with Iran,” Costello said, referring to the War Powers Resolution passed by the House Wednesday. “Rather than ignore Congress and the American people’s wishes on war and peace, he should sign the resolution and urgently seek diplomacy to put the war threat on ice.”</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/trumps-taliban-deal-falls-apart-and-republicans-are-taking-notice/</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/blinded-by-greed-financial-reporter-examines-deutche-banks-distrubing-relationship-with-donald-trump</div><div></div><div>i tend to avoid, but this sum:</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/here-are-7-brutal-comments-from-experts-about-donald-trumps-mental-stability</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/here-are-7-ridiculous-and-disturbing-moments-from-trumps-visit-to-the-cdc</div><div></div><div>see imperial prez ~ checks and BALANCE</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/prominent-republicans-mock-trumps-legal-claims-in-supreme-court-brief-and-blow-up-presidents-absolute-immunity-claim/</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/donald-trumps-war-on-food/</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>Donald Trump’s war on food</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Ali Noorani / Washington Monthly March 6, 2020</div><div>President Donald Trump’s approach to immigration policy—particularly to legal immigration–stands in between you and your favorite burger.</div><div>
</div><div>Last year, the administration announced the United States would resettle a maximum of 18,000 refugees over the course of fiscal year 2020, the lowest limit since the program started four decades ago and a 40 percent drop from 2019. Then, in January, the administration expanded the travel ban to suspend immigrant visas for people from Eritrea, Myanmar, Kyrgyzstan, and Nigeria, and to restrict diversity visas for citizens of Sudan and Tanzania.</div><div>
</div><div>These actions—coupled with myriad other moves to build a “virtual wall” that keeps newcomers out of the country — will intensify an already significant drop in legal immigration: 940,877 people obtained lawful permanent residence in fiscal year 2018, compared to 1,063,280 in fiscal year 2016, an 11.5 percent decrease.</div><div>
</div><div>So, what do hamburgers have to do with this? A lot, it turns out.</div><div>
</div><div>More often than not, immigrants are the conduit between the lettuce in the field, the cow in the pasture, and that burger on your plate. They are crucial contributors on farms in California and Idaho, and in beef-processing factories in Nebraska. In many cases, they’re the ones picking, processing, and preparing your food, and ultimately delivering it to your table. In fact, almost three-quarters of farmworkers are foreign-born. Half of the workers on dairy farms are immigrants—another important consideration if you like cheese on your patty.</div><div>
</div><div>Earlier this year, I was in Storm Lake, Iowa—population 13,000. I had the opportunity to sit with staff at the Tyson plant that processes pigs for markets around the world. One of the workers, Abel Saengchanpheng, came there as a Laotian refugee and was born in a camp in Thailand. Along with his Hispanic, Asian, African, and white co-workers, Abel makes Storm Lake—a town where 29 percent of residents are foreign-born—a stronger community. Downtown Storm Lake thrives because of Latino-owned stores like the Better Day Café and, as a result, local leadership addresses the best of all problems facing rural America: growth.&nbsp; If you take immigrants and their families out of the equation, the town starts to suffer.</div><div>
</div><div>Case in point: Look at the Tyson Fresh Meats plant in Perry, Iowa—population 7,500. Once a thriving workplace, it might not meet demand now due to a shortage of available workers, according to local press reports. Refugees from Eritrea and Myanmar—two countries included in Trump’s new entry ban—are frequent hires at Tyson’s Perry plant. Of the 1,368 workers Tyson employs there, 800 arrived as refugees.</div><div>
</div><div>In essence, we see a tale of two towns in rural America, putting food on our tables: One is thriving because of a diversity of foreign-born labor. The other town is worried about its future because its pipeline of foreign-born talent has been shut down by the Trump administration.</div><div>
</div><div>In Iowa alone, refugee- and immigrant-owned businesses contribute $4 billion to the state every year, and immigrant households pay nearly $522 million in local and state taxes. These hardworking people in the meatpacking, agricultural, manufacturing, and other industries stem the tide of population loss, keeping communities afloat, and add to the cultural vitality of Iowa and other states.</div><div>
</div><div>That matters right now, as cities attract more and more people from the heartland—hastening a demographic crisis in rural America. For instance, in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested dozens of undocumented immigrants in 2018, companies are struggling to hire. Two states away, in Indiana, immigrants are responsible for 25 percent of the state’s population growth since 2000.</div><div>
</div><div>In short, the strength and dynamism that immigrants and refugees bring to rural America—and our agricultural sector—is at risk.</div><div>
</div><div>Which brings us back to your hamburger.</div><div>
</div><div>A new MSNBC Show, “What’s Eating America”—executive produced by chef and humanitarian José Andrés—explores “immigration, the food industry, and more by examining the stories of people working to raise, process, and harvest what we eat.” As Andrés explains, many Americans, including our president, don’t seem to understand that immigrants and refugees are integral to our food system.</div><div>
</div><div>Every time Trump takes action to limit immigration or makes a derogatory comment about immigrants, farm owners and CEOs at food processing plants hear the message. They prepare for a shrinking workforce, lowered production targets, and slimmer profits.</div><div>
</div><div>The reality, however, is what President Trump’s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, recently admitted: Our country is&nbsp; “desperate” for immigrants to “fuel economic growth.” When it comes to the food we eat, immigrants aren’t a part of the equation in the United States—they are the equation.</div><div>
</div><div>Ali Noorani is the Executive Director of the National Immigration Forum, host of the Only In America podcast, and author of There Goes the Neighborhood: How Communities Overcome Prejudice and Meet the Challenge of American Immigration.</div><div>=</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/why-is-trump-trying-to-kill-a-small-agency-with-a-big-impact-on-public-safety/</div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div>320 an</div><div>
</div><div>trump admits he’ll be ‘cutting’ entitlements — but here’s what he really revealed</div><div>
</div><div>Cody Fenwick</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>Trump: At $2.13 an hour, this waitress makes too much money</div><div>David Cay Johnston / DC Report</div><div>A big reason for slow growth is that while cash piles up for those at the top, most struggle to make ends meet.</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>trump did not replace disease team, budget cuts cdc 16%</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Top Trump economic advisor slammed for claiming coronavirus ‘contained’ after CDC warns of spread</div><div>David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement&nbsp; February 26, 2020</div><div>Larry Kudlow, President Donald Trump’s top economic advisor, is falsely claiming the U.S. has “contained” the coronavirus, literally minutes after reports broke that the CDC is warning of a spread of the deadly virus that has killed 2600 people, mostly in China.</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>Trump’s trip to India: Fluffed by another right-wing strongman</div><div>Heather Digby Parton / Salon&nbsp; February 26, 2020</div><div>Trump had a great time being hosted by Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi: Just another strongman yanking his chain.</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/what-will-democrats-do-if-trump-and-pence-refuse-to-leave-office/</div><div>
</div><div>see c de v</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/how-trump-betrayed-his-promise-to-protect-and-fight-for-american-workers/</div><div>
</div><div>see working class</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trump-lashes-out-at-a-fox-news-host-who-dared-to-talk-to-a-critic-of-the-president/</div><div>cavuto</div><div>
</div><div>np lnx</div><div>
</div><div>Trump lashes out at a Fox News host who dared to talk to a critic of the president</div><div>
</div><div>Written by David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement February 21, 2020</div><div>President Donald Trump may or may not have had something to do with last year’s sudden resignation of Shepard Smith, a Fox News anchor he often targeted who had regularly criticized him, and it seems his starting another campaign targeting another Fox News anchor.</div><div>
</div><div>Neil Cavuto hosts several shows on Fox News and Fox Business and is senior vice president and managing editor at the business channel.</div><div>
</div><div>Cavuto, on rare occasions, criticizes the president or invites on guests who do. It’s far from an everyday occurrence, but a recent conservative pundit, A.B. Stoddard, caught Trump’s eye — and ire — and he’s gunning for a fight and a firing.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Donald J. Trump</div><div>?</div><div>@realDonaldTrump</div><div>So @TeamCavuto has very bad ratings on @foxnews with his Fake guests like A.B.Stoddard and others that still haven’t figured it all out. Will he get the same treatment as his friend Shepherd Smith, who also suffered from the ratings drought?</div><div>
</div><div>71.6K</div><div>9:34 AM - Feb 21, 2020</div><div>Twitter Ads info and privacy</div><div>30.2K people are talking about this</div><div>Note how Trump makes clear he wants Cavuto gone, asking if he will “get the same treatment as his friend Shepherd Smith.”</div><div>
</div><div>Trump is using his usual formula, claiming someone’s ratings are bad, or a media outlet is “failing,” or losing money, regardless of facts.</div><div>
</div><div>In 2018 Cavuto all but decimated Trump:</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Last night at his rally Trump spewed vitriol against Cavuto and Smith.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Breaking911</div><div>@Breaking911</div><div>Trump slams Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and former anchor Shepard Smith&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Embedded video</div><div>
</div><div>Since his impeachment acquittal Trump was been on the warpath, firing administration officials who testified against him. Earlier Friday it was reported Trump rehired a fired administration official, his former body man, and promoted him to head the White House personnel office. Johnny McEntee’s first act was to target for purging all executive branch employees across all government agencies who are “Never-Trumpers.”</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/top-election-security-official-who-briefed-lawmakers-on-latest-russian-meddling-targeted-for-ouster-by-trump-white-house</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trump-has-already-joked-about-defying-2020-election-results-heres-what-could-happen-if-he-refuses-to-concede/</div><div></div><div>https://www.salon.com/2020/01/28/why-does-trump-love-to-hang-with-bottom-feeders-crooked-lawyers-and-porn-stars/</div><div>
</div><div>...You take a really a deep dive into Trump's bottom-feeding world. What made you want to write a book about all of the characters in Trump World?</div><div>We felt that once we had broken the stories of Karen McDougal, who was paid off for Trump by the publisher of the National Enquirer, and then Stormy Daniels who was paid off by Michael Cohen, Trump's lawyer. How did this happen? How do you have a president who has one guy paying off a porn star and another guy paying off a Playboy model? We decided to look back and see what the pattern was here, going back decades, of how Trump had people surrounding him who were just kind of willing to do his dirty work for him. That's how we came up with the idea of writing "The Fixers." It's the seamy underbelly of the Trump presidency. It's a world that most people probably don't know about, but where you have muckrakers, paparazzi, porn stars and all this, and they helped him refine the tactics that he took to The White House.</div><div>
