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Month: October 2019

Ah, but the strawberries…. by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on October 19, 2019

Ah, but the strawberries….
by Tom Sullivan

Premature maybe, but Rolling Stone’s Tim Dickinson is already surveying possible replacements for President Donald Trump atop the Republican ticket in 2020. From Trump Loyalists to “True” Conservatives to Collaborationist Critics to Trump Kids to Neocon Revivalists, there isn’t much there to inspire Trump’s con-fed, resentment-stoked base should MAGA hats end up remaindered on eBay.

But it could happen. The Trump train and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s impeachment train are on a collision course, and the wheels are already coming off Trump’s. The acting president’s political legs have quickly gone wobbly. His already limited verbal ability has sunk to fourth-to-sixth-grade level. News outlets on Wednesday had to verify with the White House that the street corner-language letter Trump sent to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on October 9 was not a hoax.

Trump’s White House meeting with Pelosi and top congressional Democrats on Wednesday came after a House resolution rebuking Trump for his withdrawing U.S. troops from northern Syria passed 354-60. The meeting went so haywire, a Republican source inside the meeting told CNN Special Correspondent Jamie Gangel afterwards attendees were “shaken” and “shell-shocked.” Trump, the source said, “is not in control of himself. It is all yelling and screaming.”

“I am ashamed for the first time in my career,” a member of U.S. Special Forces serving beside Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Syria told Fox News Oct. 9 after being ordered by Trump to withdraw. Even Fox News reported that.

Friday night, CNN published an open letter of apology to Kurdish soldiers from the unidentified wife of a Special Operations soldier who had fought beside and lived with Kurdish people in northern Iraq. “To read in international newspapers that the United States, my country, has abandoned the Kurds is absolutely heartbreaking,” she writes:

Hasty decisions like this have not only put your people in terrible danger, they make the situation for our soldiers there on the Syrian-Turkish border much more difficult. My husband was with you on that border not long ago and I can’t imagine what our soldiers’ families are feeling right now.

And it’s not just safety. It’s hard to imagine how difficult it is for American soldiers to hear a partner and ally’s calls for help and not be allowed to answer them. It’s also hard to imagine you having to turn to Putin or the Assad regime for support because you could no longer count on Americans to keep their promise.

Tony Schwartz, Trump’s writer for “The Art of the Deal,” explains in the Washington Post this doesn’t get any better:

When Trump was elected, some critics held out hope that he would grow in office, as other presidents have. No one believes that’s possible anymore. After Mick Mulvaney took over as Trump’s third chief of staff last December, he let it be known that his approach would be to “let Trump be Trump.” Mulvaney was simply succumbing to reality. As Trump himself has said, he is essentially the same person today that he was at age 7.

Dr. Bandy Lee, an assistant clinical professor at the Yale School of Medicine, edited “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” a collection of essays by mental health professionals on Trump’s mental health “(or lack thereof),” Andrew Feinberg writes in The Independent. Based on conduct reported in the Mueller report, Lee and a group of experts believe Trump “doesn’t have the mental capacity to carry out his duties.”

Former White House Communications Director now a Trump critic, Anthony Scaramucci, believes Trump is “getting worse and worse” each week. “He will not be on the ballot for Republicans in November of 2020,” Scaramucci predicts.

That remains to be seen. But Beltway dwellers aren’t the only ones nervous about Trump’s stability.

My mother avoids any unpleasantness, as many Silents do. She frequently calls it all “dirty politics” whenever the subject is raised. But on Friday, this woman who lived through WWII, Korea, the McCarthy era, Vietnam, and the Cold War raised the subject herself in a phone call. The man whose twitchy thumb is “on the button,” as she said, has her worried. Telling her most U.S. nukes are pointed at Trump’s best friends’ countries was meant to be reassuring. I don’t think it was.

