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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on October 25, 2017 at 12:42 am
President Donald Trump was furious.
Nordstrom department store had just dared to drop the clothing and accessories lines of his daughter, Ivanka.
So, true to form, on February 8 he took to Twitter to vent his displeasure: “My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person—always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!”
Donald Trump
He used his personal Twitter account—@realDonaldTrump—to send this message. In fact, he sent it 21 minutes into his daily Intelligence briefing.
Still not satisfied, he retweeted his attack on Nordstrom on his official POTUS (President of the United States) Twitter account.
In short, he used a taxpayer-funded account to benefit his daughter.
Not content to attack Nordstrom by himself, Trump enlisted other members of his administration as assailants.
One of these was his press secretary, Sean Spicer:
“There’s a targeting of her brand and it’s her name. She’s not directly running the company. It’s still her name on it. There are clearly efforts to undermine that name based on her father’s positions on particular policies that he’s taken. This is a direct attack on his policies and her name. Her because she is being maligned because they have a problem with his policies.”
Sean Spicer
Nordstrom retorted that its decision to drop the Ivanka Trump line was “based on performance.”
“Over the past year, and particularly in the last half of 2016, sales of the brand have steadily declined to the point where it didn’t make good business sense for us to continue with the line for now.
“We’ve had a great relationship with the Ivanka Trump team. We’ve had open conversations with them over the past year to share what we’ve seen and Ivanka was personally informed of our decision in early January.”
But for the Trumpinistas, that wasn’t the end of it.
On Februrary 9, Kelleyanne Conway, a senior adviser to Trump, became a TV shill for Ivanka.
Kelleyanne Conway
Appearing on the Right-wing Fox News Channel program, “Fox and Friends,” Kelleyanne spoke from no less prestigious a forum than the White House itself:
“Go buy Ivanka’s stuff. I hate shopping and I’m going to go get some myself today. It’s a wonderful line. I own some of it. I’m going to give a free commercial here. Go buy it today, everybody. You can find it online.”
For Democrats—and even some Republicans—Conway’s behavior was simply unacceptable.
Maryland Democratic Congressman Elijah E. Cummings, a member of the the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sent a letter to Utah Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz, who chairs the committee.
In it, he requested a referral to the Office of Government Ethics for possible disciplinary action against Conway.
The office does not have investigative or enforcement authority, but officials there can contact and provide guidance to other enforcement agencies.
Chaffetz told the Associated Press that Conway’s behavior was “wrong, wrong, wrong, clearly over the line, unacceptable.”
Larry Noble, the general counsel of the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan organization of election law experts, said Trump’s tweet was “totally out of line.”
“He should not be promoting his daughter’s line, he should not be attacking a company that has business dealings with his daughter, and it just shows the massive amount of problems we have with his business holdings and his family’s business holdings,” Noble said.
Kathleen Clark, a government ethics expert, said the Nordstrom tweet could make other retailers hesitate to drop the Ivanka Trump brand. They may fear being similarly attacked by the President.
“The implicit threat was that he will use whatever authority he has to retaliate against Nordstrom, or anyone who crosses his interest,” said Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis.
* * * * *
In 1969, 25-year-old Joe McGinnis became famous overnight with the publication of his first book, The Selling of the President.
At the time, Americans were shocked to learn how Presidential candidate Richard Nixon had been sold to voters like any other product. In fact, the original book jacket featured Nixon’s face on a pack of cigarettes.
Today, Madison Avenue doesn’t simply sell Americans their Presidents. Now—with Donald J. Trump—Americans have a President determined to turn the White House into Trump, Inc.
A single example will serve to illustrate:
On January 27, Trump signed an executive order that:
- Suspended entry of all refugees to the United States for 120 days;
- Barred Syrian refugees indefinitely; and
- Blocked entry into the United States for 90 days for citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
Three countries not covered by Trump’s travel ban are Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Turkey.
Approximately 3,000 Americans have been killed by immigrants from these countries—most of them during the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
Not-so-coincidentally, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Turkey are all countries where President Trump has close business ties. His properties include two luxury towers in Turkey and golf courses in the United Arab Emirates.
The full dimensions of Trump’s holdings throughout the Middle East aren’t known because he has refused to release his tax returns.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on October 24, 2017 at 12:03 am
Fifty-six years after John F. Kennedy gave his first and only Inaugural Address, these words remain its single most-quoted sentence: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
John F. Kennedy Inaugural
So millions of Americans who were alive that day—January 20, 1961—were probably shocked when they learned that Melania Trump had a very different view of government service.
On August 20, 2016, The Daily Mail, a British tabloid, published a story accusing her of having once worked as a prostitute.
The newspaper cited a Slovenian magazine’s report that a modeling agency that she worked with in New York in the 1990s also served as an escort business, linking wealthy clients with women for sexual services.
On September 1, Melania sued The Daily Mail in a state court in Montgomery County, Maryland. In early 2017, the Maryland court dismissed the case, saying it did not have jurisdiction.
On February 6, 2017, Melania filed another libel suit against The Daily Mail in the Manhattan Supreme Court.
Required to prove that she had been harmed in some way, Melania did not cite undeserved shame or how much her family and friends had been hurt.
Instead, she argued that the article had ruined her “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to cash in on the Presidency.
Melania Trump
According to the complaint that her attorney filed:
“Plaintiff had the unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, as an extremely famous and well-known person…to launch a broad-based commercial brand in multiple product categories, each of which could have garnered multi-million dollar business relationships for a multi-year term during which plaintiff is one of the most photographed women in the world,” the Manhattan suit says.
“These product categories would have included, among other things, apparel, accessories, shoes, jewelry, cosmetics, hair care, skin care and fragrance.
“The [statements] also constitute defamation per se because they impugned on her fitness to perform her duties as First Lady of the United States.”
Melania is alleging $150 million in damages.
Enter the Emoluments Clause.
This is a United States government law that specifically forbids any leader from using government services to “enrich” the President and his family.
Among the greatest dangers facing the newly-created American government, feared the Founding Fathers, was foreign interference. And this could be obtained through the use of bribes—–money or gifts.
