Posts Tagged ‘TREASON’
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 28, 2019 at 12:14 am
On March 4, 2017, less than two months after taking office as President, Donald Trump—offering absolutely no evidence—accused former President Barack Obama of illegally tapping his Trump Tower phones prior to the election:
“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!”
A subsequent investigation by the Justice Department turned up no evidence to substantiate Trump’s foray into Presidential libel.
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,” said Gartner, who admitted he had not personally examined Trump.
Completely agreeing with that estimate was Bandy X. Lee, an assistant clinical psychiatry professor at the Yale School of Medicine.
She is 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 wrote, “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.”
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.
“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 may 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.
“We have people in Congress that hate our country.”
If you don’t agree 100% with Trump on everything, you’re a traitor.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 27, 2019 at 12:15 am
From the beginning of his Presidency, Donald Trump aroused fear—based not only of what he might do, but that he might be mentally unbalanced. Consider:
His egomania is literally stamped on his properties. Of the 515 entities he owns, 268 of them—52%—bear his last name. He often refers to his properties as “the swankiest,” “the most beautiful.”
Among the flattering references he’s made to himself:
- “My fingers are long and beautiful, as, it has been well documented, are various other parts of my body.”
- “I think the only difference between me and the other candidates is that I’m more honest and my women are more beautiful.”
- “My Twitter has become so powerful that I can actually make my enemies tell the truth.”
- “My IQ is one of the highest—and you all know it.”
Trump has never been charged with incest, but he’s repeatedly made sexually inappropriate comments about his daughter, Ivanka:
- “Yeah, she’s really something, and what a beauty, that one. If I weren’t happily married and, ya know, her father …
- ”When Trump appeared on the Dr. Oz Show, he was joined on stage by Ivanka. After they kissed, Dr. Oz said: “It’s nice to see a dad kiss his daughter.” Trump: “I kiss her every chance I get.” The remark was edited before the show aired.
- When asked how he would react if Ivanka, a former teen model, posed for Playboy, Trump replied: “I don’t think Ivanka would do that, although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.”
- “You know who’s one of the great beauties of the world, according to everybody? And I helped create her. Ivanka. My daughter, Ivanka. She’s six feet tall, she’s got the best body.”
I
Ivanka Trump
Trump delights in inflicting personal cruelties. 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.
The New York Times needed two full pages of its print edition to showcase them.
At his campaign rallies, he often encouraged Right-wing thugs to attack dissenters, even claiming he would pay their legal expenses.
As President, Trump has repeatedly used Twitter to attack hundreds of real and imagined enemies in politics, journalism, TV and films.
He has bullied and publicly insulted even White House officials and his own handpicked Cabinet officers:
- Trump waged a Twitter-laced feud against Jeff Sessions, his Attorney General. Sessions’ “crime”? Recusing himself from investigations into well-established ties between Russian Intelligence agents and members of Trump’s Presidential campaign. Trump fired him on November 7, 2018, the day after Democrats retook the House of Representatives in the mid-term elections.
- Trump repeatedly humiliated Chief of Staff Reince Priebus: “He’s like a little rat. He just scurries around.” At one meeting, Trump ordered him to kill a fly that was buzzing about. On July 28, 2017, six months after taking the job, Priebus resigned.
- Trump similarly tongue-lashed Priebus’ replacement, former Marine Corps General John Kelly. Trump was angered by Kelly’s efforts to limit the number of advisers who had unrestricted access to him. Kelly told colleagues he had never been spoken to like that during 35 years of military service—and wouldn’t tolerate it again.
- After Trump gave sensitive Israeli intelligence to Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, his national security advisor, H.R. McMaster, denied this had happened. Trump then contradicted McMaster in a tweet: “As president, I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled WH meeting) which I have the absolute right to do, facts pertaining to terrorism and airline flight safety.”
Donald Trump
This bullying has resulted in the highest turnover of White House staff in modern history.
Referencing Trump’s Presidency, Tom McCarthy, national affairs correspondent for the British newspaper, The Guardian, wrote on November 30, 2018:
“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.”
On March 4, 2017, less than two months after taking office as President, Trump—offering absolutely no evidence—accused former President Barack Obama of illegally 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!”
“How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on July 10, 2019 at 12:08 am
There were solid grounds for the Obama Justice Department to indict Donald Trump or invalidate the results of the 2016 election. Yet no action was taken.
Case #4: The Justice Department did not invalidate the results of the 2016 election, despite overwhelming evidence that Russia intervened to elect Trump as Vladimir Putin’s chosen candidate.
In July, 2016, the Russians hacked the Democratic committee’s servers—but not those of the Republican National Committee.
Admiral Michael Rogers, director of the National Security Agency (NSA) and US Cyber Command, said in mid-November, 2016, that Russia made “a conscious effort” to sway the results of the Presidential election by the hacking of 20,000 emails from the Democratic National Committee.
“There shouldn’t be any doubt in anybody’s mind,” said Rogers. “This was not something that was done casually. This was not something that was done by chance. This was not a target that was selected purely arbitrarily. This was a conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific effect.”
On December 16, 2016, FBI Director James B. Comey and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. agreed with a CIA assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election in part to help Donald Trump win the White House.