</div><div>In the bigger picture, is it a coincidence Donald Trump is surrounded by all these shady characters? Or is this who he finds himself most comfortable around?</div><div>
</div><div>I don't think it's a coincidence because it goes back to Roy Cohn, who was his lawyer. The first fixer in our book was a mob lawyer, and he helped Trump game the political system in the '70s when he was coming up as a developer. Trump uses these types of people to do his dirty work, things that he doesn't want to do himself, and that most people, if they have good judgment, would not do so. Then you look at what has happened in the White House where he's trying to pressure Jim Comey to protect him. He wants Jeff Sessions to not recuse himself. He's a line-crosser, right? But he wants other people to cross those lines for him, so that he can try to keep his hands clean. It really does take us to where we are now with impeachment, right? Because he had Rudy Giuliani doing this for him in Ukraine. Trump obviously is at the center of impeachment, but Rudy is the fixer who did it.</div><div>
</div><div>It sounds like Trump is the Walter White of it all. He's pushing people to break bad and some of the bad ones are already morally ambiguous, let's be blunt. Some of them, like James Comey, he was trying to push to be bad, to be morally ambiguous, to not care about the law or ethics at all, and do what he wants.</div><div>
</div><div>Yeah, it was harder for him in The White House to find peace, because some of these are professional people who had careers before they ever met Donald Trump. But when he was in business he was Donald Trump, he was the Donald, he was a reality star. Michael Cohen owns taxi medallions, he's a personal injury lawyer and he comes from Long Island, so getting to work for Donald Trump was this tremendous honor for him and he would do whatever Trump wanted, and he suspended his judgment. He said that "The Art of the Deal" is the only book he's ever read twice. I mean, that's the kind of person that he was.</div><div>
</div><div>Let's talk more about Roy Cohn, the infamous mafia lawyer. How much do you think he's inspired Trump?</div><div>
</div><div>He set the model for how Trump operated throughout the decades. When somebody confronts you, you have an opponent, you just attack mercilessly, you never admit that you're wrong. You just keep saying what you want to be true, you make your own reality. I mean, these are the things that we see Donald Trump doing today. Roy Cohn was doing that for him in the '70s and the '80s. And for instance, we've heard from Michael Cohen about how Trump wanted him to exaggerate his wealth. I mean, we know Trump has exaggerated his wealth and Roy Cohn was doing that with him, with the Forbes list to try to make him seem more wealthy and important by creating the myth of Donald Trump. So that's all hearkens back to Roy.</div><div>
</div><div>Never admit you're wrong, declare complete victory, this is Trump. This the guy we're dealing with right now, the "perfect phone call" guy. He's the only guy in the world that scores his phone calls like they're perfect. Bill Clinton apologized after being impeached by the House. He said, "I made a mistake." Donald Trump doubles and triples down.</div><div>
</div><div>That's what most people don't realize. This is something that has been going on for decades and it's part of how Trump made it to the presidency by using these tactics. But then he does dispose of these people if they get in trouble. If they become no longer useful to him, then he gets rid of them. Roy Cohn got sick with AIDS and Trump became embarrassed or didn't want to deal with him. He steers cases to other lawyers instead of Cohn. Cohn was very loyal, so he didn't publicly complain about it, but privately he would say, "Donald has ice in his veins."</div><div>
</div><div>Trump is at Mar-a-Lago right before New Year's in 2017 and he's sitting around with a bunch of people and he's mocking Cohn. He says, "The last time Roy was here with AIDS, right before he died, then afterward I had to fumigate all the dishes and the silverware." One day Trump he can be nice and praising somebody and the next day he can be incredibly mean and cold-hearted.</div><div>
</div><div>Another character you focus on in the book is David Pecker. Tell us about Pecker, who had a long relationship with Donald Trump and played a role in helping Trump way before he ran for president in 2016....</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/a-travesty-and-a-disgrace-trump-quietly-issues-memo-that-could-abolish-union-rights-for-750000-federal-workers</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>‘A travesty and a disgrace’: Trump quietly issues memo that could abolish union rights for 750,000 federal workers</div><div>Union workers and supporters cheer at a "Build it Here" rally Monday, Nov. 18, 2013, in downtown Seattle. The Washington State Labor Council called for the rally, saying it wanted to show Boeing and state leaders it supports Machinists union members who voted last week to reject contract concessions Boeing said it needed to build the new 777X in Washington. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Common Dreams February 22, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>“This administration will not stop until it takes away all workers’ rights to form and join a union.”</div><div>
</div><div>President Donald Trump on Thursday quietly issued a memo granting Defense Secretary Mark Esper the power to abolish collective bargaining rights for the Defense Department’s 750,000 civilian workers, a move unions decried as part of the administration’s far-reaching assault on organized labor.</div><div>
</div><div>The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) condemned the memo, which was published in the Federal Register (pdf) Thursday, as “a travesty and a disgrace.”</div><div>
</div><div>“The administration’s divide-and-conquer strategy with respect to organized labor is as disgusting as it is shameful.”</div><div>—American Federation of Government Employees</div><div>
</div><div>The memo argues that a unionized Defense Department workforce could pose a threat to “national security” and that, if necessary, collective bargaining rights at the department should be scrapped in the interest of “protecting the American people.”...</div><div></div><div>Republicans who screamed about ‘dictator’ Obama nervously stand by as Trump declares himself above all law</div><div></div><div>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/</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>Financial writer explains why Trump’s proposed federal budget would be an ‘economic calamity’ — possibly pushing the US to ‘the brink of a recession’</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Alex Henderson February 20, 2020</div><div>239</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>“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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>Deep cuts to social programs, Linden emphasizes, don’t promote economic growth — they harm it.</div><div>
</div><div>“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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>Trump’s proposed federal budget, Linden contends, fails to recognize the vital role that “workers and consumers” play in the economy.</div><div>
</div><div>“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.”</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/were-staring-into-the-abyss-unhinged-trump-rally-in-colorado-highlights-stakes-of-2020-election/</div><div>
</div><div>20k only half could get in? vs bernie 11k? preivew of 202? bash greta time man of year</div><div>=</div><div>Trump is trying to break a 2016 promise about the social safety net</div><div>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…</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>220 40 mos jail, tho djt doing a bunch of pardons and wants to 86 doj input on that.</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>Judge in Roger Stone case knocks Trump admin for reducing sentencing guidelines</div><div></div><div>jeez grenell DNI authorit</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/heres-why-trumps-incessant-vendetta-against-obama-is-a-losing-proposition/</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>Here’s why Trump’s incessant vendetta against Obama is a losing proposition</div><div>Image via Wikipedia.</div><div>Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly February 19, 2020</div><div>Barack Obama took advantage of an anniversary on Monday to poke at one of the lies being repeated by his successor.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Barack Obama</div><div>@BarackObama</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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:</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>Of course, Drum put the specifics into a chart.</div><div>
</div><div>It will surprise no one that data means nothing to Trump.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Donald J. Trump</div><div>@realDonaldTrump</div><div>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....</div><div>
</div><div>As the saying goes, Obama has taken up residence in Trump’s head—rent-free.</div><div>
</div><div>Jonathan Chait recently documented another way that Trump’s efforts to undo Obama’s legacy are failing.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>In writing about the effort to roll back Obama’s fuel-efficiency standards, Davenport identified the problem.</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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…</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>Nancy LeTourneau is a contributing writer for the Washington Monthly. Follow her on Twitter @Smartypants60.</div><div></div><div>wm barr on tv ~ djt tweets/interfere, but he said he can do whatever as he is chief law enforcement officer ("actually" means lying)</div><div></div><div>bunch of pardons, one by funder, rod b gov, said had not thot about roger stone</div><div>=</div><div>220 dn bernie mike lee utah chris m?</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.democracynow.org/2020/2/14/headlines/senate_passes_resolution_limiting_trump_s_war_powers_authority</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>220 an</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>Nations are rejecting the president’s foreign policy puffery as autocrats ditch Trump and embrace China</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>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.</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>
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</div><div>an 220</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
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</div><div>
</div><div>For Republicans in Trump’s cover-up, it was all about the money</div><div>
</div><div>Susan Collins image via MSNBC.</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Joan McCarter / Daily Kos February 18, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>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?</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>You know, of course, who else is getting in on the action:</div><div>
</div><div>Sen. Susan Collins</div><div>
</div><div>@SenatorCollins</div><div>
</div><div>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 …</div><div>
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</div><div>220</div><div>
</div><div>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; authoritarian growing everywhere, what effect of worldwide recession again? Greece?</div><div>
</div><div>what if we get hit by huge agw costs at the same time as worldwide recession?&nbsp; how wd such costs affect economies?</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>
</div><div></div><div>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/</div><div>
</div><div>border, fed chair ...</div><div></div><div>dirty trick ohio AA rev</div><div></div><div>truscott</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/were-slipping-further-into-fascism-as-trump-indulges-all-his-worst-instincts-with-the-help-of-his-toadies/</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>We’re slipping further into fascism as Trump indulges all his worst instincts — with the help of his toadies</div><div>
</div><div>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</div><div>Written by Lucian K. Truscott IV / Salon February 15, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>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.” 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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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&nbsp; helmet. The denunciations of hated minorities are the same. As is his insane bellowing before a crowd screaming its slavish obeisance.</div><div>