The Founding Fathers of the United States
To prevent this, the Founders inserted the Emoluments Clause into Article I, Section 9 of the United States Constitution:
“No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.”
This illustrates one of the dangers of bringing a libel or slander suit.
(NOTE: Libel is a written defamation; slander is a spoken one)
Whoever brings the suit must open himself to unprecedented privacy-invading questions. And, in answering them, he may unintentionally give away revelations that can prove highly damaging.
Such as the revelation—in Melania Trump’s case—that, from the outset, she intended to use her position as First Lady to enrich herself.
Another Trump seeking to find out “what the country can do for you” is the President’s daughter, Ivanka.
Starting in 2016, Shannon Coulter, a brand and digital strategist, started the Grab Your Wallet boycott aimed at more than 30 retailers who carry Ivanka’s line of fashion apparel.
Among the retailers targeted:
- Amazon.com
- Belk
- Bloomingdale’s
- Bed, Bath and Beyond
- Burlington Coat Factory
- Century 21
- DSW
- Macy’s
- Marshalls
- TJ Maxx
- Neiman Marcus
- Nordstrom
- Overstock.com
- Ross
- Saks Off Fifth
- Sears
- Walmart
- Zappos
During the first week of February, Nordstrom told The Seattle Times that it would no longer carry Ivanka Trump’s line of clothing and accessories.
Nordstrom said the decision to drop Ivanka Trump’s line was based on poor sales performance.
“We’ve got thousands of brands,” said a Nordstrom spokesman. “Each year we cut about 10 percent and refresh our assortment with about the same amount. In this case, based on the brand’s performance we’ve decided not to buy it for this season.”
President Trump had often boasted that he would defend the free enterprise system against an intrusive Federal government.
But for a major department store to drop his daughter’s clothing line was too much.
Turning to Twitter, his favorite weapon of insult, the President tweeted: “My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person—always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!”
Trump drafted other members of his administration to attack Nordstrom.
One of these was then-White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer.
Spicer said that the store’s decision to stop carrying Ivanka Trump’s clothing and accessories line was nothing less than an attack on the president’s policies and his daughter.
“”I think this is less about his family’s business and an attack on his daughter. He ran for President, he won, he’s leading this country.
“I think for people to take out their concern about his actions or his executive orders on members of his family, he has every right to stand up for his family and applaud their business activities, their success.”
But even more was to come.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Military, Politics, Social commentary on October 23, 2017 at 11:58 am
In 1991, director Oliver Stone ignited renewed controversy about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.
His film, “JFK,” presented the murder as the result of a conspiracy involving almost everyone. It starred Kevin Costner as idealistic New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison.
By contrast, the real Garrison was reputedly linked to the Mafia. In 1973, Garrison was tried and found not guilty for accepting bribes to protect illegal pinball machine operations.
Garrison’s “search for the truth” targeted a businessman named Clay Shaw. On March 1, 1969, Shaw was unanimously acquitted less than one hour after the case went to the jury
To gauge historical accuracy of “JFK”: Stone gave Garrison an eloquent final speech to the jury—a speech he never delivered.
Jim Garrison
But the public hysteria triggered by the film led Congress to pass the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act in 1992. As a result, millions of pages of documents related to the assassination were made public in the 1990s—but not all.
About 3,100 never-before-seen documents—and the full text of more than 30,000 files previously released only in part—have been unavailable until now. Most of those documents were created inside the CIA, the FBI and the Justice Department. Under the law they must be released, in full, by October 26 unless President Donald Trump decides otherwise.
But for investigative reporter Gus Russo, the secrets behind Kennedy’s murder are no mystery.
Russo is the author of Live By the Sword: The Secret War Against Castro and the Death of JFK. Published in 1998, it is almost certainly the definitive account of the Kennedy assassination.
Russo reaches some startling—but highly documented—conclusions. Among these:
- “John and Robert Kennedy knew what they were doing. They waged a vicious war against Fidel Castro–a war someone had to lose.”
- The loser turned out to be John F. Kennedy.
- Their war began immediately after taking office on January 20, 1961.
- On April 17, 1961, more than 1,400 Cuban invaders–backed by American air power—landed JOINT at the Bay of Pigs. They were quickly overwhelmed, with hundreds of the men taken prisoner.
- Although it’s commonly believed that the Cuban Missile Crisis ended America’s efforts to overthrow Fidel Castro, this was not true.
- While continuing the campaign of sabotage throughout Cuba, the Kennedys were preparing a fullscale American invasion of the island—just one month before the November, 1964 Presidential election.
John F. and Robert F. Kennedy
- On October 4, 1963, the Joint Chiefs of Staff submitted its latest version of the invasion plan, known as OPLAN 380-63. Its timetable went:
- (1) January, 1964: Infiltration into Cuba by Cuban exiles. (2) July 15, 1964: U.S. conventional forces join the fray. (3) August 3, 1964: All-out U.S. air strikes on Cuba. (4) October 1, 1964: Full-scale invasion to install “a government friendly to the U.S.”
- Oswald, a former Marine, was a committed Marxist–whose hero was Castro.
- The CIA’s ongoing campaign to overthrow and/or assassinate Castro was an open secret throughout the Gulf.
- Oswald visited New Orleans in the spring of 1963.
- There he learned that Castro was in the crosshairs of the CIA.
- For this, he blamed John F. Kennedy.
- Oswald told his Russian-born wife, Marina: “Fidel Castro needs defenders. I’m going to join his army of volunteers.”
- Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated Kennedy.
- He did it alone.
- Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner, murdered Oswald because he was distraught over Kennedy’s death.
- Ruby was not part of a Mafia conspiracy to silence Oswald.
- Skeptics of the Warren Commission–which concluded that Oswald had acted alone–asked the wrong question: “Who killed Kennedy?”
- According to Gus Russo, they should have asked: “Why was he killed?”
- And his answer: “The Kennedys’ relentless pursuit of Castro and Cuba backfired in tragedy on that terrible day in November, 1963.”
- Following the JFK assassination, there was a cover-up.