Case #5: The Justice Department did not prosecute Trump for treason, even though he solicited aid from Russia, a nation hostile to the United States. And no major official of the government—including President Obama—publicly condemned him as a traitor.
On July 9, 2016, high-ranking members of his 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.”
The purpose of that meeting: To gain access to any “dirt” Russian Intelligence could supply on Democratic Presidential Nominee Hillary Clinton.
Donald Trump
On July 22, 2016, Wikileaks released 19,252 emails and 8,034 attachments hacked from computers of the highest-ranking officials of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Early reports traced the leak to Russian hackers.
At a news conference in Doral, Florida on July 27, 2016, Trump publicly invited “Russia”—i.e., Vladimir Putin—to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails: “I will tell you this, Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Hours later, the Main Intelligence Directorate in Moscow targeted Clinton’s personal office and hit more than 70 other Clinton campaign accounts.
This was essentially treason—calling on a hostile foreign power to interfere directly in an American Presidential election. And it was seen as such by both Democrats and even Republicans:
- “This has to be the first time that a major presidential candidate has actively encouraged a foreign power to conduct espionage against his political opponent,” Hillary for America policy adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement. “That’s not hyperbole, those are just the facts. This has gone from being a matter of curiosity, and a matter of politics, to being a national security issue.”
- “I find those kinds of statements to be totally outrageous because you’ve got now a presidential candidate who is, in fact, asking the Russians to engage in American politics,” said former CIA Director Leon Panetta, a Clinton surrogate. “I just think that’s beyond the pale.”
- Brendon Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker Paul Ryan, said: “Russia is a global menace led by a devious thug. Putin should stay out of this election.”
Throughout 2016, the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency (NSA) found numerous ties between officials of the Trump Presidential campaign and Russian Intelligence agents. Among these were future Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, future National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and future Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
The discovery of such contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russian Intelligence agents led the FBI to launch an investigation into Russia’s efforts to influence the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election.
On October 7, 2016, The Washington Post leaked a video of Donald Trump making sexually predatory comments about women. Among his admissions: That he had aggressively tried to bed a married woman, and “when you’re a star….you can do anything. Grab them by the pussy.”
The story rocked the Trump campaign—and threatened to upend it. Then it was eclipsed by an even bigger story.
Eleven days before the November 8 election, FBI Director James Comey announced that he was re-opening an investigation he had closed on Hillary Clinton’s emails on a private server while she was Secretary of State.
That announcement erased widespread outrage over Trump’s unintended admissions of predatory behavior toward women and reversed Clinton’s growing lead in the polls.
Yet the Bureau has never issued similar statements about the continuing reports of close ties between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, and Trump’s history of investments in Russia.
To their shame, no one from the Obama administration—including the President himself—has apologized for failing to take action against these abuses.
And, to their shame, the news media has failed to indict them for their criminal negligence.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on July 9, 2019 at 12:06 am
There were at least five instances when the Obama administration could have disqualified Donald Trump as a Presidential candidate—or secured his indictment. Yet it did neither.
Case #2: The Justice Department did not indict Trump for threats that he made—or inspired—against Republicans and Democrats throughout the 2016 campaign.
- On July 29, 2016, Roger Stone, a notorious Right-wing political consultant acting as a Trump strategist, told Breitbart News: “The first thing Trump needs to do is begin talking about [voter fraud] constantly. If there’s voter fraud, this election will be illegitimate, the election of the winner will be illegitimate, we will have a constitutional crisis, widespread civil disobedience, and the government will no longer be the government.”
- At a town hall meeting where Trump’s Vice Presidential nominee Mike Pence appeared, a woman named Rhonda said: “For me personally, if Hillary Clinton gets in, I myself am ready for a revolution.”
- In Cincinnati, a Trump supporter threatened to forcibly remove Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, from the White House if she won the race: “If she’s in office, I hope we can start a coup. She should be in prison or shot. That’s how I feel about it,” said Dan Bowman, a 50-year-old contractor. “We’re going to have a revolution and take them out of office if that’s what it takes. There’s going to be a lot of bloodshed. But that’s what it’s going to take….”
Even Fergus Cullen, former chairman of the New Hampshire GOP, expressed fear of what might happen if Trump lost the election:
Fergus Cullen
“That’s really scary,” Cullen said, recounting the violence at Trump rallies around the country leading up to the Republican National Convention. “In this country, we’ve always had recriminations after one side loses. But we haven’t had riots. We haven’t had mobs that act out with violence against supporters of the other side.
“There’s no telling what his supporters would be willing to do at the slightest encouragement from their candidate,” he said.
Trump even began encouraging his mostly white supporters to sign up online to be “election observers” to stop “Crooked Hillary from rigging this election.” He urged them to act as poll watchers in “other” [non-white] communities to ensure that things are “on the up and up.”
Many of his supporters promised to do so.
“Trump said to watch your precincts. I’m going to go, for sure,” said Steve Webb, a 61-year-old carpenter from Fairfield, Ohio.
“I’ll look for…well, it’s called racial profiling. Mexicans. Syrians. People who can’t speak American,” he said. “I’m going to go right up behind them. I’ll do everything legally. I want to see if they are accountable. I’m not going to do anything illegal. I’m going to make them a little bit nervous.”
