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In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on May 7, 2020 at 12:17 am
“Is this man simply crazy, or is he crazy like a fox?”
That was the question that Bandy X. Lee, an assistant clinical psychiatry professor at the Yale School of Medicine, wanted to answer.
And she tried to do so as the editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.
“It doesn’t take a psychiatrist to notice that our president is mentally compromised,” she and colleague Judith Lewis Herman asserted in the book’s prologue.
According to Dr. Craig Malkin, a Lecturer in Psychology for Harvard Medical School and a licensed psychologist, Trump is a pathological narcissist:
“Pathological narcissism begins,” Malkin writes, “when people become so addicted to feeling special that, just like with any drug, they’ll do anything to get their ‘high,’ including lie, steal, cheat, betray and even hurt those closest to them.
“When they can’t let go of their need to be admired or recognized, they have to bend or invent a reality in which they remain special despite all messages to the contrary. In point of fact, they become dangerously psychotic. It’s just not always obvious until it’s too late.”
Lance Dodes, a retired psychiatry professor at Harvard Medical School, believes that Trump is a sociopath: “The failure of normal empathy is central to sociopathy, which is marked by an absence of guilt, intentional manipulation and controlling or even sadistically harming others for personal power or gratification.”
But an observer didn’t need to be a psychiatrist to feel frightened by Trump’s behavior at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on March 2, 2019.
For two hours, in National Harbor, Maryland, Trump delivered the longest address (so far) of his Presidency—and of any American President.
“You know, I’m totally off script right now,” Trump said early on. “This is how I got elected, by being off script.”
And from the moment he embraced an American flag as though he wanted to hump it, it was clear: He was “totally off script.”
“How many times did you hear, for months and months, ‘There is no way to 270?’ You know what that means, right? ‘There is no way to 270.'”
Once again, Trump reveals his obsession with his win in 2016—as if no one else had ever been elected President.
“If you tell a joke, if you’re sarcastic, if you’re having fun with the audience, if you’re on live television with millions of people and 25,000 people in an arena, and if you say something like, ‘Russia, please, if you can, get us Hillary Clinton’s emails. Please, Russia, please.'”
Here he’s trying to “spin” his infamous invitation to hackers in Vladimir Putin’s Russia to intervene in an American Presidential election by obtaining the emails of his campaign rival. Which they did that same day.
“So now we’re waiting for a report, and we’ll find out whether or not, and who we’re dealing with. We’re waiting for a report by people that weren’t elected.”
It doesn’t matter to Trump that America’s foremost enemy—Russia—tried to influence a Presidential election. What matters to him is that the report might end his Presidency.
“Those red hats—and white ones. The key is in the color. The key is what it says. ‘Make America Great Again’ is what it says. Right? Right?”
Color matters. Words, ideas don’t.
“Now, Robert Mueller never received a vote, and neither did the person that appointed him. And as you know, the attorney general says, ‘I’m going to recuse myself.'”
Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller and Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were career Justice Department officials. They weren’t voted into office.
“Number one, I’m in love, and you’re in love. We’re all in love together. There’s so much love in this room, it’s easy to talk. You can talk your heart out. You really could. There’s love in this room. You can talk your heart out. It’s easy. It’s easy. It’s easy.”
Trump apparently finds it easy to fall in love—with Right-wing audiences and Communist dictators such as Kim Jong-Un.
“And from the day we came down the escalator, I really don’t believe we’ve had an empty seat at any arena, at any stadium. They did the same thing at our big inauguration speech. You take a look at those crowds.”
Once again, he must brag about how popular he is and how many people want to listen to him.
“A few days ago I called the fake news the enemy of the people. And they are. They are the enemy of the people. Because they have no sources, they just make ’em up when there are none.”
By January 20, 2020, The Washington Post found that Trump had made “16,241 ‘false or misleading claims” in his first three years in office. He is in no position to talk about integrity.
“But we’re going to have regulation. It’s going to be really strong and really good and we’re going to protect our environment and we’re going to protect the safety of our people and our workers, OK?”
To “protect our environment,” Trump appointed Andrew R. Wheeler, a former coal company lobbyist, to head the Environmental Protection Agency.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on May 6, 2020 at 11:13 am
“One man in the free world has the power to launch a nuclear war that might destroy civilization: the President of the United States. What if that man were mentally unbalanced?”
That is the premise of the 1965 novel, Night at Camp David, by Fletcher Knebel.
At the time of its release, its plot was considered so over-the-top as to be worthy of science fiction:
Iowa Democratic Senator Jim MacVeagh is summoned to Camp David, the Presidential retreat, by President Mark Hollenbach. MacVeagh is expected to become Hollenbach’s next Vice President. But he becomes alarmed that Hollenbach is clearly suffering from intense paranoia.
He wants to develop a closer relationship between the United States and Russia—while cutting ties with American allies in Europe. Moreover, Hollenbach believes the American news media are conspiring against him with his political enemies.
Only one person possesses evidence that Hollenbach is losing his grip on sanity—his mistress, Rita. Desperate to retain his power, Hollenbach orders the FBI to investigate both MacVeagh and Rita.
So why was a 53-year-old novel released in 2018? The answer lies in two words: Donald Trump.
In a November 30, 2018 review of Night at Camp David, Tom McCarthy, national affairs correspondent for the British newspaper, The Guardian, writes:
“The current president has seen crowds where none exist, deployed troops to answer no threat, attacked national institutions – the military, the justice department, the judiciary, the vote, the rule of law, the press – tried to prosecute his political enemies, elevated bigots, oppressed minorities, praised despots while insulting global allies and wreaked diplomatic havoc from North Korea to Canada.
“He stays up half the night watching TV and tweeting about it, then wakes up early to tweet some more, in what must be the most remarkable public diary of insecurity, petty vindictiveness, duplicity and scattershot focus by a major head of state in history.”