- Its purpose: To protect the reputation of the United States Government—and that of its newly-martyred President.
- The CIA and FBI concealed the CIA-Mafia assassination plots against Castro from the Warren Commission assigned to investigate Kennedy’s murder.
- Other government officials participating in the cover-up included Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and President Lyndon B. Johnson.
- Ironically, this secrecy ignited the widespread–and false–belief that the President had died at the hands of a government conspiracy.
- Robert Kennedy feared that his relentless pursuit of Castro might have led Castro to “take out” JFK first.
- Robert Kennedy’s fears and guilt were compounded by the fact that, while waging war on Castro, he had waged an equally ruthless crusade against organized crime.
- He knew that some of the mobsters he had tried to send to prison had played a major role in the CIA’s efforts to “hit” Castro. Had the Mafia–believing itself the victim of a double-cross–put out a “contract” on JFK instead?
- It was a question that haunted RFK until the day he died.
- Fearing his own assassination if he continued Kennedy’s efforts to murder Castro, President Johnson ordered the CIA to halt its campaign to overthrow and/or assassinate the Cuban leader.
Other legacies of America’s twisted obsession with Cuba
- The huge Cuban community throughout Florida–and especially Miami–continues to exert a blackmailing influence on American politics.
- Unwilling to risk their own lives, they hope that a Right-wing President will order the military to overthrow the Castro regime.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on October 19, 2017 at 12:21 pm
On October 4, four American Special Forces soldiers were ambushed and slain on the border of Niger and Mali. Their killers were members of an ISIS-affiliated guerrilla group.
The next day, President Donald Trump attacked one of his favorite targets—the free press—as “fake news.”
Over the weekend of October 7-8, Trump went golfing. Then he took to Twitter and let his venom flow. His victims included:
- The National Football League;
- Puerto Rico;
- North Korea;
- Bob Corker, Republican United States Senator from Tennessee and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
For 12 days after the tragedy, Trump said nothing.
Then, during an October 16 press conference in the White House Rose Garden, a reporter asked him about his silence.
So Trump claimed—falsely—that earlier Presidents—including Barack Obama—had never or rarely called or written family members of soldiers who died on duty.
.jpg/220px-Donald_Trump_August_19,_2015_(cropped).jpg)
Donald Trump
But it was his call to Myeshia Johnson, the widow of Sergeant La David Johnson, that ignited a firestorm.
According to Florida Democratic Representative Frederica Wilson, Trump’s condolence call was brutally insensitive. Wilson was riding in a limousine with Johnson and heard the conversation on speakerphone.
“He knew what was signing up for, but I guess it hurts anyway,” Wilson quoted Trump as telling the grieving widow.
Cowanda Jones-Johnson, a family member who raised Johnson, told CNN that Wilson’s account of the call was “very accurate.”
Veterans such as Arizona United States Senator John McCain have expressed their outrage at Trump’s callousness. But this shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone.
On January 21, Donald Trump—on his first full day as President—visited CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
Officially, he was there to pay tribute to the men and women who dedicate their lives to discovering when and where America’s enemies are planning to strike. And to countering those threats.
And now Trump was appearing before what, to CIA employees, was the agency’s most sacred site: The star-studded memorial wall honoring the 117 CIA officers who had fallen in the line of duty.
So Trump spent much of his time talking about himself.
Among the worst examples:
- Somebody said, are you young? I said, I think I’m young. You know, I was stopping—when we were in the final months of that campaign, four stops, five stops, seven stops. Speeches, speeches, in front of 25,000, 30,000 people, 15,000, 19,000 from stop to stop. I feel young….
- And I was explaining about the numbers. We did a thing yesterday at the speech. Did everybody like the speech? I’ve been given good reviews. But we had a massive field of people. You saw them. Packed. I get up this morning, I turn on one of the networks, and they show an empty field….
- And they said, Donald Trump did not draw well. I said, it was almost raining, the rain should have scared them away, but God looked down and he said, we’re not going to let it rain on your speech…..
- So a reporter for Time magazine—and I have been on their cover, like, 14 or 15 times. I think we have the all-time record in the history of Time magazine.
Crowds at Trump and Obama Inaugurals
In February, Trump approved and ordered a Special Forces raid in Yemen on an Al-Qaeda stronghold.
The assault resulted in the death of Navy SEAL Chief Petty Officer William “Ryan” Owens.
Disavowing any responsibility for the failure, Trump said:
“This was a mission that was started before I got here. This was something they wanted to do. They came to me, they explained what they wanted to do—the generals—who are very respected, my generals are the most respected that we’ve had in many decades, I believe. And they lost Ryan.”
* * * * *
Seventy-four years before Donald Trump took office as President of the United States, Adolf Hitler suffered a blow from which he never recovered: The surrender of his once-powerful Sixth Army at Stalingrad.
For five months, 330,000 of the German army’s finest troops had fought to capture that city on the Volga River. Then they had been surrounded by even larger Russian armies and became the besieged.
Finally, on February 2, 1943, their commanding general, Friedrich Paulus, surrendered.
Adolf Hitler flew into a rage.
- Not at the loss of 150,000 Germans who had been killed.
- Not at the agonies of the tens of thousands of others wounded.
- Not at the suffering of the 91,000 men taken prisoner.
No, what infuriated Hitler was the refusal of General Friedrich Paulus to commit suicide rather than surrender.
Knowing that no German field marshal had ever allowed himself to be taken prisoner, Hitler had, by wireless, promoted Paulus—shortly before he chose to do so.
“When the nerves break down, there is nothing left but to admit that one can’t handle the situation and to shoot oneself,” screamed Hitler.
“This hurts me so much because the heroism of so many soldiers is nullified by one single characterless weakling.”
In April, 1945, with Russian troops about to capture Berlin, Hitler, 50 feet below ground in a fortified bunker, blamed his defeat on the Germans who had given him their unconditional loyalty for 12 years.
For egomaniacal tyrants, blame always falls on others.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Social commentary on October 18, 2017 at 12:06 am
When the movie, You’ve Got Mail appeared in 1998, no one needed to be told that America Online (AOL) would be prominently featured.
