Trump's Big CON: The Donald is a Russian Agent, CONt. Part 6 (AKA the GOP Coverup)

Another MUST READ, the Washington Post, Republicans are desperate to protect Trump from Mueller. But will their strategy work?, which states in full:

"In their desperate attempt to protect President Trump from the Russia scandal and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation, sizable portions of the Republican Party have returned to a place they know well. It’s the home of intricate conspiracy theories, where nothing is as it seems and the most mundane pieces of information are proof of sinister machinations so shocking that any tactics are justified in order to expose them.

It’s a place where only those willing to believe the most outlandish and ludicrous tales are able to grasp reality and where the truth is a hundred times worse than you think. It’s a madhouse, and they’re moving right in.

As bizarre as this all sounds, there’s a logic to it. If these Republicans can convince the public not only that Trump and those around him did nothing wrong but also that he’s the target of a malevolent conspiracy, then nothing that Mueller or any news organization reveals needs to be believed. It can all be cast aside as fruit of that poisonous tree, no matter what the facts might say.

But will that strategy work? I’d argue that it will work to save Trump from impeachment but won’t work to protect him from the political fallout this November and in 2020.

First, let’s take a quick tour around the fever swamp. The first object of Republican fascination is a memo attacking the FBI that Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, has been circulating. Though Democrats describe it as an absurd collection of tendentious talking points, conservatives have begun a #ReleaseTheMemo campaign (with the help of Russian social media bots) in the hope of attracting as much attention to it as possible. They seem to believe that once it is made public, everyone will realize that the entire Russia investigation is a sham. Spoiler alert: They won’t.

Then there are the text messages sent by an FBI agent and an FBI lawyer — given to Congress by the Justice Department — that reveal that the two of them didn’t think particularly highly of Trump. This has been spun out into the preposterous idea that the FBI is the center of a liberal conspiracy to destroy the president, with the mundane words exchanged by the two employees plumbed for evidence of the dark forces at work.

In the latest twist, members of Congress found a text that made reference to a 'secret society,' which of course couldn’t have been a joke, since everyone knows secret societies all go around talking about how they’re secret societies. This one, Republicans are convinced, was organized inside the FBI to bring Trump down.

'It’s more than bias, but corruption at the highest levels of the FBI and that secret society,' said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). 'We have an informant that is talking about a group that were holding secret meetings off-site. There is so much smoke here, there is so much suspicion.'

Johnson did not mention whether the Illuminati or Dumbledore’s Army might have been involved, but oh boy are the conservative media eating it up. 'It may be time to declare war outright against the deep state and clear out the rot in the upper levels of the FBI and the Justice Department,' thundered Fox Business’s Lou Dobbs.

It is absolutely no surprise that Republicans, including members of Congress, have found their way to lunatic conspiracy theories on the Russia question. That’s because it’s what they always do. They insisted that Barack Obama was a Kenyan-born Muslim enacting a carefully laid plan to destroy the United States. They convinced themselves that Bill Clinton ran a drug-running operation out of an Arkansas airport and had dozens of his political adversaries murdered. They decided that Hillary Clinton and John Podesta were running a child sex ring out of a D.C. pizza restaurant. The president they revere has gushed praise on conspiracy radio host Alex Jones, who has said that 9/11 was an inside job and the massacre at Sandy Hook was staged with child actors.

Not all Republicans tumble down these rabbit holes, but there will always be substantial numbers of the Republican electorate, Republican media figures and Republican elected officials who do. Whether they actually believe this stuff isn’t really the point. To repeat, the purpose is to convince the public that anything that comes out of the Mueller investigation can be discounted and disbelieved, no matter how incriminating it seems.

Will people believe that? Some will. Fox News viewers get it hammered into their waiting eyes every night. Rush Limbaugh’s listeners get a daily education in the sinister plans of the deep state. Breitbart readers learn from Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R-Ariz.) that it all ties together: 'If you don’t think that Fast and Furious, if you don’t think that Benghazi, for the lack of accountability, if you don’t think the IRS and the unmasking are tied together with the weaponization of our Department of Justice and political advocates, think again.'

All that amounts to an insurance policy against impeachment. Because in order to stave impeachment off, you don’t have to convince all Americans that Trump is innocent of whatever charges Mueller raises. All you have to do is convince enough Republican members of Congress that their constituents (i.e., Republican voters) won’t stand for it. Those members of Congress might or might not think it’s all a liberal deep state conspiracy, but if they think their constituents believe it, they won’t support impeachment no matter what gets revealed.

But there’s a critical limitation to that strategy. It might keep Trump from getting impeached, but it won’t keep Republicans from getting crushed in November’s midterm elections. In fact, it may make a wave election more likely, by making Democratic voters more angry and appalled and therefore eager to turn out to vote. And it won’t help Trump get reelected, either. The more unhinged Trump’s defenders look, the more voters in the middle who took a risk and gave Trump a shot may regret it.

But all that’s too far in the future for the Republican conspiracy theorists. They have one goal now: protect Trump from Mueller. They might not succeed, but they’re going to go to any length to do it."

Trump's Big CON: It's 'Liars Lying to a Liar Who Believes the Lie'

UPDATE:  "For the second straight day Thursday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders fought back against Michael Wolff's Trump tell-all. And in doing do, she may have finally killed off what's left of irony in the White House briefing room.

'The president,' Sanders told reporters, 'believes in making sure that information is accurate before pushing it out as fact, when it certainly and clearly is not.'

Yes, we all know what a stickler Trump is for making sure what he says is accurate before he says it. It may be his defining trait.

In all seriousness, it's not just the nearly 2,000 false and misleading things Trump has said as president. It's that the White House and Trump himself have acknowledged that Sanders's standard doesn't really apply to them."

[W]hatever you think about Wolff's book — and there's plenty to be skeptical of — the White House long ago forfeited the moral high ground when it comes to pre-fact-checking.  [Link in original.]

Read the Washington Post, Sarah Huckabee Sanders kills irony dead, once and for all.

And speaking of feverish efforts to hide the truth, "[t]he president and the presidency are unraveling. Trump is unloved in his own house. A figure of ridicule, a theatrical creation, he is almost sympathetic. He was told by the greedy and the outright stupid that he would make a swell president. The Liar’s Paradox has spun out of control, with liars lying to a liar who believed the lie. What would that be called?

Fox News, I think."

Read the Washington Post, Trump and the liar’s paradox.

Don't forget, there is a database of the lies, updated regularly.

Trump's Big CON: Whatsoever a Man Soweth, That Shall He Also Reap (AKA Karma's a B**** Ain't It Republi-CONs)

UPDATE VI:  "Sexual harassment is not the sin of one party. We’ve seen liberals and conservatives alike caught up in the maelstrom of sexual assault and predation complaints. However, Democrats have an easier time dealing with revelations and an opportunity to seize the high ground in a time when voters are furious at politicians who wield power for their own interests.

Let’s begin with the proposition that not all allegations are equal. As David Frum put it, '[Sen. Al] Franken’s prank was cruel and humiliating. [Roy] Moore’s acts ‘if true’ rank among the worst crimes in the statute book. And the president is a confessed serial sexual assaulter, on the record.' That does not excuse Franken nor give him a pass to remain in the Senate (more about that in a moment), but support for Moore and/or President Trump necessitates either 1) willingness to disbelieve multiple women with detailed and similar accounts or 2) toleration of a pattern of sexual assault against multiple women over years. That is the position all Republicans who continue to support Trump are in, and, candidly, I’m surprised Democrats have not made a much bigger deal of this. . .

There are many ways to approach this, but the following seems appropriate for candidates and members of Congress:

An alleged sexual predator/abuser (whose actions are confirmed by reliable accusations and surrounding facts) should not be eligible for the party’s nomination in a House or Senate race. If elected, the person should be expelled from office by the Ethics Committee.

The party should do everything in its power, including support for a third candidate or a write-in, to prevent the alleged predator/abuser from winning.

If the conduct occurs in office, expulsion is the only appropriate remedy.

If the conduct predated the accused lawmaker’s time in office but is discovered once he is in office (as in the Franken situation), the Ethics Committee should consider a full range of options, including expulsion. At the very least, the accused should not be supported for reelection. Parties can and should expel individuals from the party, which is a voluntary association. They can deny anyone the privilege of caucusing with their party or getting assigned to committees.

Now, if that seems reasonable, why should the same standard not apply to the president? . .

Impeachment does not seem to be applicable to conduct before election that was known to voters (although more compelling evidence that comes to light in office might be considered). However, other actions, such as censure, are possible. And certainly Trump is unfit on multiple grounds and has committed conduct that should properly be considered in good faith as impeachable conduct. But at the very least, the GOP going forward cannot support for reelection a candidate against whom so many credible complaints of sexual predation have been launched. There is no moral justification for doing so. There is no political barrier to declaring that henceforth, people of Trump’s ilk cannot run under the GOP’s banner.