From the beginning of his Presidency, Trump aroused fear—based not only of what he might do, but that he might be mentally unbalanced. Consider:
On March 4, 2017, in a series of unhinged tweets, he accused former President Barack Obama of tapping his Trump Tower phones prior to the election:
“Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”
“Is it legal for a sitting President to be ‘wire tapping’ a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!”
“I’d bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!”
“How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!”
A subsequent investigation by the Justice Department turned up no evidence to substantiate Trump’s foray into Presidential libel.
Donald Trump
Trump’s shoot-first-and-never-mind-the-consequences approach to life has been thoroughly documented.
From June 15, 2015, when he launched his Presidential campaign, until October 24, 2016, he fired nearly 4,000 angry, insulting tweets at 281 people and institutions. The New York Times needed two full pages of its print edition to showcase them.
Among these targets were:
- His Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton
- His fellow Republican Presidential candidates
- Actress Meryl Streep
- News organizations
- President Barack Obama
- Comedian John Oliver
- The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare)
- Singer Neil Young
- The state of New Jersey
- Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
And during his first two weeks as President, Trump attacked 22 people, places and things on his @realDonaldTrump Twitter account.
Trump’s vindictiveness, his narcissism, his compulsive aggression, his complaints that his “enemies” in government and the press are trying to destroy him, have caused many to ask: Could the President of the United States be suffering from mental illness?
One who has dared to answer this question is John D. Gartner, a practicing psychotherapist.
John D. Gartner
Gartner graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University, received his Ph.D in clinical psychology from the University of Massachusetts, and served as a part-time assistant professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University Medical School for 28 years.
During an interview by U.S. News & World Report (published on January 27, 2017), Gartner said: “Donald Trump is dangerously mentally ill and temperamentally incapable of being president.”
Gartner said that Trump suffers from “malignant narcissism,” whose symptoms include:
- anti-social behavior
- sadism
- aggressiveness
- paranoia
- and grandiosity.
“We’ve seen enough public behavior by Donald Trump now that we can make this diagnosis indisputably,” says Gartner, who admits he has not personally examined Trump.
More of that behavior was on full display on March 2, 2019 at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), held at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, National Harbor, Maryland.
For more than two hours, Trump delivered the longest speech (so far) of his Presidency to his fanatically Right-wing audience.
Facing a hostile Democratic House of Representatives and a potentially explosive report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Trump threw down the gauntlet.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on April 29, 2020 at 10:29 am
On April 27, Joe Scarborough offered an important insight about why most Americans have ignored President Donald Trump’s crimes and outrages for so long:
“Back in January Joe Biden wrote an Op-Ed that the President was not prepared for this coming pandemic, and things were going to get worse. And he said ‘Let your doctors talk. Let your scientists talk. Follow their lead.’
“…And it’s been one scam idea after another, that people then promoted on other networks, scam doctors promoting these scam solutions, claiming that everybody who had taken this malaria drug had been cured in certain hospitals. This is just the sort of thing that catches up to Donald Trump.
“I’ve said from the very beginning: You can lie about independent counsels, people won’t listen. You can lie about former FBI directors—“
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: “It doesn’t impact their lives.”
JOE SCARBOROUGH: “They’re still going to work, the kids are doing fine, they’ve got enough money to pay their rent, to pay their mortgage, You can even lie about the Ukraine call—they don’t really care.
“But all of these lies, all of these scams that he’s been pushing…have been revealed as lies—not by the people on cable news, but by their doctors. By nurses they know. If you’ve got a doctor who’s been treating your family for 20-25 years, you’re going to believe that person more than a scam artist that’s pushing propaganda for Donald Trump on talk radio.”
On August 23, 2018, Trump appearing on “Fox and Friends,” said: “I tell you what, if I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash, I think everybody would be very poor.”
Donald Trump
Thus, he appealed to the greed and fear of his voting base—and no doubt hoped to reach beyond it: “Keep me in power or you’ll all suffer for it.”
Then-White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders bragged, on June 4, 2018:
“Since taking office, the President has strengthened American leadership, security, prosperity, and accountability. And as we saw from Friday’s jobs report, our economy is stronger, Americans are optimistic, and business is booming.”
Many Congressional Republicans echoed this: The American people care only about the economy—and how well-off they are.
For eight years, Nazi Germany underwent such an epoch. Germans called it “The Happy Time.”
It began on January 30, 1933, when Adolf Hitler became Chancellor—and lasted until June 22, 1941. Germans knew about the Nazis’ cruelty to the Jews, the mass arrests and concentration camps.
They didn’t care.
Frenzied Germans greet Adolf Hitler
The Gestapo didn’t have to watch everyone: German “patriots” gladly reported their fellow citizens—especially Jews—to the secret police.
As far as everyday Germans were concerned:
- The streets were clean and peaceful.
- Employment was high.
- The trouble-making unions were gone.
- Germany was once again “taking its rightful place” among ruling nations, after its catastrophic defeat in World War 1.
The height of “The Happy Time” came in June, 1940. In just six weeks, the Wehrmacht accomplished what the German army hadn’t in four years during World War 1: The total defeat of its longtime enemy, France.
Suddenly, French clothes, perfumes, delicacies, paintings and other “fortunes of war” came pouring into the Fatherland.
Most Germans believed der Krieg—“the war”—was over, and only good times lay ahead.
Then, on June 22, 1941, three million Wehrmacht soldiers slashed their way into the Soviet Union. The Third Reich was now locked in a death-struggle with a nation even more powerful than itself.
German soldiers in the Soviet Union
And then, on December 11, 1941—four days after Germany’s ally, Japan, attacked Pearl Harbor—Hitler declared war on the United States.
“The Happy Time” for Germans was over. Only prolonged disaster lay ahead.
Donald Trump has spent his life appealing to the greed or fear of those around him. For example:
- Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi personally solicited a political contribution from Trump around the same time her office deliberated joining an investigation of alleged fraud at Trump University and its affiliates.