It was through AOL that the two main characters in this romantic comedy—Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan—found offline happiness through an online romance.
The film was aptly timed to boost AOL’s popularity. By 1997, about half of all American homes with Internet access had it through AOL.
Founded in 1983, AOL began began as a short-lived venture called Control Video Corporation (or CVC). Its sole product was an online service called GameLine for the Atari 2600 video game console.
Subscribers bought a modem from the company for $50 and paid a one-time $15 setup fee.
On May 24, 1985, Quantum Computer Services, an online services company, was founded by Jim Kimsey from the remnants of Control Video.
Kimsey changed the company’s strategy, and in 1985, launched a dedicated online service.
During the early 1990s, the average subscription lasted for about 25 months and accounted for $350 in total revenue. AOL greatly expanded its customer rolls by distributing free AOL trial disks through companies like The Good Guys and Circuit City. At one point, 50% of the CDs produced worldwide had an AOL logo.
By 1997, about half of all U.S. homes with Internet access had it through AOL.
AOL’s Silicon Valley branch office
Over the next several years, AOL launched services with the a wide range of educational organizations, including:
- The National Education Association
- NPR
- The American Federation of Teachers
- National Geographic
- The Library of Congress.
A big draw for AOL customers was its “Instant Messenger” service. Launched in 1997, it allowed AOL members to “chat” with each other. No other online service had anything like it, and AOL refused to share the technology that made this possible.
(Eventually, an anti-monopoly lawsuit by the Justice Department forced AOL to share its “Instant Messenger” technology with its online rivals.)
By 1998, anyone with an Internet-connected computer could access AOL for free. Its revenues were now driven by ads companies eagerly paid to showcase their services or products.
In January 2000, AOL and Time Warner announced plans to merge, forming AOL Time Warner, Inc. AOL shareholders would own 55% of the new, combined company. The deal closed on January 11, 2001.
At the time, it seemed a merger made in heaven. It would supposedly allow Time Warner to digitise its content and reach out to a new online audience. And AOL would gain access to Time Warner’s cable systems, innovative broadband capability and additional content to provide to its 27 million customers.
Yet by 2002 the merger resulted in a net loss of $99 billion, the largest loss ever reported by a company. By 2009, the merger-marriage was over. Time Warner Chief Jeff Bawkes called it “the biggest mistake in corporate history.”
In June, 2017, AOL warned its customers that, starting in August, they would have to pay about $5 a month to access its services. The company was switching to a “new, improved” version called AOL Gold.
As usually happens when new software is launched, there were bugs all around in it. A complainant to the Pissed Consumer website wrote:
“If I have to pay I don’t want to see ads all over my mail, reading or when I’m writing. Send to later folder is all messed up. It seems to crash more & runs slower….
“I read an email & clicked on ‘mark unread’ when I tried to pull it back up I only got the heading but NOT the info. Trying to send email to a group of friends & being told there is a problem, but no idea what is wrong. I always used this group in my 9.8 desktop with no problems.”
And another customer wrote: “Aol gold sucks.90% of the time I get error to load account.”
A third customer: “Spent 4.5 hours waiting for aol gold to import my old pfc [Private Filing Cabinet–where emails are stored] only to find it imported the wrong version of my favorites…. Then spent 3.5 hours on a remote tech call where he repeatedly uninstalled and reinstalled gold with the same results.”
Other problems include:
- AOL shutting off immediately after sending an email
- The lack of a “Clear Toolbar History” function (as was available on the “old” AOL)
- The inability to transfer an image from the Internet (such as a beautiful seascape) to the desktop (another feature that was also available previously)
Customers who call AOL’ at (888) 265-3733 and press “1” for “support on your existing AOL account” automatically get transferred to the billing department. So anyone seeking technical help needs to press “2”.
But AOL apparently doesn’t have enough techs trained in its new Gold technology. So there is usually a long wait before one of them comes on the phone. This means that if you’re calling on a cell phone, you can easily run out of battery time before your problem is resolved.
Then, in early October, AOL announced that, on December 15, it would shut down its Instant Messenger service.
The reason: Competing “chat” systems—such as texting, Gchat and Facebook—have replaced Instant Messenger as go-to forms of communication.
Nor does AOL plan to replace its Instant Messenger service.
Perhaps only the movie business can rival AOL for sheer self-destructiveness. Once “the big dog on the block,” AOL now risks the fate of dogs sent to the pound.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on October 16, 2017 at 10:32 pm
It was September 26, 1960. The date of the first—and now legendary—Presidential debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon.
Robert F. Kennedy, who was managing his brother’s campaign, offered some blunt but effective debate-prep advice: “Kick him in the balls, Jack.”
John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy
As a result, Kennedy came out fighting—and stayed on the offensive throughout the debate. At one point, he said flat-out that the United States should overthrow the year-old Cuban regime of Fidel Castro.
Nixon knew there was a secret CIA plan under way to do just that, but couldn’t afford to say so in public. So he came out hard against such a proposal, saying it would alienate American allies throughout the Caribbean.
Nixon had been warned by Henry Cabot Lodge, his Vice Presidential running mate, to tone down his “assassin image.”
During the 1950s, as a colleague of Red-baiting Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, Nixon had made himself immune from the damning charge of “soft on Communism.”
And yet, pitted against a surprisingly aggressive Kennedy, he came off as decidedly second-best in standing up to the successor of Joseph Stalin.
The Kennedy-Nixon Debate
Commentators generally agreed that Nixon lost that first debate—the most-watched of the four. And it may have proved fatal to his electoral chances that year.
“Kick him in the balls, Jack.“
It’s advice that someone should have given to President Barack Obama. Not just before his October 3, 2012 debate with Mitt Romney, the Republican Presidential candidate, but at the start of his Presidency.
Romney came on strong from the outset and never let up. He attacked the President relentlessly. And he repeatedly ignored calls by the alleged moderator, Jim Lehrer, to stop because he had exceeded his time-limit.
The Obama-Romney Debate
But, surprisingly, Obama:
- Never called out Romney on any of the lies he had aimed at the President throughout more than a year’s worth of campaigning.
