Month: March 2017

All the hallmarks of a guilty man

by digby

As is so often the case, Brian Beutler is on my wavelength with this great piece in today’s New Republic:

The Trump White House’s contempt for the press—and for the more general notion that there are inconvenient truths in the world that can’t be denied out of existence—is so well established by now that many of us who cover politics have become desensitized to its constant manifestations.

But sometimes, the administration’s dissembling is so egregious that it can’t be laughed off, such as on Monday when White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer revised the history of the Trump campaign, transition, and the early days of the administration to write central characters into trivial roles.

At his daily briefing, Spicer referred to now-deposed national security adviser Michael Flynn as a “volunteer of the campaign” and Paul Manafort—who was Trump’s campaign manager—as someone “who played a very limited role for a very limited amount of time.”

As Spicer spoke, FBI Director James Comey was testifying on Capitol Hill, where he both disputed Trump’s claim that he was unlawfully wiretapped last year by President Barack Obama and confirmed that the FBI is “investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts … includ[ing] an assessment of whether any crimes were committed.”

It is hard to say, exactly, how a presidential administration should behave when it has been the beneficiary, wittingly or unwittingly, of foreign interference on its behalf. The U.S. intelligence community has already concluded that the Russian government sabotaged Hillary Clinton’s campaign to bolster Trump’s candidacy. Even under the most innocent of circumstances, Trump and his senior aides would find themselves in the awkward position of having to contend with the role that dirty tricks played in their rise to political power.

But the defensive, contentious posture they have adopted—marked by obfuscation, deflection, and wild counterpunching—doesn’t call to mind the temporary embarrassment of a political team benefiting from the interference of some noxious but unaffiliated entity, like the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that smeared Democratic nominee John Kerry in 2004. They’re acting like cornered animals. And though Trump’s response to these developments is dressed up with the trappings of the presidency, including a White House press secretary who speaks on his behalf every day, it bears all the hallmarks of his standard reaction when his unsavory associations come back to bite him. This is vintage, guilty Trump.

In the following video, filmed a few years ago, a BBC reporter asks Trump to account for his deep entanglements with Felix Sater, a Russian gangster and FBI informant whose name recently resurfaced when The New York Times reportedthat he has a backchannel to the White House through Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.

Here, again, Trump’s instinctive response is to avoid any association with his partners’ wrongdoings by pretending they’re more like acquaintances.

“I know who he is,” Trump allows reluctantly, when he realizes outright denial won’t work.

The pattern was well established before Trump had the machinery of the White House behind him. He devoted his official Twitter feed on Monday afternoon to posting deceptively edited and summarized video clips from the Intelligence Committee hearing, to make it appear as if Obama were the real villain, that Comey’s testimony had exonerated him, and that Russians didn’t meddle in the election when, in fact, the exact opposite was true.

It is easy enough to imagine a version of events in which the Russian government determined its preference for Trump over Clinton and consequently sought to influence the outcome of the election in complete isolation from the Trump campaign, like a kind of rogue, sovereign, lawbreaking super PAC. If at bottom, Trump had confidence that his associates never colluded improperly or illegally with the Russian effort to sabotage the election, he might see it as in his interest to let an investigation proceed unencumbered.

You send your spokesman out to make an ass of himself, and pretend your closest advisers were mere hangers on, when you’re afraid of what that investigation might turn up.

I had never seen that video before … Jesus. I love that thing about how “if you have a signed contract you have to fulfill it” coming from Trump, the man who is legendary for refusing to honor his contracts.

Yes, he is not one to ever admit to anything, even in the face of absolute proof. But he acts a certain way when he’s guilty and it’s obvious.

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What did House Republicans know and when did they know it?

by digby

On MSNBC’s Monday edition of “Hardball,” Washington Post columnist David Ignatius claimed that yesterday’s House Intelligence Committee hearing with FBI Director James Comey and NSA Director Michael Rogers was “a turning point” in the growing “Russia” scandal. At the time of the hearing I wouldn’t have thought so. Not that the testimony wasn’t dramatic. It was. Director Comey categorically denied that there was any evidence of President Trump’s inane accusation that President Obama ordered Trump Tower wiretapped, and confirmed that there is an ongoing investigation into possible “coordination” between Trump associates and Russian government actors over interference in the presidential election campaign.