- After Bondi dropped the Trump University case against Trump, he wrote her a $25,000 check for her re-election campaign.
- According to an April 14, 2019 story by ABC News, a nationwide review uncovered at least 36 criminal cases where Trump was invoked in direct connection with violent acts, threats of violence or allegations of assault.
- In nine cases, attackers hailed Trump in the midst or immediate aftermath of physically assaulting victims. In 10 more cases, perpetrators cheered or defended Trump while taunting or threatening others. And in another 10 cases, Trump and his rhetoric were cited in court to explain a defendant’s violent or threatening behavior.
But since January, Trump has come up against an enemy—to his re-election—that he can’t intimidate or buy off.
A deadly virus like COVID-19 doesn’t accept bribe-monies or grovel before a raging tyrant.
The Germans made a devil’s-bargain with Adolf Hitler—and paid dearly for it.
Millions of greedy Americans have embraced Donald Trump, another would-be tyrant, as America’s economic savior.
By supporting Trump—or at least not opposing him—they have also made a devil’s-bargain. And such bargains always end with the devil winning.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 10, 2020 at 12:04 am
On March 30, Captain Brett Crozier, commanding the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, sent a four-page internal letter to multiple Naval officials, pleading to have the majority of the crew evacuated and quarantined on shore in Guam.
The reason: Dozens of his crew members had been stricken with the deadly Coronavirus. And the ship’s cramped compartments and narrow passageways made “social distancing” impossible.
On March 31, someone leaked the letter to the San Francisco Chronicle, which published it.
On April 1, the Navy ordered the aircraft carrier evacuated.
On April 2, Crozier was relieved of command by acting United States Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly.
Not content to fire Crozier, Modly visited the ship and stated over its public address system: “If he didn’t think, in my opinion, that this information wasn’t going to get out to the public, in this day and information age that we live in, then he was either (a) too naïve or too stupid to be a commanding officer of a ship like this. The alternative is that he did this on purpose.
“It was a betrayal of trust with me, with his chain of command, with you.”
Thus, for Modly, Crozier’s “crime” was making public what everyone on the ship and countless Navy officials knew.
President Donald Trump echoed Modly’s attitude: “The letter was a five-page letter from a captain, and the letter was all over the place. That’s not appropriate.
“I thought it was terrible, what he did, to write a letter. I mean, this isn’t a class on literature. This is a captain of a massive ship that’s nuclear powered. And he shouldn’t be talking that way in a letter.”
But Crozier wasn’t the only victim of Trump’s “integrity-is-treason” mindset that week.
On April 3, Trump informed Congress that he was removing Michael Atkinson, the inspector general who alerted Congress to his extortion attempt against Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, on July 25, 2019.
Trump told Zelensky: Find embarrassing “dirt” on former Vice President Joseph Biden and his son, Hunter.
Hunter had had business dealings in Ukraine. And Joe Biden might be Trump’s Democratic opponent for the White House in 2020.
To underline the seriousness of his “request,” Trump had withheld $400 million in promised military aid to Ukraine, which is facing an increasingly aggressive Russia.
Reporters asked Congressional Republicans: “Is it appropriate for President Donald Trump to ask a foreign government to investigate his political opponent?”
Donald Trump
And those Republicans refusing to answer or condemn such behavior:
Iowa Senator Joni Ernst: “We don’t have all the facts, we don’t know what is accurate. We have a picture painted by the media and we don’t know if that picture is accurate.”
Arizona Senator Martha McSally: “I think what we’ve seen out of [Speaker of the House Nancy] Pelosi and [House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam] Schiff and others in the House is quite partisan and I think people want us to take a serious look at this and not have it be just partisan bickering going on.”
North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis: “I’m going to leave it to the President to make that decision” on whether his actions were appropriate.
The reason for Republicans’ deafening silence: They didn’t want to anger Trump or his fanatical supporters. And they feared losing their Congressional seats and the perks that go with them.
Michael Atkinson, the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, showed no such fear.
After the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, Atkinson left private law practice and worked for the United States Department of Justice for 15 years.
In 2017, President Trump nominated him as Inspector General of the Intelligence Community. The Senate confirmed him in 2018.
Michael Atkinson
Atkinson, informed by an Intelligence whistleblower of Trump’s extortion attempt, was appalled. He believed that he was obligated by law to report it to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.
Trump was ultimately impeached by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives for abusing his office for personal political gain and obstruction of Congress.
But a Republican-controlled Senate—which refused to hear witnesses or act on the overwhelming evidence—quickly exonerated him.
In his April 3 letter to the leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, Trump wrote: “This is to advise that I am exercising my power as President to remove from office the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community.
“it is vital that I have the fullest confidence in the appointees serving as Inspectors General. That is no longer the case with regard to this Inspector General.”
Clearly, there is a reason why Trump no longer has “the fullest confidence” in Atkinson: He can’t depend on “this Inspector General” to conceal and support any future crimes he might commit.
In his 1960 poem, “Conversation With an American Writer,” the Russian poet, Yevgeney Yevtushenko spoke for those Russians who had maintained their integrity in the face of Stalinist terror:
“You have courage,” they tell me.
It’s not true. I was never courageous.
I simply felt it unbecoming
to stoop to the cowardice of my colleagues.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Republicans in the United States Senate and House of Representatives in the face of Trump terror.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 9, 2020 at 12:09 am
Nikolai Sergeyvich Zhilayev (pronounced Zill-lay-ev) was a Russian musicologist and the teacher of several 20th-century Russian composers.
Among these: Dimitri Shostakovich (September 25, 1906 – August 9, 1975)
Among his friends—to his ultimate misfortune—was Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky, the former military hero now falsely condemned and executed as a traitor by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
In 1938, Zhilayev (November 18, 1881 – January 20, 1938) also became a casualty of what has become known as The Great Terror.