- Never demanded that Romney produce specifics about the programs he would cut.
- Never mentioned Bain Capitol, Romney’s private equity firm, as a job-killing corporate predator.
- Never attacked Romney for having personal assets in Swiss bank accounts.
- Never mentioned the infamous “47%” videotape in which Romney contemptuously wrote off almost half of the electorate.
Obama was a supremely decent and rational man. He seemed to believe that if he was decent and reasonable toward his sworn enemies, they, in turn, would treat him the same way.
They didn’t. And Obama repeatedly failed to learn the only possible lesson from it.
As a result, he endured relentless personal insults and the stonewalling of his legislation by Republicans in the House and Senate.
But it did not have to be that way.
More than 500 years ago, Niccolo Machiavelli, the Florentine patriot and statesman, offered this advice in The Prince, his primer on political science:
Niccolo Machiavelli
From this arises the question whether it is better to be loved than feared, or feared more than loved. The reply is, that one ought to be both feared and loved, but as it is difficult for the two to go together, it is much safer to be feared than loved.
For it may be said of men in general that they are ungrateful, voluble, dissemblers, anxious to avoid danger and covetous of gain. As long as you benefit them they are entirely yours.
They offer you their blood, their goods, their life and their children, when the necessity is remote. But when it approaches, they revolt.
And the prince who has relied solely on their words, without making other preparations, is ruined….
And men have less scruple in offending one who makes himself loved than one who makes himself feared.
For love is held by a chain of obligations which, men being selfish, is broken whenever it serves their purpose.
But fear is maintained by a dread of punishment which never fails.
Obama should have put this truth into practice at the start of his administration, through the example of South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson.
It was Wilson who yelled “You lie!” at the President during his September 9, 2009 health care speech to Congress.
Wilson later apologized, and Rahm Emannuel, Obama’s Chief of Staff, accepted the apology on the President’s behalf.
Instead, Obama could—and should—have sent this directive to all Federal agencies: “If you have to make cutbacks, make them first in the Congressional district of Joe Wilson.”
When military bases and hospitals and highway projects started disappearing from Wilson’s district, word would have quickly gotten around: Don’t screw with Obama.
And Republicans would have behaved accordingly.
During the Civil War, General William Tecumseh Sherman said of his Confederate enemies: “They cannot be made to love us, but they may be made to fear us.”
General William Texumseh Sherman
Obama won the election. But, for all his brilliance as a Harvard graduate, he failed to learn and apply this most essential lesson.
And that failure haunted him throughout his eight-year term.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on October 13, 2017 at 2:37 am
On July 30, 2016, Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump attacked the integrity of the parents of an Army captain who died heroically in Iraq in 2004.
For this, he took heavy fire from Democrats, veterans organizations and even his fellow Republicans.
But an even more damning assessment came from Niccolo Machiavelli, the 16th-century Florentine statesman whose two great works on politics—The Prince and The Discourses—remain textbooks for successful politicians more than 500 years later.
Niccolo Machiavelli
Throughout his campaign for President, Trump hurled insults at virtually every major segment of American society, including:
- Latinos
- Asians
- Muslims
- Blacks
- The Disabled
- Women
- Prisoners-of-War
These insults delighted his white, under-educated followers. But they alienated millions of other Americans who might have voted for him.
Donald Trump
Machiavelli, on the other hand, advised leaders to refrain from gratuitous insults:
- “I hold it to be a proof of great prudence for men to abstain from threats and insulting words towards any one.
- “For neither the one nor the other in any way diminishes the strength of the enemy–but the one makes him more cautious, and the other increases his hatred of you, and makes him more persevering in his efforts to injure you.”
And Trump’s reaction to the criticism he’s received?
“I can be Presidential, but if I was Presidential I would only have—about 20% of you would be here because it would be boring as hell, I will say,” Trump told supporters at a rally in Superior, Wisconsin.
For those who expected Trump to shed his propensity for constantly picking fights, Machiavelli had a stern warning:
- “…If it happens that time and circumstances are favorable to one who acts with caution and prudence he will be successful. But if time and circumstances change he will be ruined, because he does not change the mode of his procedure.
- “No man can be found so prudent as to be able to adopt himself to this, either because he cannot deviate from that to which his nature disposes him, or else because, having always prospered by walking in one path, he cannot persuade himself that it is well to leave it…
- “For if one could change one’s nature with time and circumstances, fortune would never change.”
Then there was Trump’s approach to consulting advisers:
Asked on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” who he consults about foreign policy, Trump replied;
“I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things.”
This totally contrasts with the advice given by Machiavelli:
- “A prudent prince must [choose] for his counsel wise men, and [give] them alone full liberty to speak the truth to him, but only of those things that he asks and of nothing else.
- “But he must be a great asker about everything and hear their opinions, and afterwards deliberate by himself in his own way, and in these counsels…comport himself so that every one may see that the more freely he speaks, the more he will be acceptable.”
And Machiavelli offered a related warning on the advising of rulers: Unwise princes cannot be wisely advised.
During the fifth GOP debate in the Presidential sweepstakes, host Hugh Hewitt asked Trump this question:
“Mr. Trump, Dr. [Ben] Carson just referenced the single most important job of the president, the command and the care of our nuclear forces. And he mentioned the triad.
“The B-52s are older than I am. The missiles are old. The submarines are aging out. It’s an executive order. It’s a commander-in-chief decision.
“What’s your priority among our nuclear triad?”
[The triad refers to America’s land-, sea- and air-based systems for delivering nuclear missiles and bombs.]
Nuclear missile in silo
Trump’s reply: “Well, first of all, I think we need somebody absolutely that we can trust, who is totally responsible, who really knows what he or she is doing. That is so powerful and so important.”
He then digressed to his having called the Iraq invasion a mistake in 2003 and 2004. Finally he came back on topic:
“But we have to be extremely vigilant and extremely careful when it comes to nuclear. Nuclear changes the whole ballgame.