Knowing that large numbers of angry—and possibly armed—Right-wingers planned to descend on polling places could only have had a chilling effect on untold numbers of Democratic voters. And this would have been especially true in heavily conservative states.
Both the USA Patriot Act and the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act have statutes dealing with making terrorist threats against government institutions to influence their members.
President George W. Bush signing the USA Patriot Reauthorization Act of 2005
If Trump’s remarks did not violate one or both of those laws, certainly remarks made by his surrogates did.
Thus, the Justice Department could have cited the Patriot Act in indicting Trump and/or any number of his followers for “activities that…appear to be intended…to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion [and]…occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.”
The Justice Department could have also demanded that the results of the election be invalidated on the basis that widespread voter and candidate intimidation played a massive role in it.
But of course this did not happen.
Case #3 Making threats against anyone under protection by the U.S. Secret Service is a felony. Yet Donald Trump was never held legally accountable by the Justice Department.
- On August 9, 2016, Trump told a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina: “Hillary [Clinton] wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment. If she gets to pick her [Supreme Court] judges, nothing you can do folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”
- Reacting to Trump’s “dog-whistle” threat against Clinton, Michael Hayden, former head of the CIA and National Security Agency (NSA) said: “Well, let me say if someone else said that outside of the hall, he’d be in the back of a police wagon now, with the Secret Service questioning him.”
Case #4: The Justice Department did not invalidate the results of the 2016 election, despite overwhelming evidence that Russia intervened to elect Trump as Vladimir Putin’s chosen candidate.
In October, 2016, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) issued a joint statement: The Russian government had directed the effort to subvert the 2016 Presidential election.
On December 16, 2016, FBI Director James B. Comey and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. agreed with a CIA assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election in part to help Donald Trump win the White House.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on July 8, 2019 at 12:03 am
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
So wrote Edmund Burke (1729-1797) the Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher. And history has repeatedly proved him right.
One such example was the rise of Adolf Hitler as Germany’s Fuhrer.
Writes historian Volker Ullrich, in his monumental new biography, Hitler: Ascent 1889–1939: “Historians have perennially tried to answer the question of whether Hitler’s rise to power could have been halted….
“There were repeated opportunities to end Hitler’s run of triumphs. The most obvious one was after the failed Putsch of November, 1923. Had the Munich rabble-rouser been forced to serve his full five-year term of imprisonment in Landsberg, it is extremely unlikely that he would have been able to restart his political career.”
But that didn’t happen.
Tried for and convicted of treason, he was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment.
At Landsberg Prison, in Bavaria. he was given a huge cell, allowed to receive unlimited visitors and gifts, and treated with deference by guards and inmates.
Nine months later, he was released on parole—by authorities loyal to the authoritarian Right instead of the newly-created Weimar Republic.
Hitler immediately began rebuilding the shattered Nazi party—and deciding on a new strategy to gain power. Disdaining armed force, he would win office by election—or intrigue.
On January 30, 1933, those intrigues bore fruit: Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany.
Future historians may one day write that what didn’t happen played at least as great a role in electing Donald Trump President as what actually did.
There were at least five instances where the Justice Department of President Barack Obama could have utterly changed the outcome of the 2016 election. Yet, for reasons still unknown, it chose to do nothing.
Donald Trump
Case #1: The Obama Justice Department did not indict Trump and/or the Attorney Generals of Texas and/or Florida for their roles in the Trump University scandal.
- Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi personally solicited a political contribution from Donald 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. The money came from the Donald J. Trump Foundation.
- Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton moved to muzzle a former state regulator who says he was ordered in 2010 to drop a fraud investigation into Trump University for political reasons.
- Paxton’s office issued a cease and desist letter to former Deputy Chief of Consumer Protection John Owens after he made public copies of a 14-page internal summary of the state’s case against Donald Trump for scamming millions from students of his now-defunct real estate seminar.
- After the Texas case was dropped, Trump cut a $35,000 check to the gubernatorial campaign of then-attorney general and now Texas Governor Greg Abbott.
But New York’s Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman, pressed fraud claims against Trump—and forced the real estate mogul to settle the case out of court for $25 million on November 18, 2016.
There have been no press reports that the Justice Department investigated these cases to determine if Trump violated the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act statutes.
If the Justice Department did not investigate these cases, it should have. And if he did violate the RICO statutes, he should have been indicted, even as a Presidential candidate or President-elect.
Even if an indictment had not produced a conviction, the mere bringing of one would have cast an unprecedented cloud over his candidacy—let alone his being sworn in as President.
Case #2: The Justice Department did not indict Trump for the series of threats that he made—directly and indirectly—against Republicans and Democrats throughout the 2016 campaign.
Threatening political opponents with violence is a crime under Federal law. Yet making threats against his Republican and Democratic opponents played a major role in Trump’s Presidential campaign.
- On March 16, he warned Republicans that if he didn’t win the GOP nomination in July, his supporters would literally riot: “I think you’d have riots. I think you would see problems like you’ve never seen before. I think bad things would happen. I really do. I wouldn’t lead it, but I think bad things would happen.”
- An NBC reporter summed it up as: “The message to Republicans was clear on [March 16]: ‘Nice convention you got there, shame if something happened to it.’”
