Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Has anything in the world ever been more predictable than this?

Former Attorney General Bill Barr is coming to the defense of No Labels and their longshot third party effort.

In a Wednesday op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Barr accused Democrat operatives of potentially breaking the law in response to a complaint filed by No Labels with the Department of Justice describing retaliatory tactics against members and efforts to keep them from making state ballots, an already complicated and costly effort for third parties.

The No Labels complaint describes an alleged “conspiracy to use retaliation, fear, intimidation, and even threats of violence” to keep the group off of ballots.

No Labels provided accounts of threats and phone calls from Democrat operatives as evidence of their claims.

“Although I am a committed Republican and not part of No Labels’ effort, I believe the campaign to disenfranchise the group is profoundly wrong. Poll after poll shows American voters want a choice beyond Joe Biden and Donald Trump,” Barr wrote about the situation.

If the accusations are true, he argued, then they amount to an attack on voter rights, an issue many Democrats have made central to their platforms amidst Trump’s constant talk of supposed voter fraud.

“Imagine what the progressive left would say if there were a campaign under way, with at least tacit support from the White House, to prevent Americans from registering to vote,” he wrote. “The current effort to block No Labels’ ballot access is as outrageous as taking away someone’s right to vote.”

No Labels is a Republican stalking horse effort so of course Barr would be supportive. He hates Democrats way more than he hates Trump and the Republicans, even now.

Here’s what the lawsuit is actually about:

For months, the centrist group No Labels has stockpiled cash and diligently worked to secure ballot access for a potential third-party presidential bid, striking fear among allies of President Joe Biden that the effort could siphon away votes and hand the White House to Donald Trump.

Now, with a rematch between Biden and Trump looking likely, two Democratic-aligned groups this week filed campaign finance complaints, hoping to crimp No Labels’ pipeline of campaign cash and force the group to follow the same rules as formal political parties.

The complaints, filed by the groups End Citizens United and Accountable.US, are part of a broader Democratic effort to ramp up legal scrutiny and elicit public scorn for No Labels as it teases a possible White House run by an as-of-yet unannounced ticket that many Democrats worry will play electoral spoiler.

“We are continuing to work every single avenue with our partners to hold (No Labels) accountable legally, to expose them publicly and to make sure they are playing by the same rules as everyone else,” said Tiffany Muller, the president of End Citizens United. “I don’t think it’s any secret that No Labels is a threat to our democracy if they run a third-party (candidate). That’s going to siphon off votes from President Biden and reelect Donald Trump.”

In a statement, No Labels on Wednesday disputed any suggestion that the group had done anything improper and dismissed the complaints as part of a “coordinated conspiracy to subvert No Labels’ ballot access and limit Americans’ choices.”

No Labels regularly promotes itself as a “common sense” centrist organization. But while the group has established No Labels political parties in numerous states, at the national level it is actually registered as a nonprofit with the IRS. That has enabled No Labels to operate with limited transparency while accepting unlimited sums from an anonymous set of donors — a source of financing often referred to pejoratively as “dark money.”

If the Democrat-aligned groups are successful, No Labels would not only be compelled to register as a formal political party with the Federal Election Commission, but it would also have its tax-exempt status revoked, be forced to abide by the same donation amount limits as other political parties and be required to reveal its big-money donors.

I don’t know about this cause of action. Maybe No Labels has a point on the legal technicalities. But they are anti-democracy saboteurs who’ve decided to do what they are doing at the worst possible time in order to break the Democrats and they don’t care how they do it. They know that Trump will benefit and that he will destroy democracy as we know it. Defending itself on the basis of “democracy” is a terrible joke.

He’s openly threatening anyone who supports Haley — and no doubt any of his other enemies. Come crawling now or never crawl to me again. I doubt he rally means it. He won’t turn away money. But he does want to see who comes running.

Why is he so desperate and angry at Haley? He’s ahead in all the polls, he won the first two contests, he’s certain to be the nominee. Could it possibly be that he just can’t stand a woman who refuses to succumb to his orders?

In any case, this was the response:

Well in that case…donate here. Let’s Go!❤️🇺🇸 https://t.co/T29l0DdrKv https://t.co/RvbLoL8oOd

— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) January 25, 2024

She said she’s raised a million dollars since her New Hampshire speech, mostly from small donors. She probably raised even more since Trump’s fatwa against her donors.