“The biggest problem we have today is nuclear–nuclear proliferation and having some maniac, having some madman go out and get a nuclear weapon. I think to me, nuclear, is just the power, the devastation is very important to me.”
Which brings us back to Machiavelli:
- “…Some think that a prince who gains the reputation of being prudent [owes this to] the good counselors he has about him; they are undoubtedly deceived.
- “It is an infallible rule that a prince who is not wise himself cannot be well advised, unless by chance he leaves himself entirely in the hands of one man who rules him in everything, and happens to be a very prudent man. In this case, he may doubtless be well governed, but it would not last long, for the governor would in a short time deprive him of the state.”
All of which would lead Niccolo Machiavelli to warn, if he could witness American politics today: “This bodes ill for your Republic.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on October 10, 2017 at 3:25 pm
“One man with courage,” said frontier general Andrew Jackson, “makes a majority.”
Yet it’s amazing how many “heroes” come out of the woodwork only after the danger is safely past.
Joseph Stalin dominated the Soviet Union from 1928 to 1953. He held absolute power twice as long as Adolf Hitler–whose Third Reich lasted only 12 years.
Joseph Stalin
Above all, he was responsible for the deaths of at least 20,000,000 men, women and children:
- At the hands of the executioners of the NKVD (later named the KGB).
- In exile—usually in Siberia—in Soviet penal camps.
- Of man-made starvation brought on by Stalin’s forced “collective-farm” policies.
Then, the unthinkable happened: Stalin finally died on March 5, 1953.
Almost three years later—on February 25, 1956—Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, shocked the 20th Party Congress of the Soviet Union with a bombshell announcement:
Stalin—the “Wise Leader and Teacher”—had been a murderous despot.
Among his crimes:
- He had created a regime based on “suspicion, fear and terror.”
- His massive purges of the officer corps had almost destroyed the Red Army–thus inviting Hitler’s 1941 invasion, which killed at least 20 million Soviet citizens.
- He had allied himself with Hitler in 1939 and ignored repeated warnings of the coming Nazi invasion.
Naturally, Khrushchev didn’t advertise the role he had played as one of Stalin’s most trusted and brutal henchmen.
Over the ensuing years, many of the statues and portraits of Stalin that had dotted the Soviet Union like smallpox scars were quietly taken down. The city of Stalingrad—which Stalin had renamed from its original name of Tsaritsyn—became Volgograd.
Then, in 1961, Stalin’s corpse was removed from its prominent spot in the Lenin mausoleum and reburied in a place for lesser heroes of the Russian Revolution.
The young poet, Yevgeney Yevtushenko, noted the occasion in his famous poem, “The Heirs of Stalin.” Its gist: Stalin the tyrant was dead, but his followers still walked the earth—and lusted for a return to power.
Something similar happened in the United States around the same time.
From 1950 to 1954, Wisconsin Republican Senator Joseph R. McCarthy terrorized the nation, accusing anyone who disagreed with him of being a Communist—and leaving ruined lives in his wake.
Joseph R. McCarthy
Among those civilians and government officials he slandered as Communists were:
- President Harry S. Truman
- President Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow
- Secretary of State George C. Marshall
- Columnist Drew Pearson
Finally, in 1954, McCarthy overreached himself and accused the U.S. Army of being a hotbed of Communist traitors. Joseph Welch, counsel for the Army, destroyed McCarthy’s credibility in a now-famous retort:
“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?”
Later that year, the Senate censured McCarthy, and he rapidly declined in power and health.
Senatorial colleagues who had once courted his support now avoided him.
They left the Senate when he rose to speak. Reporters who had once fawned on him for his latest sensational slander now ignored him.
Eisenhower—who had sought McCarthy’s support during his 1952 race for President—joked that “McCarthyism” was now “McCarthywasm.”
Fast-forward to October 9, 2017—and the current blood-feud between President Donald Trump and Tennessee’s United States Senator, Bob Corker.
During Trump’s 2016 Presidential campaign, Corker—a highly-respected figure within the Republican establishment—threw his support behind Trump. Even more importantly, he did so when few other Republican establishment figures were willing to do so.
Bob Corker
As a result, when Trump won the election, he was reported to be considering Corker for Secretary of State.
But then Corker committed the unthinkable sin against Trump: He actually criticized him.
“They are in a downward spiral right now and have got to figure out a way to come to grips with all that’s happening,” Corker told reporters in May, amid a series of administration scandals.
And, on August 17, Corker said: “The President has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful.”
Then, on September 27, 2017, Corker announced he was considering retiring from the Senate—to which he had been elected in 2006.
On October 4, Corker told reporters: “I think Secretary Tillerson, Secretary Mattis and Chief of Staff Kelly are those people that help separate our country from chaos, and I support them very much.”
Trump then attacked Corker via Twitter: “Senator Bob Corker ‘begged’ me to endorse him for re-election in Tennessee. I said ‘NO’ and he dropped out (said he could not win without…”
To which Corker—also via Twitter—responded: “It’s a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.”
According to widespread news reports, many other Republicans share Corker’s low opinion of Trump. And they fear—like Corker—that Trump—through his repeated insults to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un—is catapulting America toward World War III.
But they haven’t been willing to share those views publicly—because they fear that Trump—and his legions of fanatical voters—will turn on them.
As the Russian poet Yevgeney Yevtushenko put it: Our descendants will be ashamed to recall a time when simple honesty was labeled courage.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on October 9, 2017 at 12:04 am
If Donald Trump ever read The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli, the Florentine statesman, he’s decided he doesn’t need it. And his ever-falling popularity among Americans clearly proves his mistake.
First published in 1532, The Prince lays bare the qualities needed by a successful political leader. At the top of this list must be creating and preserving a sense of his own dignity. Thus, he must appear to be a combination of mercy, faith, integrity, humanity and religion.
As Machiavelli puts it:
A prince must take great care that nothing goes out of his mouth which is not full of the above-named five qualities, and he should seem to be all mercy, faith, integrity, humanity and religion.
Since taking office on January 20, Trump has violated Machiavelli’s injunction on integrity with a vengeance. He has been caught in repeated falsehoods–so many, in fact, that the New York Times gave over its June 23 front page to a story headlined: “Trump’s Lies.”
