Here At Home, The Rule of Law Asserts Itself

While the world was transfixed, with good reason, on the horrific invasion of Ukraine by the Russians, two events occurred here at home last Wednesday that were truly momentous if you hate fascism and believe in the rule of law.

The first was when Joshua James, a leader of the fascist Oath Keepers organization, pleaded GUILTY to sedition. James had been charged with multiple felonies of obstructing the formal count of the electoral college, assaulting a police officer inside the Capitol, and attempting to destroy records of his communication with other Oath Keepers. As part of his guilty plea, charges other than seditious conspiracy and obstruction were dropped.

James is admitting that he helped lead two tactically equipped teams that were sent into the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and organize the stockpiling of a cache of weapons in a hotel just outside of Washington, D.C. He also pleaded guilty to one count of obstructing an official proceeding, a felony that many of the January 6th insurrectionists have been charged with. Perhaps even more importantly, James agreed to cooperate with Federal investigators, who have charged ten others, including Oath Keepers founder and leader Stewart Rhodes, with sedition.

James’ guilty plea is the first successful prosecution of sedition in twenty years. Seditious conspiracy is defined in Federal law as when two or more people “conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States,” or act “by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States.” James’ indictment reveals that the Oath Keepers began planning for a “civil war” two days after the 2020 election. In the plea agreement, James agreed that Rhodes “instructed [him] and others to be prepared and called upon to … use lethal force if necessary” to keep Trump in office.

James’ guilty plea and Rhodes’ upcoming trial are just the start of an effort to destroy a leading fascist group allied with the White Supremacist QAnon Trump party.

The other event on Wednesday was a filing made by the House committee investigating the January 6th insurrection in response to a legal attempt by Trump campaign lawyer John Eastman to avoid turning over 10,000 emails to the committee. This is a civil case, but if you ever wanted to know—and if you like anything like democracy and the rule of law, you should—whether the committee’s work will culminate in a criminal referral against Donald Trump to the Department of Justice, you got your answer on Wednesday.

According to the committee:

“The evidence detailed above provides, at minimum, a good-faith basis for concluding that President Trump has violated section 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2). The elements of the offense under 1512(c)(2) are: (1) the defendant obstructed, influenced or impeded, or attempted to obstruct, influence or impede, (2) an official proceeding of the United States, and (3) that the defendant did so corruptly.”

“The Select Committee also has a good-faith basis for concluding that the President and members of his Campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371. An individual “defrauds” the government for purposes of Section 371 if he “interfere[s] with or obstruct[s] one of its lawful governmental functions by deceit, craft or trickery, or at least by means that are dishonest.”

“There is also evidence to support a good-faith, reasonable belief that in camera review of the materials may reveal that the President and members of his Campaign engaged in common law fraud in connection with their efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. The District of Columbia, where these events occurred, defines common law fraud as: (1) a false representation; (2) in reference to material fact; (3) made with knowledge of its falsity; (4) with the intent to deceive; and (5) action is taken in reliance upon the representation.”

The filing is an amazing read. (You can see the full text here: gov.uscourts.cacd.841840.160.0.pdf (courtlistener.com).) It lays out in great detail the evidence of the conspiracy led by Trump and his allies in government to overturn a free and fair election by convincing his followers that that election was fraudulent and by relentlessly pressuring government officials to buy into narratives that Trump knew were false.

The filing shows beyond a doubt that Trump knew his claims of election fraud were, in Attorney General Bill Barr’s word, “bullshit” because his own team was telling him that, including Trump’s own lawyers, who NEVER claimed fraud in court, Vice President Mike Pence, Attorney General William Barr, Department of Homeland Security head Ken Cuccinelli, senior Trump campaign aide Jason Miller, Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger. Outside Trump’s own circle, he heard from the sixty judges (some of whom he had appointed) who ruled that his election challenges were baseless, the New York state bar association, which yanked Rudy Guiliani’s law license because he made “false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers, and the public” regarding the election, and the Michigan judge who sanctioned Trump attorneys Lin Wood, Sidney Powell and seven others for “deceiving a federal court and the American people into believing that rights were infringed, without regard to whether any laws or rights were in fact violated.”

The committee made it clear on Wednesday that it will send a criminal referral against Donald Trump, and many of his confederates, to the Justice Department before this fall’s elections.

The filing contains some remarkable windows into the chaos Trump created inside his administration as he insisted, without any proof, that the 2020 election was fraudulent, and about the actions of various governmental hacks and professional weasels who tried to grab power and influence in the middle of that chaos.

Take Jeffrey Clark. Clark is a Harvard grad who served as Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division of George Bush’s Justice Department and was later appointed to that same position by Donald Trump. His long-time associate, Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, helped get Clark appointed to the Justice Department's Civil Division. After the 2020 election, Clark was the only senior official in the Department of Justice who backed Trump’s claims of fraud. Then Bill Barr resigned as Attorney General. The standard procedure was for Rosen, Barr’s top deputy, to become Acting Attorney General. Imagine Rosen’s surprise, then, when Clark invited him and Acting Assistant Attorney General Richard Donoghue to a meeting and informed them that he had been to the White House to report on “his own investigation” into the election and that Trump was about to announce that he, Clark, would be named Acting Attorney General.

Clark hadn’t counted on the threat of a full-scale mutiny.

Things came to a head in a meeting that Trump called on January 3 in the Oval Office to decide Rosen’s fate. In attendance were Trump, White House counsel Pat Cippolone, Clark, and Justice Department leaders Pat Philbin, Jeffrey Rosen, Steve Engel, and Richard Donoghue. Donoghue, a no-nonsense Brooklyn native and Army veteran who had spent weeks investigating specific conspiracy theories about the election and trying to convince Trump that they were totally unfounded, took the lead in drawing a line in the sand against Clark’s bizarre self-promotion.

As Donoghue relates in his deposition for the January 6th committee, “Jeff Clark certainly was advocating for change in leadership that would put him at the top of the Department, and everyone else in the room was advocating against that and talking about what a disaster this would be.”

“He repeatedly said to the President that, if he was put in the seat, he would conduct real investigations that would, in his view, uncover widespread fraud; he would send out the letter that he had drafted; and that this was a last opportunity to sort of set things straight with this defective election, and that he could do it, and he had the intelligence and the will and the desire to pursue these matters in the way that the President thought most appropriate.”

“I made the point that Jeff Clark is not even competent to serve as the Attorney General. He's never been a criminal attorney. He's never conducted a criminal investigation in his life. He's never been in front of a grand jury, much less a trial jury. And he kind of retorted by saying, ‘Well, I've done a lot of very complicated appeals and civil litigation, environmental litigation, and things like that.’ And I said, ‘That's right. You're an environmental lawyer. How about you go back to your office, and we'll call you when there's an oil spill.”