In his posthumously-published memoirs, Testimony, Shostakovich, his pupil and friend, described how Zhilayev faced his end with a calmness that awed even the NKVD (the predecessor to the KGB) secret police sent to arrest him.
Dimitri Shostakovich
“He had a large picture of Tukhachevsky in his room, and after the announcement that Tukhachevsky had been shot as a traitor to the homeland, Zhilayev did not take the picture down.
“I don’t know if I can explain how heroic a deed that was….As soon as the next poor soul was declared an enemy of the people, everyone destroyed in a panic everything connected with that person….
“And naturally, photographs flew into the fire first, because if someone informed on you, reported that you had a picture of an enemy of the people, it meant certain death.
“Zhilayev wasn’t afraid. When they came for him, Tukhachevsky’s prominently hung portrait amazed even the executioners.”
“What, it’s still up?” one of the secret police asked.
“The time will come,” Zhilayev replied, “when they’ll erect a monument to him.”
As, in fact, has happened.
Meanwhile, Stalin has been universally condemned as one of history’s greatest tyrants.
Mikhail Tukhachevsky appears on a 1963 Soviet Union postage stamp
Third hero—Brett Crozier, the former commanding officer of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt.
Graduating from the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1992, he received his Master’s Degree in National Security and Strategic Studies from the Naval War College in 2007.
From 2017 to 2018 he commanded the USS Blue Ridge. In November, 2019, he was given command of the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt.
On March 24, 2020, reports circulated that three members of the crew had tested positive for COVID-19. The next day the number of stricken sailors increased to eight. A few days later, it was “dozens.” The sailors reportedly became ill at sea, two weeks after a port call at Danang, Vietnam.
The initial cases were airlifted to a military hospital. The Roosevelt was ordered to Guam. After the ship docked on March 27, 2020, all 5,000 aboard were ordered to be tested for the virus. But only about 100 stricken sailors were allowed to leave the ship. The rest remained on board.
On March 30, Crozier emailed a four-page internal letter to multiple Naval officials, pleading to have the majority of the crew evacuated and quarantined on shore. Given the crowded sleeping quarters and narrow passageways of the vessel, Crozier wrote that it was impossible to follow social distancing and quarantine procedures:
“This will require a political solution but it is the right thing to do. We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die. If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset—our Sailors….
“This is a necessary risk. Keeping over 4,000 young men and women on board the TR is an unnecessary risk and breaks faith with those Sailors entrusted to our care.”
Brett Crozier
Crozier sent his letter via a non-secure, unclassified email to 20 to 30 recipients, as well as the captain’s immediate chain of command. He reportedly believed that his immediate supervisor would not allow him to send it.
And his superior later confirmed that he would not have allowed Crozier to send it.
On March 31, someone leaked the letter to the San Francisco Chronicle, which published it.
On April 1, the Navy ordered the aircraft carrier evacuated. A a skeleton crew of 400 remained aboard to maintain the nuclear reactor, the fire-fighting equipment, and the ship’s galley.
On April 2, Crozier was relieved of command by acting United States Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly.
By that time, about 114 crew members—out of a total of around 4,000—reportedly tested positive for COVID-19.
As Crozier disembarked, sailors loudly saluted him with a standing ovation: “Cap-tain Cro-zier!”
Modly claimed that Crozier’s letter “raised alarm bells unnecessarily. It undermines our efforts and the chain of command’s efforts to address this problem, and creates a panic and this perception that the Navy’s not on the job, that the government’s not on the job, and it’s just not true.”
Actually, the Trump administration had frittered away January and February, with President Donald Trump giving multiple—and misleading—press conferences. In these, he played down the dangers of COVID-19, saying that “we’re on top of it”—even as the virus spread across the country.
“It was a betrayal. And I can tell you one other thing: because he did that he put it in the public’s forum and it is now a big controversy in Washington, DC,” continued Modly. [Italics added]
This was the United States Navy under President Donald Trump—who throws “betrayal” and “treason” at anyone who dares reveal the truth about institutional crimes and failures.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 8, 2020 at 12:08 am
…A truly great man is ever the same under all circumstances. And if his fortune varies, exalting him at one moment and oppressing him at another, he himself never varies, but always preserves a firm courage, which is so closely interwoven with his character that everyone can readily see that the fickleness of fortune has no power over him.
The conduct of weak men is very different. Made vain and intoxicated by good fortune, they attribute their success to merits which they do not possess. And this makes them odious and insupportable to all around them. And when they have afterwards to meet a reverse of fortune, they quickly fall into the other extreme, and become abject and vile.
—Niccolo Machiavelli, The Discourses
Four heroes, three villains.
Two of the heroes are Russians; two are Americans.
The villains: One Russian (actually, Georgian); two American.
First up—in order of disappearance: Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky (pronounced too-ka-chev-sky)
Tukhachevsky (February 4, 1893 – June 12, 1937) was a leading Soviet military leader and theoretician from 1918 to 1937.
He commanded the Soviet Western Front during the Russian-Polish War (1920-21) and served as Chief of Staff of the Red Army (1925-1928).
He fought to modernize Soviet armament, as well as develop airborne, aviation and mechanized forces. Almost singlehandedly, he created the theory of deep operations for Soviet forces.
Mikhail Tukhachevsky
All of these innovations would reap huge dividends when the Soviet Union faced the lethal fury of Adolf Hitler’s Wehrmacht.
In 1936, Tukhachevsky warned Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin that Nazi Germany might attack without warning—and ignite a long and murderous war.
Stalin—the son of a Georgian cobbler—resented Tukhachevsky’s coming from a noble family. A monumental egomaniac, he also hated that Tukhachevesky’s fame rivaled his own.
Warned of the approaching German danger, Stalin shouted: “What are you trying to do—frighten Soviet authority?”
Joseph Stalin
The attack that Tukhachevsky warned against came five years later—on June 22, 1941, leaving at least 26 million Russians dead.