</div><div>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. 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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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!”</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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 denying New Yorkers access to the “Trusted Traveler” program unless the state “stop all of its unnecessary lawsuits & harrassment” [sic]....</div><div></div><div>hookers fr jesus</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trump-admin-grant-to-christian-supporters-ignites-twitter-firestorm-over-taxpayer-funded-religious-coercion/</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trump-thinks-authoritarian-executions-stop-drug-use-but-hes-totally-wrong/</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/critics-of-blackwater-mercenary-erik-prince-fear-ag-barr-will-quash-doj-case-against-him-report/</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>Critics of Blackwater mercenary Erik Prince fear AG Barr will ‘quash’ DOJ case against him: report</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Alex Henderson February 12, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.” 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.</div><div>
</div><div>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). 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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>a little context here too: Prince plainly lied. we are really getting upriver here. https://t.co/fts8iTbka2</div><div>
</div><div>— Harry Litman (@harrylitman) February 11, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>??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????.</div><div>
</div><div>Until Barr quashes it.??https://t.co/2qMdHVNJjg</div><div>
</div><div>— Dr. Dena Grayson (@DrDenaGrayson) February 11, 2020</div><div>=</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/conservative-writer-details-how-evidence-cant-penetrate-the-delusional-trumpian-bubble/</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trump-lashes-out-with-a-dangerous-lie-at-the-federal-judge-overseeing-roger-stones-case/</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>Trump lashes out with a dangerous lie at the federal judge overseeing Roger Stone’s case</div><div>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)</div><div>Written by Cody Fenwick February 12, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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!”</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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:</div><div>
</div><div>Manafort “is not confined to a cell”</div><div>
</div><div>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”</div><div>
</div><div>He has “his own bathroom and shower facility”</div><div>
</div><div>He has “his own personal telephone,” which he can use more than 12 hours a day</div><div>
</div><div>Those calls are limited to 15 minutes each, but when they cut off, he can just call the person back immediately</div><div>
</div><div>He’s made nearly 300 phone calls in the last three weeks</div><div>
</div><div>He has a personal laptop he can use in his unit to review materials and prepare for his trial</div><div>
</div><div>He was provided an extension cord to let him use his laptop in either his unit or his workroom</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>He’s being treated like a “VIP,” according to his own account on a monitored phone call.</div><div>
</div><div>Jackson noted at one hearing that Manafort was later moved to another jail in Alexandria, Virginia, because of his team’s complaints. CNN explained:</div><div>
</div><div>She said Manafort “realized the tactic had backfired immediately.” He was in a self-contained (“VIP”) suite in Northern Neck, Jackson added.</div><div>
</div><div>“I’m not going to split hairs over whether the word solitary was accurate because he had a room of his own,” Jackson said.</div><div>
</div><div>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</div><div>
</div><div>“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.</div><div>
</div><div>In short, Trump’s attack on Jackson was a lie.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>Cody Fenwick is a senior editor at AlterNet. He writes about politics, media and science. Follow him on Twitter @codytfenwick.</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trump-says-he-has-the-absolute-tight-to-tell-the-justice-department-what-to-do/</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>Trump says he has the ‘absolute tight’ to tell the Justice Department what to do</div><div>
</div><div>Written by David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement February 11, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>Calling the sentencing recommendation “ridiculous” Trump added, “I thought the whole prosecution was ridiculous.”</div><div>
</div><div>“That was a horrible abberition,” he concluded, apparently meaning “aberration.”</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/the-roger-stone-debacle-is-a-true-crisis-and-the-house-must-force-bill-barr-to-testify/</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>The Roger Stone debacle is a true crisis — and the House must force Bill Barr to testify</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Daily Kos February 11, 2020</div><div>by Hunter</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>=</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/the-roger-stone-debacle-is-a-true-crisis-and-the-house-must-force-bill-barr-to-testify/</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>The Roger Stone debacle is a true crisis — and the House must force Bill Barr to testify</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Daily Kos February 11, 2020</div><div>by Hunter</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trumps-acquittal-and-the-stunning-history-of-an-intentionally-undemocratic-us-senate/</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>see scary end times ppp</div><div>=</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/obama-was-unprepared-for-trump-and-the-gops-total-has-abandonment-of-the-rule-of-law-wapo-editor/</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/white-house-targeting-of-truth-tellers-is-turning-the-intelligence-community-into-a-crowd-of-cowards/</div><div>
</div><div>revenge witch hunt authoritarian</div><div>---</div><div>
</div><div>QS kill in sotu, but no cas --> headaches --> 50 tbi?! he said isis defunct when his kurd fail let 100's out of prison?!</div><div>
</div><div>an 220</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/bombshell-report-finds-iraqi-officials-doubt-trumps-basis-for-escalating-to-the-brink-of-war/</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>‘Bombshell’ report finds Iraqi officials doubt Trump’s basis for escalating to the brink of war</div><div>
</div><div>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)</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams February 7, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>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 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.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>“All the indications are that it was Daesh,” 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.”</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>The U.S. responded to the rocket attack days later with deadly airstrikes on Khataib Hezbollah targets in Iraq and Syria, setting off a dangerous escalatory spiral that brought Iran and the U.S. to the brink of war.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>As the Times reported:</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Khataib Hezbollah has not had a presence in Kirkuk Province since 2014.</div><div>
</div><div>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…</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>These facts all point to the Islamic State, Iraqi officials say.</div><div>
</div><div>“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?”</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>Sina Toossi</div><div>
</div><div>@SinaToossi</div><div>
</div><div>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 …</div><div>
</div><div>Iraqi soldiers at the K-1 base, which was struck by rockets on Dec. 27.</div><div>
</div><div>Was U.S. Wrong About Attack That Nearly Started a War With Iran?</div><div>
</div><div>Iraqi military and intelligence officials have raised doubts about who fired the rockets that started a dangerous spiral of events.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>nytimes.com</div><div>
</div><div>184</div><div>
</div><div>3:57 PM - Feb 6, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>Twitter Ads info and privacy</div><div>
</div><div>119 people are talking about this</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>CODEPINK</div><div>
</div><div>@codepink</div><div>
</div><div>The US almost started WWIII based on questionable evidence.</div><div>
</div><div>After all of the violence&nbsp; 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&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Iraqi soldiers at the K-1 base, which was struck by rockets on Dec. 27.</div><div>
</div><div>Was U.S. Wrong About Attack That Nearly Started a War With Iran?</div><div>
</div><div>Iraqi military and intelligence officials have raised doubts about who fired the rockets that started a dangerous spiral of events.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>nytimes.com</div><div>
</div><div>47</div><div>
</div><div>1:15 PM - Feb 6, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>Twitter Ads info and privacy</div><div>
</div><div>44 people are talking about this</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>“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.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Responsible Statecraft managing editor Benjamin Armbruster agreed.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>“Congress needs to investigate ASAP,” Armbruster tweeted.</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>ref seidel</div><div>
</div><div>https://religiondispatches.org/amid-reality-tv-gimmicks-and-xenophobic-rhetoric-trumps-sotu-appeals-to-evangelicals/</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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 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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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 Christian Reconstructionism, a radical theocratic ideology whose exponents believe that public education should be abolished in favor of homeschooling and/or Christian schools.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>julie ingersoll</div><div>@julieingersoll</div><div>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</div><div>
</div><div>389</div><div>6:43 PM - Feb 4, 2020</div><div>Twitter Ads info and privacy</div><div>206 people are talking about this</div><div>
</div><div>Chrissy in the Dumbest Dystopia</div><div>?</div><div>@C_Stroop</div><div>&nbsp;· Feb 4, 2020</div><div>Replying to @cutrightest @julieingersoll</div><div>
</div><div>They’re not exactly the same thing but Christian Reconstructionism is very racist. But I guess the rhetoric is older:</div><div>
</div><div>https://t.co/3ng03XqUNY https://twitter.com/julieingersoll/status/1224899037117272065?s=21 …</div><div>
</div><div>julie ingersoll</div><div>@julieingersoll</div><div>I suspect #Rushdoony got it from J. Gresham Machen in the 20s. https://twitter.com/C_Stroop/status/1224898284491173888 …</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>julie ingersoll</div><div>@julieingersoll</div><div>
</div><div>I'd say that Rushdoony brought the language into modern popular Evangelical usage as he developed the "biblical" defense of Christian education and the rejection of public education.</div><div>
</div><div>15</div><div>7:40 PM - Feb 4, 2020</div><div>Twitter Ads info and privacy</div><div>See julie ingersoll's other Tweets</div><div>
</div><div>Trump’s subsequent appeals to his white evangelical base were more obvious. 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.</div><div>
</div><div>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:</div><div>
</div><div>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!</div><div>
</div><div>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.)</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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. 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).</div><div>