- That Republicans clearly saw this as a threat is undeniable. Paul Ryan, their Speaker of the House, said on March 17: “Nobody should say such things in my opinion because to even address or hint to violence is unacceptable.”
- Philip Klein, the managing editor of the Washington Examiner, wrote on the eve of the Republican National Convention in July: “Political commentators now routinely talk about the riots that would break out in Cleveland if Trump were denied the nomination, about how his supporters have guns and all hell could break loose, that they would burn everything to the ground. It works to Trump’s advantage to not try too hard to dispel these notions.”
2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, ABC NEWS, ALTERNET, AP, ARCHIBALD COX, BARACK OBAMA, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CIA, CNN, CRAIG UNGER, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOZ, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, DEVIN NUNES, DIANNE FEINSTEIN, DONALD TRUMP, DONALD TRUMP JR., DOUG COLLINS, FACEBOOK, FBI, FOX NEWS, GREG MILLER, HILLARY CLINTON, HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE, HOUSE OF TRUMP HOUSE OF PUTIN (BOOK), ISLAMIC STATE OF IRAQ AND SYRIA (ISIS), ISRAELI INTELLIGENCE, JAMES COMEY, JARED KUSHNER, JEFF SESSIONS, JERROLD NADLER, JOE SCARBOROUGH, LESTER HOLT, LINDSEY GRAHAM, MALCOM NANCE, MALCOM W. NANCE, MICHAEL FLYNN, MICHAEL ISIKOFF, MIKE PENCE, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NATALIA VESELNITSKAYA, NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NPR, OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE, PAUL MANAFORT, POLITICO, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, RAW STORY, REPUBLICAN PARTY, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, REX TILLERSON, RICHARD M. NIXON, ROBERT S. MUELLER 111, ROD ROSENSTEIN, RUSSIA, RUSSIAN ROULETTE (BOOK), SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE, SERGEY KISLYAK, SERGEY LAVROV, SLATE, SUPREME COURT, THE APPRENTICE (BOOK), THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE PLOT TO DESTROY DEMOCRACY (BOOK), THE WASHINGTON POST, TIME, TREASON, TRUMP TOWER MEETING, TWITTER, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF STATE, UPI, USA TODAY, VLADIMIR PUTIN, WILLIAM BARR
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 3, 2019 at 1:06 am
The appointment of Robert S. Mueller as Special Counsel aroused unprecedented hopes and fears.
Foes of President Donald Trump hoped that Mueller would unearth evidence of criminality—if not treason—blatant enough to guarantee his impeachment.
Supporters of Trump—starting with the President—feared that this would be the case. When Attorney General Jeff Sessions told Trump that a Special Counsel had been appointed, the President exclaimed, “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I’m fucked.”
Yet even before the release of the long-awaited Mueller report, several deeply-researched and well-written books outlined Russia’s efforts to subvert the 2016 Presidential race. And they cast devastating light on Trump’s loyalty to the United States.
Among these:
- The Apprentice: Trump, Russia and the Subversion of Democracy, by Greg Miller
- House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia, by Craig Unger
- Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump, by Michael Isikoff
- The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West, by Malcom W. Nance
According to its blurb on Amazon.com, The Apprentice is “based on interviews with hundreds of people in Trump’s inner circle, current and former government officials, individuals with close ties to the White House, members of the law enforcement and intelligence communities, foreign officials, and confidential documents.”
Among the subjects it covers:
- The Trump Tower meeting, where the Trump campaign sought “dirt” on Hillary Clinton from Russian Intelligence agents.
- The penetration by Russian Intelligence of computer systems used by Democrats.
- How Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, tried to set up a secret back channel to Moscow via Russian diplomatic facilities.
- Trump’s giving Russian officials highly classified secrets supplied by Israeli Intelligence;
- Trump’s clashes with the FBI and CIA.
Miller is a veteran investigative journalist and twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Among his stories: National security adviser Michael Flynn’s discussing U.S. sanctions with Russian officials prior to Trump’s inauguration. The story contributed to Flynn’s ouster.
Then there’s House of Trump, House of Putin, whose jacket blurb describes Trump’s inauguration as “the culmination of Vladimir Putin’s long mission to undermine Western democracy, a mission that he and his hand-selected group of oligarchs and Mafia kingpins had ensnared Trump in, starting more than twenty years ago with the massive bailout of a string of sensational Trump hotel and casino failures in Atlantic City.
“…Craig Unger methodically traces the deep-rooted alliance between the highest echelons of American political operatives and the biggest players in the frightening underworld of the Russian Mafia. He traces Donald Trump’s sordid ascent from foundering real estate tycoon to leader of the free world….
“Without Trump, Russia would have lacked a key component in its attempts to return to imperial greatness. Without Russia, Trump would not be president.”
As an appendix to the book, Unger writes: “Donald Trump has repeatedly said he has nothing to do with Russia. Below are fifty-nine Trump connections to Russia.”
Russian Roulette, according to its dust jacket, “is a story of political skullduggery unprecedented in American history. It weaves together tales of international intrigue, cyber espionage, and superpower rivalry.