Have you seen this roadmap for Trump's dictatorship. He lays it out point-by-point, 1 through 10. It's Nixon paranoia meets Bush 1 covert ops. Absolutely chilling. Abolish warrants, arrest journalists, issue executive orders, establish fascism. pic.twitter.com/5BzSCGWXph

— Victoria Brownworth (@VABVOX) January 25, 2024

He put that out last night.

David Leonhardt wonders if we should really worry our pretty little heads about all this:

My colleagues Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman and Charlie Savage are writing a continuing series on what Donald Trump plans to do during a second term as president. With Trump on his way to winning the Republican nomination, I want to devote today’s newsletter to a conversation with the three of them.

David: One question that some people have is whether Trump would govern as radically in a second term as his rhetoric suggests. After all, he also made sweeping promises when running in 2016, but he often failed to follow through.

There is no border wall. He didn’t withdraw from Afghanistan. He didn’t “lock up” Hillary Clinton. The courts rejected his initial Muslim ban and his changes to the census. What’s your view about whether to assume he will really do what he says in a second term?

Jonathan: I would challenge the statement that Trump didn’t do a lot of what he promised in his first term. Yes, there were some things he didn’t accomplish, and, yes, he initially appointed people who resisted his requests.

But by the end of his first term, Trump had put the U.S. on a course to withdraw from Afghanistan. On immigration, he had all but destroyed the asylum system. On trade, he had implemented tariffs against China and even European allies, and he had withdrawn from the Trans-Pacific Partnership — President Obama’s signature trade deal. He’d pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate accords. I could go on, but you get the point.

Maggie: One way to look at this is that Trump would be picking up where he left off when the pandemic changed everything. At the beginning of 2020, Trump had installed a loyalist at the office of presidential personnel, John McEntee, to purge the government of anti-Trump officials and had plans to make it easier to fire civil servants. That was all put on pause, and would resume accordingly.

Charlie: Those who stuck with Trump learned a lot about how to work the levers of government over four years and are likely to be more competent than they were at first. For example, you mention that the courts blocked his ban on travel to the U.S. by people from several Muslim countries, but that is only true of the first stabs at it. Eventually, his administration figured out how to rewrite it in a way that the Supreme Court let take effect. His aides would be starting from that level of sophistication in a second term.

David: If he is president again, which policy areas do you think will be his biggest initial priorities?

Maggie: Immigration is an area where he tried to do a number of things last time, some of which his appointees blocked. One example was releasing undocumented immigrants into sanctuary cities — similar to what Republican governors have done with sending undocumented immigrants to blue states. But lawyers at Trump’s Department of Homeland Security said it couldn’t work.

If a second Trump term happens, I think you will see him move quickly on immigration. He has promised crackdowns at the border through use of the Insurrection Act, as well as mass roundups and deportations of undocumented immigrants.

He and his allies have also been clear that a big agenda item is eroding the Justice Department’s independence.

Charlie: Yes, Trump has vowed to use his power over the Justice Department to turn it into an instrument of vengeance against his political adversaries. This would end the post-Watergate norm that the department carries out criminal investigations independently of White House political control, and it would be a big deal for American-style democracy.

Jonathan: The reality is that Trump has spent almost no time thinking about what governing would look like in a second term. To the extent he has thought about it, his mind mostly turns to the Department of Justice and the “deep state” — which he understands as the intelligence community. People close to Trump are already drawing up lists of “disloyal” officials in the national security apparatus who will be targeted for retribution.

David: So far, we’ve been talking about the executive branch, but the Constitution includes checks on a president’s power — namely, Congress and the courts. How might they respond?

Charlie: The ability of other branches to serve as a check will be diminished. Most of the Republicans in Congress who occasionally stood up to Trump have left government or, by 2025, will have. Think of John McCain, Jeff Flake, Adam Kinzinger, Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney.

The Supreme Court will be more tilted in Trump’s favor in any second term, thanks to his own appointments in his first four years. As a result, some disputes that he lost last time — such as the immigration case involving so-called Dreamers — would probably come out the other way.

Jonathan: I would add that the Senate has been the institution most resistant to Trump, but that, too, is changing. Mitch McConnell is near the end of his career. And the newer Republican senators, like J.D. Vance of Ohio and Ted Budd of North Carolina, are Trump loyalists who replaced Trump skeptics.

David: Good point. The main conclusion I take from your reporting is that when Trump tells voters what he plans to do in a second term, we should default to believing him.