But it’s not as if there hadn’t been extensive reporting about all of this already. This was no smoking gun. The hearing was significant in that it was the first time anyone in government has publicly acknowledged the investigation, which means that the calls for a special prosecutor and/or a bipartisan commission take on new urgency. Despite the recusal of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, this issue is too critical, and the Trump administration is too lacking in credibility to be allowed to investigate itself. Comey may have struck an independent note in the hearing but his reputation in regard to the election is so tainted by his previous behavior that no matter what comes of the investigation, half the country won’t believe it. And no one will trust the senior members of Sessions’ Justice Department to make a fair decision about whether or not to prosecute.

Yes, Comey’s testimony was a turning point: Consider the reaction from Trump and the GOP

But it wasn’t the testimony itself that created the impression that something important had shifted. It was the over-the-top reaction. According to Politico, the White House was “knocked on its heels” and “scrambling to contain the fallout.” Perhaps administration officials expected their buddy Comey to come through for them once again, but it appears he’s only willing to take so many bullets on Donald Trump’s behalf. (Admitting in the hearing that the probe had begun last July, as he was ostentatiously proclaiming Hillary Clinton “reckless” for what turned out to be nothing, may have made Comey feel slightly chagrined.)

Press secretary Sean Spicer seemed to be near panic as he desperately tried to steer attention away from the fact that the President’s campaign is the subject of a counterintelligence investigation. He reminded the press about Obama officials saying they had no proof of collusion, even as Republicans on the committee seemed to imply that those same officials were the ones responsible for the leaks. In a lame attempt to distance the White House from former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Spicer claimed they were insignificant campaign volunteers, which doesn’t pass the laugh test.

Even as he pretended that Flynn wasn’t intimately involved with the campaign, Spicer tried gamely to turn reporters’ attention to the fact that Flynn’s name was leaked improperly and claim this was the “real” scandal that should be investigated (along with some nonsense about Hillary Clinton being involved with the Russians.)

It was a manic performance, but no more bizarre than Trump’s tweets prior to the hearing, which were a tipoff that the president was feeling nervous and wanted to steer the narrative his way.

James Clapper and others stated that there is no evidence Potus colluded with Russia. This story is FAKE NEWS and everyone knows it!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 20, 2017

The real story that Congress, the FBI and all others should be looking into is the leaking of Classified information. Must find leaker now!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 20, 2017

What about all of the contact with the Clinton campaign and the Russians? Also, is it true that the DNC would not let the FBI in to look?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 20, 2017

Republicans on the committee followed Trump’s lead as best they could. Despite having backed the Patriot Act and NSA mass surveillance to the hilt in the past, nearly all of them are now born-again civil libertarians, overwhelmed with concerns for the privacy rights of average citizens as long as they are named Michael Flynn.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., did everything but beg Comey to say he was investigating newspapers and would promise to prosecute journalists. Committee chair Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., went on and on about the Clinton Foundation. It was almost as if these GOP congressmen wanted to talk about anything but the Russian hacking of the election campaign.

As Politico’s Michael Crowley told Brian Williams on MSNBC last night:

There’s just an unwillingness [among Republicans] to hear the fundamental facts of what happened in this election. It’s a desire to tell a different story, to have a narrative that this is about leaks. And sure, that’s a valid point to raise and it’s a serious question. But relative to the idea that a foreign government interfered in our election, tried to distort our democracy, it just doesn’t compare. And I just saw so little concern about that on the part of he Republicans on that committee today. I just found it very strange.

Even for partisans trying to provide some cover for their president it was odd. After the hearing, Mother Jones’ David Corn reported that Nunes was weirdly lackadaisical about the hearing and acted as if he’d never heard of some of the main players in the controversy — including Roger Stone, who has been all over the news for his admitted contact with Guccifer 2.0, one of the alleged hackers.