“After U.S.-Russia relations soured, as Vladimir Putin moved to reassert Russian strength on the global stage, Moscow trained its best hackers and trolls on U.S. political targets and exploited WikiLeaks to disseminate information that could affect the 2016 election.
“The Russians were wildly successful and the great break-in of 2016 was no ‘third-rate burglary.’ It was far more sophisticated and sinister—a brazen act of political espionage designed to interfere with American democracy. At the end of the day, Trump, the candidate who pursued business deals in Russia, won….
“This story of high-tech spying and multiple political feuds is told against the backdrop of Trump’s strange relationship with Putin and the curious ties between members of his inner circle—including Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn—and Russia.”
Malcom Nance, the author of The Plot to Destroy Democracy, is an Intelligence and foreign policy analyst and media commentator on terrorism, intelligence, insurgency and torture.
In his book, he outlines how “Donald Trump was made President of the United States with the assistance of a foreign power.
“[It is] the dramatic story of how blackmail, espionage, assassination, and psychological warfare were used by Vladimir Putin and his spy agencies to steal the 2016 U.S. election—and attempted to bring about the fall of NATO, the European Union, and western democracy….
“Nance has utilized top secret Russian-sourced political and hybrid warfare strategy documents to demonstrate the master plan to undermine American institutions that has been in effect from the Cold War to the present day.
“Based on original research and countless interviews with espionage experts, Nance examines how Putin’s recent hacking accomplished a crucial first step for destabilizing the West for Russia, and why Putin is just the man to do it.”
These books—combined with the recently released Mueller report—clearly establish the damning conclusion: The man now sitting in the Oval Office is an illegitimate usurper, installed by an unholy alliance of American Fascists and Russian Communists.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 2, 2019 at 12:09 am
In the first installment of this series, four examples were listed of Donald Trump’s treason against the United States. Here are four more:
EXAMPLE #5: On January 20, 2017—the day Donald J. Trump became the 45th President of the United States—Michael Flynn took office as the nation’s 25th National Security Adviser.
Flynn, a former United States Army lieutenant general and director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, seemed the perfect choice for safeguarding the country’s security.
Two days later, The Wall Street Journal reported that Flynn was under investigation by U.S. counterintelligence agents for his secret communications with Russian officials.
On February 8, Flynn denied having spoken to Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in December, 2016, about removing the sanctions placed on Russia by the outgoing Obama administration.
The sanctions had been placed in retaliation for Russia’s efforts to manipulate the 2016 Presidential election.
On February 13, The Washington Post reported that Acting Attorney General Sally Yates had warned Trump in late January that Flynn had lied about his contacts with Kislyak—and that he could be blackmailed by Russian Intelligence.
Sally Yates
Flynn was forced to resign that same day—after only 24 days as National Security Adviser.
Officially, the reason given was that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence. But Flynn’s deception had already been known—via the warning to Trump by Yates.
Only after Yates’ warning became known to the media was Flynn forced to resign.
The same Washington Post story reported that, in December, 2015, he had appeared on Russia Today, the news network that American Intelligence agencies consider “the Kremlin’s principal international propaganda outlet.”
He had also received more than $45,000 as a “speaking fee” from the network for a talk on world affairs. At the gala where Flynn received the fee, he sat next to Russian President Vladimir Putin for dinner.
Flynn did not file the required paperwork for the trip. Nor did he report the “fee” to the Pentagon.
On December 1, 2017, Flynn appeared in federal court to formalize a deal with Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III. He plead guilty to a felony count of “willfully and knowingly” making “false, fictitious and fraudulent statements” to the FBI
EXAMPLE #6: On May 9, 2017, President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey for investigating Russia’s subversion of the 2016 Presidential race.
There were four reasons for this:
- Comey had refused to pledge his personal loyalty to Trump. Trump had made the “request” during a private dinner at the White House in January.
- Comey told Trump that he would always be honest with him. But that didn’t satisfy Trump’s demand that the head of the FBI act as his personal secret police chief—as was the case in the former Soviet Union.
- Trump had tried to coerce Comey into dropping the FBI’s investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, for his secret ties to Russia and Turkey. Comey had similarly resisted that demand.
- Comey had recently asked the Justice Department to fund an expanded FBI investigation into well-documented contacts between Trump’s 2016 Presidential campaign and Russian Intelligence agents.The goal of that collaboration: To elect Trump over Hillary Clinton, a longtime foe of Russian President Putin.
James Comey
EXAMPLE #7: On May 10, Trump met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the Oval Office—and gave them highly classified Israeli Intelligence about an Islamic State plot to turn laptops into concealable bombs.
Kislyak is reportedly a top recruiter for Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence agency. He has been closely linked with Jeff Sessions, then Attorney General, and fired National Security Adviser Mike Flynn.
“I just fired the head of the FBI,” Trump told the two dignitaries. “He was crazy, a real nut job. I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”
On May 11, Trump, interviewed on NBC News by reporter Lester Holt, said: “And in fact when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said ‘you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.'”
A national firestorm erupted—unprecedented since President Richard M. Nixon had fired Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox on October 20, 1973.
To squelch it, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein moved quickly.
On May 17, 2017, he appointed former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III to serve as Special Counsel for the United States Department of Justice.