Ya think? He lies about everything except one thing: his thirst for revenge. This is vengeance.

Whatever happened to those pink pussyhats?

Over at Anand Giridharadas’ The Ink this morning, Anat Shenker-Osorio emphasizes the need for the left to adopt and use symbols the way MAGA uses hats. Or rather, the way abortion rights activists in Argentina use green bandanas not only to signify their movement’s cause, but to provide people not in the movement with social proof. “It’s one of the most persuasive tools in our arsenal,” Giridharadas writes. Shenker-Osorio explains (subscription req’d):

The thing is, people need to see, “Oh, that’s what my kind of a person thinks.” Humans are social creatures. We’re tribal. We want to find cues in our environment that tell us what our category subscribes to.

That is, what do people like me think? Or as Girdharadas explains below, what do people like me wear?

Shenker-Osorio continues:

So while I think there is some symbology on the movement side of the left, there isn’t enough. On the Democratic side, I think it’s very hard to maintain. You just can’t maintain symbology when the movement won’t carry it — like they literally will not wear a Democratic Party hat, won’t do it. 

But if you go to labor actions — I mean, look at the resurgence of labor, right? We ended 2023 with something like 400 separate labor actions in one year alone. We haven’t seen this in 40 years. Bread and roses.

Like, the labor movement sings. The labor movement has songs, the labor movement has T-shirts, the labor movement has signs. It even has iconic silly things, like that goofy rat that you see at picket lines.

It’s part of an identity, not a personal one, but with a larger movement.

We lefties are often not “joiners.” Radical individualism on the left and a drive for inclusion lead to political self-marginalization. Identity politics gets in the way of solidarity politics:

On the left we have to try to convince people who are fundamentally, psychologically left-wing in their makeup, in order to get them to repeat things to convert the conflicted. And that’s very different.

So, getting back to those green bandanas. After Dobbs came down, leaders of the abortion fight in Argentina mentioned to me that they had offered a few U.S.-based reproductive rights groups green bandanas without success. Why? My guess is that they saw this as something specific to Argentina and feared wearing the bandanas would amount to cultural appropriation. Of course it’s a political symbol, not a cultural symbol.

So you saw only a few green bandanas at the protests following Dobbs, and though since 2023 more folks have adopted it, we haven’t made it the thing. It’s used by some smaller groups, and individuals who’ve traveled to Latin America and brought it back (I wore mine when I managed to get great seats for a Warriors game).

It’s not enough signal to break through the noise. Only repetition does that, verbally and visually And mass adoption also would have extended visible solidarity with campaigners for this same cause not just in Argentina, but in Colombia, Mexico, and parts of Central America. It’s a missed opportunity.

Repetition is really important
And so is repetition

— Anat Shenker-Osorio 🟧 (@anatosaurus) May 25, 2021

So, what happened to those pink pussyhats that were everywhere during the 2017 Women’s March? By 2018, they’d begun to disappear, explained The Detroit Free Press:

The reason: The sentiment that the pink pussyhat excludes and is offensive to transgender women and gender nonbinary people who don’t have typical female genitalia and to women of color because their genitals are more likely to be brown than pink.

“I personally won’t wear one because if it hurts even a few people’s feelings, then I don’t feel like it’s unifying,” said Phoebe Hopps, founder and president of Women’s March Michigan and organizer of anniversary marches Jan. 21 in Lansing and Marquette.

Sometimes we can’t get out of our own way.

Some illiteration about the mad king

U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan adjourned E. Jean Carroll’s defamation trial against Donald “91 Counts” Trump in New York City on Monday after one of the jurors became sick. Trump himself is expected to take the stand this afternoon.

The mad king was using his thumbs about it again last night. If Trump’s Truth Social account is any indication of his state of mind, hoo-boy (The New Republic):

Trump made 42 posts about Carroll (and one pushing falsehoods about the House January 6 investigative committee) on Truth Social in the span of 13 minutes. Many of his posts included photos or clips of interviews that he has previously shared about Carroll. Trump’s posting rate is so fast that the former president must have some prescheduled, some drafts saved for constant reuse, someone else posting for him, or some combination of all three.

His Truth Social account shared media interview clips and social media posts that appear to come from Carroll, all stripped of context so as to paint her as some sort of sexual deviant. He also falsely claimed that the co-founder of LinkedIn is paying Carroll’s legal fees and that presiding Judge Kaplan and Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan (no relation) are Democratic operatives.