But Tukhachevsky wasn’t alive to command a defense.
The 1930s were a frightening and dangerous time to be alive in the Soviet Union. In 1934, Stalin, seeing imaginary enemies everywhere, ordered a series of purges that lasted right up to the German invasion.
An example of Stalin’s paranoia occurred one day while the dictator walked through the Kremlin corridors with Admiral Ivan Isakov. Officers of the NKVD (the predecessor to the KGB) stood guard at every corner.
“Every time I walk down the corridors,” said Stalin, “I think: Which one of them is it? If it’s this one, he will shoot me in the back. But if I turn the corner, the next one can shoot me in the face.”
In 1937-38, the Red Army fell prey to Stalin’s paranoia.
Its victims included:
- Three of five marshals (five-star generals);
- Thirteen of 15 army commanders (three- and four-star generals);
- Fifty of 57 army corps commanders; and
- One hundred fifty-four out of 186 division commanders.
And heading the list of those marked for death was Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky.
Arrested on May 22, 1937, he was interrogated and tortured. As a result, he “confessed” to being a German agent plotting to overthrow Stalin and seize power.
On his confession, which survives in the archives, his bloodstains can clearly be seen.
On June 11, 1937, the Soviet Supreme Court convened a special military tribunal to try Tukhachevsky and eight generals for treason.
It was a sham: The accused were denied defense attorneys, and could not appeal the verdict—-which was foregone: Death.
In a Russian version of poetic justice, five of the eight generals who served as Tukhachevsky’s judges were themselves later condemned and executed as traitors.
Within hours of the verdict, Tukhachevsky was summoned from his cell and shot once in the back of the head.
From 1937 until 1956, Tukhachevsky was officially declared a traitor and fifth-columnist.
Then, on February 25, 1957, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev delivered his bombshell “Secret Speech” to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
In this, he denounced Stalin (who had died in 1953) as a ruthless tyrant responsible for the slaughter of millions of innocent men, women and children. He condemned Stalin for creating a “personality cult” around himself, and for so weakening the Red Army that Nazi Germany was able to easily overrun half of the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1943.
On January 31, 1957, Tukhachevsky and his co-defendants were declared innocent of all charges and were “rehabilitated.”
Today, he is once again—rightly—considered a Russian hero and military genius. And Stalin is universally—and rightly—seen as a blood-stained tyrant.
Next hero: Nikolai Sergeyvich Zhilayev (pronounced Zill-lay-ev)
Zhilayev (November 18, 1881 – January 20, 1938) was a Russian musicologist and the teacher of several 20th-century Russian composers. Among these: Dimitri Shostakovich.
Zhilayev, a member of the Russian Academy of Art-Sciences, taught at the Moscow Conservatory. Among his friends—to his ultimate misfortune—was Mikhail Tukhachevsky.
In 1938, he, too, became a casualty of what has become known as The Great Terror.
In his posthumously-published memoirs, Testimony, Shostakovich, his pupil and friend, described how Zhilayev faced his end with a calmness that awed even the NKVD secret police sent to arrest him.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on April 7, 2020 at 12:14 am
On April 3, I received the following email from a longtime friend who has become a fanatical Stormtrumper:
Steffen, WE are worlds apart on our beliefs & knowledge when it comes to political differences. Although I am astonished that I have always referred to you as “an educated & intelligent individual”, I now feel that your opinions are simply based on total hatred because of your negative references.
In other words – you are nothing more than a typical deranged democrat with nothing good to offer this Country nor the American People other than “HATRED” for a duly elected President who will undoubtedly be re-elected in a landslide of the American People..
I felt it necessary to point out to my accuser that I was not “a typical deranged democrat”:
While I am liberal on some issues, I am CONSERVATIVE on others. Unlike you, I DON’T support a man who sides with the former head of the KGB against our own FBI and CIA. If you want an example of this, you need look no further than his dual press conference in Helsinki with Putin on July 16, 2018.
Vladimir Putin
Associated Press Reporter Jonathan Lemire said to Trump: “Just now President Putin denied having anything to do with the election interference in 2016. Every U.S. intelligence agency has concluded that Russia did. My first question for you, sir, is who do you believe?”
Trump responded by attacking Democrats and the FBI as partners in a conspiracy: “You have groups that are wondering why the FBI never took the server, why haven’t they taken the server? Why was the FBI told to leave the office of the Democratic National Committee?
“I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be, but I really do want to see the server.”
That, in my view, is treason.
If you choose to support such a man—and you clearly do—that, by extension, makes you an ACCESSORY to his treason.
I felt it necessary to point out that
Your “duly elected President” had the full support of Vladimir Putin and the Russian Intelligence establishment.
[On July 9, 2016, high-ranking members of Trump’s Presidential campaign met at Trump Tower with at least two lobbyists with ties to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. The participants included:
- Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr.;
- His son-in-law, Jared Kushner;
- His then-campaign manager, Paul Manafort;
- Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer with ties to Putin; and
- Rinat Akhmetshin, a former Soviet counterintelligence officer suspected of “having ongoing ties to Russian Intelligence.”
Donald Trump
The purpose of that meeting: To gain access to any “dirt” Russian Intelligence could supply on Democratic Presidential Nominee Hillary Clinton.]
But let’s not forget all those dedicated Russian bots who flooded the Internet with real “fake news.” And, as I said earlier in this email, Putin is the only world leader—in fact, the only person, period—Trump has never dared insult.
I had urged my friend to avoid Fox News Network and Donald Trump’s press conferences as sources of reliable information on Coronavirus. He, in turn,
asked me if we should get our updates from [Democratic Presidential candidate] Joe Biden. No—Biden is NOT a doctor. He’s a politician. And when you’re dealing with a deadly pandemic you want medically-sound advice, not political pablum….
Your most recent email follows the pattern used by Trump and his cheerleading chorus at Fox News: It’s filled with insults, but not one actual piece of evidence to back it up.