And that, you see, is the real difference between the parties. Republicans almost certainly won’t do any of that. Democrats can and should. One party can tolerate an alleged sexual predator, and the other can decide never to do so."

Read the Washington Post, Republican risk being defined as the party of sexual predators.

Read also the Washington Post, Sorry: There’s no equivalence between Republicans and Democrats on sexual harassment., which names the many women who have accused The Donald of sexual harassment or assault, and notes: "we should all be asking ourselves some very hard questions, not only about the people now in positions of power, but about how we’ve each thought about these issues in the past and what we want to change in the future. Democrats are doing that — perhaps imperfectly, and arriving at different answers of varying quality — but at least they’re grappling with it. Republicans, by and large, are doing anything but."

UPDATE V:  Another MUST READ: the Washington Post, Just how bad are Republicans?, which states in substantial part:

"It turns out that electing President Trump was not the apex of Republicans’ political insanity. Since last November, consider the Trump GOP’s track record:

The GOP’s idea of health-care reform was trying to remove millions of people from health-care coverage while giving tax cuts to the super rich. Having learned their lesson (not), Senate Republicans now support a tax bill that will remove millions of people from health-care coverage while giving tax cuts to the super rich — and to big corporations. . .

The GOP’s environmental agenda includes climate-change denial (despite the government’s own confirmation that climate change is real and man-made), lifting the ban on importing elephant trophies (the first sons are avid big-game hunters and Christmas is around the corner) and trying in vain to save the coal industry. Trump’s GOP has made China look like a leader in global environmental issues.

The GOP president now embraces (literally, I think) autocrats like the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte, applauds autocratic Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after a stolen election, barely if at all brings up human rights in China and Saudi Arabia, and has not a bad word to say about Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. The GOP now opposes multilateral trade deals (the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership) while China makes trade deals and the TPP countries forge a deal among themselves without the United States.

The GOP’s constitutional conservatism amounts to giving a totally unqualified nominee who hid a conflict of interest a lifetime federal court appointment. . .

The Trump GOP does not believe in fiscal responsibility nor in federalism (as evidenced by its attack on localities that don’t do the feds’ bidding on immigration enforcement) nor in legal immigration. It does, however, believe in mass deportation of “dreamers,” who came here illegally as children.

The GOP president believes 3 million to 5 million people voted illegally based on no evidence whatsoever but doesn’t think the Russians meddled in our election despite the unanimous findings of our intelligence services.

The GOP president does not believe the media should be able to write whatever it wants nor that a sheriff found in contempt of court for abusing the rights of suspected illegal immigrants should be convicted and punished.

The GOP-led Congress is content to tolerate Trump’s nepotism, massive conflicts of interest and possible receipt of foreign emoluments. It looks the other way as a president monetizes the office, hawking his properties at every opportunity.

This is not a party that can be described as coherent, sensible, respectful of the rule of law, dedicated to equal protection or grounded in reality — let alone conservative. Today’s GOP stands for a set of crackpot ideas, unworkable and unpopular policies and a president not remotely fit to remain in office. Some sunny optimists think the GOP can be saved. From our perspective, it’s not worth trying." [Emphasis added.]

UPDATE IV:  "With Republicans searching for a solution to having an Alabama Senate nominee who is accused of molesting a teenager, Roll Call’s David Hawkings reports that how Trump will address the situation has emerged as a “pivotal question” for the party. Trump has three options. He can side with the GOP establishment and call on Moore to step aside. He can stick to the White House’s previous middle-ground response, by saying Moore should abandon his candidacy only if it’s true that he did what his accusers claim. Or he can side with Moore, though this appears a remote possibility.

The problem is that, because of the peculiarities of this situation, it’s plausible that none of these options will prove a good one. . .

Trump cannot call on Moore to exit without raising questions as to why the charges against Moore are disqualifying while similar ones against him are nothing more than a fabrication created by a conspiracy between liberal elites and the “fake news” media.

In the end, there is a fair bit of poetic justice in Trump being stuck with this particular dilemma. Moore is feeding his voters a similar set of narratives about allegations against him that Trump has fed to his own voters for well over a year now. But Trump cannot call on Moore to step aside without undermining Moore’s efforts to pull the same scam — and putting his own agenda in serious peril." [Emphasis added.]

Read the Washington Post, The Roy Moore problem is now squarely on Trump.

UPDATE III: Do you doubt the accusers?

Read The New Yorker, Locals Were Troubled by Roy Moore’s Interactions with Teen Girls at the Gadsden Mall.

UPDATE II:  Read also the Washington Post, Ignore the spin. Trump and the GOP have made a devil’s bargain with Roy Moore., which notes that the aim of Trump and his syncophant media enablers is to confuse people about what happened and dissuade them from . . . [making] a judgment as to whose account is the more credible one."

UPDATE: "Roy Moore may or may not become a U.S. senator, but he was fortunate that the explosive allegations about him pursuing relationships with teenage girls (one as young as 14) while he was in his 30s emerged at a time in his party’s history when it had been preparing for years to defend something like this.

If Moore’s political ambitions survive, he’ll have President Trump — and the way the GOP, in service to Trump, abandoned any pretense of moral principle — to thank.

Moore is insisting that The Post’s story is all a bunch of lies engineered by people who want to silence Christians like him. He’s even using it as a fundraising tool, asking supporters to contribute so that he can fight back against 'the forces of evil' and 'The Obama-Clinton Machine’s liberal media lapdogs.'

But if you read the story, it’s almost impossible to believe it isn’t true. Our reporters found four different women, none of whom know each other, telling similar stories of Moore pursuing them when they were teenagers. They didn’t come forward themselves — the reporters, after hearing rumors that apparently had been circulating in Alabama for years, tracked them down and convinced them to share their stories. They have nothing to gain. Relatives and friends corroborate the stories. . .

[The GOP] response gets at two essential things about the GOP. The first is that for Republicans in 2017, there is no such thing as truth. There is only what you want to hear and wish to believe, and anything else can be ignored or explained away. This is the result of an epistemological project that dates back decades, most especially since the founding of Fox News in 1996. From the beginning, the ideology Fox pounded into the heads of Republicans was not only that the mainstream media are biased against them, but that anything the mainstream media says can be dismissed out of hand as nothing but lies, no matter how factual it might appear. The only thing you should believe is what you hear from conservative sources.

That belief system achieved its apotheosis with the nomination of Trump, the most promiscuous liar in American political history. After years of being fed a diet of insane stories about their political opponents — Bill and Hillary Clinton had dozens of their enemies murdered, Barack Obama was born in Kenya — they were perfectly happy to swallow whatever tripe Trump tossed at them. When you hear the phrase, “if it turns out to be true,” this is a line coming from a party that has waged a brutal and systematic assault on the very idea of objective truth.

The second vital feature of today’s GOP is that Trump has led Republicans to a place where there is essentially no behavior that they cannot countenance. This is certainly Trump’s fault. But we shouldn’t excuse Republicans — after getting over some initial qualms, they quite happily followed him down into the moral sewer.

The seminal event in that descent was the release of the 'Access Hollywood' tape, in which the future president bragged about his ability to commit sexual assault with impunity. When it came out, some Republicans condemned it, but they got over their distaste pretty quickly and rallied behind him. When more than a dozen women came forward and said that Trump had groped them, kissed them against their will or otherwise assaulted them, Republicans ignored it or explained it away. To this day, it is the position of the White House that all those women are liars, something I have heard no Republicans dispute.

But that’s hardly all. In the age of Trump, Republicans have taken the position that a hostile power meddling in American elections is no big deal, not even if they got help from people inside the president’s campaign. They’ve stuck with the president as he said that those marching alongside neo-Nazis in Charlottesville were 'very fine people,' as he installed his family members into positions of power, and as he used the office of the presidency, which they once claimed they had such deep respect for, as a vehicle to enhance his own wealth.

In short, the Republican Party has made amply clear that it holds no moral principle above seizing and maintaining power. So a U.S. Senate candidate hit on teenage girls as a man in his 30s? If he can get away with it, Republicans can live with it." [Emphasis added.]

Read the Washington Post, The Roy Moore mess actually began with the Trump ‘Access Hollywood’ tape.

Republi-CONs really have no principles and values, or shame anymore.

Read the Washington Post, Woman says Roy Moore initiated sexual encounter when she was 14, he was 32, which is a detailed and creditable investigation (as much as Republi-CONs will label it FAKE NEWS).

And remember: "[W]hatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."

Or as the kids might say: 'Karma's a b**** '.

Trump's Big CON: The Donald is a Russian Agent, CONt. Part 4 (Why Are He, "His" Party, and "His" Propaganda News Friends So Worried?)

UPDATE X:  Trump is really worried about and afraid of the Russian investigation, and he and his supporters are working vigorously to stop it or at the very least discredit it.

Why?

Because Putin has the kompromat to control Trump, and Trump knows it since he knows his own compromising financial and personal information.

