Skip to content

Month: October 2019

Was Trump’s Syria green light really “impulsive”?

Published by digby on October 15, 2019

Was Trump’s Syria green light really “impulsive”?

by digby

My Salon column this morning:

During the 2016 campaign, then-candidate Donald Trump had a few stock lines about the wars in the Middle East he repeated on the stump and during debates. For instance, when asked what he would do if the U.S. were attacked by al-Qaida or ISIS, he famously said: “I’d bomb the shit out of ’em and take the oil!” (He would explain that he believed in the old-fashioned credo, “To the victors go the spoils.”) He often pretended that he had been against the Iraq war from the beginning, although there’s little evidence of that, and also made it clear that he had no use for Muslims, no matter where they came from.

Trump made many lurid, disgusting comments about torturing terrorists and their families, praising waterboarding “and worse.” But one of the least noticed of these bloodthirsty remarks was his belief that the U.S. should have left Saddam Hussein alone because he knew how to deal with terrorists ruthlessly and he kept Iran in line with chemical weapons. At a speech back in 2011 Trump made this clear:

Iran, which has been fighting with Iraq forever. Years and years and they were about the same. You know, that’s the way it evolved one would push 10 feet this way. Yeah, they throw some gas. They throw a bomb then they go back home.

So, it should come as no surprise that he would take the actions he took this past week in Syria. Giving autocratic Turkish President Reccep Tayip Erdogan the green light to invade northern Syria to drive out (or wipe out) the Kurds who fought ISIS to a standstill is in perfect keeping with Trump’s worldview. If he viewed Iraq and Iran “fighting forever” as some kind of natural phenomenon among primitive people, he clearly believes thatTurks killing Kurds is the same thing. Trump said this to Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro last Friday night:

They have a tremendous unlimited amount of soldiers because, you know, Turkey is right there. It’s their border. And they have been fighting with the Kurds for many years, for centuries, they’ve been fighting with the Kurds. And it’s like some people go to lunch, that’s what they do, they fight with the Kurds.

What can you do with these people? They just fight like they go to lunch. They throw a little gas. They throw a bomb. They ethnically cleanse, they commit genocide, they torture, whatever. It’s just how they are, amirite?

In that weird late-night statement announcing the U.S. pullout, issued by the White House after Trump got off the phone with Erdogan, it was clear enough that Trump was green-lighting Turkey’s invasion of Syria:

Turkey will soon be moving forward with its long-planned operation into Northern Syria. The United States Armed Forces will not support or be involved in the operation, and United States forces, having defeated the ISIS territorial “Caliphate,” will no longer be in the immediate area.

Trump reiterated that declaration on Pirro’s show, saying, “It’s time for us to leave. We’re going to leave.”

He added, sort of as an afterthought, “And you know what, if the Kurds can find somebody else or if the Kurds move around …” before launching into an irrelevant discussion of Iraq and all the money the U.S. has spent in that region. Then Trump said, “But it’s time for us go home. We want to defend our country. We also have to be very strong. We’ll have a good relationship with Russia. We’ll have a good relationship with China.” After that he trailed off into trade talk.

The commander of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, Mazloum Abdi, said in a phone interview last Thursday, “If our allies do not stop this catastrophe to our people, the situation will become worse. I think an alliance with Assad could happen.”

It happened. But an alliance with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, by definition, is also an alliance with Russia. As Reuters reported on Sunday:

The Syrian government and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have been holding negotiations with Russian participation, a Syrian Kurdish politician said on Sunday, expressing hope for a deal that would halt a Turkish attack.

I bring this up because there seems to be some emerging conventional wisdom that Trump was just going off half-cocked when he gave Erdogan the go-ahead. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., even suggested that Trump did it because the Democrats have instigated an impeachment inquiry over his nefarious activity with Ukraine.

NBC’s Richard Engel tweeted about this:

Of course it was predictable. As I pointed out above, Trump almost certainly knew that the Kurds would make a deal with Assad and by extension Russia — and that was part of his reasoning for letting it happen. The question is, why?

Yes, Trump thinks the Turks and the Kurds have some absurd tribal beef that isn’t worth worrying about. But he also knew that Russian involvement was something President Vladimir Putin dearly wanted. His new role as mediator and power broker in the Middle East radically expands his global influence.

