You’ll recall that the DOJ applied for a temporary restraining order to stop John Bolton’s book release (which dozens of newspapers have already read, reviewed and excerpted.) The judge said no:
A federal judge denied on Saturday the Trump administration’s request to block the release of John Bolton’s memoir, noting that the former national security adviser’s book had already been “printed, bound and shipped across the country.”
U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth said the Justice Department’s request to suppress the tell-all book on national security grounds would be impossible to enforce, but criticized Bolton’s decision to move ahead with publication without the explicit go-ahead from the government.
He said that he believed Bolton had endangered national security which means that the DOJ’s move to seize all the profits may have a chance. ( They may also seek to have Bolton put in jail, although I think that’s a long shot.)
Had Bolton been a patriot and testified to all this during the impeachment, I think people would be more sympathetic. At this point, there’s a little bit of poetic justice in this outcome. The book comes out but Bolton may not profit from it. Win-win.
To all the youngsters out there, this is why so many of us older folks hoped and prayed that this time it would be different but feared that nothing was likely to change:
Political leaders in Minnesota promised sweeping reforms after George Floyd’s killing turned their state into a focal point for nationwide fury and grief over police killings and racism.
But those efforts collapsed early on Saturday as leaders in the Minnesota Legislature — the only one in the country where Democrats control one chamber and Republicans the other — failed to compromise on a package of law-enforcement reform measures before a special session ended.
Ultimately, legislators could not reach a deal that reconciled the Democrats’ calls for far-reaching changes to police oversight with Republican leaders who supported a shorter list of “common-sense police reforms” that included banning chokeholds in most situations and requiring officers to stop their colleagues from using unreasonable force.
Democrats said the plan passed by the Republican-led Senate consisted of tepid half-steps that were already in place in most law-enforcement agencies and did not rise to the moment’s calls for dramatic action. Republicans balked at the proposals passed by the Democrat-controlled House to restore voting rights to tens of thousands of felons and put the state’s attorney general, Keith Ellison, a Democrat, in charge of prosecuting police killings.
How many times do we have to watch the tragic farce of government complicity in racism through inaction ? How many deaths will it take ’til we know that too many people have died?
Adding: note the not-so-subtle anti-reform bias and both-siderism of the Times reporting. Note especially the Times’s assumption that it is reasonable for Republicans to call proposals that include chokeholds “common sense.”
The durability of the acting president’s political base comes down to this:
He is who they would be if they were born rich. They are who he would be if he were born poor. To deny him is to deny themselves.
They love him because Donald Trump pisses off the people they hate. He is rude, crude, and socially unacceptable. He relies on his gut, not on book learning. Despised like them by coastal elites, he is the stone the builders rejected. Yet, God has made him the chief cornerstone (Psalm 118:22). They would like to win the lottery. Trump won the birth lottery. Whatever his sins, he is God’s and they are his.
Unless someone discovers a wedge for separating their identity from Trump’s, they are going nowhere.
The draw, Sharlet explains, is to bathe in the great man, in “divinity disguised as earthly provocation.” Trump’s shtick is less refined than Ann Coulter’s. The once-Trumper conservative pundit throws out offensive, red-meat provocation to her audiences too. When there is blowback, she tosses her blonde hair, rolls her eyes, and sighs. It was just a joke. Get over it. Wink-wink.
Which is how racism works at a Trump rally, just like the president’s own trolling—signal, disavowal, repeat; the ugly words followed by the claim that it was just a joke followed by a repetition of the ugly words. Joking! Not joking. Play it again, until the ironic becomes the real.
For Christian right believers, Trump is King David, “a sinner nonetheless anointed.” Or the Queen Esther of their imaginations, and destined to save Israel. “A vessel for God,” according to former congressman Zach Wamp, a member of The Family (from Sharlet’s 2008 book).
It is a movement rife with conspiracy theories. Apocalyptic even. Filling in the syllogistic blanks here, Trump’s followers believe homosexuals are pedophiles. Democrats support the “gay agenda.” Ergo, Democrats are pedophiles. And sex traffickers or worse. (Google Pizzagate, if you’ve forgotten.)