</div><div>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,” 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.</div><div>
</div><div>Bio</div><div>Latest Posts</div><div>fake@gmail.com'</div><div>Chrissy Stroop</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>=</div><div>=</div><div>emolument (zelensky points out staying in trump hotel on (infamous?) phone call]</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trump-charging-secret-service-650-per-room-per-night-to-protect-him-at-his-golf-courses</div><div>=</div><div>total loyalty or attack thornberry</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/ex-lawmaker-horrified-by-transformation-of-never-trump-republicans-into-presidential-loyalists-whats-happening-now-is-dangerous</div><div>
</div><div>steve israel</div><div></div><div>(tears up sotu text, manifesto of misinformation</div><div>trump uses National Prayer Breakfast to slam Pelosi for praying for him</div><div>Travis Gettys / Raw Story</div><div>President Donald Trump attacked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Mitt Romney for justifying their impeachment actions on religious grounds.</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/white-house-responds-to-acquittal-by-floating-vengeance-threat-at-adam-schiff/</div><div>
</div><div>...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.”</div><div>
</div><div>But this section is the most noteworthy:</div><div>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?</div><div>Is that a threat? How could it not be considered one?</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>day after impeach ended?!</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trumps-treasury-department-is-now-helping-a-hunter-biden-probe-while-furiously-protecting-the-president/</div><div>
</div><div></div><div></div><div>AA key to dem win 2020</div><div>
</div><div>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/</div><div>
</div><div>trump faces backlash over Super Bowl ad on Alice Marie Johnson that completely ignored the long road ahead for criminal justice reform</div><div>Alex Henderson</div><div>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…</div><div>
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</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
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</div><div>Trump faces backlash over Super Bowl ad on Alice Marie Johnson that completely ignored the long road ahead for criminal justice reform</div><div>
</div><div>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)</div><div>
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</div><div>Written by Alex Henderson February 3, 2020</div><div>
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</div><div>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.</div><div>
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</div><div>Trump’s ad asserted, “Politicians talk about criminal justice reform; President Trump got it done. Thousands of families are being reunited.”</div><div>
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</div><div>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.</div><div>
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</div><div>I promised to restore hope in America. That includes the least among us. Together, let’s KEEP AMERICA GREAT!</div><div>
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</div><div>Text TRUMP to 88022 if you liked our Super Bowl ad! pic.twitter.com/Lgjt53B7QX</div><div>
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</div><div>— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2020</div><div>
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</div><div>Two Super Bowls ago I was sitting in a prison cell.</div><div>
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</div><div>Today I am a free woman and my story was featured in a Super Bowl Ad.</div><div>
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</div><div>I will spend the rest of my life fighting for the wrongly and unjustly convicted!</div><div>
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</div><div>God Bless America! pic.twitter.com/CGSyk54O37</div><div>
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</div><div>— Alice Marie Johnson (@AliceMarieFree) February 3, 2020</div><div>
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</div><div>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.”</div><div>
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</div><div>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, “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.”</div><div>
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</div><div>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.”</div><div>
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</div><div>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</div><div>
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</div><div>— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) February 3, 2020</div><div>
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</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>...</div><div>
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</div><div></div><div></div><div>https://theconversation.com/trump-the-transgressor-the-psychological-appeal-of-leaders-who-break-the-rules-130247</div><div>
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</div><div></div><div>interesting long v short, me v we: limit immigrant will hurt economy</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/trumps-most-lasting-legacy-analyst-reveals-the-presidents-worst-mistake-in-economic-policy/</div><div>...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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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</div><div>
</div><div>Anderson also points out that Ruchir Sharma, chief global strategist for Morgan Stanley, has cited immigration as an importance source of economic growth....</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/republicans-want-to-either-rule-america-or-destroy-it-for-everyone-else-political-scientist</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>Republicans want to either rule America — or destroy it for everyone else: political scientist</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Tom Boggioni / Raw Story February 2, 2020</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>“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?”</div><div>
</div><div>“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.”</div><div>
</div><div>“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.</div><div>
</div><div>You can read the whole piece here (subscription required).</div><div></div><div>stipulated post aquittal freakouts ~ democ</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/american-fascist-the-u-s-is-a-failing-democracy-and-the-peddlers-of-hope-are-lying-to-us/</div><div>
</div><div>c d v quite good</div><div>=</div><div>amanda m</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/how-trump-has-brought-the-entire-republican-party-to-the-point-of-no-return/</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/investigators-interview-irs-whistleblower-who-warned-of-meddling-in-audit-of-trump-or-pence-report/</div><div>=</div><div>mofo re wind</div><div>The Trump administration announced plans Thursday to formally weaken protections for millions of migratory birds.</div><div>=</div><div>an 120 not paul k</div><div>Nobel Prize-winning economist: Here’s why Trump is ‘just wrong’ to claim his economic policies help the middle class</div><div>
</div><div>Alex Hen</div><div></div><div>=</div><div>omfg land mines 120,&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/absolutely-horrific-trump-reportedly-prepares-to-roll-back-restrictions-on-use-of-landmines/</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>‘Absolutely horrific’: Trump reportedly prepares to roll back restrictions on use of landmines</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams January 31, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>“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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>“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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>“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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>“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.</div><div>
</div><div>Advocacy group Public Citizen echoed that reaction on Twitter.</div><div>
</div><div>“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.”</div><div>=</div><div>‘Apologia for authoritarianism’: Legal analysts slam Trump lawyer for arguing president can do whatever he wants to boost reelection chances</div><div>
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</div><div>"They are saying that abuses of power in order to…</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>omg geo-fencing</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/the-real-reason-trump-holds-so-many-rallies-is-deeply-disturbing-and-could-be-weaponized-against-him/</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>bibi indicted, elections in march? djt impeached</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/it-is-a-war-plan-trump-netanyahu-deal-decried-as-shameful-attack-on-palestinian-rights</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>‘It is a war plan’: Trump-Netanyahu deal decried as shameful attack on Palestinian rights</div><div>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)]</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Julia Conley / Common Dreams January 28, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>The resulting plan is “shameful and disingenuous,” tweeted Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).</div><div>
</div><div>They could have guaranteed justice, and brought everyone into this peace deal.</div><div>
</div><div>Instead these two embattled heads of state, impeached and indicted, have a “ just us” peace deal.</div><div>
</div><div>It’s shameful and disingenuous! https://t.co/THIniOEv8B</div><div>
</div><div>— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) January 28, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>“This is not a peace plan,” tweeted Yousef Munayyer, executive director of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights. “It is a war plan.”</div><div>
</div><div>This is not a peace plan, it is a war plan.</div><div>
</div><div>A war on peace</div><div>A war on justice</div><div>A war on freedom</div><div>A war on equality</div><div>
</div><div>A war on Palestinian existence</div><div>
</div><div>— (((YousefMunayyer))) (@YousefMunayyer) January 28, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>“It’s stunning that Donald Trump doesn’t know that this is insulting to Palestinians,” tweeted James Zogby, founder of the Arab American Institute.</div><div>
</div><div>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</div><div>
</div><div>— James J. Zogby (@jjz1600) January 28, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>“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,” 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.”</div><div>
</div><div>Major points within the deal include:</div><div>
</div><div>Jerusalem will be established as Israel’s “undivided” capitol, undermining Palestinians’ aim to recognize East Jerusalem as their capitol;</div><div>the recognition of the majority of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine;</div><div>the recognition of the Jordan Valley, which makes up a third of the occupied West Bank, as part of Israel; and</div><div>the refusal by Israel to grant Palestinians the “right to return” to their homes lost in the Six-Day War and other conflicts.</div><div>Palestinians in occupied territories held protests on Tuesday ahead of the deal’s announcement. Larger demonstrations are planned for Wednesday.</div><div>
</div><div>“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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
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</div><div>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</div><div>
</div><div>— Arab American Instit. (@AAIUSA) January 28, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>This doesn’t look like a state. It looks like a Native American reservation. https://t.co/ZwHMt0L0V7 pic.twitter.com/S2gO5gdV4t</div><div>
</div><div>— Shahed Amanullah (@shahed) January 28, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>“This is not a peace plan,” tweeted Omar. “It is theft. It is erasure.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>“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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>“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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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</div><div>