Read the Washington Post, In new interview, Trump openly rages at checks on his authoritarianism, which show how much Trump wishes he were a dictator, free to lock up critics and opponents.

Read also the Washington Post, Why is Trump so obsessed with Russia? We’re finally going to find out.

My guess, it is worse than compromising financial information, those salacious stories in the ‘Steele Dossier’ might even be true!

UPDATE IX: ANOTHER MUST READ, the Washington Post, To what circle of hell are Republicans about to consign themselves?, which states in substantial part:

"At our political costume ball, it is definitely ’90s nostalgia night. A president obsessed with attacking all things Clinton stands accused of serial sexual harassment, sends out underlings to dismiss the accusers as liars, condemns a federal investigation as a politically motivated fraud and is attempting to destroy the reputation of the leader of that investigation. Hillary Clinton may be President Trump’s continuing target, but the Clinton years are clearly his inspiration.

It worked the first time around. In President Bill Clinton’s case, the Democratic Party almost uniformly honored tribal loyalties above legal or moral principle. Even the feminist left generally fell into line for partisan reasons. 'American women,' said columnist Nina Burleigh, 'should be lining up with their presidential kneepads on to show their gratitude for keeping the theocracy off our backs.' What is a little sexual misconduct and obstruction of justice among friends when legal abortion is at stake?

Now Trump appeals to the same type of team solidarity, this time on the right. “The Dems are using this terrible (and bad for our country) Witch Hunt for evil politics,” tweeted Trump, “but the R’s are now fighting back like never before.” Note how a federal investigation of Russian influence on American democracy has become “the Dems.” Note also that it is not the president and his lawyers fighting this investigation but the “R’s.” Trump is conditioning Republicans and conservatives to view his upcoming legal defense entirely through the lens of partisanship. With the broad cooperation of conservative media, there is every reason to think he might succeed.

Trump’s ultimate objective in all this matters greatly. If he wants to recruit Republicans into a defense of the shady political and business dealings of Paul Manafort and the rest of the president’s political circle — now exposed by federal indictment — it will be discrediting and humiliating. A party that rallies to the defense of corruption will eventually be seen as a swamp in need of clearing.

As the indictments begin to come down, Republicans need to ponder what legal and ethical lines, if any, they are willing to draw. Continuing the attacks on Hillary Clinton’s own dishonest dealings is all fun and games (except to Clinton, I suppose). Joining the defense of slimy political figures such as Manafort makes one, ceteris paribus, into a slimy political figure. Obscuring or excusing Russian influence on the American political process is a dangerous disservice to the country. Supporting Trump in a power play against the special prosecutor and his investigation would be an attack on the stability and legitimacy of the Republic — a source of infamy in American history. . .

It is worth making clear that every conservative media voice — including, recently, the editorial voice of the Wall Street Journal — that attacks the objectivity and legitimacy of Mueller is giving Trump cover and encouragement to move against him. They are dropping lit matches in the dry tinder of American politics. And they would be responsible, in part, for the resulting wildfire.

Do Republicans and conservatives really want to be remembered as a bodyguard of enablers for this man? For this cause? Few enter the fray of political ideas, or make the considerable sacrifices of entering public life, to defend corruption and the abuse of power. That is now the calling of the Republican partisan, and the downward path of dishonor."

So, 'what legal and ethical lines, if any, the Republi-CONs are willing to draw'?

Think back to Watergate.

UPDATE VIII:  "Look at the whole story and tell me this isn't suspicious. . .

The Trump campaign was filled with operatives connected in shady ways to the Russian government. It included individuals who knew that the Russians had obtained Clinton-related emails and who lied about that knowledge to federal investigators. Top campaign officials (and Trump family members) dropped everything to meet with Russian operatives when they believed there was useful opposition research on offer. Trump publicly asked Russia to hack into Clinton’s computers to find and release her missing emails.

We also know the Russians really did hack into John Podesta’s and the DNC’s email accounts and found and released emails that damaged Clinton. They really did conduct social media operations designed help Trump. Both their targets and their timing were extremely sophisticated for a foreign government that has traditionally shown itself to have a poor understanding of American politics. After winning the White House, Trump attacked the CIA and fired the director of the FBI in an effort to discredit or end their investigations into Russia’s role in the election.

At this point, it would be a truly remarkable coincidence if two entities that had so many ties to each other, that had so much information about what the other was doing, and that were working so hard toward the same goal never found a way to coordinate."

Read Vox, It sure looks like there was collusion between the Trump operation and Russia.

UPDATE VII:  And The Donald and his Propaganda News, AKA Hedgehog News, are really, really worried.

Read the Washington Post, The Fox News-cum-Murdoch effect: Mueller must resign! Or be fired!

UPDATE VI: Of course, given The Donald's intense desire to win at all cost, it is possible that he and/or those very, very, very close to him knowingly and actively colluded with Putin to win the election.

Read the Washington Post, How bad will Mueller probe get for Trump? The Papadopoulos plea may be a big tell., which notes:

"While the biggest news of the day is the indictments Robert S. Mueller III has handed down against former Trump aides Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, today he also released a plea bargain with a heretofore minor figure in the Russia scandal by the name of George Papadopoulos. And that could actually be the day’s biggest news. . .

Who does Papadopoulos have information on? We don’t know. The plea document mentions his discussions (his efforts to set up a meeting with the Russians) with people who are referred to as 'Senior Policy Adviser,' 'Campaign Supervisor,' and 'High-Ranking Campaign Official,' but we don’t know who those are. Then there’s this:

    On or about May 4, 2016, the Russian MFA Connection sent an email (the 'May 4 MFA Email') to defendant PAPADOPOULOS and the Professor that stated: 'I have just talked to my colleagues from the MFA. The[y] are open for cooperation. One of the options is to make a meeting for you at the North America Desk, if you are in Moscow.' Defendant PAPADOPOULOS responded that he was '[g]lad the MFA is interested.' Defendant PAPADOPOULOS forwarded the May 4 MFA Email to the High-Ranking Campaign Official, adding: 'What do you think? Is this something we want to move forward with?' The next day, on or about May 5, 2016, defendant PAPADOPOULOS had a phone call with the Campaign Supervisor, and then forwarded the May 4 MFA Email to him, adding to the top of the email: 'Russia updates.'

This exchange happened not long before Paul Manafort, Donald Trump Jr., and Jared Kushner had their infamous meeting with representatives of the Russian government who purportedly had damaging information on Clinton to offer. Given that context, it seems rather unlikely that Papadopoulos would not have mentioned the possibility that the Russians had of 'dirt' on Clinton contained in 'thousands of emails.' But we don’t yet know for sure.

What we do know is that the prosecutors believe that Papadopoulos’ information will be valuable to them in building a case against others. Manafort, on the other hand, is not cooperating — at least not yet. . .

If Manfort is going to flip, there are only so many people he could flip on who are closer to the center of whatever happened than he was. That could include Jared Kushner, perhaps Donald Trump Jr., and of course President Trump himself.

But right now, Papadopoulos is the one who is providing Mueller an entry into the heart of the Trump campaign and its relationship to Russia. Which is why McQuade says, 'That one, because of its relevance to that larger question, strikes me as maybe the more important development today.' And this is just getting started."

One hint that this is possible -- The Donald doth protest too much, methinks.

UPDATE V:  As I said early on, The Donald is a Russian agent, perhaps he was originally an unwitting agent, but Putin has the kompromat to control Trump, and Trump knows it since he knows his own compromising financial and personal information.

Those salacious stories in the ‘Steele Dossier’ might even be true!

"Like a poker player whose flagrant tell gives him away, President Donald Trump telegraphed a twitchy bit of direction to Trump Tower scandal-watchers this week. Or was it indirection? After the founder of the oppo-research company Fusion GPS that commissioned the infamous Steele Dossier told the House Intelligence Committee he would take the Fifth Amendment if subpoenaed to testify, Trump responded with a brain-bender of a tweet that thrust the dossier to the center of the stage again.

'Workers of firm involved with the discredited and Fake Dossier take the 5th. Who paid for it, Russia, the FBI or the Dems (or all)?' Trump's tweet said.

Like many Trump tweets, it proved more difficult to untangle than a mound of last night's dried out spaghetti. Why was Trump screaming about the dossier now? Does he sense that investigators are closing in on him and he needs to divert them? BuzzFeed published the 35-page smutty and salacious document, which purports that the Russians had compromised Trump personally and financially, more than nine months ago. Was it because the dossier had floated back into the news because Fusion GPS's Glenn Simpson had refused to testify and Trump's a reflexive beast? Or because he worries that the investigations may be used to unlock his secrets? Or is it just a new tactic in his campaign to undercut its origin?

Trump may claim that the contents of the dossier have been discredited, but as Reuters' Mark Hosenball wrote last week, elements of the dossier may have been denied but none of it has been disproved. Trump reliably affixes the "fake" label to every utterance he dislikes or finds threatening, and the dossier abounds with potentially damaging assertions like, 'Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years.' By jumping up and down with the fury of a Yosemite Sam, is Trump really confirming the accuracy and potency of the dossier?"