Representative Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) suggests Republicans might find it easier to find Trump unwell than to admit he has committed “high crimes and misdemeanors.” In one scenario, removing Trump for incapacity via the 25th Amendment could come into play before impeachment runs its course. But there is little chance now that Cabinet members who share culpability in Trump’s perfidies will move against him. They’ll be too busy lawyering up and covering their own retreats to do what’s best for their country.

So, impeachment remains the most likely tool for the mad king’s rebuke, if not his removal. The New York Times Editorial Board provides a short list of impeachable offenses the Senate may have to consider in deciding whether Trump deserves to be removed. Crimes Against Humanity is not one of them.

If his presidency isn’t enough to render the Trump brand forever toxic, that would do it.

QOTD: a Senate Trumper

Published by digby on October 18, 2019

QOTD: a Senate Trumper

by digby

Thee is “tremendous integrity” in his “bold,” “transparent” corruption and willingness to say “try to stop me, suckers — I’m the president and I’ll do anything I want.”

It’s quite inspiring.

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“There are exactly two possible explanations for the shameful performance the world witnessed on Monday”

Published by digby on October 18, 2019

“There are exactly two possible explanations for the shameful performance the world witnessed on Monday”

by digby

James Fallows is not a hysterical blogger. But he’s not pulling any punches:

There are exactly two possible explanations for the shameful performance the world witnessed on Monday, from a serving American president.

Either Donald Trump is flat-out an agent of Russian interests—maybe witting, maybe unwitting, from fear of blackmail, in hope of future deals, out of manly respect for Vladimir Putin, out of gratitude for Russia’s help during the election, out of pathetic inability to see beyond his 306 electoral votes. Whatever the exact mixture of motives might be, it doesn’t really matter.

Or he is so profoundly ignorant, insecure, and narcissistic that he did not realize that, at every step, he was advancing the line that Putin hoped he would advance, and the line that the American intelligence, defense, and law-enforcement agencies most dreaded.

Conscious tool. Useful idiot. Those are the choices, though both are possibly true, so that the main question is the proportions.

Whatever the balance of motivations, what mattered was that Trump’s answers during his joint press conference with the Russian president were indistinguishable from Putin’s, starting with the fundamental claim that Putin’s assurances about interference in U.S. democracy (“He was incredibly strong and confident in his denial”) deserved belief over those of his own Department of Justice (“I think the probe is a disaster for our country”).

I am old enough to remember Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon telling lies on TV, about Vietnam in both cases, and Watergate for Nixon. I remember the travails and deceptions of Bill Clinton, and of George W. Bush in the buildup to the disastrous Iraq War.

But never before have I seen an American president consistently, repeatedly, publicly, and shockingly advance the interests of another country over those of his own government and people.

Trump manifestly cannot help himself. This is who he is.

I hear pooh-poohing of this obvious observation from people on the right and also the left. It is impossible to ignore it at this point. Indeed, it’s verging on delusional.

He goes on to indict Trump’s accomplices in the Senate which is correct. So far, with the exception of a few stray comments and speech or two on the floor, they have refused to do their duty. They are betraying their country too.

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Young Republicans starting to peel off

Published by digby on October 18, 2019

Young Republicans starting to peel off

by digby

If the GOP cares at all about their future they should take a hard look at this:

While majorities of Republicans and Republican leaners across all age categories disapprove of the impeachment inquiry, there is more support for the inquiry among young Republicans (30% of those younger than 30) than those 65 and older.

That’s from the new Pew Poll which finds this astonishing number:

Pew also found that 54% approve of the impeachment proceedings so of those folks apparently don’t care, which is something. (And frankly, every time I hear Democrats saying that voters don’t care about all this and only want to talk about their own pocketbooks, they reinforce that notion.)

That 30% of young GOP voters could end up being a big problem. Even young Republicans are idealists. If they leave over Trump many of them won’t go back. And the Republicans aren’t getting very many coverts these days.

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A little crack in the wall?