Maybe Republicans have other motives for trying to downplay this growing scandal aside from partisan loyalty to a president most of them barely know. As I noted here on Salon a few weeks back, the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chair John Podesta were not the only hacks. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, was hacked as well and the information was professionally curated and disseminated by none other than the same Guccifer 2.0. The release of that information targeted close campaigns where the information could be most effectively used against the Democrats.

The New York Times published a long exposé about this last December showing exactly how the hacks were done, but amid the Trump furor it’s never been followed up. One can imagine why Republican Intelligence Committee members would prefer it never is. After all, the Russians apparently didn’t just interfere on behalf of Donald Trump. They interfered on behalf of House Republicans. Somebody might begin to wonder what they expected in return.

If the administration and congressional Republicans want to avoid a widening net of suspicion they should probably stop acting as if they are desperate to change the subject. It’s a sure sign of a coverup.

Moscow on the Potomac
by Tom Sullivan

Image via Pinterest.

FBI Director James Comey yesterday informed a congressional hearing that the FBI has a counterintelligence investigation underway looking into whether any of President Donald Trump’s associates coordinated with Russian operatives engaged in efforts to manipulate the 2016 elections. The investigation, Comey confirmed, began last July. Both Comey and NSA Director Adm. Michael Rogers dismissed allegations by Trump that Trump Tower had been wiretapped by order of President Obama. The New York Times called it “a remarkable public takedown of a sitting president.”

The Trump White House was in damage control mode even before the hearing, with Trump himself firing off a series of diversionary tweets yesterday morning.

The Los Angeles Times indicates it is not only Trump knocked back on his heels. Russian hackers have been surprised by the blowback. “The story has magnified more than the Russians expected,” said William Courtney, an adjunct senior fellow at the Rand Corp:

Traditionally, former Soviet governments were reluctant to get involved in the internal politics of America because of the risk of possible retaliation. “But Putin has been willing to do that and to take extra risks,” said Courtney, a former U.S. ambassador to Georgia and onetime presidential special assistant for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia.

[…]

“The fact that they were willing to do it openly suggests Putin is trying to fire a shot across the bow, in a political sense, to show that Russia has the capacity to make it look like the integrity to the U.S. elections is not as strong as Americans think it is and to undermine confidence … that the democratic process is honest,” Courtney said.

The L.A. Times report notes that Kremlin loyalists claimed Monday’s congressional hearings are meant to undermine Moscow’s ties with Trump:

The aim of this week’s hearings in Washington “is not to allow Trump to improve ties with Russia,” said Sergei Markov, a Moscow-based political analyst and a former lawmaker with the ruling United Russia party. “Very serious circles in the U.S. think that they can’t let Russia become a great power, that Russia should be pressed, pressed, pressed.”

Just now, encouragement from Moscow cannot be helpful to a Trump administration and Republican leaders in Congress hoping to make this investigation go away quickly if not quietly.

Alex Shepard at the New Republic offered this bit of snark on the Republicans’ blue Monday:

But by the end of the day, Republicans had hit upon their strategy. “The longer this hangs out there, the more the cloud grows,” House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes said to Comey near the end of the hearing. The suggestion was that Comey—not Trump—had put this cloud over the White House. This is a remarkable thing to say, given that it’s Trump’s campaign that is under investigation for its ties to Russian intelligence. But the subtext is clear: We’re going to apply political pressure to try to get you to wrap this up quickly. Shortly after the hearing ended, notable Google result Rick Santorum concurred that this strategy was the way to go on CNN.

Good luck with that. This morning’s Washington Post online headline reads:

As of 8 a.m. EDT, both the White House and Trump’s Twitter feeds are dark.

QOTD: Trumpie

by digby

In his interview with the respected Fox News journalist Jesse Waters:

I think the Alec Baldwin situation is not good. Chuck [Schumer] I’m very disappointed in, because he’s a guy who should make deals for the people. Instead he’s just an obstructionist. So, I’m disappointed in him. And Jeff Zucker, I mean, I got him the job. And CNN is just, you know, fake news. Who would I say? I just, I don’t want to say, but I will say I’m disappointed in all three. I think the portrayal of me is ridiculous.

Your president, ladies and gentlemen.