</div><div>— Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (@RepRashida) January 28, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>“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.”</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>djt also has problem w/ uppity woman m kelley blood from everywhere, NPR bonus</div><div>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/</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>Shameful assault on press freedom’: Mike Pompeo denounced for ‘insulting and contemptuous’ statement lashing out at NPR reporter</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lashed out at NPR reporter…</div><div>
</div><div>Trump hits NPR with veiled threat after Pompeo blow-up with reporter over Ukraine</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>President Donald Trump issued a veiled threat against National Public…</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/gop-lawmakers-incite-outrage-as-they-push-trump-to-intensify-attacks-on-women-with-global-gag-rule/</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>trumpista base held tgether by evil fox trinity: hanty, ingraham and tucker</div><div>
</div><div>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</div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/get-rid-of-her-recording-reportedly-shows-trump-fuming-about-fired-ambassador/</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/trumps-shocking-and-deeply-disturbing-foreign-conflicts-of-interest-detailed-in-explosive-new-report</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>Trump’s ‘shocking and deeply disturbing’ foreign conflicts of interest detailed in explosive new report</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Brad Reed / Raw Story January 20, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>Among the conflicts include “state-owned companies in China, Saudi Arabia and South Korea” 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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>Nonetheless, Congressional Democrats remain determined to get to the bottom of the president’s shady foreign dealings.</div><div>
</div><div>“The level of this is shocking and deeply disturbing,” Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI), 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.”</div><div></div><div>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/</div><div>
</div><div>see post-truth</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/trumps-top-russia-expert-placed-on-administrative-leave-and-escorted-from-the-white-house-report/</div><div>
</div><div>andrew peek, going to davos</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>120 2 on AN</div><div>no lnx</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>&nbsp;=</div><div>
</div><div>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/</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>‘I made a lot of bankers look very good’: Trump lets the mask slip as Wall Street titans get $32 billion tax windfall</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Jon Queally / Common Dreams January 17, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>“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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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 cut back their work forces approximately 1,200 people over the same time period.</div><div>
</div><div>“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.”</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>...[ask for thx]</div><div></div><div>=</div><div>120 aha</div><div>kind of scary 6 drivers to war:</div><div>
</div><div>1) BO remark there's just a penchant/bias for it in DC</div><div>2) red calf dominionist lunacy 3 p's?!</div><div>3) general islamophobia, but boosted by bannon clash of of BS</div><div>terrorism fear/hyped, vote gop to keep you safe/nat'l security traf BS ploy now breaking down?</div><div>4) djt accuse BO of wag the dog war, so projection, plus IMPEACHMENT</div><div>5? legit fear of iran hegemony? why do we care? oil? straits of H?</div><div>7 saudi pals want it kush? mbs?</div><div></div><div></div><div>120 icn</div><div>trump Moves to Erase Climate Change from Environmental Reviews</div><div>BY: MARIANNE LAVELLE</div><div>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."</div><div>=</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/fascism-scholar-if-trump-wins-again-america-will-be-ready-for-full-on-authoritarian-rule/</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>Fascism scholar: If Trump wins again, America will be ‘ready for full-on authoritarian rule’</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Chauncey DeVega / Salon January 13, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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, Trump has promised financial support to the Republican senators who will soon be voting at his trial. It has also been reported that Trump ordered the execution of Iranian Maj. Gen.&nbsp; Qassem Soleimani in order to ensure that Republican senators would support his acquittal.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>The obscenities continue.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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:</div><div>
</div><div>His evangelical supporters loved every minute of it. That night, 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. Such a display by evangelicals is unprecedented in American history.</div><div>
</div><div>I usually get angry when members of my tribe worship at the feet of Trump. This time, I just felt sad.</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>As you watch the Trump regime’s ongoing authoritarian assault on America, how do you feel?</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>The shoe drops slowly, and it is hard for many people to discern what is really happening. 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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>Three years into Trump’s regime, why are so many Americans still in a state of denial about this crisis?</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>Is this a lack of historical context and knowledge? Is it cowardice?</div><div>
</div><div>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. 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.</div><div>
</div><div>Applying your historical framework and expertise about fascism and authoritarianism, what are Donald Trump and his regime an example of?</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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. 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.</div><div>
</div><div>When we say that Trumpism is a “movement,” what specifically do we mean?&nbsp; &nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>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. 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. They are following a movement. Of course that movement has now taken over the Republican Party — and Trump transcends the GOP.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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?&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>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. 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 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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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 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 leader. This is a very successful strategy by authoritarian leaders like Donald Trump.</div><div>
</div><div>Part of the power of the Trump cult is how he promises to be their savior, protector, friend and father figure.&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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. 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.</div><div>
</div><div>How does authoritarianism impact people’s sense of time and history?</div><div>
</div><div>Part of the experience is the anxiety of the minute. Twitter 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. 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. Twitter is a filter for information and experience that is constantly changing. People lose perspective on what is important and what is not.</div><div>
</div><div>Our capacity for discernment goes down and our anxiety goes up. Everything is made to feel urgent. Yet the more time people spend on Twitter the less time they are doing anything about Donald Trump and the crisis. 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.</div><div>
</div><div>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”?&nbsp; &nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>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. 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, 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. 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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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. 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.</div><div>
</div><div>What is the Trump regime preparing the American people for?</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>What were some moments when the rise of Trumpism, and what feels like a type of inevitability and path dependency, could have been stopped?</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>What comes next with Donald Trump in 2020 and the presidential election?</div><div>
</div><div>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. 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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div></div><div></div><div>Reporters should stop treating Trump and his advisors as credible sources</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>see for pol</div><div>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/</div><div>
</div><div>...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.</div><div>1. Republican foreign policy was isolationist from the party’s founding through the 1890s...</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>guts NEPA xl</div><div>https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-environment-infrastructure-review-2644664081.html</div><div>
</div><div>'No Other President Has Had the Gall': Environmental Groups Balk as Trump Proposes Major Rollback of Infrastructure Review Process 1/20.</div><div>
</div><div>1/9/20 NEPA rollback</div><div>
</div><div>omfg</div><div>https://www.democracynow.org/2020/1/10/headlines/trump_seeks_to_exempt_large_projects_from_some_environmental_review</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;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.</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>=</div><div>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...</div><div>or maybe b/c called on BS/lack of evidence, they make it up?</div><div>
</div><div>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/</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>The evolution of a Trump lie: How we got from ‘imminent attack’ to ‘four embassies’ in 9 fact-free steps</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Mark Sumner / Daily Kos January 12, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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 “worst briefing ever”.</div><div>
</div><div>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 Soleimani had been plotting “to blow up the U.S. embassy” into an interview, while providing absolutely no evidence.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>8) Trump expanded on his freshly-generated claim 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.</div><div>
</div><div>9) Trump reaches into his bag of nonsense to come up with the idea that specifically four embassies were under threat by Soleimani.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>&nbsp;=</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>ref 1</div><div>
</div><div>The Christianization of U.S. Foreign Policy</div><div>Behind President Trump's Twitter theatrics, there's a growing theme to American diplomacy.</div><div>By KATHRYN JOYCE</div><div>March 25, 2019</div><div>
</div><div>https://newrepublic.com/article/153387/christianization-us-foreign-policy</div><div>