“Perverts and murderers,” a woman in Bossier City tells Sharlet. Another rally attendee tells him many socialists are literal cannibals. The Devil is around every corner. A spiritual battle is silently waged.
They come to access secret knowledge about it dispensed by Trump in code only the enlightened may interpret. The last shall be first. Trumpism is a kind of gnostic heresy for the 21st-century, as Sharlet sees it:
Gnosticism, which dates at least to the second century A.D., is the path Christianity did not take, its texts destroyed as heretical, its ideas mostly forgotten until the 1945 discovery in Egypt of 13 ancient books in a sealed clay jar. Or maybe not so much forgotten as woven over the centuries into countless conspiracy theories, the deep-seated belief that there exist truths they—there is always a they in gnosticism, from the bishops and bureaucrats of the early church, coastal elites of the ancient world, to the modern media peddling fake news—do not want us, the people, to perceive.
Trump also benefits from a different heresy, the Prosperity Gospel or “name it and claim it” Christianity. And from another twisted syllogism: God showers blessings on those who please him — conveniently, on “send your prayers to God and send your money to me” preachers. Trump is gilded success incarnate. Ergo, Trump pleases God.
A woman interviewed on Fox just now waiting outside the BOK Center in Tulsa said tomorrow’s event will be her 36th Trump rally and 19th state — her first in Oklahoma.
Accessing secret knowledge is the appeal of both Trump and the QAnon conspiracy. Every Trump tweet is code — weird capitalization, misspellings, and all. “The truth is right there in what the media think are his mistakes. He doesn’t make mistakes,” explains Pastor Dave who follows Trump from rally to rally like Deadheads did for years. It is all part of Trump’s plan to defeat the Deep State. They. The ancient Enemy.
What for Sharlet cinches the quasi-religious, quasi-mystical character of the Trump cult is Diane G. They met in Sunrise, Florida. A converted Never-Trumper, Diane possesses the zeal of the born again.
“Trump is not my God,” says Diane. “But God put him there.”
Her story is tortuous, involving Haiti and the Clintons. They are but actors in a deeper conspiracy:
She points to the kabbalistic discipline of alphanumeric codes known as gematria, in which numbers and letters are treated as interchangeable. “The numbers tell us certain things,” she says. “And the capital letters”—the tweets, just as Pastor Dave had told me in Louisiana. “Anything capitalized,” Diane says, “we add up as a number.” Such codes are a baseline of conspiracy theories going back centuries. To Diane and other Q believers, this does not disprove the system; it is evidence of how deep runs the struggle. “Two thousand years,” says Diane. Christianity, roughly speaking.
Sharlet wonders if Diane is an outlier. One woman’s delusions, he thinks. “They eat the children,” she told him, shaking with tears in her eyes. But Google her ravings and, “holy shit—Diane is far from alone.”
A QAnon follower explains how she responds when somebody asks her "What is Q?" pic.twitter.com/jDtZpjBRL7
The Trump rallies Sharlet experienced are a more paranoid version of the Whole Life Expos I attended while assembling “Mantra-preneur,” my unpublished, mock-New Age magazine from the mid-1990s. Strike space aliens and angels. Insert They, brown-skinned criminal aliens, and pedophiles. It is the same dysphoria. The same search for secret knowledge from a mystical past. Same dark, centuries-old conspiracies and hopes for miraculous transformation. Plus escape from the American carnage Trump says surrounds them.
I wrote in 1993 about the impulses driving the New Age movement. Seekers felt disconnected from the modern world and had retreated into a mystical, less-threatening past:
People are desperate for something in which they can believe. Communities have disappeared, replaced by subdivisions and condominiums. Terrorism and human rights abuses are more visible than ever. Anything you eat, drink or breathe might produce cancer. Science has reduced life to a cold set of mechanistic principles, demythologizing the world and stripping life of the meaning our myths once conveyed. The world seems to be coming apart and we are powerless to stop it. Nothing feels right anymore.
Is it any wonder people need something, some way to get control in their lives, some way to overcome our sense of powerlessness and paranoia? (Empowerment has become a hot term lately, both in enlightenment and legislative circles.) But in the absence of feeling that we can affect changes in our lives, we find solace in the notion that that power might exist somewhere else. It is as if we awakened to find ourselves locked in the trunk of a car careening down a mountain road. We desperately need to believe someone is behind the wheel. Even a diabolical someone is more comfort than no one at all.