On Monday, Trump tweeted this:

Sure that can be interpreted as more of Trump’s cavalier attitude toward “shithole” countries who fight each other as if they were having lunch. Maybe that’s all there is to it. But he certainly seems to have been unusually attentive to Russian interests in Syria. After Assad’s chemical gas attack in 2017, Trump met with Putin at the G20 in Hamburg (where he had the translator tear up the notes), where they announced a temporary ceasefire and held a jolly press conference to announce how beautifully they worked together. At the recent G7 meeting in France he repeatedly hectored the other leaders to allow Putin back into the group, citing Syria as a primary reason for him to be there. And let’s not forget that notorious Helsinki summit:

There was this as well:

The consensus is that Trump “impulsively” told Erdogan to go ahead and invade Syria and said the U.S. would not object. (Since Turkey has 50 American nuclear bomb sites on its territory, Erdogan probably figured Trump wouldn’t say such a thing if he didn’t mean it.) It’s also possible that Trump wanted to keep Turkey happy since he has two Trump Towers in Istanbul and several other active business ventures that require Erdogan’s cooperation. But it’s impossible to ignore the fact that while every single Trump foreign policy bungle can be attributed to his ignorance, narcissism or corruption, for some reason they always seem to accrue to the benefit of Vladimir Putin.

.

Trump’s doctrine: bellicose, economic imperialism

Published by digby on October 15, 2019

Trump’s doctrine: bellicose, economic imperialism

by digby

Trump only cares about his ego and money. Nothing else makes any sense to him. But he does have a “doctrine” of sorts. Trump’s bellicose statement yesterday declaring that he was prepared to “swiftly destroy Turkey’s economy” reminded me of this piece I wrote for Salon a few months back:


According to the New York Times, Donald Trump had never visited the Normandy Beaches before Thursday’s commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings, and he responded with what they characterized as “almost childlike wonder.” The following comment illustrates that fact:


Despite Trump’s claim to have read about “Normandy,” it’s pretty clear that he learned everything he knows about the battle from the speech he had woodenly delivered at the ceremony earlier that morning.

It wasn’t a bad speech and since Trump was able to get through it without ad-libbing something stupid, it came off all right. But for those who actually knew something about D-Day and the alliance that came together at great sacrifice to make it happen, it was a melancholy moment. Trump paid tepid lip service to the Allies but mostly related stories of U.S. soldiers’ bravery and talked about America being great. As the Times put it, “it fell to President Emmanuel Macron of France to defend the postwar international order.” Or as Times writer Nicolas Confessore said on MSNBC, it was “a requiem for the alliances that won WorldWar II.”

Trump’s speechwriters were trying to make his worldview fit the moment. It didn’t work, as none of Trump’s speeches have worked. Because Trump’s worldview is crude and disjointed (and because he is mercurial and frighteningly ignorant) they have never been able to adequately define a “Trump Doctrine,” at least in a way that would be palatable to the public. But he does have one.


Way back in the spring of 2016, Trump gave a wide-ranging interview with the New York Times on foreign policy. I don’t think many people read it or if they did, they didn’t take it seriously. I wrote about it here on Salon because it sent chills down my spine and it was already clear there was a realistic chance this man could become president.

By that time everyone knew about his love of torture and bombing and seizing resources from countries we had “liberated.” Yet, for some reason, perhaps because he was using the old isolationist slogan “America First” (which he thought he’d made up himself) and he lied about having been against the war in Iraq, people thought he was some kind of humble nationalist, looking to withdraw from global obligations and bring all that money home to focus on hard-working Americans for a change.

He did say things like that. But those words never squared with his bullying temperament and otherwise bellicose rhetoric.

When Trump says he wants to make America great again, he is thinking of his childhood in the post-World War II years, when America was the only industrialized nation left standing after the destruction wreaked by the two world wars in the first part of the century. Since he has no sense of history and no knowledge of how that came to pass, he believes that the post-war world order was created by other countries seeking to exploit the United States. He does not understand that having finally learned the terrible lessons from the mess left behind after the uneasy peace at the end of World War I, the U.S. later led the way in creating institutions that would encourage interdependency and trust among its allies and trading partners so that nothing like that could ever happen again.