“I remember saying at some point that, you know, Jeff wouldn't even know how to find his way to Chris Wray's office, much less march in there and direct the FBI what to do, and that, ‘If you walked into Chris Wray's office, he wouldn't even know who you are. So we had these conversations that went around and around and were very blunt and direct.”

When asked by Trump how they would react if he installed Clark, each of the attorneys threatened to resign. Donoghue told Trump that “I wouldn’t serve one minute this guy.”

Trump then turned to Steve Engel, and asked him, “Steve, you wouldn’t resign, would you?”

“Steve Engel— I remember this because it was very vivid — said, ‘No, Mr. President,” Donoghue told the committee. “’If you replace Jeff Rosen with Jeff Clark and send this letter, I would have no choice. I would have to resign.’”

In a stunning comment considering that he was proposing to cause the resignations of the entire leadership of the Justice Department and his own White House counsel, Trump asked, “What have I got to lose I do this?”

Donoghue responded by saying “Mr. President, these aren't bureaucratic leftovers from another administration. You picked them. This is your leadership team. You sent every one of them to the Senate; you got them confirmed. What is that going to say about you, when we all walk out at the same time? ... And what happens if, within 48 hours, we have hundreds of resignations from your Justice Department because of your actions? What does that say about your leadership?”

Again, from Donoghue’s testimony: “He [Trump] did say several times, ‘You two,’ pointing at Mr. Rosen and me, ‘You two 24 haven't done anything. You two don't care. You haven't taken appropriate actions. Everyone tells me I should fire you," and things of that nature.”

At the end of the three-hour meeting, Trump reversed himself and decided not to replace Rosen. Pointing to Rosen, the President said, “I know that these two here, they're not going to do anything. They're not going to fix this. But that's the way it is, and I'm going to let it go anyway.”

It was the Justice Department lawyers who, with the exception of the ambitious Jeffrey Clark, against Trump’s claims of election fraud. If Trump ends up going on trial for his post-election crimes, it will be the Justice Department lawyers who send him there.

Another Night in Fascist America

Until last night, the only time I was teargassed was in November of 1969, so I guess I was due. In 1969 it was Nixon who gassed me in Washington, D.C.; last night it was Trump who made my eyes sting in my home, Portland. Not the kind of lifetime bookends I would have chosen for myself, but it is what it is.

I hadn’t participated in the more than 50 straight days of protests here in Portland until last night. I visit my 93-year-old mother twice a week, so I have been very careful about Covid-19. But Trump’s deployment of secret police in my city solely for the purpose of providing video footage for his campaign ads was too much for me, and yesterday I felt like I had to show up in person down at the Hatfield Court House, which Trump’s stormtroopers are “protecting.”

The fundamental thing that people need to know about what is happening here in Portland is that the skirmishes are limited to the evening and early-morning hours and to a single city block in downtown Portland. Ninety-nine percent of daily life here is completely normal. Portland is not being vandalized, looted, or set ablaze.

I got town to the courthouse about 8:30 last night. The courthouse is an ideal location for a protest because, although it is smack in the middle of downtown Portland, there is a park across the street. So for the past fifty-eight consecutive nights protesters have gathered in that park. So the protests predate the presence of Trump’s secret police—those goons arrived a little over two weeks ago.

The rationale for the arrival of this motley crew of untrained, brutal thugs was the protection of the federal courthouse building. The damage to the courthouse before their arrival was graffiti. Some small fires were also lit in the street in front of the building, but there were no conflagrations inside the building—no arson. This is still the case today. The “damage” to the courthouse is still limited to graffiti.

We don’t know how many fascist police Trump has sent to Portland to battle this wave of graffiti. He refuses to say. What we do know is that the size of the demonstrations, which had been winding down, has exploded exponentially since their arrival. This is surprising to exactly no one. Two nights ago, 4,000 Portlanders protested. Last night’s crowd was estimated to be about 5,000—the largest one yet.  

I got to the courthouse about 8:30 last night. There were probably a couple of thousand people there. The secret police have set up a metal barricade in front of the courthouse, and it had been decorated with flowers and BLM posters. I brought some swim goggles, water, and a bandana, but I felt severely under-prepared as I scanned my fellow protesters. Most of them were wearing ski helmets and ski goggles. Some had full-on, pro gas masks. Several were wearing leaf blowers, which they have been using to blow tear gas back toward the secret police. The food kitchens in the park that had been destroyed the night before by the secret police were back up and running—barbecue AND vegan. There were groups of nurses in their medical scrubs, teachers, more children than I would have expected, and a really fine contingent of drummers.

One important point: many in the black community (Portland’s is small—about 6% of the population) have expressed their concerns, often angrily, that the nightly skirmishes had obscured the original Black Lives Matter focus on addressing systemic racism in the police force. It is a totally legitimate concern, and there is a lot of truth in it. I can tell you that Black Lives Matter was the theme last night, and that black organizers were leading the crowd. It’s also true, of course, that it’s important to protest the invasion of your city by secret police, so there was a strong message of “Feds out of Portland,” too.

Around ten o’clock a speaker addressing the crowd pointed out that the tactic of confronting the secret police on their federal turf night after night was questionable. She spoke of the need to spread the protest out to other areas in Portland that were not under federal control. She told us that organizers had learned that the secret police were being housed in the Marriott Hotel several blocks away, down on the river, and within minutes most of the crowd, including me, was marching over to the Marriott.

We surrounded the Marriott on two sides and filled the circular driveway in front of the hotel. I couldn’t see any guests in the lobby, and nearly all of the windows in the hotel were dark. This tactic made a ton of sense to me. If the Marriott truly is housing the secret police (several folks on Facebook are claiming this, but I haven’t seen it confirmed in the regular media), then targeting them and hurting Marriott’s business is not only legitimate but important. And moving the focus to the Marriott moves the protests off federal territory and the turf of the secret police. Trying to shut down the Marriott would certainly being about a confrontation with law enforcement, but it would most likely be with the Portland police (who showed a lot of brutality before the arrival of the feds) and not the secret police.

But we didn’t attempt to shut down the Marriott. Around 11:00 we marched back to the courthouse, where we joined a large crowd in the park. There were about 5,000 protesters at this point.