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Compassion 

by tristero

Riffing off Digby’s recent post as well as Frank Rich’s article:

Some of us will suffer sooner, others later but we’re all going to suffer under Trump’s gold-plated heel. That people voted for Trump is utterly deplorable. And no, there’s little point in trying to reach them if that means abandoning our values.

But there were many factors that led to this disaster – sexism, a media that provided billions of dollars in free coverage to a histrionic fascist because doing so sold ad space, a Democratic campaign tone-deaf  to the working class, Comey (thanks, man), and America’s original sin (the accommodation of slavery) embodied in the electoral college. There were others.

There is absolutely nothing to be gained, imo, in being furious with people who were woefully misled. And for those angry voters who actually are racists, Islamophobes, sexists, homophobes, and ignorant, there is nothing to be gained by matching their anger with our own. Why? Because to act from anger is to make terrible mistakes – like voting for Trump.

Instead, we should focus laser-like on the main problem: the monstrous, sexist, racist, and viciously anti-democratic behavior of the modern Republican party. To begin, I suggest we start by looking at our rhetoric. Many of the most prominent Democrats, liberals, and independents are really terrible at it.

Need examples?  Here, at the height of the media frenzy, is one of the worst campaign op-eds I’ve ever read. A 10-20-30 plan? Now there’s a bunch of numbers America’s voters could sign up for – if only they cared enough to find out what the hell those numbers could possibly mean. Who can blame them for focusing on the easy-to-digest tweets floating around the inter-webs instead?

And the tone-deaf rhetoric is not just historical.  Here’s Dianne Feinstein today, quoted in the NY Times on the upcoming Gorsuch hearings:

“This is an important process that needs to be carried out with the kind of dignity and perseverance that it warrants,” Ms. Feinstein said. “Because this is so pivotal, as the decisive vote on the court, this is a huge responsibility. This is complicated by what came before, which was the Republican treatment of Merrick Garland, which I found very disagreeable and unprecedented.”

There are many things that the blocking of Garland’s nomination was. “Disagreeable” was the least of it. If only she’d say something like this:

For years, Republicans have consistently made a mockery of Supreme Court confirmations. Then their immature clowning around escalated into outrageous, unheard-of levels of Republican obstructionism in Merrick Garland’s case. They wouldn’t even deign to meet with him. Rest assured: no Senate Democrat has forgotten.

Of course, decent rhetoric’s not sufficient. But it is necessary and it would be a start. And if you ever want proof that good ideas aren’t enough, well look back to November of ’16, dear friends.

The White House was shocked to learn the sun came up this morning

by digby

Apparently the White House doesn’t bother reading anything but Breitbart or watching anything but Hannity these days because they were apparently surprised that Comey would confirm there’s an investigation that everyone has known about for months and about which they have received intelligence briefings.  Talk about a bubble. Politico reports:

The White House was knocked on the defensive Monday ahead of its biggest week yet on Capitol Hill as FBI Director James Comey confirmed the existence of an active investigation into Russia’s meddling in the presidential election, including whether there was any coordination with now-President Donald Trump’s team.

The dramatic revelation, made at a hearing of the House Intelligence Committee, dragged the Trump administration yet again back into uncomfortable territory just as it had hoped to highlight the smooth rollout of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, who began his confirmation hearings across the Capitol on Monday.

In another blow to Trump, Comey and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers also publicly refuted his unsubstantiated claims on Twitter that President Barack Obama had ordered a wiretap of Trump Tower phones. The leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees had said last week that Trump’s allegations were untrue.

“I have no information that supports those tweets, and we have looked carefully inside the FBI,” Comey said.

The White House scrambled to contain the fallout, deploying two simultaneous war rooms, according to two people familiar with the arrangement, one in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building to monitor the Comey hearing and another in the Senate offices to keep tabs on Gorsuch.

But any hopes in the West Wing for a split-screen day were dashed with the revelation of an active probe into campaign associates of the president. At the White House, televisions in the press offices played the Comey hearing as it ran live on all the cable networks.

“I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election,” Comey said. “And that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government.”

Comey said the probe will “include an assessment of whether any crimes were committed.”