[…]
In New Age thinking, more benign conspirators pull strings behind the scenes. The government may be hopeless and Jesus may have lost credibility, but our alien mentors, spirit guides and secret circles of Wise Guys are directing humanity to a brighter future. A host of channelers, gurus, practitioners and facilitators have selflessly come forward to guide us into their empowering presence. Stripped of our myths by science, people have scrambled frantically to reconstruct the interior landscape from a pastiche of mystical icons – from pyramids to crop circles to UFOs – and a faith in beneficent higher beings that reassures us that someone is in control, even if that someone is not us.
Politics is not a linear spectrum but a circle. Trump and QAnon traffic in some of the same conspiratorial fantasies I found among the New Age faithful decades ago. Trumpers need to believe someone beneficent is secretly steering a world that appears out of control. But the Trump cult treads a darker path driven by its own dysphoria. Trumpers too feel the world they knew coming asunder, their grip on the white, Christian America God intended demographically slipping away. Slipping, along with the ability of people who look and believe as they do to dominate it.
But in Trump there is redemption. Sharlet finds:
Only the truly initiated—Dave, Diane, QAnon—know the name of “The Storm” that’s coming, but nearly all of Trump’s devotees can read the signs, red flares over blue seas: A CNN crew arrested on camera, live, in Minneapolis; in New York, a viral video of a riot cop flashing the O.K. symbol; and in Washington, following a gas processional, the president of the United States marching through the sterile aftermath to hold aloft a Bible, upside down—a sign? A signal?—its red ribbon dangling along his wrist like a snake’s tongue.
Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.
And so the Trump faithful gather again tonight for a Trump rally in Tulsa, Okla. — 19,000 indoors, no masks required, and maybe 100,000 milling about outside — in defiance of “experts” and a pandemic virus that so far has killed 120,000 Americans. Defiant, like the priests and ministers who held services confident their faith would shield them from harm. (I stopped counting dead pastors at 50.) Defiant, like parishioners without masks claiming insurance in “the blood of Jesus.”
The foreshadowing is like Act 1 of a comet-strike movie.
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For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like. Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.
Students for Trump announced this week that President Trump is planning to speak later this month at their convention in Phoenix on June 23, marking his second visit to the state since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.
But that visit comes as COVID-19 cases have climbed in recent days across the battleground state, with local health officials urging residents to avoid the very type of large indoor gatherings the president’s visit will likely involve.
“While any president has a right to visit our great city, it is very worrisome that this president will visit and have a rally as our state is seeing an increase in COVID-19 cases,” Phoenix Councilwoman Debra Stark told CBS News in a statement. Stark, a Democrat, represents the area where the convention will be held.
Students for Trump is a project of the conservative organization Turning Point Action and is not directly affiliated with the president’s campaign. An organizer with the group said thousands were expected to attend the president’s “address to young Americans” from across the country, which will also be streamed to satellite locations. The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
The president’s remarks are slated to take place on the campus of Phoenix mega-church Dream City Church, which touts a “6,500-seat auditorium, one of the largest sanctuaries in America” in a biography of its senior pastor.
Dream City Church, which reopened for in-person services at the end of May, declined a request for an interview. A video posted by the church urges worshippers to socially distance as they return to the campus, though it says masks are optional.
I think this one may be a bigger super-spreader event than Tulsa.
Antifa is anti-fascist. It’s right there in the name. Boogaloo is fascist. Members of only one of these groups are killing cops. It isn’t Antifa:
The Trump administration is warning law enforcement and public safety officials that a far-right extremist movement known as “boogaloo” may be setting its sights on the nation’s capital.
On Monday, the National Capital Region Threat Intelligence Consortium (NTIC), a fusion center for Washington, D.C. that provides support to federal national security and law enforcement agencies, warned in an intelligence assessment that “the District is likely an attractive target for violent adherents of the boogaloo ideology due to the significant presence of US law enforcement entities, and the wide range of First Amendment-Protected events hosted here.”