In his lifetime he’s seen the rest of the world rebuild and prosper and doesn’t understand that was always the plan. And he doesn’t seem to recognize that the U.S. got tremendously richer and more powerful at the same time. He believes the world owes America money for helping it rebuild itself. He has said that in dozens of different ways, from hectoring the allies to complaining that Iraq hasn’t paid us back for invading them and wrecking their country.

Now Trump’s trade war has begun and he’s planning to show the rest of the world who’s boss. Here’s how he put it in that Times interview in 2016 when talking about China building islands in the South China Sea as a military fortress to control valuable shipping lanes.

TRUMP: “We have tremendous economic power over China. We have tremendous power. And that’s the power of trade. Because they use us as their bank, as their piggy bank, they take – but they don’t have to pay us back. It’s better than a bank because they take money out but then they don’t have to pay us back. 

SANGER: So you would cut into trade in return – 

TRUMP: No, I would use trade to negotiate. 

HABERMAN: Oh, O.K. My last question. Sir, my last – 

TRUMP: I would use trade to negotiate. Would I go to war? Look, let me just tell you. There’s a question I wouldn’t want to answer. ..I wouldn’t want them to know what my real thinking is. But I will tell you this. This is the one aspect I can tell you. I would use trade, absolutely, as a bargaining chip.

It’s not just a bargaining chip. It’s a weapon. 

Trump has declared economic war on China. And now he has declared economic war on Mexico with tariffs designed to force that nation to do something that’s impossible. Just in the last week he’s hit India and has even talked seriously about tariffs on Australia. He has made clear to America’s allies from Japan to Europe that he will be economically ruthless with them as well unless they start paying tribute to the United States.

Does any of that sound like isolationism? It is not. It’s crude economic imperialism — with the world’s most powerful armed forces to back it up if necessary. He doesn’t have to make that threat explicit. He just has to mention over and over again that the U.S. is spending vast sums on a military build-up for no obvious reason.

Trump’s talk of nationalism and sovereignty is not what people think it is. It’s nationalism for thee but not for me. It’s American sovereignty but “my way or the highway” for everyone else. Trump wants to see the U.S. dominate the world economically the way it did when he was a little boy. In his mind, it’s “unfair” that other countries have a say. In the zero-sum way he views all “deals,” whether in real estate or politics, it’s not enough for the U.S. to win. Everyone else must also lose.

This is how real wars start. It’s happened before. It was years of such arrogance and demand for dominance that led to the horrors Trump just learned about at the Normandy beaches on Thursday. Only this time, the United States of America is the aggressor.

Staying-home-while-black by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on October 15, 2019

Staying-home-while-black
by Tom Sullivan


Body cam footage shows mentally ill Jason Harrison walking out his door holding a screwdriver moments before being shot and killed by Dallas police, 2014.

“This is a serious question: What can a black person do to keep from getting killed by police in this country?” Eugene Robinson asks this morning in the Washington Post.

It is as if black people are in season and for police that season runs year-round.

Quick backstory from Vox:

At around 2 am local time on October 12, a neighbor of 28-year-old Atatiana Koquice Jefferson called a non-emergency hotline, saying he was concerned about an open door at the woman’s residence and wanted to make sure she was okay. According to a statement released by the Fort Worth Police Department, officers arrived at the home at around 2:25 am to respond to an “open structure call” and, after seeing the open door, walked around the perimeter of the residence.

The department said that while doing so, officers saw a person inside standing near a window. “Perceiving a threat the officer drew his duty weapon and fired one shot striking the person inside the residence,” police said.

Atatiana Jefferson, 28, was in her bedroom playing a video game with her 8-year-old nephew. The officer who shot through her window resigned from the force hours before he was to be fired. Aaron Dean, 34, has been charged with murder. Footage here.


Victim Atatiana Jefferson, 28 (Family photo provided to NBC5)

Jefferson’s sisters and brother tell the Dallas Morning News they see the arrest as progress since police are slow to indict cops.