He also revealed that the FBI launched its investigation into possible ties between Trump’s campaign and Russian officials back in July — a detail that enraged allies of Hillary Clinton, considering Comey chose to confirm the existence of the probe into her email arrangement but not the one into Trump’s campaign.

Yeah — quite the double standard on that one.

Spicer tried his best but it didn’t really work:

He repeatedly tried to cast former national security adviser Michael Flynn as the victim of illegal leaks, seeking to point reporters’ focus to the circumstances around which Flynn’s pre-inauguration phone calls with the Russian ambassador were revealed. It was a tactic followed by Republicans on Capitol Hill, who mostly ignored Russian interference in the election and opted to focus on leaks to the press.
[…]
Spicer said reporters needed to take “no” for an answer about collusion, and he said more attention should be paid to other issues, like leakers and any contact between Clinton’s campaign and Russia. He also sought to minimize the role in the campaign of some people who have been linked to Russia or WikiLeaks, including former campaign adviser Carter Page, longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone and former campaign Chairman Paul Manafort.

Spicer was particularly obtuse on that one, saying that Manafort had a “limited role in the campaign. Except for being the campaign chairman for months, he’s right.

This was truly amazing:

Trump’s war room teams, meanwhile, offered a preview of what is likely to come as they cherry-picked elements from Comey and Rogers to make it seem as if Russia hadn’t meddled in the election.

“The NSA and FBI tell Congress that Russia did not influence electoral process,” Trump tweeted with a clip of the testimony from the official @POTUS account.

That is not accurate, or, at the least, is misleading. Comey and Rogers testified that Russia had not altered vote tallies, though they acknowledged they could not judge whether the Russian efforts had any influence on voters.

Trump himself began the pushback before the hearings even began, with a burst of morning tweets attacking the media, Clinton, polls and the Democratic Party. “The real story that Congress, the FBI and all others should be looking into is the leaking of Classified information. Must find leaker now!” Trump tweeted.

The good little soldiers on the committee happily followed that lead and spent the whole time smearing former Obama administration figures and rending their garments over leaks naming poor Michael Flynn. It’s heartwarming to see how they’ve all suddenly had an epiphany and become privacy advocates, especially Trey Gowdy who spent years trying to get a peek into Hillary Clinton’s personal emails.

They were not bothered at all by the Russian interference apparently since they didn’t bother to ask about it. They did ask about this, however:

Meanwhile, Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) said the Clinton Foundation and Clinton campaign need more examination regarding Russia ties.

This just gets weirder and weirder.

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Many forums for investigation

by digby

The feds aren’t the only game in town:

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, a vocal critic of President Trump, has hired a prosecutor who served under fired U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara to focus on public corruption cases, including those involving the Trump administration, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Schneiderman’s decision to hire Howard Master reportedly signals that he plans to target Trump and his administration. Master previously served under Bharara, who was fired after refusing to resign at Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s request.

Master worked on high-profile cases at the Department of Justice, including the prosecution of New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.

Eric Soufer, a spokesman for Schneiderman, confirmed the hire to the Journal.

“[He] will be working on a wide range of civil and criminal investigations and enforcement matters, including public corruption, complex civil litigation,” Soufer said.
The White House did not immediately respond to the Journal’s request for comment.

Schneiderman has a history with Trump, including a  fraud lawsuit in 2013 over the billionaire’s now-defunct real estate school, Trump University.

All the Russian stuff is very interesting and I don’t mean to devalue the importance of those probes. If they do lead anywhere it’s the biggest scandal in American history and the fact that there’s any evidence at all to that effect makes it very much worth pursuing.
But I continue to be most curious about the Trump organization’s global business dealings and the frightening conflicts of interest they present.

That may or may not have something to do with Russia but it’s not confined to Russia. The state of New York has some jurisdiction over Trump’s businesses so this could be a fruitful avenue of investigation. We know Jeff Sessions will throw sand in the gears if he can. But there are other people who will keep looking and Schneiderman is one of them.