Most of the confrontations with the secret police have happened between 11:00 p.m. and 2 a.m., so at this point we were in that skirmish time zone, and you could feel a heightened awareness in the crowd. Protesters shined bright floodlights into the front of the courthouse. Green lasers were flashed against the sides of the courthouse and nearby buildings at spots where protesters thought that secret police were stationed.

At around 11:30, a really loud boom went off in front of the courthouse, and then another. Protesters were setting off fireworks. Some of them were launched skyward at the sides of the buildings. I was toward the back of the crowd after the march to the Marriott, so I couldn’t see what was happening right in front of the courthouse. More fireworks, and then I saw a cloud launched in front of the courthouse and billow into the air. I couldn’t tell if it was smoke from the fireworks or tear gas, but the crowd booed loudly. About two minutes later, a much larger cloud appeared and wafted toward the crowd, and people began hustling past me, away from the courthouse. I was just getting my goggles out of my pocket when my eyes started watering and I realized that the cloud of tear gas had reached me. I turned and started moving toward the back of the park. Just a few minutes, I thought, and then I’ll be out of this, but then a much stronger cloud of tear gas reached me from another direction, and for a second I thought that I was disoriented and was heading INTO the gas, not away from it.

That tear gas really does the job. It’s very nasty shit. People were wretching and moaning and rubbing their eyes. I must have been stumbling around, because a good samaritan came up to me and asked me if I’d like my eyes cleaned out. “Yes, please,” I said and he had me tip my head back and blink while he poured saline solution in my eyes. I doused my bandana with my water bottle and wiped the stinging gas off my face with it as I got further way. The Covid mask I was wearing kept from breathing very much of the gas.

On Fifth Avenue I passed a four-person, constantly flowing drinking fountain. A suburban-looking father and his two sons, who looked to be about ten and twelve, were washing their red eyes with handfuls of water from the fountain. “See, boys,” he told them. “That’s how it’s done.”

I headed out of the park, found my car, and went home. I found out today that the secret police did emerge and clear the area, but not until much later—around 2 a.m.

Did we score any tactical victories last night? Not really, but the feint to the Marriott is a tactic that should be followed up on. We don’t need to target the courthouse every night.

Are the secret police any closer to leaving Portland? Nope.

Then what’s the point?

Protests are not like wars. Their value is not based on body counts or territory taken. Protests are statements—they are the antithesis of silence, which is tacit approval and a different kind of violence. Most of all, their power is in their ability to outlast even the most repressive response.

A reporter from the Portland Oregonion spent last night inside the courthouse with the secret police and wrote an article about her experience in today’s paper. She wrote that “Federal agents said they are wearing of the nightly protests.” She interviewed one of them.

“We’re just not getting anywhere,” he said. “If they just stayed off the fence and weren’t being aggressive towards us, we’d just be inside twiddling our thumbs. … I don’t think there’s an end in sight. They don’t want to stop but we can’t leave this building until they leave us alone. The ‘give’ has to ‘give’ on the outside of the fence.”

This the fundamental delusion of so-called “moderates” who criticize the protesters when their city is invaded by the secret police—claiming that the protesters are playing into their hands while ignoring that their city has been invaded by a secret police force and acquiescence and passivity in the face of that means that the fascists will have won.

This is also the fundamental delusion of the committed fascist—that if more and more pressure and violence are brought to bear, citizens—who have stood up to protest exactly that violence—will respond by giving up.

We can do this forever, and we will until the “give” happens on the other side of that fence—inside that courthouse. That courthouse is OUR courthouse, not the secret police’s, and we will outlast them. Iit is we who will one day bring THEM to justice—in a courtroom iinside that very same building.

Mueller Speaks

The reports of an imminent end to the Mueller investigation seem more substantial than the rumors we’ve heard every day for a year and a half. It will be an experience to live without the mystery and anticipation surrounding it.

None of us know what Mueller will tell us. We don’t even know whether he will be allowed to tell us anything.

It is possible that Mueller’s report will document treason and obstruction of justice by the President of the United States and that it will be accompanied by one or several additional indictments that had been previously sealed.

It is also possible that Mueller will find no evidence linking Trump directly to either the Russians or obstruction of justice and that Roger Stone will turn out to be Mueller’s last indictment.

It was never smart to think that we could outsource our responsibility to fix our monstrous 2016 mistake to Mueller or to bet that he would provide the ironclad case for impeachment that we’ve dreamed about. It’s more likely that nightmare elections can only be cured by another election, and that Mueller’s findings will not be the end of Trump.

We have three things to be thankful for—the 2016 midterms, the arrival of Bill Barr, and Robert Mueller.

If the Democrats hadn’t won by a sizeable margin last year, the Republicans would have had a relatively easy time burying or lying about Mueller’s report in advance of the 2020 election. But things are different with Sheriff Pelosi in town. If Barr quashes or selectively edits the report, the Democrats can subpoena it and/or have Mueller testify about it public. If the report turns out to be too narrow, the Democrats can launch their own investigations. If the report lays out a strong case for impeachment, that process starts with Pelosi and Nadler..

If Matt Whitaker were still acting Attorney General, we would soon learn exactly what he meant when he told friends that his job description was to “jump on a hand grenade” for Donald Trump. We know from Whitaker’s recent performance on the Hill that he is dumb enough and partisan enough to attempt to completely quash Mueller’s report. Barr is definitely partisan, but he is not stupid enough to put himself in legal jeopardy, and with him in as Attorney General we at least have a chance of seeing most of Mueller’s report. Many Democrats in D.C. vouch for Barr’s integrity, he is not an enemy of the DOJ or the FBI, and he’s known Robert Mueller fir decades. Hopefully we will find that Trump has woefully misjudged Barr. It may be that Mueller waited to release his report until Barr was in place.

It’s hard to imagine a better person for the impossible role of special prosecutor than Robert Mueller, and he has certainly lived up to his reviews when it comes to running this investigation. Nearly two years without a leak from his team. That’s unreal. Just imagine the legions of aggressive, brilliant reporters who have trued to crack that cone of silence. Mueller is also a patriot who cares deeply about the rule of law, the FBI and the DOJ. If Mueller thinks that Trump is a traitor or has obstructed justice, Trump is in big trouble.

There is a contradiction built into Mueller’s investigation that will be key to how this all plays out.

Mueller is a prosecutor conducting a legal investigation and bringing indictments when justified. He is a Department of Justice employee and a known stickler for following the rules and precedents. He will likely follow the DOJ guidelines that hold that a sitting President cannot be indicted. Another standard DOJ practice is to not report on evidence gathered during an investigation that does not lead to a criminal indictment, which makes sense from a strictly legal perspective. If Mueller follows that standard, his report will not include evidence that could be damaging politically but doesn’t meet the threshold of indictment. Mueller and Barr will probably follow the legal requirement to not share information that comes from secret grand jury proceedings, that compromises national security, or that might compromise future prosecutions. Adhering to these standards would narrow Mueller’s report substantially.