“Fake news” is the standard response for those who don’t want to provide a rebuttal—because they don’t have the evidence for one and THEY know it most of all.
Dismissing—with insults—any news that doesn’t jibe with how you want things to be is a guaranteed recipe for disaster.
The Original Nazis kept insisting that victory was just around the corner—all the way up to the moment when the Russians were knocking at the Fuhrerbunker.
It didn’t save the First Fuhrer and it won’t save the Second. Nor will it save you.
* * * * *
Many liberals believe that Donald Trump’s base simply doesn’t understand the sheer evil of the man they are following. And that—if only they can be educated on this point—they will desert him.
This is to deny that human beings have a choice—to do good or evil. Following that logic, every member of the Mafia is simply a helpless ignoramus, waiting to be educated out of a lifetime of extortion, drug-trafficking and murder.
The truth is that those who support Donald Trump know exactly why they do so: Because their hatred for millions of their fellow Americans overrides everything else.
So long as Trump feeds into their hatred—of blacks, Hispanics, “uppity” women, liberals, atheists, non-Christians, among others—they will enthusiastically support him.
One day, Donald Trump will be a despicable memory for most Americans—-as Adolf Hitler is for most Germans.
But the millions of hate-filled Right-wingers who elected him and fiercely support him will still be with us, searching for their next champion of hate.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on April 6, 2020 at 12:15 am
Recently a longtime friend of mine sent me a furious and insulting email. I hadn’t insulted or harmed him in any way, so it came as a total surprise to me—-until I read it.
He and I had long disagreed about the virtues of the Trump administration. I had assumed that politics was one of those areas where we would agree to disagree and still remain on good terms. So you can imagine my surprise when I opened his email and found this waiting for me:
Steffen, WE are worlds apart on our beliefs & knowledge when it comes to political differences. Although I am astonished that I have always referred to you as “an educated & intelligent individual”, I now feel that your opinions are simply based on total hatred because of your negative references.
In other words – you are nothing more than a typical deranged democrat with nothing good to offer this Country nor the American People other than “HATRED” for a duly elected President who will undoubtedly be re-elected in a landslide of the American People..
At first I hesitated to reply. We had been friends for more than 20 years, and I didn’t want to risk ending such a long and otherwise enjoyable friendship. But I quickly decided that a strong reply was not simply in order, but demanded.
Too many people—especially Democrats—-allow such assaults to go unanswered—-and, even worse, unpunished. As a result, they find themselves the victims of even worse attacks.
Here, in part, is the email I sent him in return.
I find it amazing that so many Right-wingers who preach HATRED against millions of their fellow Americans are the first to scream HATRED when those THEY hate refuse to accept their lies or aggression.
For example: From June 15, 2015, when he launched his Presidential campaign, until October 24, 2016, Trump fired almost 4,000 angry, insulting tweets at 281 people and institutions that had somehow offended him. That doesn’t sound like a love-filled man to me.
Donald Trump
The Original Nazis behaved the same way: They had no hesitation about invading other people’s countries and massacring their inhabitants. But if a country dared resist their aggression, the Original Fuhrer yelled “They’re attacking me!”
If you HONESTLY look at the way your Commie-kissing Fuhrer has handled the COVID-19 outbreak—-and NOT in the way Fox News is portraying it–then you must realize that he is responsible for its now infecting so many tens of thousands of Americans.
For starters: In 2018, he gutted the White House Pandemic Office which President Obama had set up in 2014 at the time of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. The purpose of that office was to act as an early-warning system for the next epidemic.
But Trump, as a lifelong racist, has tried since taking office to destroy every vestige of Obama’s legacy. So, naturally, the White House Pandemic Office had to go.
To put this in military terms: It was like deliberately shutting off the radar system before an enemy launched a devastating airstrike.
COVID-19 virus
News of the COVID-19 outbreak emerged by the end of December, 2019. But your Fuhrer frittered away the first two months of the year.
He diminished its virulence. He claimed it was no more than a version of the common cold. He didn’t take action to see that the nation’s hospitals were supplied with medical equipment for combating a mass plague.
He has blamed governors for the virus that is now sweeping the nation—-instead of doing what a LEGITIMATE President does and taking it upon himself to organize an effective, well-coordinated response to the emergency.
Why? because he didn’t want to say or do anything that might cause the almighty stock market to fall. From Day One of his Fuhrership he has bragged that the stock market owed its success entirely to him. He feared that if it fell, so would his chances to be re-elected—-which is his ONE, OVER-ARCHING OBSESSION.
Responding to his charge that I was “nothing more than “a typical deranged democrat” I wrote:
I have plenty of criticisms to offer the Democrats—-most importantly, their general tendency toward cowardice every time a Republican yells “boo!” at them. The Democrats, for the most part, offer the country a party of Neville Chamberlains when what it desperately needs is a party of Winston Churchills.
I AM admittedly liberal on some things—-such as the right of a woman to decide for herself whether she wants to have children.
While I am liberal on some issues, I am CONSERVATIVE on others. Unlike you, I DON’T support a man who sides with the former head of the KGB against our own FBI and CIA. If you want an example of this, you need look no further than his dual press conference in Helsinki with Putin on July 16, 2018.
Associated Press Reporter Jonathan Lemire said to Trump: “Just now President Putin denied having anything to do with the election interference in 2016. Every U.S. intelligence agency has concluded that Russia did. My first question for you, sir, is who do you believe?”
Trump responded by attacking Democrats and the FBI as partners in a conspiracy.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on March 27, 2020 at 12:09 am
“Senator, may we not drop this?…You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
The speaker was Joseph N. Welch, chief counsel for the United States Army—then under investigation by Joseph McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations for alleged Communist activities.
It was June 9, 1954, the 30th day of the Army-McCarthy hearings.