The assessment, dated June 15 and obtained by Politico, reported that “recent events indicate violent adherents of the boogaloo ideology likely reside in the National Capital Region, and others may be willing to travel far distances to incite civil unrest or conduct violence encouraged in online forums associated with the movement.”
A senior DHS official forwarded the assessment to security stakeholders on Friday, noting that “while it identifies Washington D.C. as an attractive target, the boogaloo ideology is not restricted to a specific region and those who wish to cause division are routinely using peaceful protests as means of cover. Heading into a weekend of more planned protests, we believe this information to be useful to all of our membership.”
Separately on Friday, DHS published its own intelligence note assessing that “domestic terrorists advocating for the boogaloo very likely will take advantage of any regional or national situation involving heightened fear and tensions to promote their violent extremist ideology and call supporters to action.”
The note, dated June 19 and obtained by Politico, aims to “provides information regarding some domestic terrorists’ exploitation of heightened tensions during recent First Amendment-protected activities in order to threaten or incite violence to start the ‘boogaloo’—a colloquial term referring to a coming civil war or the fall of civilization.”
Participants in the boogaloo movement generally identify as anarchist, pro-Second Amendment members of citizen-militias who are preparing for a second Civil War or American revolution, extremism experts say. Several boogaloo adherents have been charged in recent weeks for acts ranging from felony murder to terrorism, and police last month seized military-style assault rifles from so-called “boogaloo bois” in Denver.
The DHS note says boogaloo tactics “likely will be repeated in future similar incidents wherein domestic terrorists attempt to shut down or endanger government operations, judging from domestic terrorists’ continued calls for attacks.”
And the NTIC assessment is the first known government confirmation that suspected “violent adherents of the boogaloo ideology” may reside in D.C. and have an abundance of potential targets.
“These individuals may target law enforcement as violent adherents have in other parts of the country, and motivated adherents have an increased number of targets given the concentration of law enforcement agencies in the region,” the memo reads.
It cites planning documents shared by boogaloo adherents online, including military manuals, CIA handbooks, “and revolutionary literature which provides instructions on bomb-making.” And it says that other documents shared by the boogaloos refer to national guard depots, police stations and factories that produce munitions as “very solid targets.”
The assessment is striking given the public emphasis President Donald Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr have placed on alleged violence carried out by adherents of the left-wing ideology antifa, while refusing to specifically identify and denounce the far-right groups like boogaloo that have been have been charged in recent weeks for acts ranging from felony murder to terrorism.
“It’s ANTIFA and the Radical Left,” Trump tweeted on May 30. “Don’t lay the blame on others!” Barr similarly homed in on the anti-fascist protest movement the following day, in a statement presented from the Department of Justice in D.C.: “The violence instigated and carried out by Antifa and other similar groups in connection with the rioting is domestic terrorism and will be treated accordingly.”
To date, no federal charges have been filed against individuals linked to antifa—violent acts at Black Lives Matter protests, including setting police cars on fire, have been attributed to individuals with no clear political or ideological affiliation, according to charging documents.
But right-wing extremists, militia groups and vigilantes have become more activated, with more than half a dozen separate violent incidents across the country in the last month alone—most within the last week.
Law enforcement and government officials, moreover, are increasingly in the crosshairs. A Santa Cruz county police officer and a federal officer in Oakland were murdered, allegedly by a boogaloo adherent, earlier this month, and boogaloo members in California’s Bay Area have reportedly been plotting to kidnap elected leaders’ children.
Experts on far-right violence and extremism say the president and attorney general’s rhetoric is political, and that the real threat has been laid out in the federal charges filed in the last month and the federal alerts, such as from NTIC and DHS, being sent to law enforcement warning of far-right violence.
But some argue that the unwillingness to name and shame these far-right groups publicly and from the top is not harmless, either.
“It puts a target on the backs of law-enforcement — whether federal, state or local — because these individuals, with the power they have at the podium, are not speaking out about who is really carrying out these abhorrent acts of violence,” said Jason Blazakis, a senior research fellow at The Soufan Center, a nonprofit that studies emerging threats.
A DOJ spokesperson pointed to Barr’s comments about the extremists being a “witches brew” of violent actors and groups.