But Mueller’s investigation is also political. If Trump can’t be indicted while President and Mueller’s report contains evidence that Trump broke the law, the audience for the report is not just the Attorney General but Congress and the American people. We don’t know if Mueller will name Trump as an unindicted co-conspirator, like Leon Jaworski did with Richard Nixon, or let him off completely. Mueller understands that there is a political dimension to his investgation. How he decides to handle it will impact the history of this country.

We may be disappointed by Mueller’s findings on a criminal conspiracy (remember that collusion is not a crime and that Mueller is a prosecutor) between Trump and the Russians to influence the 2016 elections, in the sense that the trail will not lead to Trump himself. Mueller did not break Paul Manafort, who is clearly risking the rest if his life in prison to angle for a pardon, and Manafort is the one who can tie Trump directly to an election conspiracy involving the Russians. Mueller will show that many of Trump’s people worked with the Russians, but he may not be able to prove that Trump had personal role in those dirty tricks

I’m more hopeful about the obstruction of justice case, given Mueller’s background and the fact that Trump has obstructed justice on many occasions right out in the open and has no doubt made other attempts behind the scenes that Mueller knows about. I cannot imagine how someone like Robert Mueller could not find that Trump has obstructed justice.

Obstruction of justice, specially by a President who technically runs most of the government, is all about proving intent. Why, then, didn’t Mueller subpoena Trump and force him to testify? Without that testimony, how does Mueller prove intent?

People tend to forget that Nixon would never have faced the prospect of impeachment had it not been for the tapes. Without them, it was Nixon’s word against John Dean’s, and we know who would have won that fight. Does Mueller have the luxury of not asking for Trump’s testimony to prove intent because he has tapes or phone taps of Trump?

In the end I think we will learn that this was all about a real estate developer and media star whose biggest dream was not to be President but to have his name on an apartment tower in Moscow that would net him $500 million. He starts pursuing this goal in the 1990s, around the time he begins borrowing millions from Russian banks. He runs for President in 2015 after his television show is cancelled, not to actually win—even he doesn’t believe that will happen—but to reenergize his brand. He continues to pursue the Trump Tower Moscow deal because he doesn’t think he will win. But he DOES win, and he continues to pursue the deal because that’s still what’s most important to him. He first step as President is to make sure that the Trump business cashes in on him being President. He makes it clear even before the inauguration that the entire U.S. government is for sale. He licks Putin’s boots because he needs Putin to get his stupid tower built in Moscow and because, like most weak bullies, he has a thing for real tyrants. The Russians get their patsy in the White House. The government gets sold off. Trump makes war on the press, the FBI, the CIA, and the DOJ because he fears that they have the goods on him, and forty percent of Americans support him in this. The Republican Party’s transformation into a white supremacist party is completed during the first year of Trump’s term. America, seemingly, hits rock bottom.

It could actually get worse. If Mueller makes a case for Trump conspiring with the Russians or obstructing justice, or both, the Democratic House will vote to approve articles of impeachment and Trump will be tried in the Senate. That could lead to a truly rock-bottom, we-can’t-sink-any-lower-as-a-country moment in which the Republicans in the Senate officially vote to acquit a treasonous and criminal President.

Trump Gang says that families cannot be reunited

Last June Federal Court Judge Dana Sabraw set a deadline for the Trump Gang to reunite all the nearly 3,000 children they had kidnapped from their parents.

That deadline was two weeks ago. FIVE HUNDRED AND FIFTY NINE children still remain separated from their parents, including 46 children under the age of five, who the Trump Gang claim are "ineligible" for reunification--in many cases, because the Trump Gang deported their parents and now can't locate them. Many of these children will NEVER be reunited with their parents.

Please donate to the ACLU, which is leading the fight to reverse these kidnappings, keep agitating on behalf of these young victims, and remember this vicious policy when you vote in November.

What the hell is a "perjury trap"? It used to be called lying.

According to Rudy Guiliani, Fox News, and the alt-right, a “perjury-trap question” is a real thing, and it’s not good. It’s a trap, a devious trick sprung on innocent people by super smart, slick prosecutors and special counsels. To hear them tell it, these questions are so cunning that they can force blameless folks to lie and give the prosecutors—who are supposed to go after criminals but instead, according to the alt-right, spent most of their time trying to trip up Republicans—the grounds to send them to jail.

“Perjury-trap question” is now a term in the political lexicon. You can’t watch cable news for two minutes without hearing some talking head discussing “perjury-trap questions” as if they were a legitimate subject. They’re not.

This seems to beg another one of those basic civics lessons about something that we all thought was common knowledge until we were all propelled into Trumpworld in 2016.

PERJURY is what is real. Perjury is making an intentionally false statement, either spoken or in writing, that could affect the outcome of a proceeding.

Because perjury can sabotage legal cases, especially when capital punishment is a possible outcome, it has always been a serious crime in the United States. In the early days of our nation, penalties for perjury included death, banishment, and cutting out the liar’s tongue.

Such lies often follow a question, but the question is not the issue. The issue is whether the person who answers a question under oath tells the truth or not.

People become perjurers not because of the questions they are asked or by underhanded prosecutorial black magic. They become perjurers when evidence from other sources is presented that proves that what they said was untrue.

So dodging “perjury-trap questions” is not a problem for a witness under oath because there is no such thing. They are just questions.

Faulty memory is not perjury. Perjury requires willful intent.

Inconsequential false statements, even if there was intent, do not result in perjury charges. If Trump was to lie under oath about his hair or his age, a greased slide won’t open up under the witness seat to take him to Perjury Land. The lie has to be a conscious one, and it has to be about something that could change the decision of the judge or the jury.

A titanic myth at the center of this “perjury trap” is that it infers that Mueller is focused on nailing Trump as a perjurer. This is that notion, again, that evil prosecutors can get innocent people to lie. Mueller has much bigger fish to fry. He is investigating whether Trump worked with the Russians to rig the election and whether Trump has obstructed justice. Trump has much bigger charges to fear than a perjury rap.

If Mueller is supposedly setting a perjury trap, he is doing a really, really poor job of it. He has been negotiating with Trump’s lawyers for months on getting Trump to answer questions. He even gave Trump the questions IN ADVANCE. He’s offered to allow Trump to submit written (by whom?) answers if he can ask follow-up questions. Worst entrapment scheme ever!