</div><div>Last&nbsp; Thursday, Donald Trump announced, 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 reported, 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.</div><div>MOST POPULAR</div><div>The Evangelicals Who Pray for War With Iran</div><div>Mike Pompeo Is the Most Dangerous Man in the World Right Now</div><div>The Pinnacle of Trump’s Foreign Policy Stupidity</div><div>The Military Views Poor Kids as Fodder for Its Forever Wars</div><div>America Has Never Cared About Sacred Sites</div><div>The Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), among Pompeo’s traveling press team, sat down with the secretary in Jerusalem, and breathlessly reported 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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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 minted 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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>Republicans have ventured the comparison before, with both Sarah Palin and George W. Bush. The story of Esther, journalist Sarah Posner has observed, has long been used by 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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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 release of North Carolina pastor Andrew Brunson, detained for two years in Turkey on terrorism charges, was one high-profile victory.</div><div>
</div><div>Monday’s call excluded the entire State Department press corps, restricting participation to a small group of “faith-based” media outlets. When an invitation was accidentally sent to a member of the mainstream press and then rescinded, bringing the exclusive briefing to light, 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.</div><div>
</div><div>Journalists as well as former State Department spokesperson John Kirby were appalled. “These officials are public servants,” Kirby told 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.”</div><div>
</div><div>One of the media organizations on the call, Religion News Service (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 Algemeiner; the evangelical World Magazine; and two Catholic publications, America magazine and the newspaper of the Catholic Archdiocese of Kansas City.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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 “ministerial for international religious freedom,” as New York Times religion reporter Elizabeth Dias noted on Twitter, Pompeo had sit-down interviews with four evangelical news outlets, including the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN),before a press conference call where evangelical publications World Magazine and Christianity Today were picked first for questions, and mainstream newspapers, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, were only invited to pose questions at the end of the call. 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 controversial) Christian Zionist leaders like Pastor John Hagee—to “hear any concerns and red lines” they might have on a potential Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, according to an Axios source, and to reassure them that any plan would protect Israeli interests.</div><div>
</div><div>CBN’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 argued 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.</div><div>
</div><div>CBN’s stated mission is to ready the U.S. “for the coming of Jesus Christ.” To that end, it focuses heavily on Middle East issues. 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 a member of Pompeo’s inner circle, who has helped broker interviews between the Secretary and the network. Earlier this month, Rosenberg appeared on CBN to discuss his latest work offiction, The Persian Gamble, which posits that Iran used U.S. money to buy North Korean nukes. Rosenberg said he’d recently explained the book’s plot to President Trump. “How do you know that’s not happening already?” Trump apparently replied.</div><div>
</div><div>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. It’s a belief that Pompeo seems to share, having told a Kansas church audience in 2015 to keep fighting “until the rapture.”</div><div>
</div><div>Even amid an administration stacked with evangelical staffers and advisors, Pompeo stands out. As former CIA director he described the “war on terror” as a holy war and said the U.S. “worshipped other gods and called it multiculturalism.” He now readily tells 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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>Kathryn Joyce is a contributing editor at The New Republic and author of The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking and the New Gospel of Adoption</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>Trump privately admits he killed Suleimani ‘under pressure’ from upcoming impeachment trial: report</div><div>Igor Derysh / Salon</div><div>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…</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/trump-assassinated-soleimani-to-gain-favor-with-key-gop-senators-vital-to-supporting-him-during-impeachment-trial-wsj/</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>Trump assassinated Soleimani to gain favor with key GOP senators vital to supporting him during impeachment trial: WSJ</div><div>
</div><div>Written by David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement January 10, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>So why was he assassinated, and why now?</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>“We will continue to fight these battles,” Pompeo said in 2015, insisting there is a “never-ending struggle” until “the rapture.”</div><div>
</div><div>But like all things Trump, it boils down to self-protection and self-interest.</div><div>
</div><div>The Wall Street Journal published a deep dive Thursday night, headlined, “Trump’s New National Security Team Made Fast Work of Iran Strike.”</div><div>
</div><div>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:</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>Some have just started to weigh in on the grotesque news.</div><div>
</div><div>Michelangelo Signorile</div><div>@MSignorile</div><div>Let’s be clear re: this WSJ story:</div><div>
</div><div>Trump assassinated Soleimani based on no imminent threat to please GOP Senators who were pressuring him & who he needed re: impeachment.</div><div>
</div><div>Terribly corrupt and, well, impeachable. https://twitter.com/JoeSudbay/status/1215636962079657984 …</div><div>
</div><div>Joe Sudbay</div><div>@JoeSudbay</div><div>
</div><div>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</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Dennis Mersereau</div><div>?</div><div>@wxdam</div><div>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.</div><div>&nbsp;https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-new-national-security-team-made-fast-work-of-iran-strike-11578619195 …</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Trump’s New National Security Team Made Fast Work of Iran Strike</div><div>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...</div><div>
</div><div>wsj.com</div><div>ets</div><div>
</div><div>Eric Columbus</div><div>?</div><div>@EricColumbus</div><div>And there it is. https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-new-national-security-team-made-fast-work-of-iran-strike-11578619195 …</div><div>=</div><div>ref see xian above</div><div>
</div><div>https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/01/07/pompeo-aligns-u-s-foreign-policy-with-the-christian-zionists/</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/heres-how-trump-weaponizes-crackpot-ideas-to-maintain-a-firm-grip-on-his-maga-base</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>Here’s how Trump weaponizes crackpot ideas to maintain a firm grip on his MAGA base</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Alex Henderson January 10, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>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. 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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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 Roger Stone and his protégé Sam Nunberg.</div><div>
</div><div>“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 MarkLevin’s increasingly popular radio show,” 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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>“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.”</div><div>
</div><div>As Trump’s movement grew, Kruse notes, it didn’t do so by appealing to conservative intellectuals.</div><div>
</div><div>“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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>“If Trump began his political ascent as a follower —&nbsp; 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.”</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>ref</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/01/10/donald-trump-art-of-the-steal-096841</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>POLITICO</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx many</div><div>
</div><div>Trump’s Art of the Steal</div><div>How Donald Trump rode to power by parroting other people’s fringe ideas, got himself impeached for it—and might prevail anyway.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>By MICHAEL KRUSE</div><div>
</div><div>01/10/2020 05:09 AM EST</div><div>
</div><div>Michael Kruse is a senior staff writer for POLITICO.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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. 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.”</div><div>
</div><div>[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.</div><div>Donald Trump, photographed in Oct. 1999, with Roger Stone, the director of his presidential exploratory committee, walking behind him. | AP Photo]</div><div>
</div><div>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. 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: “This is all marketing and you’re a great product … in a new type of market,” he said he told Trump. “Help me help you sell gold to these people that normally buy gold.”</div><div>
</div><div>Trump started listening to the show.</div><div>
</div><div>“He would call me up sometimes,” Nunberg recalled. “‘Oh, did you just hear what Levin said?’”</div><div>
</div><div>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. 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.</div><div>
</div><div>Employees, executives, aides and others who’ve known 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,”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.</div><div>
</div><div>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 “Ground Zero Mosque”—which alerted him to the potential potency of anti-Obama birtherism, which paved the way for his anger-girded, fear-mongering presidential candidacy. 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.</div><div>
</div><div>[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.</div><div>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]</div><div>
</div><div>“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.”</div><div>
</div><div>“Taking the information he wants or needs,” former Trump casino exec Jack O’Donnell said.</div><div>
</div><div>“Whether it’s true or not,” former Trump Organization exec Barbara Res said.</div><div>
</div><div>Taking it in. Sending it out. Over and over. Again and again.</div><div>
</div><div>This, regardless of whatever else it is or means, is a remarkable and undeniable talent: hoovering others’ ideas, making them his, and in doing so growing a following uniquely his own that far exceeds the size of the even considerable original audience.&nbsp; AMP It’s what got him elected. In some ways, too, it’s what got him impeached.</div><div>
</div><div>“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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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. It may well establish a new standard for what our government defines as true.</div><div>
</div><div>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,” game to “bluff his way through.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>[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.</div><div>Donald Trump and his attorney Roy Cohn in October, 1984. | Getty Images]</div><div>
</div><div>“If he’s willing to listen, he’s a quick learner,” Res said.</div><div>
</div><div>“A quick study,” biographer Gwenda Blair concurred.</div><div>
</div><div>“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.”</div><div>
</div><div>Starting in the 1970s, he learned, of course, how to fight dirty and win from his antagonistic attorney and mentor, Roy Cohn.</div><div>
</div><div>In the ’80s, he learned from Stone, 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”. 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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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. 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.</div><div>