But singling out antifa is similarly “dangerous and foolish,” said J.J. McNab, an expert on violent political extremism and a research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. “There is nothing to back it up. I don’t think that if they called out these right-wing groups it’d make much of a difference, but now anyone who wears black [at these protests] has a target on their back,” McNab said, referring to antifa sympathizers’ tendency to wear all black. “It’s irresponsible and frustrating.”
Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Texas have experienced incidents in the last week involving armed, right-wing vigilante individuals and militias seeking either to protect Confederate statues or attack Black Lives Matter protesters.
On Sunday, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner warned vigilante groups who claimed to be “protecting” a Christopher Columbus statue in South Philadelphia that using bats or hatchets “or anything else for an illegal purpose is a criminal act.” The FBI arrested an El Paso man on Wednesday who, armed with an AR-15 style rifle, allegedly threatened to “take out at least 200 [N******].”
A man was shot in Albuquerque on Tuesday as tensions rose between protesters there and the New Mexico Civil Guard, a self-described civilian militia, though the Guard has claimed the shooter was not one of their own. And a group of about 80 Black Lives Matter protesters in Bethel, Ohio—organized by resident Alicia Gee, who called on people to join her to tell “whoever will listen that no matter the color of your skin you are loved, you deserve everything you can possible dream of, and you matter”—were overwhelmed this week by 700 armed counter protesters, including motorcycle gangs and Second Amendment proponents.
“There is a clear link between far-right groups and gun culture that doesn’t really exist in the culture of individuals who identify with the antifa movement,” Blazakis noted. “That’s a key distinguishing feature. There is a potential shared narrative between boogaloo and antifa, given the anti-government bent. But the way they project the threat is different.”
Antifa is in reaction to the far-right gun nut extremists, aka fascists. I’m not an adherent, by any means — I’m a non-violence extremist myself — but it’s ridiculous to say they are the same thing. Sure, the boogaloo bois are a little bit unusual in that they are killing cops but it just goes to show that they’re more like Mussolini’s blackshirts than Antifa.
Bill Barr and Trump have tried to raise the spectre of Antifa rioting in the streets but they haven’t said a word about Boogaloo. And there’s a good reason for that. They’re part of his base.
If you’re looking for a good Boogaloo explainer, I recommend this one. They’re more complicated than just straight up neo-Nazism. But however you want to define them, they’re armed to the teeth and they’re batshit crazy.
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) June 19, 2020
The rumor is that Trump’s father was arrested at a KKK parade in New York in 1927. (The heyday of the Klan in the 20th century.) This fact check says it’s impossible to prove that Trump was a member and he might have been an innocent bystander, but this certainly makes you wonder:
“A contemporaneous article from the Daily Star notes that Trump was detained ‘on a charge of refusing to disperse from a parade when ordered to do so.'”
I suspect the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Trump on the 75-year-old peaceful protester the cops shoved to the ground and left lying there with blood coming out of his ear. That protester, Martin Gugino, has a fractured skull and is still unable to walk:
Interesting that he calls the police soldiers…
Trump is basically saying, “he’s no angel, he deserved what he got .” It’s obvious he thinks Gugino is a some kind of subversive who has been provoking police. In fact, you’ll recall that he tweeted the altercation was staged.
Facebook posts have cast doubt on the altercation. One shows an image of the man, 75-year-old Martin Gugino, with his head on the ground. An arrow pointing to his ear says, “‘Blood’ coming from the front of ear.” An arrow pointing to his mask says, “Tube running from under mask.” An arrow pointing to the back of his head says, “No blood on sidewalk or back of head.”
Another Facebook post shows four stills from the video, the same image featured in the other Facebook post, and a photo with tubing, batteries and a fluids bag.
“The incident in Buffalo is fake!!!” this post says. “This guy has been arrested many times before. He was antagonizing the cops. The cop pushed him away from him and the guy purposely fell! Look at this fake blood he hooked himself up with!! My friend in Buffalo said the hotels in Buffalo are filled with Antifa and they plan a big attack in Buffalo and Cheektowaga. ! Pray!”
They’re also baseless. We found no indication this incident is “fake.”