Trump has made these claims about Carroll multiple times before. This is the third time during this trial that he has gone on such a posting spree. The first time was just before the trial began, and the second was—inexplicably—as he sat in the courtroom for the first day of the trial.

Trump must keep the undead corpse of Roy Cohn nearby and whispering bitter nothings in his ear. Perhaps it is Trump’s late mentor helping him tap out rapid-fire smears whenever Donald is feeling insecure, which is always.

From Where’s My Roy Cohn? (2019):

Cohn formulated his playbook in the 50s, but it is all too familiar today: always attack; never admit blame or apologize; use favors and fear to ensure support for your objectives; expertly manipulate the media to gain advantage and destroy your opponents; lie shamelessly, invalidating the idea of truth; weaponize lawsuits; evade taxes and bills; and, most importantly, inflame the prejudices of the crowd by scapegoating defenseless people.

Trump may be permanently aggrieved, semi-literate and under-educated (and mad, corrupt, etc.), but he learned all that from Cohn and learned it well.

Should Trump actually take the witness stand this afternoon, there’s not enough Maalox in Manhattan for Trump’s team of lawyers (NBC News):

Carroll is seeking at least $10 million in compensatory damages for “injury to her reputation, humiliation and mental anguish in her public and private life,” in addition to an unspecified amount in punitive damages to “punish Trump for acting maliciously and to deter Trump and others” from continuing to defame her. An expert who testified on Carroll’s behalf put the cost of repairing her reputation alone at $7 million to $12 million.

Carroll is expected to wrap up her case early in the day, paving the way for Trump’s defense to begin. He’s listed as one of two possible defense witnesses in the case, in which jurors will be deciding how much he should pay Carroll in damages for defaming her while he was in the White House in 2019, when he accused her of making up a sexual abuse claim against him for financial and political reasons.

Between E. Jean Carroll threatening to take him for tens of millions and Nikiki Haley, another woman (and she’s brown!) daring to taunt him on the campaign trail, Trump must be wound up tighter than usual. He’s threatening Haley’s donors now (The Hill):

“When I ran for Office and won, I noticed that the losing Candidate’s ‘Donors’ would immediately come to me, and want to ‘help out.’ This is standard in Politics, but no longer with me,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform.

“Anybody that makes a ‘Contribution’ to Birdbrain, from this moment forth, will be permanently barred from the MAGA camp. We don’t want them, and will not accept them, because we Put America First, and ALWAYS WILL!” Trump continued, using the nickname “Birdbrain,” to refer to Haley.

Trump’s direct threat against Haley’s supporters signals a sharpening in his rhetoric, as the former president seeks to compel support from all corners of the GOP.

Donald Trump turn down money? That’ll be the day.

If Trump takes the stand today, his attorneys will wish they never got out of bed.

Mitch McConnell believes in nothing. Not one thing.

A quandary? Trump is going to push his party, his country and the world over the abyss and Mitch doesn’t want to do anything to undermine him.

This is the GOP at its core. They are a death cult.

It never occurs to them that there might be nothing there

Trump: where’s my Biden impeachment?

House Republicans are increasingly disenchanted with Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., saying his leadership of the Biden impeachment inquiry has become a “clueless investigation” at best and — at worst — “a disaster.”

Less than 10 months away from the 2024 election, his impeachment investigation is barreling toward its conclusion, with no smoking gun to bring the president to his knees. Only one thing is clear: Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, has lost the trust of some in his own party.

“One would be hard pressed to find the best moment for James Comer in the Oversight Committee,” one House Republican lawmaker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to maintain internal relationships, told The Messenger. “It’s been a parade of embarrassments.”

The GOP House member is among over a dozen Republicans — lawmakers, senior aides and strategists — interviewed for this story.

Republican sources have a problem with what the investigation has not accomplished. The probe has taken a winding road, jetting off into different paths of inquiry, some more obscure than others, from chasing claims of foreign bribery and influence peddling to probing the sale of Hunter Biden’s artwork and loans between the president and his brother. Republicans at the highest level of the party criticize the chairman’s unfocused investigation.

“Comer has cast a wide net and caught very little fish. That is a big problem for him,” one personal ally of former President Donald Trump told The Messenger.

None of the Republicans they interviewed accepted that maybe there isn’t any evidence of wrongdoing. They’re just mad at Comer for failing to find it.