</div><div>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. AA</div><div>
</div><div>[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.</div><div>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]</div><div>
</div><div>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,” he called them, according to Stone. He watched Newt Gingrich weaponize words 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 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.</div><div>
</div><div>And Trump in 2011 seized on what people, some people—misguided, bigoted or both—thought about the country’s first black president. The birtherism 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.</div><div>
</div><div>“I’m starting to wonder myself whether or not he was born in this country,” he said on Fox News in March of that year.</div><div>
</div><div>“He doesn’t have a birth certificate,” he told talker Laura Ingraham two days later. “Somebody told me …”</div><div>
</div><div>“A lot of people do not think it was an authentic certificate,” he said on CNN in 2012, long after the White House released Obama’s “long form” birth certificate.</div><div>
</div><div>[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.</div><div>Mark Levin speaks during a ceremony at the White House in 2019. | Alex Brandon/AP Photo]</div><div>
</div><div>“Was it a birth certificate? You tell me,” he told ABC News in 2013. “Some people say that was not his birth certificate.”</div><div>
</div><div>That same year, Nunberg arranged for Trump to make his Levin show debut, preparing a memo “to familiarize Mr. Trump with Mark Levin,” he wrote—deploying tried-and-true ways to pique Trump’s interest. 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 Sean Hannity “his best friend”), his reach (books Liberty and Tyranny and Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America sold more than a million copies, Nunberg noted), and his compensation (“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 websites like TheRightScoop.com. People, in other words, “some people,” “many people,” “a lot of people,” were listening to what Levin was saying.</div><div>
</div><div>Armed with this advance work, the memo as well as the emails, Trump fit in well with Levin. In addition to shilling for the upcoming season of “The Celebrity Apprentice”—“Trace Adkins, La Toya Jackson, Dennis Rodman”—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.</div><div>
</div><div>“If the Republicans are going to win,” Trump said, “they’re going to have to 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 Tea Party. 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.”</div><div>
</div><div>And he landed especially hard on immigration and any notions of amnesty for undocumented immigrants.</div><div>
</div><div>“I watched last night,” he continued, referring to Obama’s State of the Union that year, “as 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.”</div><div>
</div><div>“Immigration,” Trump said, “will be the next thing, based on what I’m watching.”</div><div>
</div><div>Trump and Levin wrapped up by exchanging compliments.</div><div>
</div><div>“I’m extremely impressed with what you’re doing,” Levin said.</div><div>
</div><div>“You just have a great show,” Trump said. “I’m always listening.”</div><div>
</div><div>“Donald Trump,” Levin told his listeners after Trump signed off. “See that, folks? Very solid. Very conservative. To the right of the Republican establishment. Strong supporter of the Tea Party. I’m telling you. I’ve been watching this. I’ve been listening. People have been sending me his tweets.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.” FEEDBACK LITERALLY</div><div>
</div><div>In the few months before his interview with Levin:</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Donald J. Trump</div><div>@realDonaldTrump</div><div>Obama weak on immigration. All words, no action. He's been Prez 4 years.</div><div>
</div><div>197</div><div>6:12 PM - Oct 16, 2012</div><div>Twitter Ads info and privacy</div><div>987 people are talking about this</div><div>
</div><div>Donald J. Trump</div><div>@realDonaldTrump</div><div>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!</div><div>
</div><div>63</div><div>1:05 PM - Dec 3, 2012</div><div>Twitter Ads info and privacy</div><div>349 people are talking about this</div><div>And in the few months after:</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Donald J. Trump</div><div>?</div><div>@realDonaldTrump</div><div>Whether you like it or not, Bush also gave us Obama!</div><div>
</div><div>54</div><div>8:12 AM - Jun 27, 2013</div><div>Twitter Ads info and privacy</div><div>190 people are talking about this</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>He talked to Pat Caddell about what he was picking up on the trail. “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.”</div><div>
</div><div>Twitter, too, increasingly served a similar purpose.</div><div>
</div><div>“He glommed onto it like it was an oxygen source,” 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.”</div><div>
</div><div>“He loved it,” Nunberg said. “He doesn’t trust the political people who do the focus groups.” Instead: “What are we getting the most retweets on?”</div><div>
</div><div>In 2014 and ’15—well before Trump came down the escalator and announced his intention to run—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 (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.</div><div>
</div><div>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, ‘Because our people despise John McCain. 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.’”</div><div>
</div><div>Talk radio led the way. Trump followed.</div><div>
</div><div>Theoretically, Trump could have changed. 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, having at his disposal, suddenly and quite unexpectedly, the world’s preeminent intelligence-gathering apparatus. But no—sticking to “that gossip kind of mentality,” said O’Donnell, the casino exec, 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.”</div><div>
</div><div>“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.”</div><div>
</div><div>And then? The last and most important piece of this by now almost rote process?</div><div>
</div><div>“He repeats it,” Bolling said.</div><div>
</div><div>[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.&nbsp;</div><div>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]</div><div>
</div><div>And for as long as he’s occupied the Oval Office, Trump’s been thinking about Ukraine. “Ukraine,” Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said a couple months back, “has always been problematic, from Day One. He’s heard a lot about Ukraine from a lot of people.” He’s heard about it, according to reports, from RudyGiuliani, from his favored right-wing media outlets, from Vladimir Putin.</div><div>
</div><div>He started spreading it almost immediately.AMP</div><div>
</div><div>“I heard it’s owned by a very rich Ukrainian,” he said of CrowdStrike, incorrectly, in an interview with The Associated Press in April of 2017. “That’s what I heard.”</div><div>
</div><div>Officials have insisted to the president the CrowdStrike conspiracy is just that. He has not heeded their counsel.</div><div>
</div><div>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, “they say Ukraine has it.”</div><div>
</div><div>“It’s combustible because Trump’s only looking for news stories and information that suits his persona, that build his persona up,” Brinkley, the presidential historian, told me last week. “And by doing that he is following the trolls down an ugly path.”</div><div>
</div><div>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 last fall. “If he continues to focus on that white whale,” Bossert said of Trump’s questionable Ukraine theory, “it’s going to bring him down.”</div><div>
</div><div>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, 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.</div><div>
</div><div>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. The result: a crescendoing feedback loop, in which followers are leaders and leaders are followers, perpetuating ideas based on what works rather than what’s real.</div><div>
</div><div>“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 willing to destroy not just institutions but fact-based thinking, empirical thinking.” 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 propagate it.’”</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div></div><div>grift</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/investors-balked-at-trumps-plan-to-personally-make-2-million-per-room-leasing-government-building-wsj/</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>&nbsp;vilification of enemies is all that matters in Trump’s GOP</div><div>Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Mont</div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/trump-actually-does-have-a-strategy-for-iran-and-its-deeply-disturbing/</div><div>
</div><div>wa mo for pol</div><div></div><div>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?]</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/world-war-iii-trends-as-hawks-rejoice-at-trump-decision-to-assassinate-iranian-military-leader/</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>‘World War III’ trends as hawks rejoice at Trump decision to assassinate Iranian military leader</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams January 3, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>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>
</div><div>“To the Iranian government:&nbsp; 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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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>
</div><div>“From here, war is unavoidable, they believe,” Parsi added. “And celebrate.”</div><div>
</div><div>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>
</div><div>
</div><div>Donald J. Trump</div><div>?</div><div>@realDonaldTrump</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>“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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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>
</div><div>“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>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>Amid fears of revenge attacks, the State Department on Friday urged U.S. citizens to leave Iraq immediately.</div><div>
</div><div>“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>
</div><div>“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.”</div><div></div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/donald-trump-and-the-embarrassment-gap-in-american-politics/</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>Donald Trump and the ’embarrassment gap’ in American politics</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Joshua Holland / Raw Story January 4, 2020</div><div>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.</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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:</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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, 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.</div><div>
</div><div>The other sees in those same traits a genuineness 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 mark of a real, red-meat-eating manly-man. They see in Trump a living, breathing rebuke of all the smarty-pants eggheads who look down on them.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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?</div><div>
</div><div>With that, let’s move on to the first roundup of the new year.</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>According to Bloomberg…</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>“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.”</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>The Trump foreign policy doctrine–“do as much stupid shit as possible”–is paying off in North Korea just as it is with Iran.</div><div>
</div><div>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…</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. Trump, who has met Mr. Kim three times, has often cited the North’s restraint as a major diplomatic achievement.</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>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. 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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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…</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>As a result, “the federal government may collect hundreds of billions of dollars less over the coming decade than previously projected.”</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>Let’s not become inured to Trump’s authoritarianism.</div><div>