Rosenstein charged Mueller to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump, and any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.”
EXAMPLE #8: On July 16, 2018, Trump attended a press conference in Helsinki, Finland, with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
There he blamed American Intelligence agencies—such as the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency—instead of Putin for Russia’s subversion of the 2016 Presidential election: “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 instead of attacking Trump for his treasonous behavior, Republicans in Congress and Right-wing Fox News relentlessly attacked Robert Mueller’s integrity and investigative methods.
2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, ABC NEWS, ALTERNET, AP, ARCHIBALD COX, BARACK OBAMA, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CIA, CNN, CRAIG UNGER, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOZ, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, DEVIN NUNES, DIANNE FEINSTEIN, DONALD TRUMP, DONALD TRUMP JR., DOUG COLLINS, FACEBOOK, FBI, FOX NEWS, GREG MILLER, HILLARY CLINTON, HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE, HOUSE OF TRUMP HOUSE OF PUTIN (BOOK), ISLAMIC STATE OF IRAQ AND SYRIA (ISIS), ISRAELI INTELLIGENCE, JAMES COMEY, JARED KUSHNER, JEFF SESSIONS, JERROLD NADLER, JOE SCARBOROUGH, LESTER HOLT, LINDSEY GRAHAM, MALCOM NANCE, MALCOM W. NANCE, MICHAEL FLYNN, MICHAEL ISIKOFF, MIKE PENCE, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NATALIA VESELNITSKAYA, NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NPR, OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE, PAUL MANAFORT, POLITICO, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, RAW STORY, REPUBLICAN PARTY, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, REX TILLERSON, RICHARD M. NIXON, ROBERT S. MUELLER 111, ROD ROSENSTEIN, RUSSIA, RUSSIAN ROULETTE (BOOK), SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE, SERGEY KISLYAK, SERGEY LAVROV, SLATE, SUPREME COURT, THE APPRENTICE (BOOK), THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE PLOT TO DESTROY DEMOCRACY (BOOK), THE WASHINGTON POST, TIME, TREASON, TRUMP TOWER MEETING, TWITTER, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF STATE, UPI, USA TODAY, VLADIMIR PUTIN, WILLIAM BARR
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 1, 2019 at 12:07 am
During a photo-op with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Osaka, Japan, President Donald Trump demonstrated how seriously he took American election security.
An NBC News reporter asked: Would you tell Putin not to meddle in the 2020 Presidential election?
“Yes, of course I will,” replied Trump, grinning. “Don’t meddle in the election, please.” And he jokingly wagged his finger at Putin: “Don’t meddle in the election.”
Putin grinned back.
Complaining about “fake news” journalists, Trump advised Putin: “Get rid of them. Fake news is a great term, isn’t it? You don’t have this problem in Russia, but we do.”
“We also have,” Putin assured Trump. “It’s the same.”
It was June 28, 2019. And it was the first meeting between Trump and Putin since the March 22 release of the Mueller Report—which documented Russia’s subversion of the 2016 Presidential election.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that there was “no collusion” between him and members of Russia’s Intelligence community. But Special Counsel Robert Mueller found that the President and his associates embraced the Kremlin’s assistance in the 2016 election and thwarted the inquiries that followed.
From the outset, Trump has acted like a guilty man desperate to stop an investigation before it uncovers the full extent of his criminality.
EXAMPLE #1 On July 9, 2016, high-ranking members of his 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.”
The purpose of that meeting: To gain access to any “dirt” Russian Intelligence could supply on Democratic Presidential Nominee Hillary Clinton.
Trump originally claimed that the meeting was “about the adoption of Russian children.” Eventually he admitted that it had been “a meeting to get information on an opponent.”
Donald Trump
EXAMPLE #2: On July 22, 2016, during his campaign for President, Trump said at a press conference in Doral, Florida: “Russia, if you are listening, I hope you are able to find the 33,000 emails that are missing [from Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s computer]. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
This was nothing less than treason—calling upon a foreign power, hostile to the United States, to interfere in its Presidential election.
Hours later, the Main Intelligence Directorate in Moscow targeted Clinton’s personal office and hit more than 70 other Clinton campaign accounts.
EXAMPLE #3: Throughout 2016, the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency (NSA) found numerous ties between officials of the Trump Presidential campaign and Russian Intelligence agents.
And many of those he appointed to office had strong ties to the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
One of these was Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. In 2013, as the chief executive of ExxonMobil, he was presented with Russia’s Order of Friendship award. He had just signed deals with the state-owned Russian oil company Rosneft. Its chief, Igor Sechin, is a loyal Putin lieutenant.
Rex Tillerson
Another such official was Attorney General Jeff Sessions. During the 2016 campaign, Sessions—then serving as a surrogate for Donald Trump’s campaign—twice spoke with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
But during his Senate confirmation hearings, Sessions denied that he had had “communications with the Russians” during the campaign.
The discovery of numerous contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russian Intelligence agents led the FBI to launch an investigation into Russia’s efforts to influence the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election.
EXAMPLE #4: Trump has repeatedly praised Russian President Vladimir Putin.
On December 18, 2015, Trump appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” Its host, Joe Scarborough, was upset by Trump’s praise for Putin:
SCARBOROUGH: Well, I mean, [he’s] also a person who kills journalists, political opponents, and invades countries. Obviously that would be a concern, would it not?