Read Politico, Trump Singes Fingers Trying to Torch Dossier.

UPDATE IV:  In the investigation of  "Russia’s role in the 2016 presidential campaign . . . three facts are both important and undisputed . . .

Trump’s family and the top echelons of the campaign hoped that a meeting with well-connected Russians would yield dirt on Clinton. The Trump White House dissembled on the purpose of this meeting. And Trump admitted that the primary reason he fired the FBI director was because of the Russia investigation.

These are the facts of the case, and they are not in dispute."

Read the Washington Post, These are the facts of the Russia investigation, and they are not in dispute.

I would add, Putin didn't want Clinton as president, he wanted The Donald.

UPDATE III:  "President Trump and his surrogates — most especially the Fox News lineup (which includes a fleet of conservative pundits who disgrace themselves by facilitating a political distraction game for Trump), obsequious Republicans in Congress, old allies such as Roger Stone (who wound up getting banned by Twitter) and the talk radio crowd — have been frantically fanning Hillary Clinton non-scandals about Uranium One (it was baseless before and baseless now) and the dossier’s funder. (Fusion GPS initially was hired by the conservative Free Beacon, which at one time claimed not to know the identity of the Republican outfit that first hired Fusion.) The unhinged rants from Trump’s defenders demanding Clinton be locked up for one or both of these reveal how tightly Trump and the right-wing ecosystem that supports him rely on Clinton as an all-purpose distraction.

Upon a moment’s reflection, the non-scandals make no sense (Clinton was colluding with Russia to beat herself in the election?), have been debunked before and in no way affect the liability, if any, of current or ex-Trump administration figures. This is “whataboutism” run amok. It does expose the degree to which Fox News has given up the pretense of a real news organization, preferring the role of state propagandist. (And it’s not just the evening hosts; the non-scandals now monopolize the rest of the schedule.)

The intensity of Trump’s frenzy underscores the peril in which the president now finds himself. Beyond the indictments unsealed this morning, Trump does not know what special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has uncovered; which witnesses are flippable; what financial documents have revealed about the Trump business empire; and whether, for example, Mueller finds support for an obstruction of justice charge from Trump’s own public dissembling (e.g., hinting at non-existent tapes of former FBI director James B. Comey). For someone who insists on holding all the cards and intimidating others, Trump finds himself in a uniquely powerless position."

Read the Washington Post, Trump’s meltdown in anticipation of indictments is telling.

UPDATE II: What is The Donald hiding?

We may soon find out.

Read the Washington Post, Indictments signal the beginning of Mueller’s work, not the end. 

UPDATE: The RepubliCONs are engaged in a "careful, coordinated, and comprehensive strategy" hoping you ignore and forget the "Russian interference in the 2016 election, which it is more than clear was 1) comprehensive, involving hacking, propaganda, and outreach to Trump representatives; and 2) clearly intended to help Donald Trump win the election, or at the very least wound Hillary Clinton should she become president. . .

It has three essential components. The first is the cranking up of the conservative calliope: all of the right’s information sources, from Fox News to conservative talk radio to web sites like Breitbart and Drudge, immediately begin shouting about the same story and repeating the same line. Then to keep it going and force mainstream media to cover it, they create an official 'investigation' that will provide a steady stream of tantalizing leaks and events that can become the occasion of news coverage, even if it all ends up proving nothing. Then the whole narrative gets validated by top-level Republicans whose words are news in and of themselves.

All of these components are now in motion. Fox and the other outlets are doing hour after hour of discussion about what they are calling the 'Russia dossier,' an opposition research document prepared for Democrats that gathered together facts and rumors about Trump’s dealings in Russia (I explained why their line on this document is so bogus here). Now that story is being joined to absurd charges about the sale of a uranium mining company, with all kinds of dark allegations of corruption."

Read the Washington Post, The GOP strategy on the Russia scandal: ‘No puppet. You’re the puppet.’
"There may be no talent the Republican Party and the conservative movement have that is more astounding than the way they are able to take a ludicrous idea with zero relationship to actual facts, light a fuse on it, and turn it into an explosive firework of spin that manages to confuse everyone who tries to look at the issue that started the whole controversy. . .

The most Clinton did was hire an opposition researcher who interviewed sources he knew in Russia to see if her opponent had engaged in any questionable activities there. We don’t even know if she (or anyone else on her staff) even read Steele’s report, since he was a few steps removed from the campaign. Nothing about that even remotely resembles 'collusion with Russia.'" [Emphasis added.]

Read the Washington Post, GOP spin about the new ‘Steele Dossier’ story is disingenuous nonsense.

Trump's Big CON: When Criticized or Cornered, He Responds With Lies and Threats, CONt.

"President Trump’s supporters have reveled in his and his administration’s assault on the media. Trumpkins were thrilled when then-chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon declared the media to be the “opposition party.” Any unfavorable news could be written off as “fake news.” With the mainstream media discredited, Trump could keep his supporters loyal and his opponents on defense. Republicans officials, out of fear or indifference or mutual disdain for the media, haven’t objected. Just blowing off Trump. Just being Trump. What could he actually do?

Well, lots, actually. The Post reports:

    President Trump attacked NBC News on Wednesday, dismissing as “pure fiction” an explosive report that he had sought a massive increase in the nation’s nuclear arsenal.

    On Twitter, Trump also raised the possibility that he would support stripping the broadcast licenses of news networks that report what he believes to be inaccurate information. The tweets came after NBC News reported that Trump purportedly told senior national security advisers during a meeting last summer that he favored what amounted to nearly a tenfold increase in nuclear weapons.

No president has publicly threatened to shut down a media outlet for unfavorable coverage. This is beyond the pale, further evidence that Trump seeks to emulate the thugs around the world like Russian President Vladimir Putin (whose alleged killing of journalists Trump once wrote off, because “our country does plenty of killing, too”), Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (whom he congratulated after a vote that outside observers found rife with irregularities) and Rodrigo Duterte, president of the Philippines (whose “drug war” Trump praised despite thousands of extrajudicial killings). House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), self-styled libertarians such as Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), self-proclaimed constitutional conservatives such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), high-minded “thought leaders” such as Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), once-independent and intellectually honest think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and the entire retinue of Beltway right-wing groups that castigate the left nonstop would be horrified if a Democratic president ever suggested such a thing. . .

Consider by contrast the Trumpian defenders and other conservatives who’ve bashed Hollywood for years who now are in full dungeon over the failure of Hollywood elite and docile entertainment press to out Harvey Weinstein years ago for his abusive behavior toward women. Hypocrites! Enablers! Complacent! In many cases, that would be true. But for Republicans who sit silently, who enable a president who abuses democracy and violates constitutional norms, and who refused to disqualify as president a serial abuser of women to decry hypocrisy and chide others for lacking moral courage and putting politics over morality is rich — and infuriating."

Read the Washington Post, In case you didn’t take Trump’s threat to the First Amendment seriously.

Read also Trump's Big CON: When Criticized or Cornered, He Responds With Lies and Threats.

Trump's Big CON: Stay Quit & Pledge Loyalty, Or Else, CONt.

UPDATE: The article was "updated with Bannon's comments Monday night" and renamed:

"Former chief White House strategist Steve Bannon picked up that argument Monday night during an appearance on Sean Hannity's TV show.

'It's totally unacceptable in a time of war,' Bannon said of Corker's comments. 'We have troops in Afghanistan. In the Northwest Pacific and Korea, we have a major problem that could be like World War I. In the South China Sea, in the Persian Gulf, we have American lives at risk every day.' . .

Bannon's argument is especially specious give we've had troops stationed overseas on a constant basis since World War II, and that we've been in tense situations with unpredictable enemies pretty much that whole time (think: Cold War, ISIS, etc.). He's basically suggesting it's really never okay to criticize a president. Yet that's exactly what Trump did for eight years under Obama."

Read the Washington Post, The Trump White House’s dangerously authoritarian response to criticism.

"President Trump, as the White House will often remind us, is a counterpuncher. You hit him; he hits back twice as hard. You bring a knife; he brings a bazooka.

But while the White House thinks Trump's counterpunching is only fair, this is not a two-way street. And yet again Monday, the White House made the case that it is simply not okay to criticize the president in the manner he goes after others.

After Trump attacked Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) over some veiled criticisms last week, Corker tweeted Sunday that the White House was an 'adult day-care center' and later suggested Trump's threats to foreign countries could lead to World War III. Appearing on 'Fox and Friends' on Monday morning, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said that this was not okay.

Host Brian Kilmeade teed it up nicely, saying, 'What a demeaning tweet at the president.' . .


The subtext of all of this is: How dare you criticize the president? He is doing important things and speaking out against him only undermines his efforts to “\'Make America Great Again.'

Whatever you think of Trump, that's a very authoritarian argument to make. It suggests dissent is unhelpful. It suggests it's unpatriotic. And it's hardly the first time Conway and the White House have gone down this road. . .