</div><div>Jonathan Chait (again):</div><div>
</div><div>Trump has made two major attempts (so far) to use his power to intimidate and control independent media. 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, 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.</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>Or the grifting.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>“Erik Prince, a major Republican donor and founder of controversial security firm Blackwater, 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 Nicolas Maduro,” according to the AP.</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>We want to note a few stories about the abuses of power for which Trump is being impeached lest they get lost in the turmoil in Iraq.</div><div>
</div><div>The New York Times:</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>“All 20 documents are being withheld in full,” wrote Dionne Hardy, the office’s Freedom of Information Act officer.</div><div>
</div><div>WaPo:</div><div>
</div><div>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. 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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>And then there’s this tibit, from The Daily Beast…</div><div>
</div><div>Paul Manafort said he used Fox News host Sean Hannity to receive backchannel messages from President Donald Trump 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.</div><div>
</div><div>*</div><div>
</div><div>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:</div><div>
</div><div>Horrific #ClimateChange emergency now unfolding in #Jakarta, where officials say ‘this is not ordinary rain’.</div><div>
</div><div>21 dead so far, 30,000 evacuated.</div><div>
</div><div>Do keep on saying it’s ‘just weather’ though. One day, there’ll be trials for climate criminals. #Indonesiapic.twitter.com/qcDZtFJC8x</div><div>
</div><div>— Brendan May (@bmay) January 2, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>Meanwhile, 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, according to a Trump administration plan that would weaken the nation’s benchmark environmental law.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>The planet requires Trump’s defeat this November.</div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>1/20 an</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>“A lot of very good people were taken down by a small group of Dirty (Filthy) Cops, 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 treason (and more), and it would be considered the CRIME OF THE CENTURY, far bigger and more sinister than Watergate!”</div><div>=</div><div>Fact checker reveals Trump stole credit from Obama with 1 outrageous lie 56 times in 2019</div><div>Travis Gettys / Raw StoryJanuary 1, 2020</div><div>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…</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/the-press-finally-tried-and-failed-to-stand-up-to-trump</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>The press finally tried—and failed—to stand up to Trump</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Eric Boehlert / Daily Kos December 31, 2019</div><div>
</div><div>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. 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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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. 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.”</div><div>
</div><div>Oddly committed to normalizing 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.</div><div>
</div><div>Incredibly, as I noted in August, this represented one 48-hour period in 2019:</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>What does it mean for the most powerful leader in the free world to be acting in a bizarre and often seemingly schizophrenic fashion? 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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>Of course, 2019 was the year that White House press briefings were officially canceled. 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.</div><div>
</div><div>Instead, reporters dutifully gathered outside the White House to shout questions at Trump during his so-called “Chopper Talk” sessions 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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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. 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).</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>NYT: Top Officials Failed to Convince Trump to Release Withheld Ukraine Aid</div><div>dn&nbsp;</div><div>=</div><div>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/</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/trumps-defenders-must-be-voted-out-to-protect-the-constitution/</div><div>
</div><div>editorial</div><div></div><div>deutche ivanka jared epstein?</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/heres-why-congress-wants-to-look-inside-the-bank-that-fronted-donald-trump-2-billion/</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>trump retweets — the deletes — article outing name of alleged Ukraine whistleblower</div><div></div><div>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/</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>Trump runs the country just like his bankrupted businesses: The national debt is skyrocketing while economic growth lags behind</div><div>
</div><div>Written by DC Report December 29, 2019</div><div>
</div><div>“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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>A powerful way to communicate Trump’s true economic legacy is to brand him as “Bankrupter-in-Chief Trump.”&nbsp; 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.</div><div>
</div><div>The country’s economic resources are being wasted, while its future economic health is endangered.</div><div>
</div><div>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.&nbsp; 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.</div><div>
</div><div>Debt to Top $4.1 Trillion</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>Squandered Stimulus</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>Another of Trump’s great promises was that he would eliminate the U.S. trade deficit.&nbsp; Here again, Trump’s performance has been disastrous.&nbsp; 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.</div><div>
</div><div>Trump points to the rise in stock prices as evidence that his economic policies are working.&nbsp; 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.</div><div>
</div><div>Bankrupting Individual Americans</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>“Farm debt in 2019 is projected to be a record-high $416 billion,” the Farm Bureau reported in October, while farm income is 29 percent lower than in the record year of 2013.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>Tax Cuts an ‘Enormous Flop’</div><div>
</div><div>“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.</div><div>
</div><div>During his campaign and in his inaugural address, Trump promised to protect the “forgotten man and woman.”&nbsp; 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.</div><div>
</div><div>“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.</div><div>
</div><div>Not only have protections for individual Americans been stripped from regulations and policies, but enforcement of remaining laws and regulations has also plummeted.&nbsp; 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.”&nbsp; This, too, will cause bankruptcies for large numbers of individual Americans.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>A Career of Business Bankruptcies</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>“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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>Passing Losses to Others</div><div>
</div><div>[pix Trump and his failed airline. ]</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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 laundered out of Russia.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.”&nbsp; 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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>an 1219</div><div>Trump runs the country just like his bankrupted businesses: The national debt is skyrocketing while economic growth lags behind</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>why Trump’s embrace of Eddie Gallagher is so dangerous</div><div>an 1219</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/how-trumps-trade-war-hurt-the-very-individuals-it-was-supposed-to-help/</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>How Trump’s trade war hurt the very individuals it was supposed to help</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Sarah Toce / Salon December 30, 2019</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>“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.</div><div>
</div><div>“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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>Mother Jones summarized the main findings in a handy chart:</div><div>...</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>TRUMPRELIGIOUS RIGHT#METOOGO AD FREE!MAKE A ONE-TIME DONATION</div><div>Bill Barr pressed Australian officials for dirt on Mueller probe while DOJ was assisting in hostage negotiations: report</div><div>Fox News</div><div>Written by Tom Boggioni / Raw Story April 15, 2020</div><div>According to a report at the Daily Beast, Attorney General William Barr pressed officials in Australia for information on William Mueller’s Russia investigation at the same time members of his Justice Department were assisting the Australians with hostage negotiations with Tehran.</div><div>
</div><div>In the exclusive report from Erin Banco and Lachlan Cartwright, they reveal that the conversations took place back in September before House Democrats sent articles on impeachment to the GOP-controlled Senate related to Donald Trump quid pro quo dealings with Ukraine while searching for dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden.</div><div>
</div><div>According to the report, “In a series of conversations last September, senior Department of Justice officials worked with representatives of the Australian government to hammer out an arrangement to win the release of a pair of Australian bloggers imprisoned in Tehran,” at the same time Barr was making inquiries about the genesis of Robert Mueller’s investigation into the president’s ties to Russia at the time of the 2016 election.</div><div>
</div><div>“Barr, like his boss, President Donald Trump, had long had a view of the Russia probe that bordered on hostile, and his review has been widely seen as an attempt to discredit the Mueller investigation, which led to the indictment of multiple Trumpworld associates. Just days before the culmination of talks in September—which coincided with an official Australian state visit—Trump himself pushed Prime Minister Scott Morrison to help Barr with this inquiry,” the report states. “Barr followed up about the Mueller re-investigation, two U.S. officials and a third individual familiar with the matter told The Daily Beast, even as American and Australian officials finalized their arrangement to try to free the pair jailed in Iran. According to four sources—including those two U.S. officials and one former U.S. official—the American government agreed to help facilitate the release of the Australian bloggers, in part by agreeing to pull back from pursuing the extradition of an Iranian scientist held in Australia.”</div><div>
</div><div>The report continues, “The discussions between Washington and Canberra raise questions about why the Department of Justice engaged in a behind-the-scenes effort to help win the release of Australian hostages from Iran and whether the president’s request to have the country assist in Barr’s Russia inquiry influenced the department’s decision-making.”</div><div>
</div><div>According to Claire Finkelstein, a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania, “This story suggests that the president is continuing to use the authority of his office to pressure foreign leaders into assisting him in covering up Russia’s assistance with his 2016 victory. This is the same conduct for which Trump was impeached, and the reporting suggests that he is undeterred.”&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>She added, “If the administration engaged in this swap as part of a deal with the Australian government in which it would support Trump’s counter-narrative to the Mueller Report, then department officials are actively using U.S. diplomacy to undermine our U.S. national security interests.”</div><div>
</div><div>You can read more here.</div><div>
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