In a statement published by Reuters, Erie County District Attorney John Flynn said that the officers “pushed” Gugino outside of City Hall, “causing him to fall and hit his head on the sidewalk.” Flynn also said that Gugino was in critical condition at the Erie County Medical Center, where he was treated for a head injury, loss of consciousness and bleeding from the right ear.
You can watch the video of the incident here. It was taken by a reporter for WBFO, a local radio station. In the footage, Gugino is seen approaching a line of officers with a phone in his right hand and a helmet in his left. As he stands face-to-face with two officers, he looks like he’s talking to them for a few seconds as a third officer tells him to move. One of the officers then shoves Gugino with a baton and the other pushes him with his hand. Gugino stumbles backward and falls on his back. Blood starts seeping out of his ear and the phone falls from his hand as he lies motionless on the ground.
“He’s bleeding out of his ear,” someone says repeatedly. Though the image in the Facebook posts claims no blood spreads to the sidewalk or the back of his head, around the 14-second mark it’s visibly pooling there. This Reuters photo shows a different angle of the blood pooling at his head. While the video rolls, we see officers walking past Gugino as he lies on the pavement.
[…]
Police initially said that Gugino tripped and fell. John Evans, president of the Buffalo police union, told the Buffalo News that the officers were following orders to clear Niagara Square of people protesting the May death of George Floyd, who died in police custody in Minneapolis after an officer pressed his knee to Floyd’s neck.
“It doesn’t specify clear the square of men, 50 and under or 15 to 40,” Evans said. “They were simply doing their job. I don’t know how much contact was made. He did slip, in my estimation. He fell backwards.”
Prosecutors disagree. The district attorney has stated clearly that his office believes officers pushed Gugino and caused him to fall and hit his head.
On June 9, President Donald Trump amplified the conspiracy theory about Gugino when he tweeted: “
Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an ANTIFA provocateur. 75 year old Martin Gugino was pushed away after appearing to scan police communications in order to black out the equipment. @OANN I watched, he fell harder than was pushed. Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up?
On Friday afternoon, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth will hold a hearing to decide whether to grant the Department of Justice’s request for a temporary restraining order against former national security adviser John Bolton to prevent the publication of his book, “The Room Where It Happened,” next Tuesday. Considering the fact that the book has already been read by journalists and excerpted in major newspapers, this would seem to be a classic case of shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted. Needless to say, this is just another move by Trump’s DOJ — and specifically Attorney General Bill Barr — to appease him. The judge cannot order the public to un-see what they have seen, classified or not.
Lawfare offers a full rundown of the legal issues in the case, but in a nutshell, what seems to have happened is that Bolton submitted his book for the normal government review and, after a few months of back-and-forth revisions, it was cleared for publication. At that point, Trump’s favorite new henchman (and Bolton’s successor), national security adviser Robert O’Brien, stepped in and gave the book to a political appointee who claimed it still contained classified information and refused to clear it. Bolton and his publisher decided to go ahead anyway and here we are.
The DOJ has asked for this temporary restraining order and is also seeking to seize any earnings from the book which, I suspect, is the real point. Trump wants to punish Bolton and judging from the excerpts we’ve seen so far, you can understand why.
He is not happy:
Bolton’s book, which is getting terrible reviews, is a compilation of lies and made up stories, all intended to make me look bad. Many of the ridiculous statements he attributes to me were never made, pure fiction. Just trying to get even for firing him like the sick puppy he is!
One assumes Judge Lamberth will ask the government how it can claim that information is simultaneously top secret and also a bunch of lies. Let’s just say that from what we’ve seen of Bolton’s observations about Trump, they’re entirely in keeping with everything we already knew about him.
Before getting into any of the juicy details, let me just stipulate that John Bolton is one of the most odious men in American politics and has been for decades. I’ve written a boatload about him over the years. His self-serving behavior during the impeachment hearings and Senate trial will stand as a historic example of selfishness, cowardice and greed. Everything he put in this book he could have come forward and told any Washington journalist, but he chose to save it for the time when he could rake in millions.
Not that I think it would have made any difference in the outcome of the impeachment. The Republicans in the Senate are even more cowardly than Bolton. But it would have been the patriotic thing to do. In fact, all these former insiders, from former Defense Secretary James Mattis to former White House chief of staff John Kelly to any number of others who have emerged in recent days, should have stepped up long ago.