[T]he White House still thinks it's above this kind of criticism. It still thinks the president should “not be questioned,” at least to the extent Corker did.

What's most notable here as that a lot of these criticisms pale in comparison to what Trump has said about his opponents. He has questioned the war hero status of John McCain. He has attacked a Gold Star family. He called his primary foe a liar — repeatedly. He called his Democratic opponent a criminal who should be jailed. And most importantly, he was one of the most vocal critics of the last president, even suggesting he was a fraud whose presidency was illegitimate.

All of that was okay, but suggesting President Trump is volatile and dangerous is not, apparently. . .

It's not only a double standard; it's a willful campaign to suggest that even criticisms that might be valid are beyond the pale if they undermine Trump. The White House isn't disputing the criticisms; it's suggesting they shouldn't be tolerated and aren't good for the country. That's a stunning posture for any White House to take."

Read the Washington Post, Kellyanne Conway and the White House’s very authoritarian attitude toward criticism.

The End of the World, Again, Cont., Again, Part 2 (It Never Ends! (Pun Intended!!))

 UPDATE: Who ever thought that after the Rapture I'd have to update this post ;)

"The man whose biblical doomsday claim had people worried about Sept. 23, 2017, is not backing down.

The world did not end over the weekend, and David Meade, a self-described 'specialist in research and investigations,' is saying that’s exactly what he had expected. Now, he is focusing on another date, Oct. 15, 2017, which he claims is the beginning of the world’s destruction.

It is 'the most important date of this century or millennium,' Meade wrote on his website. The action starts that day, he claimed, when the world will enter what’s called a seven-year tribulation period, a fairly widespread evangelical belief that for seven years, catastrophic events would wreak havoc on Earth.

'Hold on and watch — wait until the middle of October and I don’t believe you’ll be disappointed,' Meade wrote, before going on to promote his book, which he claims has all the details.

'You don’t have long to read it,' he added."

Read the Washington Post, The man who had people worried about a Sept. 23 apocalypse is peddling a new doomsday date.

Trump's a CON Man, but who cares!

"Unsealed, an evangelical Christian publication, foretells the Rapture in a viral, four-minute YouTube video, complete with special effects and ominous doomsday soundtrack. It’s called 'September 23, 2017: You Need to See This.'

Why Sept. 23, 2017?

Meade’s prediction is based largely on verses and numerical codes in the Bible. He has homed in one number: 33.

“Jesus lived for 33 years. The name Elohim, which is the name of God to the Jews, was mentioned 33 times [in the Bible],” Meade told The Washington Post. “It’s a very biblically significant, numerologically significant number. I’m talking astronomy. I’m talking the Bible … and merging the two.”

And Sept. 23 is 33 days since the Aug. 21 total solar eclipse, which Meade believes is an omen.

He points to the Book of Revelation, which he said describes the image that will appear in the sky on that day, when Nibiru is supposed to rear its ugly head, eventually bringing fire, storms and other types of destruction.

The book describes a woman 'clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head' who gives birth to a boy who will 'rule all the nations with an iron scepter' while she is threatened by a red seven-headed dragon. The woman then grows the wings of an eagle and is swallowed up by the earth.

The belief, as previously described by Gary Ray, a writer for Unsealed, is that the constellation Virgo — representing the woman — will be clothed in sunlight, in a position that is over the moon and under nine stars and three planets. The planet Jupiter, which will have been inside Virgo — in her womb, in Ray’s interpretation — will move out of Virgo, as though she is giving birth.

To make clear, Meade said he’s not saying the world will end Saturday. Instead, he claims, the prophesies in the Book of Revelation will manifest that day, leading to a series of catastrophic events that will happen over the course of weeks."

Read the Washington Post, The world as we know it is about to end — again — if you believe this biblical doomsday claim., which notes that Hedgehog News published a "story with a headline that appears to give credence to the doomsday claim — and was published in the Science section under the label “Planets.”

Republi-cons are such suckers for snake oil salesmen.

Any question how The Donald got elected.

Trump's Big CON: Lacking Honesty, Empathy, and Ability, He Is Simply Not Presidential Material, CONt.

UPDATE II:  "[B]roadcast and cable producers know — and Trump knows deeply — that most Americans don’t really care that much about what they insist they care about. A few headlines will get most through the morning. Twitter and Facebook keep the curious plied with updates, and by day’s end, who really wants to plunge into tax reform?

It is true, nonetheless, that when Trump needs time to fidget with something that actually matters, he tosses a dead fish into the Dasani tank and waits for the media herdlings to begin their march toward the trough.

Temporarily spared the spotlight, Trump fluffs the thatched nest atop his head and invites his brain to hatch some very bad ideas. Thus, we seem to be on the brink of a nuclear confrontation with North Korea. Remember when we used to worry about Trump having his finger on the nuclear launch button? Square that. When the other antagonist is North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, the nightmare can’t be dismissed as the twisted hankie of the persistently worried.

Never have two less qualified 'leaders' been so endowed with such devastating power without the requisite impulse control upon which living civilizations depend. Not to mention that these two nuke hecklers are unmercifully coifed to resemble cartoon characters so that we, the soberly sane, are left to ponder our face-melting demise as a clown showdown between two renegade circus performers. . .

In July, Trump was typically eloquent in describing his approach to thwarting disaster:

“We’ll handle North Korea. We’ll be able to handle North Korea. It will be handled. We handle everything.”

Whew, that.

As further insult to reason, this isn’t even a conflict over something at least historically rational, such as the now nearly charming contest between communism and Americanism. No battle of wits, the U.S.-North Korea stare-down is more accurately a battle of nitwits who seem to think threatening nuclear holocaust and mutual destruction is a contest to see who has bigger hands.

No one would suggest that Trump is responsible for all the nail biting these past few months or that Kim’s missile and nuclear tests aren’t deadly serious. But Trump surely has exacerbated matters with his “fire and fury” rhetoric. The goading language of ultimatum, more than a bluffing tactic, is an inflammatory agent such that the possible moves inexorably toward the inevitable. U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, the president’s toughest-talking Cabinet member, recently said: 'We have kicked the can down the road long enough. There is no more road left.'

Perhaps Kim might argue the same. Meanwhile, a can-kicking strategy (i.e., containment and diplomacy) seems a not-irrational substitute for mutual annihilation. Have we reached a point of no return? Will the president of the United States fire Kim, or will he invent some new distraction (staffers: Watch your backs) while he becomes a stealth, wartime leader?"

Read the Washington Post, Have we reached a point of no return?

UPDATE:  "Trump kicked off September by threatening a trade war with China and South Korea and pushing to deport young people at a time when businesses are struggling to find enough workers to fill all the available jobs. . .

So far in Trump's presidency, his threats on trade just turned out to be hot air. He said he would pull out of the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. Instead, his administration is renegotiating it. He talked repeatedly of putting tariffs on steel and aluminum imports this summer, but it was repeatedly put off and Trump now says it's behind several other major items on his agenda. The China rhetoric may turn out to be more of the same, but businesses are on edge amid news this weekend that Trump had instructed his senior staff to draft the documents that would end the U.S.-South Korean trade deal. . .

The U.S.-Korea trade deal was negotiated under both President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama. It has bipartisan support because it's not just about economics, it's about containing North Korea and China's influence in Asia. If Trump cancels the deal now, it sends a message to South Korea to deepen its relationship with China. It also plays into North Korea's hands by causing a rift between South Korea and the United States. . .

Trump has been touting how well the economy is doing lately. Unemployment is at a 16-year low, the stock market is soaring, and growth hit 3 percent in period between April and June. In a very encouraging sign, even business investment was finally picking up a bit. But Trump is putting that momentum in jeopardy by angering business leaders yet again.

Read the Washington Post, What Trump is doing with DACA and trade could backfire badly.

"President Trump in three very different settings over the past few days reminded us how unsuited he is for the job. Increasingly, his presidency is defined by blatant lies, an empathy deficit and a frightful lack of ability to navigate through dire international crises. Each has been on display. . .

One is left, still, agog at Trump’s dishonesty, narcissism and inability to project the calmness and discipline we expect from a president. Those who thought he’d grow in office or who perpetually think he’s “pivoting” or “becoming presidential” have engaged in dangerous delusion. One wonders how long we can muddle on with a president this unsuitable without provoking a constitutional or international calamity."

Read the Washington Post, Something is seriously off about this president.

Trump's Big CON: When Criticized or Cornered, He Responds With Lies and Threats

"As with so much about President Trump, his Phoenix rally on Tuesday night was two contradictory things: both shocking and completely predictable.

Shocking because it was the most sustained attack any president has made on the news media. . .

And predictable because this is exactly what Trump does when he’s in trouble. He finds an enemy and punches as hard as he can.

Make no mistake, he is in trouble. With a special prosecutor breathing down his neck and even once-loyal Breitbart News turning on him, Trump is, according to one new poll, at the lowest point of his presidency. . .