Published by digby on October 18, 2019

A little crack in the wall?

by digby

My Salon column this morning:

It feels as though every week during the Trump administration is a year and every year a decade. Every day there is a crisis or an outrage or a revelation that takes your breath away. But the underlying dynamics always seem to be the same no matter what. The press reports the story, the Democrats get outraged, the pundits analyze it, the president rages and then Fox and the Republicans all line up like a  bunch of robots and salute smartly and we reset until the next crisis, outrage or revelation. It’s an exhausting cycle that never seems to get anywhere and it’s bred a fatalistic response in many of us: “nothing matters.”

But this past week is the first time I’ve thought that we might have seen something truly fundamental shift.  A cascade of recent and current National Security Counsel and State Department officials have now defied White House orders and given sworn testimony to congressional investigators which charge that Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani were running a shadow foreign policy that was at odds with the stated administration policy and US interests and aimed solely at securing personal political benefit for Trump. The whistleblower was right.

On Thursday, Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney held a rare press briefing in the White House and admitted that the president had, in fact, demanded a quid pro quo for military aid to Ukraine, astonishing everyone including the White House which quickly had him run out and declare that he didn’t actually say what he said. (Hey, it’s worked for Trump so far.)

Mulvaney obviously thought he was being clever by copping to Trump withholding military aid until they agreed to investigate this bogus “DNC 2016 election interference” because it’s looking into the past rather than the future as with the Biden investigation demand. They all seem to be unable to grasp that asking foreign governments to manufacture dirt on your domestic political opponents in exchange for American aid no matter how you slice it.  Their inane “mirror-Mueller” probe seeking to exonerate Russia for its activity in 2016 by proving they were framed by the Deep State, the DNC and Hillary Clinton is not only absurd, it’s extremely suspicious.

Let’s just say that Mulvaney’s explanations didn’t help his or the president’s cause:

Meanwhile, even congressional Republicans have been agitated by the president’s seemingly abrupt decision to greenlight a Turkish invasion of northern Syria last Friday night, paving the way for ethnic cleansing of US allies and creating an opportunity for ISIS to regenerate.  The normally enthusiastic Trump bootlicker Senator Lindsey Graham, R-SC, was beside himself as the week wore on even claiming that Trump would have blood on his hands and proclaiming it the worst decision of his presidency. Mitt Romney, R-Ut,  spoke out as well as did Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Others tip-toed around the issue by tepidly voicing some concern rather than their usual full-throated endorsement of Donald Trump’s genius, obviously waiting to see which way the wind was blowing. Nonetheless, the Senate prepared to pass a sanctions bill against Turkey on a bipartisan basis and the House passed a resolution condemning the abrupt withdrawal of US troops, 354 to 60, with the full support of Democrats and 129 Republicans. That’s right, two-thirds of House Republicans joined that vote.

That is unusual, to say the least, particularly since the House is in the midst of a dramatic process that will, in all likelihood,  result in the impeachment of this president. The votes weren’t specific to that charge but the fact that they happened at this moment is a sign that his power over them may be diminishing.

Trump flailed about all week using the same gambit he tried with the notorious Ukraine phone call: “you can believe me or you can believe your lyin’ eyes.” In this case, he had circulated an official White House announcement declaring the troop withdrawal and blessing the invasion and days later he was saying that he never did any such thing.

As the pressure mounted, Trump got more and more frantic, holding rambling incoherent press avails, finally culminating in a White House meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi D-Ca,  and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer,D-NY, in which he suffered a serious meltdown. He insulted Pelosi to her face causing the Democratic leaders to leave the meeting. The White House circulated an unhinged, juvenile threatening letter Trump had sent to Turkish President Erdogan three days after his assent to their invasion plan, obviously trying to back peddle in the face of the Republicans balking, which was later reported to have landed in the rubbish bin beneath Erdogan’s desk.

It’s become clear even to many of his allies on Capitol Hill that this decision was a sign of either dangerous impulsiveness, possible corruption or both. As with the Ukraine mess, Trump carried out this policy in defiance of his national security and foreign policy expert’s advice and for inscrutable reasons. His decision-making has always been erratic but the consequences are becoming deadly.