Trump’s lawyers have responded that the President should not be asked questions about possible obstruction of justice.

Here are those questions that Mueller wants to ask Trump about possible obstruction of justice:

• What is your knowledge of calls that Gen. Flynn made with [former Russian ambassador Sergei] Kislyak late December 2016?
• What is your reaction to press accounts Jan. 12, 2017, Feb. 8-9 2017?
• What did you think and what did you know regarding Sally Yates’ meetings on Jan 26-27 regarding Gen. Flynn?
• How was the decision made to request the resignation of Gen. Flynn on Feb. 13?
• What was the purpose of the meeting with James Comey on Feb. 14 after the Homeland Security briefing?
• What did you say to Comey about Gen. Flynn?
• What did you think and what did you do about the Comey June 8, 2017 testimony regarding Gen. Flynn?
• After Gen. Flynn resigned, what calls or efforts were made by people associated with you to reach out to Gen. Flynn or to discuss Flynn seeking immunity or possible pardon?
• What was the President’s view of James Comey during the Transition with respect to job performance?
• What did the President think and do in reaction to James Comey’s briefing on January 6, including the intelligence community assessment?
• What was the President’s reaction to Comey when they met alone regarding what they called other ICA matters (the Steele Dossier)? Also, what was discussed [regarding] ancillary reports?
• What was the purpose of the Jan. 27 dinner meeting you had with Comey?
• Was loyalty discussed? Did you communicate with Comey concerning his status at the end of the dinner? What was your knowledge of the Gen. Flynn and Russia investigation in days leading up to the March 20 testimony of Comey before House Intel Committee?
• What did you think and what did you do in reaction to the Comey testimony on March 20 before House Intel Committee?
• Describe outreach to Intel chiefs [Mike] Rogers, [Mike] Pompeo, and [Dan] Coates?
• What did you say to them?
• What was the purpose of the reach-out on March 22, 25 and 27?
• What was the purpose of your calls to Comey on March 30 and April 11?
• What was the purpose of your statement to Maria Bartiromo on April 11, 2017?
• What did you think and what did you do regarding the May 3 Comey testimony before the Senate Intel Committee?
• Regarding the decision to terminate Comey, when was it made, why was it made, who on your staff played a role in decision, and how was it determined to make it public?
• What did you mean to communicate during your May 10 meeting with Kislyak and [Sergey] Lavrov (concerning ‘pressure off’ and ‘nutcase’)?
• What did you mean regarding your statements to Lester Holt regarding Comey and Russia?
• What was the purpose of May 12 tweet that Comey better hope there are no tapes?
• What was the purpose of the September and October press statements, including tweets, regarding an investigation of Comey? Also, Sarah Sanders statements regarding same?
• What did you think and what did you do regarding AG Sessions recusal?
• What efforts did you make to try to get him to change his mind and reverse?
• Did you have a discussion about whether the AG was going protect him and reference other AG’s?
• What did you think and what did you do in reaction to the news of the appointment of the Special Counsel? – Including your reaction to AG Session’s resignation?
• What was the purpose of holding AG Sessions resignation until May 31 and with whom did you discuss it?
• What did you think and what did you do in reaction to the June 20, 2017 determination that the SC was speaking to Rogers, Pompeo and Coates?
• What consideration and discussion did you have regarding terminating the Special Counsel in June of 2017?
• What did you think and do in reaction to January 25, 2018 story about the termination of the Special Counsel and Don [McGahn] backing you off of the termination?
• What discussions did you have with Reince Priebus in July 2017 about obtaining the Sessions resignation?
• With whom did you discuss obtaining the AG’s resignation?
• What was the purpose of the public criticism of Sessions via tweets during July 2017?
• What was the reason for your continued criticism of Comey and McCabe, even till today?

No tricks or traps here. Every one of these questions is an entirely predictable query that goes to the heart of determining whether Trump has obstructed justice. Many are based on Trump’s own words, and they are all focused on Trump’s own actions.

The Trump legal team and Fox News aren’t worried about “perjury-trap questions.” They are worried, with damn good reason, because their guy is incapable of telling the truth. About anything. Given that remarkable fact, ANY question posed to Trump under oath is literally a “perjury-generating question”—not because of the trickiness of the question, but because the answer will come directly out of that “truth-free zone” that is Trump’s mouth and mind.

Trump's not on the ballot in November. So why vote?

If we turn out and vote, the Democrats have a good shot at winning the House and a very slim chance to win the Senate.

This won't result in the Democrats stopping the Republicans' legislative strategy, because they literally have none.

It won't result in Democrats passing legislation, because Trump will veto any bill that passes and the Democrats won't be able to get the two-thirds majorities to override.

It won't mean that Trump will be impeached, because the Democrats won't be able to get 67 votes in the Senate. Not a chance in hell that will happen, no matter WHAT Trump did or does.

So who cares? Why vote?

Because of what it will mean to Trump's reelection chances to have all the House committees and the power to serve subpoenas and hold public hearings. If the Democrats win the House, they will:

• Use their chairmanship of the tax committee to get access to Trump's tax returns, which they could reveal to the American public by reading them into the Congressional Record from the floor of the House.

• Launch investigations into the blatant corruption in Trump's Cabinet--Wilbur Ross' shady business deals and attempt to politicize the 2020 census, Ryan Zinke's ethics charges and politicization of offshore drilling decisions, Ben Carson's hiring of family members, and Betsy DeVos' connections to private prisons, Mnuchin's travel and ties to the banks and Wall Street--there is literally no end to this work.

• Investigate Devin Nunes' treasonous activities.

• Re-open the Intelligence Committee's Russia investigation, hold public hearings with the Trump Gang under oath, subpoena Trump's Deutsche Bank records, and expand it to include Russian interference in the 2018 election.

• Protect Rod Rosenstein and Robert Mueller.

• Hold floor votes on common-sense gun control, immigration reform, tax reform that favors the 99%,, Medicare for all, abolishing ICE, universal college tuition, the environment, DACA and other votes that the Republicans have been purposefully avoiding for years. None of these bills will survive Trump's veto, but GOP members of Congress will finally be on record on these issues, which will be vital in the Democrats' to increase their margins in Congress and remove Trump (kicking and screaming, no doubt) from the White House.

Kidnapper Trump

Today was the deadline for the Trump Gang to return the children they kidnapped to their parents. They succeeded in reuniting only slightly more than half.

The Trump Gang says it released 378 children to someone other than their parents. Who were they released to?

The Trump Gang says that 711 children are INELIGIBLE to be reunified with their parents. In what moral universe, under what conditions, under what circumstances, are children ineligible to be reunited with their parents?