Never one to examine his own conscience, or look for self-improvement, Trump apparently consulted his tried-and-true playbook.

'Go for the jugular,' Trump advised in his 2009 book 'Think Big.'

Always get even: 'You need to screw them back 15 times harder. You do it not only to get the person who messed with you but also to show the others who are watching what will happen to them if they mess with you.'

It is a philosophy learned decades ago from his mentor, the ruthless lawyer Roy Cohn. In a recent Vanity Fair article on Trump and Cohn, Marie Brenner quotes lawyer Victor Kovner: 'You knew when you were in Cohn’s presence you were in the presence of pure evil.'

She writes: 'Cohn’s power derived largely from his ability to scare potential adversaries with hollow threats and spurious lawsuits. And the fee he demanded for his services? Ironclad loyalty.' Sounds familiar.

Trump lapped up this advice. No target is sacrosanct.

Even if the person or organization that 'screwed him' is a Gold Star parent like Khizr Khan, in the Trump philosophy, you must counterpunch.

If it’s one of the cornerstones of American democracy like the independent news media, that’s fair game, too.

The president may be able to convince his die-hard supporters, like the ones at the Phoenix rally, that he was misquoted or misrepresented, but that’s simply not true. Anyone who was paying attention knows that.

What happens next? Under siege, Trump needs a foil more than ever, so these media attacks are only going to grow in intensity.

It will be journalists’ continued challenge not to take the bait, to refuse to play the assigned role of presidential enemy. Leave the revenge to the expert.

Read the Washington Post, Trump’s vicious attack on the media shows one thing clearly: He’s running scared.

Trump's Big CON: Even If He Is Not Racist, Trump Uses Racism

UPDATE IV:  "We have learned today that Stephen Bannon, the most prominent nationalist and friend to the alt-right in the White House, is on his way out. . .

Don’t be fooled.

Republicans will likely seize on Bannon’s ouster to argue that, in his heart, Trump isn’t really a racist. . .

Trump himself has said that he is 'the least racist person that you have ever met.' I could make a long and detailed case for why Trump is not in fact the least racist person you have ever met.

But this is the wrong question to ask. Not only can’t we know with absolute certainty what lies in Trump’s heart, but it also could not matter less. He’s the president of the United States — what matters isn’t what he feels but what he does and the kind of example he sets.

And by those much more important measures, Trump is the most racially divisive president in our lifetimes — and it’s not even close. "

Read the Washington Post, Steve Bannon is out. That’s good, but the problem is still Donald Trump., which notes:

"Let’s give ourselves a reminder of what President Trump has done just since becoming a candidate, setting aside his history as a private citizen:

    In the speech announcing his presidential candidacy, he attacked Mexican immigrants, saying 'When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. … They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.'

    He retweeted a racist graphic showing a dark-skinned man wielding a gun and listing bogus statistics alleging falsely that black people are responsible for the vast majority of homicides of white people. That was in addition to the multiple times he retweeted messages from the Twitter accounts of neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

    Though immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans, he put an intense focus on individual crimes committed by an undocumented person, telling lurid stories meant to inflame as much hatred as possible. After becoming president, he created the Victims of Immigrant Crime Engagement office, whose purpose is to publicize crimes committed by immigrants.

    He repeatedly characterized African Americans as living in a hellish nightmare that could only be saved by him. 'You’re living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58% of your youth is unemployed — what the hell do you have to lose?' he said. That statistic, of course, was bogus.

    He said that the judge presiding over his trial for fraud in the Trump University lawsuit (for which he eventually agreed to pay $25 million to compensate his victims) couldn’t be impartial, because 'He’s a Mexican.' The judge in fact is an American who was born in Indiana; saying 'He’s a Mexican' is no more accurate than saying about Trump, 'He’s a German.' But the idea that your heritage forever defines your identity and determines whether you qualify as a 'real' American is an old racist notion.

    He proposed banning all Muslims from entering the United States, and even said he’d be open to creating a registry to track all Muslims in the country.

    His 'America First' slogan was a deliberate echo of the America First party of the early 1940s, which trafficked in anti-Semitism as it attempted to keep America out of World War II.

    For almost the entirety of the campaign he continued to hold to the racist conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not born in the United States, the issue that enabled him to transform himself from a reality TV star into a political figure. In addition, he frequently questioned whether Obama could have fairly been admitted to Columbia University and Harvard Law School, demanding to see Obama’s grades to prove that he was actually qualified.

    His Justice Department is reportedly planning to seek out cases where it can sue universities for discriminating against white people.

    Soon after taking office, his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, made clear that the Justice Department would no longer concern itself with investigating police abuse of minority citizens, and has taken steps to pull back from the consent decrees the Obama administration negotiated with local police departments to improve their conduct.

    He made the ludicrous claim that he only lost the popular vote because 3 million to 5 million undocumented immigrants voted illegally, then set up a commission to 'investigate' the matter, the results of which will be used to further the Republican effort to make it as hard as possible for African Americans and other minorities to register and vote.

    On Thursday, he made another reference to a bogus story he told repeatedly on the campaign trail, in which Gen. John Pershing supposedly responded to terrorism by taking 50 Muslim prisoners and summarily executing 49 of them with bullets dipped in pig’s blood, on the theory that this would be particularly offensive to Muslims. So in addition to proclaiming his support for a fictional war crime, Trump is arguing that offending Muslim religious sensibilities is the way to fight terrorism (this from a man who says it’s a deep insult to Christians when a department store puts up a 'Happy Holidays' sign).

    And of course, not only has he now embraced the cause of monuments celebrating the Confederacy — a rebellion against the United States for the purpose of maintaining slavery — he has explicitly equated its leaders to the founders of the American republic, putting figures like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson on the same plane as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

Given this extraordinary record, no sane person believes that it’s some kind of accident that all manner of neo-Nazis and white supremacists have felt emboldened by Trump’s campaign, his election victory and his presidency to become more vocal and demonstrative than they ever have before.

Indeed, if you ask them that’s exactly what they’ll tell you. They regularly praise and celebrate President Trump, and say that his words and actions show that they no longer need to hide their ideology of hate."

UPDATE III: "James Murdoch, chief executive of 21st Century Fox, has pledged to donate $1 million to the Anti-Defamation League, according to an email he sent to friends. He told them, 'What we watched this last week in Charlottesville and the reaction to it by the President of the United States concern all of us as Americans and free people.' He continued: 'These events remind us all why vigilance against hate and bigotry is an eternal obligation — a necessary discipline for the preservation of our way of life and our ideals. The presence of hate in our society was appallingly laid bare as we watched swastikas brandished on the streets of Charlottesville and acts of brutal terrorism and violence perpetrated by a racist mob.' In pointed criticism of President Trump, he went on: “I can’t even believe I have to write this: standing up to Nazis is essential; there are no good Nazis. Or Klansmen, or terrorists. Democrats, Republicans, and others must all agree on this, and it compromises nothing for them to do so.”

The sentiment is lovely, and the money is certainly appreciated by those fighting anti-Semitism and bigotry, but the email reeks of hypocrisy, to be blunt. Murdoch seems blissfully unaware of — or in denial about — his family’s role in creating the Trump phenomenon, fueling the rise of a xenophobic, racist demagogue and continuing to fan the flames of his noxious populism, which has brought us to where we are. . .

Instead of giving the ADL what amounts to pocket change for James Murdoch, why doesn’t he clean up his own news operation? Fox News has, more than any other outlet, popularized birtherism, Trumpism and white grievance-mongering, creating an alternative universe for white, older, working-class voters whom Trump whipped into a frenzy. That might cost more than $1 million, but at least Murdoch could sleep well at night, look at himself in the mirror and tell his family that he is a patriot, not a guy who’s making a mint tearing apart the country."

Read the Washington Post, To curtail hate, James Murdoch must clean house at Fox News.

With a few few exceptions, the Republi-CON handwringers, who pandered to fear, anger, and hatred for years to win elections, are hypocrites.

UPDATE II:  How could The Donald equate Nazis, racisits and murder with those protesting the same?

Because "moral equivalence is an option — for those who are willfully blind to history and have a shriveled emptiness where their soul once resided."

Read the Washington Post, There is a shriveled emptiness where Trump’s soul once resided.

UPDATE:  In some respects, until very recently The Donald had diffent views.

"In 2015, Trump endorsed then-South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s decision to remove a Confederate flag from the statehouse after the shooting in Charleston. 'I would take it down, yes,' he said. 'I think they should put it in a museum and respect whatever it is you have to respect.'

But Trump can never turn down a good wedge issue, if he’s convinced it will gin up conservatives: In November 2012, Trump said Mitt Romney lost the election because he was too 'mean-spirited' on immigration and toward Hispanics. 'He had a crazy policy of self-deportation, which was maniacal,' Trump told Newsmax. 'It sounded as bad as it was, and he lost all of the Latino vote. … He lost everybody who is inspired to come into this country.' Just months later, though, Trump was convinced by his advisers that an especially hardline on Mexican immigration was crucial to win the GOP nomination. So he went vastly further than Romney ever did."