And it was the pivotal moment that finally destroyed the career of the Wisconsin Senator whose repeated slanders of Communist subversion had bullied and frightened Americans for four years.
Joseph McCarthy
When the Senate gallery erupted in applause, McCarthy—totally surprised at his sudden reversal of fortune—was finished.
Today, however, other Americans should be asking themselves the question asked by Welch: “At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
Americans like Rick Santorum, former United States Senator from Pennsylvania (1997 – 2007) and Republican Presidential candidate in 2012.
Rick Santorum
Santorum has fervently sought to ban legalized abortion—even in rape cases.
He also wants to ban birth control: “It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”
But this did not stop him from marrying, in 1990, a woman—Karen Garver—who had spent six years as the unmarried bedmate of an OBGYN-abortionist named Tom Allen, who was 40 years her senior.
Today, as Mrs. Santorum, she has totally reversed her view on abortion and wants to see it banned.
Then there’s President Donald Trump.
Donald Trump
On July 15, 2018, Trump tweeted: “Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity and now, the Rigged Witch Hunt!”
He was, of course, referring to Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller, charged by the Justice Department with investigating the subversion of the 2016 Presidential election by Russian Intelligence agents.
The next day, Trump attended a press conference in Helsinki, Finland, with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Addressing a question to Trump, Jeff Mason, a reporter from Reuters, asked: “Mr. President, do you hold Russia at all accountable for anything in particular?”
Trump, refusing to condemn Russia, blasted the Mueller probe: “I think that the probe is a disaster for our country. I think it’s kept us apart. It’s kept us separated. There was no collusion at all. Everybody knows it.
“People are being brought out to the fore. So far that I know, virtually, none of it related to the campaign. They will have to try really hard to find something that did relate to the campaign.”
Associated Press Reporter Jonathan Lemire said to Trump: “Just now President Putin denied having anything to do with the election interference in 2016. Every U.S. intelligence agency has concluded that Russia did. My first question for you, sir, is who do you believe?”
Trump responded by attacking Democrats and the FBI as partners in a conspiracy:
“You have groups that are wondering why the FBI never took the server, why haven’t they taken the server? Why was the FBI told to leave the office of the Democratic National Committee?
“I’ve been wondering that. I’ve been asking that for months and months and I’ve been tweeting it out and calling it out on social media. Where is the server? I want to know where is the server and what is the server saying. With that being said, all I can do is ask the question.
“I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be, but I really do want to see the server.”
Clearly, the word “hypocrisy” meant nothing to McCarthy—just as it means nothing to Santorum and Trump.
But it should mean something to the rest of us.
In samurai Japan, officials who publicly disgraced themselves knew what to do. The samurai code of Bushido told them when they had crossed the line into eternal damnation.
And it gave them a way to redeem their lost honor—seppuku. With a small “belly-cutting” knife and the help of a trusted assistant who sliced off their head to spare them the agonizing pain of disembowelment.
In the armies of America and Europe, the method was slightly different: A pistol in a private room.
Considering the ready availability of firearms among Right-wing Republicans, redeeming lost honor shouldn’t be a problem for either man.
But of course it will be. It takes more than a trigger pull to “do the right thing.”
It takes insight to recognize that you’ve “done the wrong thing.” And it takes courage to act on that insight.
In men who live only for their own egos and wallets, such insight and courage will be forever lacking.They are beyond redemption.
Their lives give proof to the warning offered in Matthew 7:17-20:
“Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.
“Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.”
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In Bureaucracy, Entertainment, History, Politics, Social commentary on March 13, 2020 at 12:44 am
Donald Trump has been compared to Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Gaius Caligula. But perhaps his counterpart lies not in history but in fiction.
Specifically, the fictional news anchor Howard Beale in Network, the 1976 satire written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Sidney Lumet. It starred Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Robert Duvall, Peter Finch and Beatrice Straight.
Howard Beale (Finch) the longtime anchor of the UBS Evening News, is about to be fired because of declining ratings.
So he announces on live television that he will commit suicide on next Tuesday’s broadcast.
UBS fires him, but then agrees to let Beale appear one more time to leave with dignity.
But once Beale is back on the air, he launches into a rant that contains the most famous—and most often-quoted—line in the film:
“I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter….
“We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat….
“So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!'”
Peter Finch as Howard Beale in Network
Beale is clearly losing it. But his outburst causes the newscast’s ratings to spike. Instead of pulling him off the air, the top brass of UBS decide to exploit Beale’s antics.
Soon he’s hosting a new program called The Howard Beale Show, where he’s billed as “the mad prophet of the airwaves.” Ultimately, the show becomes the most highly rated program on television.
But then Beale’s ratings slide as audiences find his sermons on the dehumanization of society depressing.
To rid themselves of Beale and boost their season-opener ratings, the network’s top executives hire a band of terrorists called the Ecumenical Liberation Army to assassinate Beale—on the air!
Forty years after Network, Right-wing voters sent “reality show” host and real estate mogul Donald Trump to the White House.
Donald Trump
Republicans have reveled in his antics and enthusiastically supported his most heinous acts, which have included:
- Repeatedly and viciously attacking the nation’s free press for daring to report his growing list of crimes and disasters, calling it “the enemy of the American people.”
- Repeatedly “hinting” that he wants to be “President-for-Life.”
- Allowing predatory corporations to subvert Federal regulatory protections for consumers and the environment.
- Repeatedly and viciously attacking American Intelligence agencies—such as the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency—for unanimously agreeing that Russia interfered with the 2016 Presidential election.
- Shutting down the Federal Government for more than a month on December 22, 2018, because Democrats refused to fund his “border wall” between the United States and Mexico.
- Pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to provide “dirt” on Hunter Biden, the son of Democratic Presidential candidate Joseph Biden—and threatening to withhold military aid if Zelensky refused.
The greed-obsessed honchos of the fictional UBS Network believed they could parley Howard Beale’s madness into greater profits.