According to the Times, Trump “told public falsehoods or lies every day for his first 40 days.”
“There is simply no precedent,” went the Times‘ opinion piece, “for an American president to spend so much time telling untruths. Every president has shaded the truth or told occasional whoppers.
“No other president—of either party—has behaved as Trump is behaving. He is trying to create an atmosphere in which reality is irrelevant.”
Donald Trump
Machiavelli also advises:
[He] must contrive that his actions show grandeur, spirit, gravity and fortitude….
It’s hard to convey those qualities in a series of 140-character rants on Twitter. Yet, from the start of his Presidency, Trump has put his ambitions, excuses and rants on social media.
As CNN Political Analyst Julian Zelizer outlined in a July 3 article:
“Putting aside the specific content of the recent blasts from the Oval smart phone, the President’s ongoing Twitter storms make all leaders uneasy. The heads of government in most nations prefer a certain amount of predictability and decorum from other heads of state.
“To have one of the most powerful people in the room being someone who is willing to send out explosive and controversial statements through social media, including nasty personal attacks or an edited video of him physically assaulting the media, does not make others….feel very confident about how he will handle deliberations with them.”
Trump’s apologists have fiercely defended his tweetstorms, claiming they allow him to bypass the media and “communicate directly with the American people.”
On October 8, Trump attacked retiring Tennessee United States Senator Bob Corker on Twitter:
“Senator Bob Corker ‘begged’ me to endorse him for re-election in Tennessee. I said ‘NO’ and he dropped out (said he could not win without…”
“..my endorsement). He also wanted to be Secretary of State, I said “NO THANKS.” He is also largely responsible for the horrendous Iran Deal!”
“…Hence, I would fully expect Corker to be a negative voice and stand in the way of our great agenda. Didn’t have the guts to run!”
Corker decided to give Trump a taste of his own Twitter medicine: “It’s a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.”
Later that day, Corker told The New York Times: “He concerns me. He would have to concern anyone who cares about our nation.
“I know for a fact that every single day at the White House, it’s a situation of trying to contain him,”
And Todd Womack, Corker’s chief of staff, flatly called Trump a liar: “The president called Senator Corker on Monday afternoon and asked him to reconsider his decision not to seek reelection and reaffirmed that he would have endorsed him, as he has said many times.”
Machiavelli urged rulers to safeguard their reputations:
Niccolo Machiavelli
…A prince must show himself a lover of merit, give preferment to the able, and honor those who excel in every art.
Besides this, he ought, at convenient seasons of the year, to keep the people occupied with festivals and shows….mingle with them from time to time, and give them an example of his humanity and munificence, always upholding, however, the majesty of his dignity, which must never be allowed to fail in anything whatever.
Rulers who disregard this advice do so at their peril:
A prince need trouble little about conspiracies when the people are well disposed. But when they are hostile and hold him in hatred, then he must fear everything and everybody….
…[The Roman Emperor Commodus], being of a cruel and bestial disposition, in order to…exercise his rapacity on the people, he sought to favor the soldiers and render them licentious.
On the other hand, by not maintaining his dignity, by often descending into the theater to fight with gladiators and committing other contemptible actions…he became despicable in the eyes of the soldiers. And being hated on the one hand and despised on the other, he was conspired against and killed.
Donald Trump has repeatedly violated these lessons. It remains to be seen if he will pay a price for doing so.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on October 6, 2017 at 12:08 am
In peace, sons bury fathers, but in war fathers bury sons.
—Herodotus
Among the major accomplishments of the National Rifle Association:
- The NRA has steadfastly defended the right to own Teflon-coated “cop killer” bullets,” whose only purpose is to penetrate bullet-resistant vests worn by law enforcement officers or those under protection.
- The NRA and its lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action, is responsible for the “stand-your-ground” ordinances now in effect in more than half the states. These allow for the use of deadly force in self-defense, without any obligation to attempt to retreat first.
- In 2012, the NRA rushed to the defense of accused murderer George Zimmerman, the self-appointed “community watchman” who ignored police orders to stop following 17-year-old Trayvon Martin and ended up shooting him.
- Police did not initially charge Zimmerman because of Florida’s “Stand-Your-Ground” law, which the NRA had rammed through the legislature.
George Zimmerman
- On February 26, 2012, Zimmerman shot unarmed Trayvon Martin, who was wearing a “hoodie.” In March, the NRA issued its own version of a “hoodie”—the Concealed Carry Hooded Sweatshirt, designed to hide firearms. Selling on the NRA’s website for $60 to $65, it is advertised thusly:
- “Inside the sweatshirt you’ll find left and right concealment pockets. The included Velcro®-backed holster and double mag pouch can be repositioned inside the pockets for optimum draw. Ideal for carrying your favorite compact to mid-size pistol, the NRA Concealed Carry Hooded Sweatshirt gives you an extra tactical edge, because its unstructured, casual design appears incapable of concealing a heavy firearm – but it does so with ease!” http://www.nrastore.com/nrastore/ProductDetail.aspx?c=11&p=CO+635&ct=e
- Anyone—including convicted criminals—can buy these “hide-a-gun” sweatshirts, putting both the public and law enforcers at deadly risk.
- The NRA often claims that millions of law-abiding citizens defend themselves with guns every year. But the FBI has determined that, of the approximately 11,000 gun homicides every year, fewer than 300 are justifiable self-defense killings.
- The NRA supports loopholes that allow criminals to buy guns without background checks and allow terrorists to buy all the AK-47s they desire.
- The NRA’s executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, tried to defeat Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. Yet the President had meekly signed legislation allowing guns to be brought into national parks and onto Amtrak trains. Since becoming Chief Executive, he made no effort to curb gun violence.
- High-capacity magazines were prohibited under the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban. It expired in 2004. The NRA—aided by the George W. Bush administration and Republicans generally—easily overcame efforts to renew the ban.