“That’s a huge step for us,” Jefferson’s brother, Adarius Carr, told reporters. “They are willing to understand this is serious and we mean it. Justice is important to us.”

The shooting comes just two weeks after a jury convicted former Dallas police Officer Amber Guyger for shooting and killing her neighbor Botham Jean. She entered his apartment by mistake, thinking it was her own, and shot him on his couch.

In both cases, the officers were white and the victims black.

Body camera footage shows an officer looking through a window by the light of a flashlight. He shouts, “Put your hands up — show me your hands,” and fires seconds later, never identifying himself as an officer.

A black person might be killed by police in this country for driving-while-black, running-away-while-black, walking-while-black, or even for standing-while-black, Robinson charges, citing the cases of Philando Castile, Walter Scott, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner.

Add staying-at-home-while black to that list. These scenarios are characteristic of racism but have “less to do with the color of the perpetrators than that of the victims,” Robinson writes, “In too many departments, officers still are being enculturated to see persons of color as both threatening and disposable.”

Enculturated is a good word for it. I’ve been writing about that problem in this space for at least four years. Dallas police shot and killed Jason Harrison, a mentally ill black man, after he walked out his door holding a screwdriver in 2014.

Steve Blow of the Dallas Morning News commented at the time about something he’d heard from multiple police officers: “The No. 1 duty of a police officer is to go home to his or her family at the end of the shift,” writing:

If so, then an officer is always right to shoot in any dangerous encounter. Or potentially dangerous. Or conceivably dangerous. Or most any time.

If self-preservation is the first and foremost priority of a police officer, then you get what we have seen in recent months and years — a series of unsettling police shootings.

You get what we saw on that video released last week showing Dallas police shooting a mentally ill man nonchalantly holding a screwdriver in his hands.

You get the questions swirling around the shooting death last month of an unarmed man said to be approaching a Grapevine officer with his hands raised.

It would explain other such shootings in situations that seemed to pose no immediate threat to officers.

Maybe it’s time to quit nodding along and question the maxim that going home at the end of the day trumps all other considerations.

The No. 1 duty of a police officer is to be sure citizens are safe at the beginning and end of their shifts and inside their own homes. But that’s not what warrior cops learn formally and informally. It’s a training issue.

But it’s not only a training issue. Robinson continues:

It will not do to write this off as just a horrible mistake — not when such mistakes fit such a clear pattern. Far too often, officers approach situations involving African Americans with racist assumptions. They see a deadly threat where none exists. They act in ways that escalate the situation rather than calm it down. They are too quick to draw their weapons and too quick to fire. They shoot first and ask questions later.

Racist attitudes lead to tragic outcomes. Until departments banish those attitudes, until officers’ default assumption is that black Americans are not suspects but citizens, more innocents like Atatiana Jefferson will die.

While knocking doors once for a local candidate, the first thing I saw when one door opened was a hand holding a small kitchen knife. I stepped back. The friendly woman holding it had been cutting vegetables in her kitchen. Had she been black and I a white police officer, I might have shot her then and there and walked away uncharged.

QOTD: Chris Wallace

Published by digby on October 15, 2019

QOTD: Chris Wallace

by digby

Trump tweeted this insult over the weekend:

Wallace has this to say aout that:


Crooks and Liars has the exchange that provoked Trump’s snotty little slam.

Oh those uncivil Democrats making offensive jokes

Published by digby on October 14, 2019

Oh those uncivil Democrats making offensive jokes


by digby

This is from an official Trump twitter feed:

Whatever. Let’s get back to excoriating Warren for joking that men who believe that marriage is between one man and one woman should just marry one woman.  That’s is extremely uncivil and will force all the good, decent, God-fearing Americans to vote for the fucking racist pig who puts out tweets like this one. 

.

After he campaigned endorsing torture and mayhem against terrorist suspects, Trump is now just fine with ISIS fighters running free.