Similarly, power-obsessed Republicans in the House and Senate believe they can parley Donald Trump’s tyrannical and unstable nature into lifetime tenure for themselves.
They have silently watched—or given their enthusiastic support—as he has attacked one cherished American institution after another:
- A free press
- An incorruptible Justice Department
- An independent judiciary.
Yet, like the executives at UBS, Congressional Republicans may soon be forced to turn on their most poisonous creation.
Right-wing Fox News Network gave its enthusiastic support to Trump during the 2016 Presidential race. And it has continued to do so throughout his more than three-year Presidency.
But on September 22, 2019, Fox News declared: “Many voters are frustrated with how the federal government is working and a growing number are nervous about the economy….
“Fifty-one percent say the economy is in only fair or poor shape.
“[Trump’s] job ratings on every other issue tested are underwater: national security (45 approve-48 disapprove), immigration (42-54), international trade (38-53), foreign policy (36-54), guns (35-56), health care (34-56) and Afghanistan (31-49).
“Currently, 45 percent approve of the overall job the president’s doing, while 54 percent disapprove.
“About two-thirds (64 percent) think many people — if not nearly all people — in government are corrupt, and almost half (46 percent) say the Trump administration is more corrupt than previous ones.”
This was before the Coronavirus pandemic hit the United States—and the Trump administration’s inept mishandling of it. While Trump insists that everything is under control, there aren’t enough testing kits for the ever-growing number of victims. More importantly, there is no vaccine for the virus.
Republicans may soon be forced to face the following dilemma:
- Can I hold onto my power—and privileges—by supporting Trump? Or:
- Can I hold onto my power—and privileges—by deserting him?
This is how Republicans define morality today.
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WHEN A PSYCHOPATH RULES THE WHITE HOUSE: PART TWO (OF THREE)
In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on May 7, 2020 at 12:17 am“Is this man simply crazy, or is he crazy like a fox?”
That was the question that Bandy X. Lee, an assistant clinical psychiatry professor at the Yale School of Medicine, wanted to answer.
And she tried to do so as the editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.
“It doesn’t take a psychiatrist to notice that our president is mentally compromised,” she and colleague Judith Lewis Herman asserted in the book’s prologue.
According to Dr. Craig Malkin, a Lecturer in Psychology for Harvard Medical School and a licensed psychologist, Trump is a pathological narcissist:
“Pathological narcissism begins,” Malkin writes, “when people become so addicted to feeling special that, just like with any drug, they’ll do anything to get their ‘high,’ including lie, steal, cheat, betray and even hurt those closest to them.
“When they can’t let go of their need to be admired or recognized, they have to bend or invent a reality in which they remain special despite all messages to the contrary. In point of fact, they become dangerously psychotic. It’s just not always obvious until it’s too late.”
Lance Dodes, a retired psychiatry professor at Harvard Medical School, believes that Trump is a sociopath: “The failure of normal empathy is central to sociopathy, which is marked by an absence of guilt, intentional manipulation and controlling or even sadistically harming others for personal power or gratification.”
But an observer didn’t need to be a psychiatrist to feel frightened by Trump’s behavior at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on March 2, 2019.
For two hours, in National Harbor, Maryland, Trump delivered the longest address (so far) of his Presidency—and of any American President.
“You know, I’m totally off script right now,” Trump said early on. “This is how I got elected, by being off script.”
And from the moment he embraced an American flag as though he wanted to hump it, it was clear: He was “totally off script.”
“How many times did you hear, for months and months, ‘There is no way to 270?’ You know what that means, right? ‘There is no way to 270.'”
Once again, Trump reveals his obsession with his win in 2016—as if no one else had ever been elected President.
“If you tell a joke, if you’re sarcastic, if you’re having fun with the audience, if you’re on live television with millions of people and 25,000 people in an arena, and if you say something like, ‘Russia, please, if you can, get us Hillary Clinton’s emails. Please, Russia, please.'”
Here he’s trying to “spin” his infamous invitation to hackers in Vladimir Putin’s Russia to intervene in an American Presidential election by obtaining the emails of his campaign rival. Which they did that same day.
“So now we’re waiting for a report, and we’ll find out whether or not, and who we’re dealing with. We’re waiting for a report by people that weren’t elected.”
It doesn’t matter to Trump that America’s foremost enemy—Russia—tried to influence a Presidential election. What matters to him is that the report might end his Presidency.
“Those red hats—and white ones. The key is in the color. The key is what it says. ‘Make America Great Again’ is what it says. Right? Right?”
Color matters. Words, ideas don’t.
“Now, Robert Mueller never received a vote, and neither did the person that appointed him. And as you know, the attorney general says, ‘I’m going to recuse myself.'”
Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller and Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were career Justice Department officials. They weren’t voted into office.
“Number one, I’m in love, and you’re in love. We’re all in love together. There’s so much love in this room, it’s easy to talk. You can talk your heart out. You really could. There’s love in this room. You can talk your heart out. It’s easy. It’s easy. It’s easy.”
Trump apparently finds it easy to fall in love—with Right-wing audiences and Communist dictators such as Kim Jong-Un.
“And from the day we came down the escalator, I really don’t believe we’ve had an empty seat at any arena, at any stadium. They did the same thing at our big inauguration speech. You take a look at those crowds.”
Once again, he must brag about how popular he is and how many people want to listen to him.
“A few days ago I called the fake news the enemy of the people. And they are. They are the enemy of the people. Because they have no sources, they just make ’em up when there are none.”
By January 20, 2020, The Washington Post found that Trump had made “16,241 ‘false or misleading claims” in his first three years in office. He is in no position to talk about integrity.
“But we’re going to have regulation. It’s going to be really strong and really good and we’re going to protect our environment and we’re going to protect the safety of our people and our workers, OK?”
To “protect our environment,” Trump appointed Andrew R. Wheeler, a former coal company lobbyist, to head the Environmental Protection Agency.
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