“James Comer continues to embarrass himself and House Republicans. He screws up over and over and over,” the source said. “I don’t know how Republicans actually impeach the president based on his clueless investigation and lack of leadership.”

[…]

Republicans also have grown tired of Comer’s frequent TV hits on conservative networks like Fox News and Newsmax in which they say he promises bombshell information, but then fails to produce impeachable evidence to meet the bar he himself has set too high.

One Republican pointed to the Oversight panel’s first impeachment hearing in September, which Comer said would be a venue for the committee to lay out its findings to date. But the hearing was widely panned as a disaster, with Jonathan Turley, one of the GOP’s star witnesses at the hearing, admitting there was not yet enough evidence to impeach the president.

I’m almost sorry for Comer (I said almost) but this is what happens to all Trump lackeys eventually. And this is Trump’s baby, all the way:

Twice-impeached Trump himself threatened House Republicans in August to impeach Biden “or fade into OBLIVION.”

The source close to Trump also said Comer “set the bar too high” for an impeachable offense, attempting to prove a direct payment to Joe Biden in the probe. The investigation spent weeks rolling out payments to Joe Biden from Hunter Biden and James Biden, the president’s son and brother, which the White House and Biden allies brushed off as loan repayments. Proving a direct payment to the president, the source said, was not necessary.

“He has been one to essentially say things like we need to find all these transfers to Joe Biden and that’s what an impeachable offense is,” the Trump ally said. “He has set the bar too high when it shouldn’t be set that high for impeachment. Congress determines what is a high crime and misdemeanor.”

Just point the finger, that’s all he wants. In fact, that’s one of the things Trump was impeached for when he told the Ukrainian president that all he wanted was a press conference announcing an investigation into Biden.

Mike “Pontius Pilate” Johnson is washing his hands of the problem:

The Republican lawmaker who took his complaints of Comer to the speaker’s office was told that Johnson is aware of the problem, agrees with the criticism but can’t really do much other than watch and shake his head, the lawmaker told The Messenger.

Comer’s Fox News fame has made him a powerful fund-raiser. So he’s still in the good graces of the leadership. Will Trump stick with him too?

“You have to start producing,” a Trump ally said. “The base is starting to get more and more frustrated with him because they see all this smoke but they don’t see the movement.”

Trumpie wants his Biden impeachment. I seriously doubt he’s going to stick with Comer if this keeps up. Stay tuned.

The White Nationalist group Patriot Front was confused by the turnstiles at NYC’s World Trade Center PATH station. It reminded me of this classic turnstile scene with Slim Pickens in Blazing Saddles.

But seriously folks, who is the Patriot Front and how can they be defeated once they figure out how to use turnstiles? In June I talked to Matt Binder on the Doomed podcast about Patriot Front, the Neo-Nazis group seen in this clip. They wear the same hats, khakis and gatherers on their faces when they go to Pride events, Juneteenth parades and other events.

The Patriot Front may appear dumb here, but they are very clever at avoiding being prosecuted for their use of threats online and in person. One organization that figured out how to fight them is the called
Task Force Butler Institute. Their tag line: Veterans Fighting Fascism

From the Task Force Butler website under What We Do

Hold Extremists Accountable

For far too long neo-nazi, white supremacist, and fascist organizations have been able to terrorize vulnerable Americans and erode our democracy without paying a price.

We provide the resources and support necessary to ensure that those who want to destroy our pluralistic society pay for the damage that they’ve done to targeted minority groups and our democracy.

Whether it’s providing courtroom-ready evidence for legal accountability, or providing reports for activists to use in community education campaigns, we’re working to make sure that Americans have the information that they need to fight back.

I saw Kristofer Goldsmith, the founder and CEO of Task Force Butler, on MSNBC and was impressed by his understanding of the group’s attacks. In the first part of this video with Nicolle Wallace he describes how the Patriot Front works and how to bust them. In this part of the clip he gives an example of how they threatened his mother and how law enforcement failed to act. This is really important. We have seen that the use of threats of violence is successful for the right wing. When local law enforcement and FBI ignore threats, they keep happening.

Task Force Butler is doing what needs to be done. They are working all the angles to hold these people accountable. They understand how RW groups use the law and law enforcement’s fear of prosecuting them. More people need to understand how to defeat RW extremists, and Task Force Butler shows people how.