Published by digby on October 14, 2019

After he campaigned endorsing torture and mayhem against terrorist suspects, Trump is now just fine with ISIS fighters running free.


by digby
He’s whining like a little baby that it’s all Europe’s fault. I’m sure all those cult-members who loved that violent video of Trump killing his enemies in the media and the Democratic party think his ongoing sniveling and whimpering is yet another sign of his overwhelming macho potency, however.
Anyway:

Kurdish forces long allied with the United States in Syria announced a new deal on Sunday with the government in Damascus, a sworn enemy of Washington that is backed by Russia, as Turkish troops moved deeper into their territory and President Trump ordered the withdrawal of the American military from northern Syria. 

The sudden shift marked a major turning point in Syria’s long war. 

For five years, United States policy relied on collaborating with the Kurdish-led forces both to fight the Islamic State and to limit the influence of Iran and Russia, which support the Syrian government, with a goal of maintaining some leverage over any future settlement of the conflict. 

On Sunday, after Mr. Trump abruptly abandoned that approach, American leverage appeared all but gone. That threatened to give President Bashar al-Assad and his Iranian and Russian backers a free hand. It also jeopardized hard-won gains against the Islamic State — and potentially opened the door for its return. 

The Kurds’ deal with Damascus paved the way for government forces to return to the country’s northeast for the first time in years to try to repel a Turkish invasion launched after the Trump administration pulled American troops out of the way. The pullout has already unleashed chaos and bloodletting. 

The announcement of the deal Sunday evening capped a day of whipsaw developments marked by rapid advances by Turkish-backed forces and the escape of hundreds of women and children linked to the Islamic State from a detention camp. As American troops were redeployed, two American officials said the United States had failed to transfer five dozen “high value” Islamic State detainees out of the country.

Trump has been lying about this of course, saying the US has them all. It’s not true. But whatever. He can say up is down and black is white and it’s perfectly normal.

Turkey’s invasion upended a fragile peace in northeastern Syria and risks enabling a resurgence of the Islamic State, which no longer controls territory in Syria but still has sleeper cells and supporters. 

Since the Turkish incursion began on Wednesday, ISIS has claimed responsibility for at least two attacks in Syria: One car bomb in the northern city of Qamishli and another on an international military base outside Hasaka, a regional capital further to the south. 

Mr. Trump has said repeatedly that the United States has taken the worst ISIS detainees out of Syria to ensure they would not escape. But in fact the American military took custody of only two British detainees, half of a cell dubbed the Beatles that tortured and killed Western hostages, American officials said. 

Here he is today on twitter:

In other words, it’s nothing but a shithole country and I don’t care what happens to any of them unless they put money in my pocket (or have some kompromat. )

It’s overwhelmingly ignorant but I suspect it has some power with his base. They like war but they don’t like peacekeeping. Being a protective force or part of an international coalition to keep the peace or working with allies has never been of interest to them. They like bloody, violent, dominance period.
Trump knows his cult. Indeed, he is one of them through and through. They don’t live in the world. They live in their heads. And it’s not a pleasant place.

Here’s a NYT explainer about the camps in northern Syria.

Update

Trump’s latest flailings. God only knows what is in his head at this point:

.

Timorous GOPers desperate to please Trump are between a rock and a hard place

Published by digby on October 14, 2019

Timorous GOPers desperate to please Trump are between a rock and a hard place


by digby

Axios reports on the state of play — at least as their sources tell it:

The White House is trying to dig itself out of a self-inflicted crisis on Capitol Hill after a hellish week.

Driving the news: President Trump has signaled 3 moves that, while modest in substance, throw scraps of reassurance to anxious Republicans.

A tactical truce with China that pauses the trade war, calms the markets, forestalls planned tariff hikes, and clears the way for Chinese purchases of U.S. agricultural products.

A tweet that he is likely to support sanctions against Turkey for its invasion of northern Syria, which has led to the slaughter of America’s Kurdish allies and the escape of ISIS prisoners. (Trump is trying to clean up after he cleared the way for Turkey’s invasion last Sunday night.) 

A deployment of an additional 1,800 U.S. troops to Saudi Arabia to discourage Iranian aggression.

If that’s “reassurance” these Republicans are even more pathetic than previously thought. The China thing is simple bullshit for Trump to save face from a disastrous decision to ratchet up his trade war. The lies are coming fast and furiously, but the reality is that his “big deal” is nothing.

Tweeting about Turkish sanctions is to soothe Lindsey Graham and others in the Senate who are deathly afraid of having to take even one vote that will anger Trump’s cult.  It is nothing either.