TRUMP: He’s running his country, and at least he’s a leader. Unlike what we have in this country.
SCARBOROUGH: But again: He kills journalists that don’t agree with him.
TRUMP: I think our country does plenty of killing, also, Joe, so, you know. There’s a lot of stupidity going on in the world right now, Joe. A lot of killing going on. A lot of stupidity. And that’s the way it is.
On October 7, 2016, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement blaming the Russian government for the hacking of Democratic National Committee emails. Its motive: “To interfere with the US election process.”
Two days later, Trump publicly stated: “But I notice, anytime anything wrong happens, they like to say the Russians are—Maybe there is no hacking. But they always blame Russia.”
On December 16, 2016, FBI Director James B. Comey and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. agreed with a CIA assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election in part to help Donald Trump win the White House.
Trump, however, steadfastly denied any such role by Russia: “I think it’s ridiculous,” he told “Fox News Sunday.” “I think it’s just another excuse. I don’t believe it….No, I don’t believe it at all.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 5, 2019 at 12:05 am
In his 2015 book, American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity, Christian G. Appy describes the way Americans saw their country before the war:
“The United States [was] a unique force for good in the world, superior not only in its military and economic power but in the quality of its government and institutions, the character and morality of its people, and its way of life…..
“It was still unimaginable to most Americans that their own nation would wage aggressive war and justify it with unfounded claims, that it would support undemocratic governments reviled by their own people, and that American troops would be sent to fight in countries where they were widely regarded not as liberators but as imperialist invaders.”
For millions of Americans, writes Appy, the Vietnam war forever shattered that tremendously appealing self-image.
Yet for millions more, the United States remains an exemplary nation with a divine mission to lead other nations—willingly or unwillingly—to follow its example. For these Americans, the corruption and dictatorships that plague many countries “can’t happen here.”
This refusal to accept the lessons of history blinds many Americans to the dangers posed by the Donald Trump Presidency.
Since assuming office on January 20, 2017, Trump:
- Repeatedly attacked the integrity of the American Intelligence community for confirming Russian subversion of the 2016 Presidential election—while siding with Russian President Vladimir Putin that this didn’t happen.
- Fired FBI Director James Comey for investigating that subversion.
- Fired Acting Attorney General Sally Yates after she warned him that National Security Adviser Michael Flynn had misled the FBI about his Russian contacts.
- Forced House Republicans to release a memo falsely accusing the FBI of pursuing a vendetta against him.
- Repeatedly attacked his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, for recusing himself from investigations into ties between Russian Intelligence agents and members of Trump’s 2016 Presidential campaign. On November 7, 2018, Trump fired him.
- Repeatedly attacked the integrity of the FBI, raising the possibility of his firing more of its senior leadership for investigating that subversion.
- Accused those who participated in that investigation of committing “treason”—as if he were the monarchical embodiment of the state.
- (The Constitution does not define “treason” as disloyalty to the President—or a private citizen, which Trump was when he ran for President. It defines “treason” as “levying war” against the United States, or giving “aid and comfort” to countries or entities that have declared war on the United States.)
- Attacked and alienated America’s oldest allies, such as Canada and Great Britain.
- Repeatedly praised brutal Communist dictators Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-Un.
- Falsely accused former President Barack Obama of illegally “spying” on his 2016 campaign.
- Repeatedly asked aides to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller—but was finally persuaded that this could lead to his impeachment.
- Slandered Federal judges whose rulings displeased him.
- Spoken admiringly of American Nazis and Ku Klux Klansmen.
- Shut down the United States Government for over a month, imperiling the lives of 800,000 Federal employees, to extort money from Congress for a worthless wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
- “Joked” that the United States—like China—should have a “President-for-Life.”
- Repeatedly attacked the free press as “the enemy of the people.”
- Encourages his followers to violently attack those he hates in the press. On July 2, 2017, he tweeted a video of himself punching a man with the CNN logo superimposed on his head during a WWE wrestling match.
- Used the Presidency to further enrich himself, in violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.
- By March 17, 2019, had said or tweeted 9,179 lies or misleading statements—an average of 11.6 lies a day.
- Requires his Cabinet members and lesser appointees to fawn over him with over-the-top flattery previously reserved for notorious dictators.
- Appointed William Bar as Attorney General to replace William Sessions—after Barr sent a fawning 20-page memo to the Justice Department criticizing the foundation of the Special Counsel investigation.
- Authorized Barr to investigate the Federal law enforcement and Intelligence agencies that legally investigated links between Russian Intelligence agents and members of Trump’s Presidential campaign.
- Plans to turn the traditional nonpartisan July 4 celebration on the National Mall into a Trump campaign rally that celebrates himself.
* * * * *
Donald Trump isn’t crazy, as many of his critics charge. Nor is he a political innocent who “simply doesn’t know better,” as his Republican allies have repeatedly claimed.
He knows exactly what he’s doing—and why.
He intends to strip every potential challenger to his authority—or his version of reality—of legitimacy with the public.
If he succeeds, there will be:
- No independent press to reveal his failures and crimes.