Check out Task Force Butler’s Community Response Guide for people “just getting started in taking a stand against the fascist street gangs trying to spread hate in their neighborhood.“

Task Force Butler’s Street Teams Guide is “designed to improve the safety and effectiveness of coordinated anti-fascist research and action by established community groups who consider themselves experienced practitioners in performing work against organized, fascist street gangs.” That’s because they know that fascist groups will go after ANYONE who threatens them. So the Street Team Guide anticipates the tricks the fascists use and gives community groups the methods (and legal statutes) to bust them.) For example, this is from page 6.

What more can we say about the Patriot Front? I like how Gene Wilder described them to Cleavon Little in Blazing Saddles.

The men in Patriot Front are: “The common clay in the new West. You know, morons.”
From Blazing Saddles 1974. Written by Mel Brooks, Norman Steinberg, Andrew Bergman, Richard Pryor & Alan Uger

They make people bend to their reality

But the cult is increasingly isolated:

We've never seen a gap between the independent vote and the Republican vote in an NH GOP primary like we saw last night. Trump won R's by 49, Haley took independents by 22 — a swing of 71 points. Previous high was 40. pic.twitter.com/Avq3gbxiJE

— Steve Kornacki (@SteveKornacki) January 24, 2024

Something’s happening to the Trump cult. The hard core true believers are on board with him more than ever and they will follow him to the ends of the earth. But there is a growing faction that’s breaking away. They may not be ready to back Joe Biden. But they are starting to see the light and recognize that they can’t vote for Trump. Baby steps….

They were all high

Hey Ronny, this is you on a foreign trip. Asleep and hungover. https://t.co/K1ie6fLXnw pic.twitter.com/GrKqpVDsFl

— Pete Souza (@PeteSouza) November 2, 2021

I had heard that the White House doctor Ronny Jackson was a Dr. Feelgood and this seems to confirm it:

White House pharmacists reportedly distributed uppers and downers like candy to Trump administration officials during his time in office, according to a new report from the Department of Defense Inspector General. 

The 80-page document, which was released on Jan. 8, found that “all phases of the White House Medical Unit’s pharmacy operations had severe and systemic problems due to the unit’s reliance on ineffective internal controls to ensure compliance with pharmacy safety standards.” 

The investigation, which began in 2018 after the Office of Inspector General (DoD OIG) received complaints about improper medical practices within the White House Medical Unit, found a slew of compliance issues and improper safety standards. The medical unit’s operations fall under the jurisdiction of the White House Military Office. The report covers a period between 2009 and 2018, with a majority of its findings coalescing around 2017- 2019, during the height of the Trump administration. 

That was Jackson’s tenure. He is now a Texas congressman and is also known to be a very heavy drinker. He’s also a major Trump supporter.

I wrote this about Jackson back in 2018, the White House party years:

Everyone understands by now that President Trump doesn’t hire people so much as he casts them. His cabinet has all been chosen the way he chose contestants for “The Apprentice.” So when it was reported that he had finally followed through on the rumored firing of the secretary of Veterans Affairs, David Shulkin, and replaced him with the White House doctor, Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson — on the basis of the press conference where Jackson pronounced the president to be svelte, fit and genetically superior — it wasn’t a surprise. After all, Jackson had delivered quite a performance, without breaking character even once.

It’s easy to see why Trump would want to give Jackson a bigger role in the show. He demonstrated real talent for giving Trump administration press conferences. Nonetheless, it is a little weird that the president would “reward” Jackson with the job of running a sprawling and perpetually troubled bureaucracy when he’s spent his entire military career as a doctor. Apparently, being an admiral, a doctor and a talented performer tells Trump that the man is capable of anything. After all, he himself is the heir to a fortune who lost millions, turned himself into a celebrity brand name and became president. He is completely unqualified by normal standards and yet he’s in the White House. Clearly, “running things” is a snap.

But that doesn’t seem to be the only or even the biggest reason why he chose Jackson to head up the VA. The man who trained Jackson, Brig. Gen. Dr. Richard Tubb, said in a letter that the doctor had been attached like “Velcro” to Trump since Inauguration Day. Tubb explained that Jackson’s office is “one of only a very few in the White House Residence proper,” located directly across the hall from the president’s private elevator. He said that “on any given day ‘physician’s office,’ as it is known, is generally the first and last to see the President.”

Apparently, this is all perfectly normal. At least it explains why the president would give him a big promotion.  You see, Trump sees himself as more of a beloved monarch than a man of the people.

Does anyone think that Dr. Ronny wasn’t “helping” Trump with a little pick-me-up?