Perhaps most reprehensible of all, Bolton blames the Democrats for failing to impeach Trump on a wider array of charges, as if his own failure to come forward with what he knew weren’t a key reason why that happened the way it did. He cannot shine the shoes of his former aide Fiona Hill and all the others who put their careers and reputations on the line to testify.
I will not buy Bolton’s book and I won’t even cry if the DOJ succeeds in seizing the profits. It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. But as loathsome as he is, Bolton has written a book that must be reckoned with. It’s one of the few insider accounts of what Trump has done to foreign policy, and it’s important that we keep in mind that Bolton’s worldview could color how an incoming Democratic administration responds to that — and not in a good way.
Bolton claims that Trump’s singular concern is getting re-elected, and I think we knew that. We don’t know what deals he may have made with Russian President Vladimir Putin in those private meetings but Bolton reports that Trump outright asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to help him do it. Bolton says he was not allowed by the White House to use Trump’s actual words but Gabriel Sherman at Vanity Fair reports that he has seen an unredacted copy of the exchange and that Trump allegedly said, “Make sure I win.”
No doubt Xi would be happy to do that. For all Trump’s bluster about China, Trump’s erratic behavior, from nodding in approval at China’s concentration camps for the Uighur people to the lopsided and superficial trade deals, has left the U.S. operating without a coherent policy at all. Should Joe Biden take over next January, his administration will not be dealing with the same dynamic they left four years ago.
We must hope that Team Biden doesn’t see this as necessitating some kind of “get tough” policy simply to prove that they aren’t going to be rolled as Trump was. Bolton’s account of Trump’s behavior rings true, but his analysis of the Chinese government is inherently suspect. With the degradation of the State Department and the intelligence community over the past three and a half years, an incoming Biden administration will pretty much have to start from scratch to assess the full reality of the situation.
I think we all know how Trump has behaved with European allies. According to Bolton, the president actually believes his nonsensical insistence that those nations haven’t “paid their dues” to NATO, and came much closer to pulling the U.S. out than we knew. I’m sure that’s true. Trump’s petulant decision to pull U.S. troops from Germany after Chancellor Angela Merkel told him that she wouldn’t attend his G7 party, due to the pandemic, shows how little he values the alliance. Again, one only hopes that the next administration doesn’t decide to blindly pump up unnecessary military spending only to prove that they are not Trump. His decisions are made capriciously and without due diligence, but that doesn’t mean that the U.S. should automatically do the opposite. After all, that’s his pattern.
Trump’s “love affair” with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un was a joke from the beginning. Trump apparently said he considered Venezuela to be part of the United States and thought “it would be cool” to invade that nation. And you may recall this incident from 2018:
I have asked Secretary of State @SecPompeo to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers. “South African Government is now seizing land from white farmers.” @TuckerCarlson@FoxNews
Bolton says Trump wanted to grant white South Africans both “asylum and citizenship.” You really can’t make this stuff up.
The good news here, if you want to call it that, is that the rest of the world sees Trump for the buffoon he is and is unlikely to perceive much of what he’s done as a genuine reflection of U.S. policy. But we can’t expect any of them to pretend this never happened. It’s clear that the entire Republican Party, including Bolton and all the others who only belatedly stood up — or haven’t done so at all — are as culpable as Donald Trump.
Frankly, any country that would elect a man like him cannot be trusted as a reliable partner in global affairs. It’s going to take a lot more than simply reversing Trump’s orders to change that.
Sony’s RCA Records, RCA Inspiration and Legacy Recordings released the song Friday, aligning with the holiday .
Never Gonna Break My Faith” won best gospel performance at the 50th Grammy Awards in 2008, marking Franklin’s 18th and final Grammy win. She died in 2018 at age 76.
The song was originally featured in the film “Bobby,” about U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 assassination, and features background vocals from The Boys Choir of Harlem.
“This solo version has been sitting on my computer for years, and when I heard Clive was making a film on Aretha’s life, I sent this version to him. The world hasn’t heard her full performance and it really needed to be heard,” Grammy-winning singer Bryan Adams, who co-wrote the song, said in a statement. “I’m so glad it’s being released, the world needs this right now.”
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