As for the deployment of 1800 more troops to Saudi Arabia, well that appears to be about money in Trump’s mind. They are paying for the mercenary troops so he’s happy.

This situation arose because of Trump’s inexplicable decision to give Turkey a green light without any notice or deliberation. Whether it was impulsive, as everyone seems to think, or whether it was part of a deal he made with some of the players remains to be seen.

Behind the scenes: Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham and senior diplomat Jim Jeffrey have been working behind the scenes with Trump to encourage him to put pressure on Erdogan, per sources with direct knowledge.

And Trump is coming to the view that he probably has no choice but to support Congress’ impending Turkey sanctions, per these sources. An overwhelming majority of Congress — likely enough to override a presidential veto — appears poised to move on these sanctions.

Erdoğan has few friends these days on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers from both parties have been waiting for an opportunity to punish him for his deal with Russia to buy the S-400 missile system. Trump made these sanctions a near certainty from the moment he blindsided allies by announcing the withdrawal of U.S. troops from northern Syria — thus abandoning the Kurds.

The White House guaranteed this turmoil on the Hill by blindsiding crucial partners, including the Israelis, key Republican senators and the Christian right.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pushed hard for the additional troop deployment to Saudi to deter Iran. He did so over the objections of other national security officials, according to a senior administration official.

Pompeo called the attack on Saudi oil fields an “act of war.” I wonder what he thinks of Syria and Iran’s great ally, Russia, flying to Riyadh today.  Kind of a slap in the old face, amirite?

Anyway:

The big picture: Republican senators are increasingly spooked after being blindsided by weighty presidential decisions, a shift in public opinion toward impeachment, the absence of direction from the White House on impeachment, the fear of what other unknown scandals are still out there, and the daily controversies that all seem to involve the president’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

Trump has “had a terrible 30–40 days,” a source close to Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said. The China truce “stabilized the markets and consumer psychology,” the source added. “As far as I’m concerned, this is as serious as a heart attack.”

Between the lines: Five White House officials tell me they were relieved by the stabilizing moves, but several expressed skepticism the trend can hold through the week. “This is the pattern of the past 3 years,” said a senior White House official. “[Trump] pushes things as far as they can go, to breaking point, and then pulls back. It happens again and again.”

Another senior official expressed hope that everyone in the White House wakes up to the dangers Trump faces on Capitol Hill.

This official acknowledged a split in the White House: One group is naively oblivious to a risk that the bottom could fall out of Trump’s support in the Senate. Another group is convinced it can’t take Senate Republican support for granted, even though most senators still fear Trump because the Republican base has totally bonded to him.

They are all cowards. I see little evidence that they will change. 

In the meantime, Trump is following his “instinct” to do whatever an authoritarian tyrant tells him to do. He’s daddy’s boy after all. 

.

The Bill of Indictment is a mile long

Published by digby on October 14, 2019

The Bill of Indictment is a mile long


by digby

Jonathan Chait lays out the massive number of impeachable offenses against Donald Trump we already know of — we learn something new every day.  Lord only knows what else is out there.  As he notes, the reason “high crimes and misdemeanors” are undefined is because presidents have so much power that it would be impossible to officially outlaw every possible abuse of the office. (I doubt anyone ever anticipated that a president would abuse his office quite so comprehensively as Trump in any case.)

He notes that the Democrats want an extremely narrow impeachment inquiry focused only on the one discrete abuse of power of that phone call to the Ukrainian President. (I don’t understand that, but that’s for another post …) He outlines seven broad categories and 82 (82!!!) “authoritarian acts” that must be accounted for one way or another.

I. Abusing Power for Political Gain

Explanation: The single most dangerous threat to any democratic system is that the ruling party will use its governing powers to entrench itself illegitimately.