Read the Washington Post, Trump’s embrace of Confederate statues as a wedge issue underscores Bannon’s enduring influence.

"The truly shocking thing, looking back at what has been written and said since the events in Charlottesville, is that anybody is shocked. Donald Trump’s first appearance on the front page of the New York Times was in 1973, when President Richard Nixon’s Justice Department sued his family’s real estate company for discriminating against black would-be tenants. In the 4½ decades since, he has used racial smears and stereotypes — Mexican rapists, sly Jews, lazy blacks — over and over again, in public, including during last year’s election campaign.

During that campaign, he, his sons and his campaign advisers tweeted and passed on anti-Semitic and racist memes, sometimes deleting them later and sometimes defending them. He was signaling constantly to those who held anti-Semitic and racist views, implying that he understood them, that he was on their side. 'But his grandchildren are Jewish' has always been a pretty thin defense, right up there with 'But some of his best friends are black.' And it doesn’t matter anyway: It makes no difference what this president (or any president) thinks privately about black or brown people, or which churches or synagogues his friends and family attend. What matters is something different: how the president uses racism in politics — and whether it works.

To date, Trump has used bigotry mainly as an electoral tool, to excite a relatively small group of supporters — let’s call them the alt-right because it’s a useful shorthand — and to persuade them to attend his rallies, to donate money, and above all to coordinate and staff (I suspect both as volunteers and professionals) his online campaign. This tactic was successful largely because the rest of his voters, mainstream Republicans, were not bothered by the tactics that Trump used to win the election. Either they didn’t see the online racism — not everyone uses social media, especially Twitter — or they found compelling reasons, such as hatred of Hillary Clinton or desire for a conservative Supreme Court, to overlook it.

The question now is whether Trump will go further, manipulating racism for political ends as others have done in other countries."

Read the Washington Post, Beware: Trump may use the alt-right to turn himself into the center.

Trump's Big CON: Some of His Biggest Fans Are Fake (Maybe Russian Bots), And He Likes It (AKA Trump is a Psycho-Narcissistic Con Man (CONt., Part 8))

UPDATE II:  Read also Heavy, Nicole Mincey: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know.

It seems it took little time to catfish Trump.

Imagine how gullible he is with Putin.

UPDATE:  "For President Donald Trump, life is a constant positive feedback loop, punctuated by acute instances of narcissistic injury. He famously surrounds himself with yes-men, loyal insiders, confidants, and family members. He bristles at advisers who don’t tell him what he wants to hear, like National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, whom Trump has reportedly considered exiling to Afghanistan. Long after his election victory, he has regaled lawmakers, the C.I.A., journalists, and foreign heads of state about his unlikely electoral upset, and continuously points to the size of his crowds, which he often exaggerates. (A framed, panoramic photo of his inauguration crowd hangs in the press hall of the West Wing.) Nearly every morning, he watches the relentlessly pro-Trump Fox & Friends, retweeting clips and articles from the show and responding to segments with his own commentary online. Twice a day, Vice reports, he receives a folder 'filled with screenshots of positive cable news chyrons (those lower-third headlines and crawls), admiring tweets, transcripts of fawning TV interviews, praise-filled news stories, and sometimes just pictures of Trump on TV looking powerful.' White House staff call it 'the Propaganda Document.'

The feedback loop came full circle on Saturday when Trump, ensconced in his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club for a 17-day 'working vacation,' unwittingly amplified some 'fake news' of his own by retweeting and thanking someone who appeared to be a staunch supporter on Twitter. 'Trump working hard for the American people.....thanks,' the tweet from @Protrump45 read. The account appeared to belong to a woman named Nicole, or Nicole Mincey, or BlackGirlPatriot. She claimed to be a 'black pro-Trump conservative' with a Trump merchandise retail empire. Trump acknowledged her tweet by quoting it to his 35 million followers, adding, 'Thank you Nicole!'

By the end of the weekend, however, Nicole’s account had been suspended, indicating, according to Twitter’s terms of service, that it had been deemed 'spammy' or perhaps 'just plain fake.' Twitter users had become suspicious that she was actually a bot and not a real person. Some identified her profile picture as a stock image of a woman from a Web site called Placeit, a stock photo and logo mockup company. . .

Trump is, in many ways, the living embodiment of everything Barack Obama warned against in his farewell address regarding the negative effect of social-media echo chambers. . .

For Trump, confirmation bias isn’t a byproduct, or even a feature, of the media diet he has arranged in the West Wing. It’s a way of life, perfected over a lifetime of masquerading as his own spokesperson and decorating his real-estate properties with fake Time magazines featuring his face on the cover. Retweeting and responding to a fake pro-Trump account on Twitter is just the latest manifestation of a closed feedback loop that Trump, and now a coterie of White House staffers, guard zealously. The user @ProTrump45 is gone, for now, but Trump’s tweet, which contains a blank space where Nicole’s message would be, remains a monument to his monomania."

Read Vanity Fair, Trump Falls for His Own Propaganda Machine.

Read also New York Magazine, Nicole Mincey Wasn’t a Bot, But She Wasn’t Quite Real Either and TalkingPointsMemo, The Mystery Of Nicole Mincey, which includes a discussion of 'sponsored articles')

"Early Saturday morning, President Trump tweeted his gratitude to a social-media super-fan, -Nicole Mincey, magnifying her praise of him to his 35 million followers.

Here’s the problem: There is no evidence the Twitter feed belongs to someone named Nicole Mincey. And the account, according to experts, bears a lot of signs of a Russia-backed disinformation campaign.

On Sunday, Twitter suspended the Mincey account, known as @ProTrump45, after several other users revealed that it was probably a fake, created to amplify pro-Trump content.

The incident highlights Trump’s penchant for off-the-cuff tweeting — and the potential consequences for doing so now that he holds the nation’s highest office. Even as the president has railed against multiple investigations into Russia’s meddling in U.S. politics, he may have become Exhibit A of the foreign government’s influence by elevating a suspected Russia-connected -social-media user — part a sophisticated campaign to exacerbate disputes in U.S. politics and gain the attention of the most powerful tweeter in the world.

'The president doesn’t know whether it’s a Russian bot or not,' said Clint Watt, a former FBI agent and fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, using the term for a fake Twitter account pretending to represent a real person and created to influence public opinion or promote a particular agenda. 'He’s just pushing a narrative, whether it’s true or false. This provides a window not just for Russia but for any adversary to both influence the president or discredit him.'"

Read the Washington Post, The curious case of ‘Nicole Mincey,’ the Trump fan who may actually be a Russian bot.

Trump's Big CON: It's All About the Show, Explained, CONt.

"President Trump sees everything as a sales job.

He ran for president promising to be a dealmaker, but his skill set has always leaned much more toward boldfaced marketing than the quiet art of negotiation. That he was a dealmaker was itself a marketing slogan.

And as with the proverbial hammer, every problem Trump sees is a problem that simply requires a healthy dose of salesmanship. . .

Unfortunately for him, the national news media isn’t an arm of the Trump Organization’s communications shop, and it isn’t the New York Post’s Page Six, where celebrities are explored in minutiae but, at the end of the day, with love. . .

At some point Trump needs to come to terms with the fact that providing honest information to the media will work out better for him than obfuscating and misleading. . .

Maybe by actually embracing the role of the media in identifying problems and then working to fix those problems, the end result for Republicans and the president could be better?

Or maybe it’s easier to tweet about fake news."

Read the Washington Post, Trump does not understand what the role of the press is.

Trump's Big CON: Be Afraid (of That "Retiree Strolling Around the Woods")

"There is a specter haunting the United States, or at least the Republican Party and its friendly news outlets. You may think it’s just a former government official who holds no office and won’t be running for anything again, but they know the truth. America needs to get worried and, more important, angry at Hillary Clinton. . .

President Trump himself seems to be practically obsessed with Clinton, as Philip Bump explains:

    Whatever Trump does or doesn’t do, he’s always willing to point out what Clinton did or didn’t do that’s worse.

    So she comes up in his interviews a lot. In fact, in 19 interviews that he’s conducted since becoming president, we found that Clinton tended to be mentioned much earlier than a number of Trump’s other favorite topics: The 2016 election, the votes he received, the electoral college and Barack Obama. …

    In 17 of 19 of his interviews, Clinton came up, on average about 36 percent of the way in. . .

Without going back and checking, I’m pretty sure Obama didn’t bring up how he beat John McCain in 90 percent of the interviews he conducted during his first six months in office. I don’t recall George W. Bush talking about Al Gore at all after he became president. So what’s going on here?

For Trump personally, I think it’s mostly about the deep insecurity that comes through every time he opens his mouth. It’s why he’s always telling everyone how smart and knowledgeable and accomplished he is, something that people who are actually smart and knowledgeable and accomplished don’t do. He feels a need to remind everyone that he won the election, usually embellishing the story by characterizing it as bigger and more emphatic a victory than it actually was. As his vanquished opponent, Clinton is a symbol of his potency and dominance. . .