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Compassion for deplorables?

by digby

Frank Rich makes a controversial point in this piece but I’m not convinced he isn’t right:

While many, if not most, of those in #TheResistance of the Democratic base remain furious at these voters, the party’s political class and the liberal media Establishment are making a concerted effort to convert that rage into empathy. “Democrats Hold Lessons on How to Talk to Real People” was the headline of a Politico account of the postelection retreat of the party’s senators, who had convened in the pointedly un-Brooklyn redoubt of Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Democrats must heed the rural white enclaves, repeatedly instructs the former Pennsylvania governor and MSNBC regular Ed Rendell. Nicholas Kristof has pleaded with his readers to understand that “Trump voters are not the enemy,” a theme shared by the anti-Trump conservative David Brooks. “We’re Driving to the Inauguration With a Trump Supporter” was the “Kumbaya”-tinged teaser on the Times’ mobile app for a roundup of on-the-ground chronicles of these exotic folk invading Washington. Even before Trump’s victory, commentators were poring through fortuitously timed books like Nancy Isenberg’s sociocultural history White Trash and J. D. Vance’s memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, seeking to comprehend and perhaps find common ground with the Trumpentariat. As measured by book sales and his appeal to much the same NPR-ish audience, Vance has become his people’s explainer-in-chief, the Ta-Nehisi Coates, if you will, of White Lives Matter.

The outbreak of Hillbilly Chic among liberals is an inverted bookend to Radical Chic, the indelible rubric attached by Tom Wolfe in 1970 (in this magazine) to white elites in Manhattan then fawning over black militants. In both cases, the spectacle of liberals doting on a hostile Other can come off like self-righteous slumming. But for those of us who want to ring down the curtain on the Trump era as quickly as possible, this pandering to his voters raises a more immediate and practical concern: Is it a worthwhile political tactic that will actually help reverse Republican rule? Or is it another counterproductive detour into liberal guilt, self-flagellation, and political correctness of the sort that helped blind Democrats to the gravity of the Trump threat in the first place?

I don’t know. But I do know that as a citizen and a woman I remain deeply, deeply offended by Trump’s voters and the way they behaved during the campaign. I find it hard to see why their economic anxiety, if they really have it, excuses the despicable, gross way they acted and the way they cheered that twisted piece of work we call a president. It was indecent.

I’m all for policies that will help those people economically. I always have been. Far more, by the way, than the libertarians and the conservatives have ever been. I would never vote against the economic interests of the working class. But I don’t think I have an obligation to give them a pass for their deplorable beliefs at the same time. Everyone has certain lines they cannot cross. Coddling racist, misogynist, xenophobes is my line. They are not children. They are adults who have agency.

As far as electoral strategy, this is how I feel about that.

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Chris Hayes has an important book recommendation for Donald Trump


by digby

This interview with Chris Hayes in the New York Times’regular feature “By The Book” about books and writers is just great and you should read all of it. But as is so often true, Chris channels my thoughts, this time in regards to what I feel is the scariest aspect of Trump’s presidency:

If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be? 

Well, it’s pretty clear the president doesn’t read, so I wonder if there’d be a movie or TV series that would make more sense. But in terms of books, I think Tony Judt’s “Postwar,” which is, in its own way, about how the postwar international order was created, and why, for all its tremendous faults, it is worth preserving. The thing that terrifies me most is world war, and I feel as if we’ve entered into a period in which the generation of people who lived through world war have nearly all died and we’ve forgotten, as a kind of global society, just how horrible it is.

Trump is of an age that should know better but he’s such a solipsistic imbecile, that he didn’t think he needed to be seriously prepared for the presidency before he ran and so has no understanding of how all this works.

On the morning after the election, I wrote this and it remains my greatest concern:

We wake up today to a fundamentally different world than the one in which we woke up yesterday. The nation our allies looked to as the guarantor of global security will now be led by a pathologically dishonest, unqualified, inexperienced, temperamental, ignorant flimflam man. Things will never be the same. And we have no idea at the moment exactly what form this change is going to take, which makes this all very, very frightening.

As Hayes says, the post WWII order has tremendous faults. It was imperfect but it did manage to keep us from another World War — not to mention nuclear conflagration. But to simply toss it away as Trump is doing, partially by intention and partially because he’s a psychologically impaired moron is terrifying.

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