Evidence: (1) The Ukraine scandal is fundamentally about the president abusing his authority by wielding his power over foreign policy as a cudgel against his domestic opponents. The president is both implicitly and explicitly trading the U.S. government’s favor for investigations intended to create adverse publicity for Americans whom Trump wishes to discredit. (2) During his campaign, he threatened to impose policies harmful to Amazon in retribution for critical coverage in the Washington Post. (“If I become president, oh do they have problems.”) He has since pushed the postmaster general to double rates on Amazon, and the Defense Department held up a $10 billion contract with Amazon, almost certainly at his behest. (3) He has ordered his officials to block the AT&T–Time Warner merger as punishment for CNN’s coverage of him. (4) He encouraged the NFL to blacklist Colin Kaepernick.

II. Mishandling Classified Information

Explanation: As he does with many other laws, the president enjoys broad immunity from regulations on the proper handling of classified information, allowing him to take action that would result in felony convictions for other federal employees. President Trump’s mishandling of classified information is not merely careless but a danger to national security.


He lists the numerous times that we know of that Trump has screwed the pooch with classified information. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to assume we only know the tip of the iceberg. Those phone call readouts probably contain more crimes than just Trump trying to boost his political fortunes by strongarming foreign leaders. We know they’ve hidden calls with China, Russia and Saudi Arabia under questionable circumstances.


III. Undermining Duly Enacted Federal Law 

Explanation: President Trump has abused his authority either by distorting the intent of laws passed by Congress or by flouting them. He has directly ordered subordinates to violate the law and has promised pardons in advance, enabling him and his staff to operate with impunity. In these actions, he has undermined Congress’s constitutional authority to make laws. 

Evidence: (34) Having failed to secure funding authority for a border wall, President Trump unilaterally ordered funds to be moved from other budget accounts. (35) He has undermined regulations on health insurance under the Affordable Care Act preventing insurers from charging higher rates to customers with more expensive risk profiles. (36) He has abused emergency powers to impose tariffs, intended to protect the supply chain in case of war, to seize from Congress its authority to negotiate international trade agreements. (37–38) He has ordered border agents to illegally block asylum seekers from entering the country and has ordered other aides to violate eminent-domain laws and contracting procedures in building the border wall, (39–40) both times promising immunity from lawbreaking through presidential pardons.

That seems like a potent one that should be pursued if only to begin the important process of reining in presidential power which congress has been enabling for decades and Trump’s henchmen saw as an opening to exert authoritarian rule. The checks and balances are unpleasant sometimes but this system doesn’t work right without them.

IV. Obstruction of Congress 

Explanation: The executive branch and Congress are co-equal, each intended to guard against usurpation of authority by the other. Trump has refused to acknowledge any legitimate oversight function of Congress, insisting that because Congress has political motivations, it is disqualified from it. His actions and rationale strike at the Constitution’s design of using the political ambitions of the elected branches to check one another.
Evidence: (41) Trump has refused to abide by a congressional demand to release his tax returns, despite an unambiguous law granting the House this authority. His lawyers have flouted the law on the spurious grounds that subpoenas for his tax returns “were issued to harass President Donald J. Trump, to rummage through every aspect of his personal finances, his businesses and the private information of the president and his family, and to ferret about for any material that might be used to cause him political damage.” Trump’s lawyers have argued that Congress cannot investigate potentially illegal behavior by the president because the authority to do so belongs to prosecutors. In other litigation, those lawyers have argued that prosecutors cannot investigate the president. These contradictory positions support an underlying stance that no authority can investigate his misconduct. (42) He has defended his refusal to accept oversight on the grounds that members of Congress “aren’t, like, impartial people. The Democrats are trying to win 2020.” (43) The president has also declared that impeachment is illegal and should be stopped in the courts (though, unlike with his other obstructive acts, he has not yet taken any legal action toward this end).


V. Obstruction of Justice 

Explanation: By virtue of his control over the federal government’s investigative apparatus, the president (along with the attorney general) is uniquely well positioned to cover up his own misconduct. Impeachment is the sole available remedy for a president who uses his powers of office to hold himself immune from legal accountability. In particular, the pardon power gives the president almost unlimited authority to obstruct investigations by providing him with a means to induce the silence of co-conspirators.