Twenty-one children, the Trump Gang says, had parents with "red flags" in their background checks, but these were not explained. What are these "red flags"? What will happen to these children?

Forty-six children, according to the Trump Gang, had a parent with a "red flag" that didn't show up on their background checks. What are these "red flags"? What will happen to these children?

Seventy-nine children, says the Trump Gang, have parents who "were released into the U.S. and could not be reunited." This means that the Trump gang can't find the parents, because they had no system that linked separated children with their parents. What will happen to these children?

The Trump Gang swears that the parents of 120 children "declined to be reunited." Who believes this? Who will check with these parents--if they can be found--to check the accuracy of this claim? What will happen to these children?

The Trump Gang told the court today that they already deported the parents of 431 children and that they are not responsible for reuniting these families. The Trump Gang is refusing to pay the cost of flying these children out of the country. What will happen to these children?

The Trump Gang admits that it can't find the parents of 94 children. What will happen to these children?

The Trump Gang says that seven children were impacted by a different court case. What will happen to these children?

These numbers don't add up to 711. The Trump Gang hasn't explained the discrepancy.

Interviews with the separated families by the ACLU and Families Belong Together offer evidence that the Trump Gang was not honest with many of the parents and children who were separated.

This is heinous. It's heartbreakingly clear that some of these children will NEVER be reunited with their parents. This disaster is on Trump and the Republican Congress, which has refused to allow a vote on immigration legislation.

Why aren't the members of the Trump Gang being prosecuted for child abuse and gross negligence?

Contact your Senator and Congressperson. Contribute to the ACLU and Families Belong Together (familiesbelongtogether.org), who are the organizations working on behalf of these families. March. Protest. Show your anger!

Stop With The Freud And Start With The Fighting!

The frantic Trump resistance, the Democratic Party, and the inherently analytical legitimate media are literally killing themselves trying to figure out Donald Trump, especially since the Surrender Summit.

After a year and a half of Trumpworld, we who inhabit the Other Reality have overthought ourselves into exhaustion, disorientation and existential hospice care from trying to process a daily avalanche of lies, cruelty, doublespeak, jaw-dropping incompetence, upside-down-and-backwards nonsense, arrivals and departures on the hectic Trump train, open collusion with Russia and every manner of slimy despots via the worldwide media, and other treasonous and unnatural acts.

At this rate, we won’t survive to topple Trump. All the collective cognitive power and energy that we should be expending on bringing Trump down is being wasted on trying to define him so that we can have the right game plan for going toe to toe with him. Trump, who despite the typhoon of daily chaos he generates lives a remarkably stress-free existence thanks to being born without the part of the brain that gives most of us memory and a conscience, will at this rate clearly outlast us all. In fact, that may be—really and truly—his re-election strategy: to destroy the opposition by making our heads explode.

It’s fair to contend that you need to know your enemy in order to fight him effectively, but we can conclude this debate about Trump now and move on to the battle plan.

The various schools of thought around our Chief Executive can be boiled down to four core profiles:

• Trump #1: The successful business man beholden to no one who has sacrificed an impossibly sweet private life to come to Washington as the first President with the guts and deal-making ability to take on the more-than-two-hundred-years’ reign of the swamp-dwelling deep state. (This is the version of Trump that his core supporters pray to.)
• Trump #2: A deeply flawed but brilliant con artist who managed to hijack the Republican party, give it enough energy/momentum/support to retake not only the White House but Congress in the bargain, and, following that unbelievable trifecta win, completely remold it in his own pompadoured and painted image to the point where he downside any disloyalty to him on the Republican side means instant political death. (This is the perception of Trump held by professional, office-holding or office-aspiring Republicans.)
• Trump #3: A brilliant strategist for all that is bad, truly evil, or just plain stupid about America. The Monster of Mar-a-Lago, the cunning commandant of the screaming flying monkeys, the apocalyptic communicator who is swiftly making his hillbilly hordes proud flag wavers for racism and fascism and methodically destroying governmental institutions and the very rule of law. (This is the bogeyman Trump feared by many who despise him.)
• Trump #4: A lazy, unprincipled, moronic, and unbelievably weak narcissist who can’t even comprehend, much less realize, the standard human survival skills of hard work, preparation, knowledge and empathy and who is driven not by a brain but by some kind of awful, prehistoric lizard gland—a supremely crude mechanism that our species supposedly left behind eons ago and was thought to now only survive in lampreys, vampire bats, guano-eating beetles and those blind fish that live at great depths in underwater caves--that enables him to improvisationally careen, second by second, through a world inhabited only by himself, completely clueless about the wreckage he leaves in his wild wake. (This is the imbecilic Trump familiar to the Russians and those who have worked closely with him.)

We can quickly dispense with Trump #1. Trump parlayed a multimillion gift from his old man to finance four bankruptcies before being hired by NBC as the star of a television show. He IS a tenacious press agent (he actually used to call up reporters using a fake name and pretend to be his own spokesperson) and he knows how to make money licensing his name, but he’s a wizard at bankruptcy, not at business.

Trump #2 is part myth and part reality. Winning the Republican nomination against the likes of Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz doesn’t require brilliant political instincts—more qualified candidates can be found in any high school student council slugfest. It’s absolutely true that no one—no one—thought he would win against Clinton. But he lost the popular vote by a considerable margin and won the Electoral College by getting 70,000 more votes in three pivotal states. The key point about the election is that no one was more stunned by his victory than Trump himself. A failed run at the Presidency was, in Trump’s version of career planning, designed to get him a Fox New contract after the cancellation of “The Apprentice.” But since his improbably victory Trump has completely hypnotized 35% of Americans, which means he completely owns the Republican Party, the NRA and Fox News.

Trump #3 is based on a complete myth but otherwise spot on. The true part is the demagoguery and Trump’s effort to make racism and fascism okay again. The mythic, bogus part is the brilliant strategist piece. Trump has no strategy. He rewarded the far-right Republicans who supported him during the campaign with Cabinet-level jobs and has allowed them to gut their departments and allow themselves and their cronies to loot the government till, but in no way is he managing these people or orchestrating an overarching plan to destroy government. He is actively using his demagogic skills to attack the rule of law, the intelligence agencies, and the Justice Department not because of any personal philosophy or credo but because those are the people who could put him in jail.

Trump #4 is completely and utterly accurate.