As part of the pretense that he hadn’t given Erdogan the go-ahead, Trump sent Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Turkey to “negotiate.” They announced a short “cease-fire” in order to ethnically cleanse a portion of Northern Syria and announced they would reverse all sanctions and called it a breakthrough.

According to the  Washington Post  Turkish officials were happily surprised to learn they would get everything they wanted without having to give anything up at all:

The request for a temporary cease-fire seemed to be “face-saving, for the U.S. side,” the official said. “It was as easy a negotiation as we’ve ever had,” the official said.

The president was very pleased as well:

This is a great day for civilization. I am proud of the United States for sticking by me in following a necessary, but somewhat unconventional, path. People have been trying to make this “Deal” for many years. Millions of lives will be saved. Congratulations to ALL!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 17, 2019

And as if to emphasize once more that he doesn’t give a flying Florida flamingo about anything resembling reality anymore, he had his henchman Mulvaney announce that they had searched high and low for appropriate venues for next year’s G7 meeting and had determined that the only possible place to have it would be at Trump’s Doral golf club in Miami. He’s not really even trying to hide his intentions anymore:

All of this adds up to a dawning recognition among Trump’s allies that he’s adopting some kind of YOLO attitude that he’s just going to do whatever he wants and damn the consequences. His pronouncements are becoming even more grandiose than before and he apparently thinks he has the power to literally shape reality simply by saying what he wants to be true. For the first time it feels as if some of them are starting to realize just how dangerous that can be.

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The Media’s Latest GOP Voice of Reason…Isn’t by tristero

Published by tristero on October 18, 2019

The Media’s Latest GOP Voice of Reason…Isn’t 

by tristero

The mainstream media is still seeking that mythical savior, the Reasonable Republican — and Mitt Romney looks like the Hollywood version of deep seriousness: strong jaw, elegantly grayed hair, and as white as it gets. And of course Romney is also male-iciously male to boot. There’s just one little problem:

Romney votes Trump nearly 80% of the time. Romney’s no voice of reason. He’s a rightwing elitist nutjob who, let’s not forget, blithely wrote off 47% of American voters as not worth his attention.

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The Guardrails by tristero

Published by tristero on October 18, 2019

The Guardrails 

by tristero

They’re deserting what appears to be a sinking ship. And we’re starting to see the outline of an excuse from those who have jumped overboard. The rough outline goes like this:

“I did what I could to save the country from Trump and I could only do that from the inside.”

Bullshit.

They weren’t mitigating the damage. At worst they were enabling and covering it up. At best, they were merely stretching out the amount of time that Trump got away with it in order to advance their own (usually ethically dubious) agendas.

In other words, there were never any “guardrails around the Trump presidency.” There were only grifters.

Sure, the quip Mattis’s speechwriter wrote about bone spurs is amusing. But it doesn’t let him off the hook. He’s as morally culpable as Barr, Miller, Mnuchin, Mulvaney, Pence, and the rest of the Whole Sick Crew:

Thomas M. Nichols, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College in Rhode Island, said he did not think the speech was an occasion for laughter. 

“I don’t think anyone should be chuckling at Mattis’s brush off of Trump’s insult,” he wrote on Twitter. “It’s his facile way of dodging the reality that he knows a lot about what happened in this White House, including what are now obviously impeachable acts directly related to his time as SECDEF.”

That is exactly right. And by the way, being a serially bad judge of character — the only conceivable (and feeble) excuse for Mattis’s agreeing to serve on the Board of Theranos and in Trump’s cabinet — does not absolve Mattis his responsibility to come forward about any wrongdoing he witnessed or possibly partook in.

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Pax Ameri-con-a by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on October 18, 2019

Pax Ameri-con-a
by Tom Sullivan


Remodeled Syrian naval base at Tartus now serves Russian nuclear subs and other surface ships.