We know about the Mueller charges, which he outlines. But there’s more and they are important:

He has exercised his pardon power for a series of Republican loyalists, sending a message that at least some of his co-conspirators have received. The president’s pardon of conservative pundit Dinesh D’Souza “has to be a signal to Mike Flynn and Paul Manafort and even Robert S. Mueller III: Indict people for crimes that don’t pertain to Russian collusion and this is what could happen,” Roger Stone told the Washington Post. “The special counsel has awesome powers, as you know, but the president has even more awesome powers.”

I don’t know how they can just leave the following alone.

VI. Profiting From Office 

Explanation: Federal employees must follow strict rules to prevent them from being influenced by any financial conflict. Conflict-of-interest rules are less clear for a sitting president because all presidential misconduct will be resolved by either reelection or impeachment. If Trump held any position in the federal government below the presidency, he would have been fired for his obvious conflicts. His violations are so gross and blatant they merit impeachment. 

Evidence: (62) He has maintained a private business while holding office, (63) made decisions that influence that business, (64) and accepted payments from parties both domestic and foreign who have an interest in his policies. (65) He has openly signaled that these parties can gain his favor by doing so. (66) He has refused even to disclose his interests, which would at least make public which parties are paying him.


VII. Fomenting Violence 

Explanation: One of the unspoken roles of the president is to serve as a symbolic head of state. Presidents have very wide latitude for their political rhetoric, but Trump has violated its bounds, exceeding in his viciousness the rhetoric of Andrew Johnson (who was impeached in part for the same offense).

He goes on to lay out Trump’s numerous threats and incitement to violence. It is truly chilling particularly when you think of the terrorist attacks that have echoed his rhetoric over the past couple of years.  If he loses, I suspect we will see more of it. But there’s good reason not to negotiate with terrorists, much less elect them to the most powerful job in the world.  It only encourages them.

There seems to be some idea that the Democrats need to get this impeachment out of the way so they can go back to business and pass an infrastructure bill with Trump. At least that’s what it sounds like they have planned.  I honestly don’t understand that but I’m just a dumb old citizen and they are the experts.

I just hope they know what they’re doing because that bill indictment is devastating and allowing this criminal to somehow cheat his way into another term will be fatal to this democracy.

.

Trump Portrayed as Vengeful Mass Murderer — By His Ardent Supporters by tristero

Published by tristero on October 14, 2019

Trump Portrayed as Vengeful Mass Murderer — By His Ardent Supporters

by tristero

Tom weighed in on this below, and set the ghastly context. But let’s not forget: Trump and his crime family was paid by the group that screened this. They screened it at an extreme right conference held at  Trump’s “Miami resort.”

The video, which includes the logo for Mr. Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign, comprises… 

…a scene inside the “Church of Fake News,” where parishioners rise as Mr. Trump — dressed in a black pinstripe suit and tie — walks down the aisle. Many parishioners’ faces have been replaced with the logos of news media organizations, including PBS, NPR, Politico, The Washington Post and NBC. 

Mr. Trump stops in the middle of the church, pulls a gun out of his suit jacket pocket and begins a graphic rampage. As the parishioners try to flee, the president fires at them. He shoots Black Lives Matter in the head, and also shoots Vice News. 

Some of those in the church try to apprehend Mr. Trump. He fends them off and makes his way toward the altar, knocking over several pews. He wrestles a parishioner with a Vice News logo as a face to the ground and then shoots the person at point blank range. In the background, the former F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, is seen trying to get away. 

From there, Mr. Trump attacks a range of his critics. He strikes the late Arizona senator John McCain in the back of the neck. He hits the television personality Rosie O’Donnell in the face and then stabs her in the head. He strikes Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California. He lights the head of Senator Bernie Sanders, a Democratic presidential rival, on fire. 

He takes Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, hostage before throwing him to the ground. Then he strikes former President Barack Obama in the back and throws him against a wall. 

Others shown in the video include Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC; former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; former President Bill Clinton; the film producer Harvey Weinstein; and Representative Adam B. Schiff, the California Democrat who as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee is overseeing an impeachment inquiry of Mr. Trump. 

The clip ends with Mr. Trump putting a stake into the head of a person with a CNN logo for a face. Mr. Trump then stands on the altar, admiring his rampage, and smiles.
The video is similar in style to one Mr. Trump tweeted in July 2017, in which he is shown at a wrestling match body slamming CNN’s logo and beating it up.