- No independent law enforcement agencies to investigate his abuses of office.
- No independent judiciary to hold him accountable.
- No independent military to dissent as he recklessly hurtles toward a nuclear disaster.
- No candidate—Democrat or Republican—to challenge him for re-election in 2020.
- No candidate—Democrat or Republican—to challenge his remaining in office as “President-for-Life.”
The absurd faith that “America is different from other great powers” brought us the Vietnam war—and the 58,000 needless dead that will forever be its legacy. Now that same faith threatens to bring us an absolute Right-wing dictatorship.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 4, 2019 at 12:05 am
“Who are we?” asks Christian G. Appy in the opening of his 2015 book, American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity.
For Appy, it’s impossible to understand the enormous impact of the Vietnam war on the United States without first understanding the image that Americans had of themselves before that conflict. And he describes that image as:
“The broad faith that the United States [was] a unique force for good in the world, superior not only in its military and economic power but in the quality of its government and institutions, the character and morality of its people, and its way of life…..
“It was still unimaginable to most Americans that their own nation would wage aggressive war and justify it with unfounded claims, that it would support undemocratic governments reviled by their own people, and that American troops would be sent to fight in countries where they were widely regarded not as liberators but as imperialist invaders.”
Appy contends that, for millions of Americans, the Vietnam war dealt a mortal blow to that tremendously appealing self-image.
Yet for millions more, the United States remains an exemplary nation with a divine mission to lead other nations—willingly or unwillingly—to follow its example. And those Americans become furious when anyone—especially a foreigner—dares question that belief.
On September 11, 2013, the New York Times published an Op-Ed (guest editorial) from Russian President Vladimir Putin, entitled: “A Plea for Caution from Russia: What Putin Has to Say to Americans About Syria.”
To no one’s surprise, Putin strongly opposed an American air strike on Syria. Its “President” (i.e., dictator) Bashir al-Assad, is a close ally of Russia. Just as his late father and dictator, Hafez al-Assad, was a close ally of the Soviet Union.
And Putin is a former member of the KGB, the infamous secret police which ruled the Soviet Union from its birth in 1917 to its collapse in 1991.
In his September 11 guest editorial in the New York Times, Putin offered the expected Russian take on Syria:
- Poison gas was used in Syria.
- It wasn’t used by the Syrian Army.
- “Opposition forces [used it] to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons.”
- “There are few champions of democracy in Syria. But there are more than enough [al] Qaeda fighters and extremists of all stripes battling the government.”
But it’s the concluding paragraph that enraged American politicians the most—especially Right-wing ones. In it, Putin took exception with American “exceptionalism.”
Referring to then-President Barack Obama, Putin wrote:
“And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is ‘what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.’
“It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too.
“We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.”
Vladimir Putin
Putin has never publicly shown any interest in religion. But by invoking “the Lord,” he was able to turn the Christian beliefs of his Western audience into a useful weapon.
Americans’ outrage quickly erupted.
“I was insulted,” then-House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told reporters when asked for his blunt reaction to the editorial.
“I have to be honest with you, I was at dinner, and I almost wanted to vomit,” said U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey).
Putin had dared to question the self-righteousness of American foreign policy—and those who make it.
Making his case for war with Syria, Obama had said: “America is not the world’s policeman….But when, with modest effort and risk, we can stop children from being gassed to death, and thereby make our own children safer over the long run, I believe we should act.
“That’s what makes America different. That’s what makes us exceptional. With humility, but with resolve, let us never lose sight of that essential truth.”
In short: Because we consider ourselves “exceptional,” we have the divine right to do whatever we want.
It’s not necessary to see Putin as a champion of democracy (he isn’t) to see the truth in this part of his editorial:
“It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation.”
From 1938 to 1969, the House Un-American Activities Committee sought to define what was “American” and what was “Un-American.” As if “American” stood for all things virtuous.
Whoever heard of an “Un-French Activities Committee”? Or an “Un-German” or “Un-British” one?
The late S.I. Hayakawa was a professor of semantics (the study of the relationship between words and what they stand for).
In his bestselling book, Language in Thought and Action, he observed that a person has four ways of responding to a message:
- Accept the speaker and his message.
- Accept the speaker but reject the message.
- Accept the message but reject the speaker.
- Reject the message and the speaker.
Americans might want to consider #3 where “American exceptionalism” is concerned.
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TRUMP’S INSANITY IS AMERICA’S REALITY: PART TWO (OF FOUR)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 28, 2019 at 12:14 amOn March 4, 2017, less than two months after taking office as President, Donald Trump—offering absolutely no evidence—accused former President Barack Obama of illegally tapping his Trump Tower phones prior to the election:
“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!”
A subsequent investigation by the Justice Department turned up no evidence to substantiate Trump’s foray into Presidential libel.
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:
“We’ve seen enough public behavior by Donald Trump now that we can make this diagnosis indisputably,” said Gartner, who admitted he had not personally examined Trump.
Completely agreeing with that estimate was Bandy X. Lee, an assistant clinical psychiatry professor at the Yale School of Medicine.
She is 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 wrote, “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.”
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.
“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 may 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.
“We have people in Congress that hate our country.”
If you don’t agree 100% with Trump on everything, you’re a traitor.
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