It is as if Russian President Vladimir Putin tasked Donald J. Trump with unwinding 75 years of western diplomacy in four years and Trump piped up, “I’ll do it in under three.” And actually delivered.

Trump has dumped on NATO, bailed on trade agreements and climate accords, abandoned allies, and conceded whatever moral high ground the U.S. had left after George W. Bush invaded the wrong country, tortured prisoners, and further destabilized the Middle East to impress his father. Trump has done it in record time. It’s what happens when an insecure, autocrat-curious con man takes control of a superpower.

Now after undermining Ukraine’s territorial security in favor of Russian expansionism, he has handed Russia a greater foothold on NATO’s eastern doorstep in northern Syria and strengthened Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s Russian-backed government. Access to Syrian harbors already has helped Russia expand its naval presence in the Mediterranean that shrank after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

“We got exactly what we wanted,” a senior Turkish official told CNN after meeting with Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday:

Pence just announced that the US and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had agreed to a ceasefire in the Turkish military offensive into Syria. Pence said the Turkish operation would end when the YPG forces complete the withdrawal.

The senior Turkish official told CNN the “terrorists” would withdraw from the “safe zone” within five days and that Turkey would enforce the area after that. He also told CNN the “military operation paid off.”

Erdoğan is scheduled to meet with President Vladimir Putin in Sochi, Russia, around the time the ceasefire would go into effect.

As Trump declared his foreign policy debacle brilliant, America’s erstwhile Kurdish allies against ISIS would have 120 hours to ethnically cleanse themselves from territory Turkey wanted. For its part, Turkey rejected the ceasefire framing. This was merely a pause in its advance and not an actual ceasefire. Shelling continues.

In a touching bit of irony, Bush speechwriter Micheal Gerson laments the “global implications of having a president who is ignorant of history, driven by impulse, immune to advice and dead to the romance of American ideals.” He writes in the Washington Post:

The betrayal of the Kurds has damaged President Trump so badly — including among Republican legislators — because it so perfectly captures the essence of his approach to foreign affairs. There is the devaluing and abandonment of traditional friends (the Kurds are “not angels” and “didn’t help us with Normandy”). There is the surrender to strongmen (granting Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan a free hand in Syria, and ceding Russia’s Vladimir Putin a broader role in the Middle East). There is the absurdly contracted definition of U.S. interests (events in Syria are unimportant because they are not on “our border”). There are the blustery threats to cover his humiliation (the U.S. will “swiftly destroy” Turkey’s economy with sanctions). And there is the inevitable and delusional pronouncement of success (the debacle was “strategically brilliant”).

This set of urges and instincts is leaving its mark on U.S. influence. Trump’s bumbling retreat from alliances, from responsibility and from basic sanity has sown discord in Europe and has created new playgrounds for Russian meddling. It has also left a vacuum of influence in the Pacific that is being filled by China. The damage to U.S. interests is considerable and growing.

The cost of betraying a friend in battle — particularly to appease an authoritarian thug — is clear. It makes every friend and ally less likely to trust the United States. But what gets less attention is the cost of betraying American principles, particularly on human dignity. When Trump leaves the Kurds to ethnic cleansing, or is dismissive of the rights of protesters in Hong Kong, he is not only dishonoring national principles. He is forfeiting a decisive American advantage.

“Trump’s amoral foreign policy is a source of shame — and a source of danger,” Gerson boldly concludes without calling boldly for a swift end to Trump’s tenure in the White House.

Trump’s stay could be over in short order if Republicans in Congress put their votes overwhelmingly behind it for the good of their country. But that likely will mean the collapse of Republican power in Washington if not in many states as well. That collapse bothers them more than the collapse of their country’s international influence.

They could lose in 2020 with some modicum of dignity intact, having shaken off Trump’s spell, but like opioids, political power is addicting too. Republicans have not yet hit rock-bottom. At this rate, America may get there before they do.