- Political scientist Robert Spitzer, author of the book The Politics of Gun Control, notes that since the passage of the 1993 Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act and the assault weapons ban in 1994, state and national laws have been drifting toward more open gun access:
- “In 1988, there were about 18 states that had state laws that made it pretty easy for civilians to carry concealed hand guns around in society. By 2011, that number [was] up to 39 or 40 states having liberalized laws, depending on how you count it, and the NRA has worked very diligently at the state level to win political victories there, and they’ve really been quite successful.”
- On January 8, 2011, Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head while meeting with constituents outside a Tucson, Arizona, grocery store. Also killed was Arizona’s chief U.S. District judge, John Roll, who had just stopped by to see his friend Giffords after celebrating Mass. The total number of victims: six dead, 13 wounded. Severely brain-damaged, Giffords was forced to resign her Congressional seat.
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords after being shot
- “The NRA’s response to the Tucson shootings has been to say as little as possible and to keep its head down,” said Spitzer. “And their approach even more has been to say as little as possible and to simply issue a statement of condolence to the families of those who were injured or killed and to wait for the political storm to pass over and then to pick up politics as usual.”
- This has, in fact, been the NRA’s response to every subsequent mass shooting—including the October 1 massacre of 59 concertgoers and the wounding of more than 500 others.
- In the spring of 2012, the House Oversight Committee prepared to vote on whether to hold U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt for allegedly refusing to provide documents related to “Fast and Furious.” This was an undercover operation launched by the Bush administration to track firearms being sold to Mexican drug cartels.
- The NRA notified Congressional members that how they voted would reflect how the NRA rated them in “candidate evaluations” for the November elections. This amounted to blatant extortion—a crime under Federal law—since the NRA had long accused Holder of having an “anti-gun” agenda.
Ultimately, the aim of the NRA is an America where any place, anytime, can be turned into the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral – October 26, 1881
And that is precisely what the United States is fast becoming.
Except, so far, the vast majority of victims have not been armed gunfighters but unarmed innocents. And it’s been the “gun rights” types whom the NRA supports who have done the killing.
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PATRIOTISM IS OUT, GREED IS IN: PART TWO (END)
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on October 25, 2017 at 12:42 amPresident Donald Trump was furious.
Nordstrom department store had just dared to drop the clothing and accessories lines of his daughter, Ivanka.
So, true to form, on February 8 he took to Twitter to vent his displeasure: “My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person—always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!”
Donald Trump
He used his personal Twitter account—@realDonaldTrump—to send this message. In fact, he sent it 21 minutes into his daily Intelligence briefing.
Still not satisfied, he retweeted his attack on Nordstrom on his official POTUS (President of the United States) Twitter account.
In short, he used a taxpayer-funded account to benefit his daughter.
Not content to attack Nordstrom by himself, Trump enlisted other members of his administration as assailants.
One of these was his press secretary, Sean Spicer:
“There’s a targeting of her brand and it’s her name. She’s not directly running the company. It’s still her name on it. There are clearly efforts to undermine that name based on her father’s positions on particular policies that he’s taken. This is a direct attack on his policies and her name. Her because she is being maligned because they have a problem with his policies.”
Sean Spicer
Nordstrom retorted that its decision to drop the Ivanka Trump line was “based on performance.”
“Over the past year, and particularly in the last half of 2016, sales of the brand have steadily declined to the point where it didn’t make good business sense for us to continue with the line for now.
“We’ve had a great relationship with the Ivanka Trump team. We’ve had open conversations with them over the past year to share what we’ve seen and Ivanka was personally informed of our decision in early January.”
But for the Trumpinistas, that wasn’t the end of it.
On Februrary 9, Kelleyanne Conway, a senior adviser to Trump, became a TV shill for Ivanka.
Kelleyanne Conway
Appearing on the Right-wing Fox News Channel program, “Fox and Friends,” Kelleyanne spoke from no less prestigious a forum than the White House itself:
“Go buy Ivanka’s stuff. I hate shopping and I’m going to go get some myself today. It’s a wonderful line. I own some of it. I’m going to give a free commercial here. Go buy it today, everybody. You can find it online.”
For Democrats—and even some Republicans—Conway’s behavior was simply unacceptable.
Maryland Democratic Congressman Elijah E. Cummings, a member of the the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sent a letter to Utah Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz, who chairs the committee.
In it, he requested a referral to the Office of Government Ethics for possible disciplinary action against Conway.
The office does not have investigative or enforcement authority, but officials there can contact and provide guidance to other enforcement agencies.
Chaffetz told the Associated Press that Conway’s behavior was “wrong, wrong, wrong, clearly over the line, unacceptable.”
Larry Noble, the general counsel of the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan organization of election law experts, said Trump’s tweet was “totally out of line.”
“He should not be promoting his daughter’s line, he should not be attacking a company that has business dealings with his daughter, and it just shows the massive amount of problems we have with his business holdings and his family’s business holdings,” Noble said.
Kathleen Clark, a government ethics expert, said the Nordstrom tweet could make other retailers hesitate to drop the Ivanka Trump brand. They may fear being similarly attacked by the President.
“The implicit threat was that he will use whatever authority he has to retaliate against Nordstrom, or anyone who crosses his interest,” said Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis.
* * * * *
In 1969, 25-year-old Joe McGinnis became famous overnight with the publication of his first book, The Selling of the President.
At the time, Americans were shocked to learn how Presidential candidate Richard Nixon had been sold to voters like any other product. In fact, the original book jacket featured Nixon’s face on a pack of cigarettes.
Today, Madison Avenue doesn’t simply sell Americans their Presidents. Now—with Donald J. Trump—Americans have a President determined to turn the White House into Trump, Inc.
A single example will serve to illustrate:
On January 27, Trump signed an executive order that:
Three countries not covered by Trump’s travel ban are Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Turkey.
Approximately 3,000 Americans have been killed by immigrants from these countries—most of them during the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
Not-so-coincidentally, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Turkey are all countries where President Trump has close business ties. His properties include two luxury towers in Turkey and golf courses in the United Arab Emirates.
The full dimensions of Trump’s holdings throughout the Middle East aren’t known because he has refused to release his tax returns.
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