So the most accurate composite of Trump the politician political is a pathological, lazy moron completely driven by self interest and self promotion who has connected in a profound way with the sizeable portion of the electorate that is driven by racism and a taste for authoritarianism over the rule of law, and who has used that base of support to complete the transformation of the Republican Party and Fox News as white supremacist, fascist gangs. This connection is what makes this hopelessly random goofball the most dangerous internal threat in American history.

As we can see by reviewing the perceptions of Trump, it’s impossible to separate his politics from his personality. To cut to the chase and get to a final Trump diagnosis, then, it is appropriate to leverage the centuries of research compiled by behavioral scientists. Not surprisingly, they have formally codified a personality type that fits Trump like one of the Vaseline-filled gloves with which he covers his tiny hands: the narcissistic sociopath.

Behold the specific traits identified by the medical community that characterize the narcissistic sociopath, which scientists categorize as “a malignant personality.” According to the experts, the presence of any five of the following characteristics means that you’re dealing with a narcissistic sociopath:

• A grandiose opinion of themselves and a belief that they are superior to other people. Narcissistic sociopaths will state that their goal is to rule the world. They believe that they are all powerful and all knowing and that, when it comes to getting what they want, that the end justifies the means.
• A marked tendency to lie pathologically and make false promises to build up a complex belief about their own powers and abilities—to the point where they can pass lie detector tests.
• An excessive and persistent need for others' admiration and praise coupled with a strong, often violent, response to negative feedback.
• A hostile and domineering personality and a tendency to humiliate others.
• A noticeable lack of regard for the rights of others and a tendency to violate those rights.
• A lack of a conscience and empathy for others. An inability to show remorse, shame, or guilt or to apologize. A lack of religion and morality in their lives.
• A marked tendency to divide and conquer by smearing people and pitting people against each other.
• A marked tendency to employ other people with psychological problems.
• An inability to take responsibility. Whatever the problem, it is always someone else’s fault.
• The inability to display emotions like love, warmth, compassion and humor.
• Poor listening skills.
• A marked tendency to impulsive and reckless behavior.
• A marked tendency to be sexually promiscuous.
• A marked tendency toward extreme paranoia.
• A marked tendency toward drama and the association of that drama with “bad” people.

Trump, obviously, exhibits every single one of these traits to an extraordinary degree.

The diagnosis of narcissistic sociopath is not armchair psychobabble. This profile not only suits Trump to a T, it also explains his politics. Narcissistic sociopaths are NEVER going to defend the country if that doesn’t help them personally. They are going to be racists. They are going to think that they, and they alone, understand the problem enough to fix it. They are going to be secretive and authoritarian. They are going to admire other tyrants. They are going to make war on anyone who dares to question or counter them—anything but an ass-kissing festival is going to be “fake news.” They are going to despise the rule of law because they can’t control it and because it is a threat to them. They are going to hire sycophants and yes men, and then fire them willy nilly. They are going to divide people. Their policies are going to be cruel. Above all, they are not going to have a strategy about anything because their reaction to events and to others will be improvised depending on how they are affected by them personally.

Okay, Doc, you’ve nailed it. Trump to a T. In fact, we’ve seen all these traits in Trump for nearly three years now. We have our diagnosis and we can close his file. But you can’t stop there—you’ve got to tell us how to best deal with this lunatic. After all, he’s not just the biggest asshole at work or the shittiest neighbor in the apartment building—he’s THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. Literally the entire world wants to know how to live with—or effectively take on—this malignant wild man.

The behavioral scientists have this advice for dealing with narcissistic sociopaths:

• Realize that you will never change them.
• Pay attention to your instincts.
• Cease contact. Take steps to protect yourself.
• Do not try to reform them or give them more chances.
• Realize that it’s not your fault.
• Don’t wait for them to agree or ask you permission.
• Don’t feed their ego.
• Don’t wait for them to overpower you—take control whether they like it or not.
• Give up fear—respond with reason and calmness.

There is a framework here for the next phase of the resistance—the actually-doing-stuff phase.

Stop thinking about Trump and start fighting him. Don’t ignore Trump’s hourly lies and crimes, and be ready to show up in the streets to protest particularly odious actions and policies, but don’t obsess about them or let him or the GOP sap your energy or destroy your morale. Swap cable news and Facebook time for hours spent volunteering on the front lines.
Don’t expend ANY of your finite energy engaging with Trumpists. The vast majority did not vote for him because of his economic platform (whatever that was) or because the Democrats didn’t care about them (which is true). They are white people who voted for him because they didn’t like the prospect of the end of white supremacy in this country. Uncle Joe didn’t pull the lever for Trump because you didn’t give him an effective counterargument—not your fault!—and we don’t need him, anyway. We can beat Trump without converting a single Trump voter, because they are still the minority in this country. Our task is to make our election results look like the electorate. Given the GOP gerrymandering, this will take an enormous get-out-the-vote effort by all of us. Focus on that.

Take action now, because soon it really will be too late. Vote for Democrats. Don’t nullify your vote and your opposition to Trump by voting for write-in or third-party candidates. Volunteer in your neighborhood and city to get anti-Trump people elected mayor, to your city council, and to your local school board, and donate to their campaigns. Work and donate within your state to get Democrats elected as governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state (a role that is vitally important, as it oversees elections), and state legislator. If you live in a Congressional swing state, you are especially important and influential—work for, and donate to, the Democratic candidate.

If you live in a completely safe Republican district, sign up with SwingLeft (https://swingleft.org/) to find the swing district nearest to you and learn how to volunteer for Democrats there.

Join or start an Indivisible group in your city (https://www.indivisible.org/), the group that has created a powerful template for local political organizing that really works.

Join and donate to the ACLU (https://www.aclu.org/). The courts have already shown that they and the rule of law can be major disruptors to the Trumpists’ agenda, and the ACLU has been the most aggressive and successful group to leverage the courts to throw sand in the GOP’s gears.

Subscribe to legitimate news outlets. There has been some incredible reporting on Trump that has helped to counter his lies and Fox News and to publish new details of his crimes.

Keep expressing your anger to your elected representatives (https://countableaction.com/ and https://democracy.io/#!/).
Don’t expend any energy on being afraid. The best antidote to fear and anxiety is to join like-minded people and take action. There are more of us than there are of them.

Holding Brown People for Ransom

The fifteen and a half months of the Trump nightmare have been a long nightmare. The last few weeks, with the legalization of child abuse by the United States Government, have been torture. I was spun up enough last night, but then I watched Rachel Maddow break down as she read about the "Tender Age" detention camps. Dealt with my insomnia by drawing this cartoon.