Trump got elected in large part by getting his voters mad — at immigrants, at Muslims, at politicians and at a supposedly rigged political system. But as president, he’s had a hard time sustaining that anger and constructing that story of himself as a warrior fighting against a threatening enemy.

Other Republican presidents had it much easier. President Ronald Reagan had a natural counterpoint in the Russians, an enemy Americans had hated for decades. The Cold War provided opportunities for threat and confrontation — invade a tiny island country here, make a speech in Berlin there, and you have a drama that never gets old. President George W. Bush spent eight years telling Americans they were about to be annihilated by villainous Middle Easterners, first al-Qaeda, then Saddam Hussein. By the end of his tenure the story had lost its punch, but it did get him reelected.

Trump, on the other hand, has no villain to fight. So he and his allies are left looking backward to the person who was supposed to be the villain of the moment but now is just a retiree strolling around the woods in Westchester County. No wonder they seem so dispirited."

Read the Washington Post, Why Trump and the conservative media are still obsessed with Hillary Clinton.

Trump's Big CON: His Newest Republi-CON Media CONplex Enabler

Watch out Hedgehog News, Trump and his Republi-CON's sycophants have a new member.

"One America News is an obscure TV channel struggling to emerge from the cellar of the cable ratings, but it is nonetheless one of President Trump’s favorite media outlets. It’s not hard to see why: On One America newscasts, the Trump administration is a juggernaut of progress, a shining success with a daily drumbeat of achievements. . .


[S]ince its inception in 2013, and especially since Trump began his march to the White House, One America’s owner, Robert Herring Sr., a millionaire who made his money printing circuit boards, has directed his channel to push Trump’s candidacy . . .

OAN, based in San Diego, made its first splash in the opening weeks of the Trump campaign, when the channel became the first to carry Trump’s campaign speeches live and in full — a decision followed quickly by the owner’s directive that other candidates’ rallies not be given the same treatment, according to internal emails.

Since then, OAN has become a reliably sympathetic voice of the administration’s goals and actions. Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, has a deal to appear regularly on the channel. The network’s White House reporter, Trey Yingst, has become an administration favorite who was called on at the daily news briefings 27 times in Trump’s first 100 days in office. On Friday, OAN won a seat in the White House briefing room, albeit in the back row and shared with the BBC."

Read the Washington Post, An inside look at One America News, the insurgent TV network taking ‘pro-Trump’ to new heights.

The Donald just love his sycophants.

Read also Trump's Big CON: His Enablers.

Trump's Big CON: 'Ha, Ha, Ha, I Lied! There Are No Tapes.'

UPDATE II:  For Republi-CON's favorite sycophant media, the truth doesn't matter!

When asked why he said there might be tapes, Trump answered "because then he’ll have to tell what actually took place at the events."

“Fox & Friends” host Ainsley Earhardt then said: "It was a smart way to make sure he stayed honest in those hearings."

"Let’s juxtapose: On one hand, we have a lying president who made 669 false and misleading claims over his first 151 days in office. On the other hand, we have a career law enforcement official who was promoted to FBI director in part because of a famous act of integrity; who had won the respect of the FBI rank and file by the time he was fired by Trump; and who has told a wholly consistent and, thus far, largely unchallenged narrative of his dealings with Trump.

So the dodgiest president ever is keeping honest a man of proven integrity. A reversal this comical is possible only on one television news program."

Read the Washington Post, ‘Fox & Friends’ propagates the most astounding piece of pro-Trump propaganda yet.

In other words, Trump sycophants want you to believe that he lies just to keep everyone else honest.

How admirable of him!!

UPDATE:  For Republi-CONs, the truth doesn't matter!

Read the Washington Post, Gingrich just admitted Trump was being dishonest about White House tapes — because nothing matters, which notes in response to Trump's favorite sycophant:

"Apparently not being a “professional politician” is a license for dishonesty -- because that's what this was. And adding insult to injury, it didn't even work.

This is just the latest in a long line of Trump bluffs. There was the time he was going to force the House to vote on its health-care bill, pass or fail, until he urged that it be delayed in the face of defeat. There was the time during the spending debate when the White House signaled Trump would allow a shutdown if the bill didn't fund his border wall, only to back down just a couple of days later. More examples abound.

But this has been a particularly brazen brand of bluffing from the president of the United States. Trump threatened a former top government official using a falsehood to try to get him to soften his testimony. It's not difficult to attach this to the lengthening list of things suggesting Trump has tampered in the Russia investigation, or even obstructed justice in doing so.

And for a president who has huge trouble with facts, it displays a rather striking disregard for the truth. . .

And the final point here is that Comey essentially called Trump's bluff. In rather blistering testimony that pointed to Trump's potential obstruction of justice two weeks ago, Comey didn't really hold back at all. And at one point, he addressed the threat of tapes directly and suggested they would vindicate him if they did exist.

'I’ve seen the tweet about tapes,' Comey said. 'Lordy, I hope there are tapes.'

So basically Trump appears to have not only done something dishonest that undermines his credibility going forward, but it didn't even work."

Read the Washington Post, Trump says he has no ‘tapes’ of Comey conversations.

Now, is this true?

With Trump you never know. There could be tapes that shiow Comey was telling the truth.

But either way, Trump revels himself to be a liar, and finally acknowledges he is a con man!

Trump's Big CON: His Enablers

UPDATE II:  "President Trump’s wild accusation and the right-wing media’s eagerness to support the claims of the Trump White House, working in cahoots with House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), that there was nefarious “unmasking” of Trump associates picked up in surveillance of Russian officials has proved to be a colossal flop. Nunes wound up discrediting himself and implicating White House staffers in a half-baked scheme to deflect attention from the president.

Right-wing outlets (from Fox News to Breitbart to the New York Post) took the bait from Nunes and his associates, dragging Susan Rice into the matter — without evidence of a crime. Indeed, no evidence of impropriety exists and no evidence ties Rice to the leaking of Michael T. Flynn’s name. Given that the White House does not want to release the documents shared with Nunes that allegedly provide the basis for its tale, we can surmise that Nunes really had no evidence of much of anything.

The blatant effort to confuse and distract from the biggest political scandal of our lifetimes — Russian efforts to manipulate our election process and potential coordination with the campaign of the beneficiary of Russia’s 'active measures' — does not come as any surprise. However, certain right-wing media outlets’ willingness to echo Trump’s defamatory misdirection tactics remains as distressing as ever. (It was just this sort of echo chamber effect that Russia used during the campaign to help Trump, as Clint Watts recently explained.) . .

Nunes, Trump, Ryan, the leakers — abuse their trust and turn the most consequential national security investigation of our lifetimes into a circus. [Jack Goldsmith and Benjamin Wittes of Lawfareblog.com explain we run the risk of undoing the “grand bargain” (i.e. intelligence services get robust powers in exchange for equally robust oversight) that allows our intelligence community to operate within a democratic government. They] reiterate that 'if the President and the House Intelligence Committee Chairman can discredit an investigation of foreign interference in an American election and collusion with that effort by the president’s campaign by alleging improper political misuse of the intelligence authorities by the prior administration, if leaking FISA intercepts is an accepted way to go after a political opponent, and if nobody can credibly say who’s telling the truth and who’s lying, then the grand bargain has truly failed, with consequences that are hard to fathom.'"

Read the Washington Post, Nunes is out of the Russia probe, and the Susan Rice spin collapses. 

UPDATE: The enablers include a web of far-right media outlets, blogs, and community with help from Russia creating, promoting and echoing "fake content, seeding doubt and paranoia".

Read the Washington Post, The web of conspiracy theorists that was ready for Donald Trump.

As an article before noted, Trunp's ability to get away with false and misleading claims "requires the support of many enablers: almost all of his party’s elected officials, a large bloc of voters and, all too often, much of the news media."

For an example, read the Washington Post, Anatomy of a fake scandal, ginned up by right-wing media and Trump, which noted:

"President Trump started off this morning as he often does, by settling in to watch the festival of nincompoopery that is 'Fox & Friends.' On the show, he saw something that he believes vindicates the bizarre and false charge he made that Barack Obama was tapping his phones during the presidential campaign.

I’ll try to sort through the substance of all this. But I also want to make a broader argument about how Trump’s support system — inside his government but especially in the conservative media and on Fox, which is where he apparently gets most of his intelligence information — is playing to his worst instincts, harming him politically, and making his presidency even more dangerous. . .

[W]hen Trump tunes in to 'Fox & Friends' every morning, he learns that he’s right about everything. He doesn’t need to listen to his intelligence briefers or anyone else who might tell him something he doesn’t want to hear. He can keep telling tall tales and pursuing his petty grievances. He never does anything wrong and never has to change. I shudder to think how that dynamic will play out when this administration faces its first foreign policy crisis, with untold numbers of lives at stake."