Woke up this morning to the news that Trump will supposedly sign an executive order today ending the separation of families at the border. I'm posting the cartoon anyway, if only to remind myself in the middle of what will no doubt be a day of feverish rewriting of history by the Trump mob, that the President of the United States abused innocent child children to get Congress to pay for his insane wall.

If Trump does sign such an order today, there is no doubt, regardless of the details (which will doubtlessly be far less than satisfying), that this is a watershed moment. For the first time Trump has bailed on a key policy. And in doing so, he has admitted that his prior rationales (the policy was based on a law, the law had to be repealed by Congress, there was nothing that he could do personally) were lies. He has clearly buckled under the worldwide outrage that he and his gangsters purposely ignited and were reveling in just a few hours ago. They were utterly convinced, until this morning, that cruelty at the border would be their winning issue in the November midterms.

Today's developments don't change the reality that the effort to rid this country of Trump and his gang will be long, brutal, and horrific. But this is his first retreat, and the fact that he surrendered may perhaps make this the "emperor has no clothes" moment that the resistance has been hoping for--the crack in the fascist dam that begins to separate Trump from at least part of his family of supporters. For weeks now, Trump supporters have been loyally defending the separation of children from their parents. Most will continue to do so, but take a look at the comments on Breitbart and the Fox News web site this morning from the many Trumpists who are feeling betrayed this morning. Now, for some of them, Trump is not racist enough. As Ann Coulter put it in a tweet this morning, "Liberals cried and America died." As usual, she got it wrong.

Shithole America Hell

The First Level of Shithole America Hell: Trump is elected on a racist platform and a promise to shut down the southern border.

The Second Level of Shithole America Hell: Trump institutes a new policy designed to deter LEGAL immigration by rejecting families applying for asylum, declaring them as illegal immigrants, and separating children--including babies and toddlers--from their parents.

The Third Level of Shithole America Hell: Trump institutes this policy without having prepared for it. Two thousand children are separated from their parents in just six weeks. Existing facilities are quickly overwhelmed. New tent cities for detained children are thrown up in Texas under 100-degree heat. HHS staff is not trained on how to care for these children. The government cannot say if there is a database that maintains information on these children and their parents. It is not clear that whether the government may will be able to reunite these families.

The Fourth Level of Shithole America Hell: Trump, at the G7 Summit, stuns world leaders during a discussion on migration by telling Prime Minister Abe of Japan "Shinzo, you don't have this problem, but I can ship you 25 million Mexicans and you'll be out of office very soon."

The Fifth Level of Shithole America Hell: Trump, in a brazen lie, claims that his new policy of separating of families at the border is mandated by "a law passed by the Democrats and forced on us by the Democrats."

The Sixth Level of Shithole America Hell: Jeff Sessions quotes the same Biblical passage used by 18th and 19th century American clergy to justify slavery as a religious rationale for his terrible new policy.

The Seventh Level of Shithole America Hell: Trump, in another brazen lie, claims that he "hates" his own policy of separating families at the border.

The Eighth Level of Shithole America Hell: Trump uses the human tragedy at the border as a bargaining chip to get the Democrats to vote for his border wall next week.

We haven't reached bottom on this despicable chapter in American history. To be continued...

The Worst of the Worst

Every day millions of people point to Donald Trump as the worst person in politics.

It’s not true. There are at least fifty people in Washington, D.C. alone who are unquestionably more loathsome than Donald Trump.

That’s the number of Senate Republicans who met with Donald Trump yesterday at the White House. One of their colleagues did not attend. He is home in Arizona fighting a brain tumor. Six days ago these fifty Americans learned that a member of the White House communications team, when the subject of their esteemed colleague’s opposition to Trump’s nominee for CIA director was raised in a meeting, had joked that McCain didn’t matter because he “was dying anyway.”

This used to be the kind of juncture where our politicians would come together regardless of politics, at least in public, and condemn a shocking comment about a legitimate American hero, much less one who may not live out the month.

Not any more. A small minority of these fifty Republican Senators expressed their disgust in public. An even smaller number demanded an apology. You can count the ones who asked that this person be fired from her job on the fingers on one hand. Over the next five days, as it became clear that their leader was not going to allow any such apology or any such firing, their puny protests devolved to “I am not going to say anything further about this” statements.

These were the people who were ushered into the White House yesterday for a face to face meeting with Donald Trump. Not a single one of them brought up this disgraceful and defining moment in the Trump presidency and in the history of their party. Not one.

There are literally no words in the English language—perhaps in any language—to convey the loathsomeness of these craven invertebrates. Trump was raised in privilege to be the penultimate shitheel. He never served in the military. He never knew John McCain. He was never a Republican. He has never respected the military, our institutions of government, or their stated codes of conduct and behavior. He has no morality. He will never apologize. He will never change.

These fifty other reptiles posing as human beings are, like John McCain, Republicans. They all know John McCain personally. They all know his profound personal history of sacrifice and service—his military service, his five years as a prisoner of war, his broken body that is the permanent record of the physical torture he endured, the more than three decades in government—and they all know that he is in the fight of his life. They all campaigned for him when he crisscrossed the country as their Presidential nominee in 2008. They have all honored him as a true American hero. One of those fifty is his fellow Senator from Arizona, who has praised McCain to the skies and who, after announcing that he was quitting politics without fighting for his Senate seat, has shown a penchant for making ringing speeches about political courage and moral conduct to an empty Senate Chamber. Another is, by McCain’s own account, his closest friend. Many in this group served in the military; they all can’t talk enough about how they honor our veterans. They all know that their President sneered at McCain’s war record during the 2016 campaign.

Trump doesn’t apologize because his world is divided into “winners” and “losers,” and people who apologize are in the latter category because you get no credit for saying that you’re sorry. This sociopathic view of morality is the new normal in the Republican Party. The ONLY thing that counts is the winning, whether it is ratings, polls, elections, or the size of your crowds. McCain is a loser not only because he was captured but because he lost to Obama. All the Americans who voted against Trump are losers.

This is no small shift. By buying wholeheartedly into Trump, the GOP has turned its back on the Constitution and the institutions created to defend it in favor of a personality cult where winners are defined as those most loyal—not to the country, but to Trump. The only people worse than an odious tyrant are the people who should know better but who support him anyway.

What is going through John McCain’s mind today? He has spoken eloquently about how he survived his horrific ordeal in the prison camp because he focused on his fellow prisoners and of one day returning home. McCain refused an offer of early release by the North Vietnamese, telling them that he would not allow himself to be freed until his fellow prisoners were also liberated. Now he discovers that he lived through that ordeal and spent thirty years serving his country and his party only to find that he doesn't have a single true friend among his fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill. No doubt he has also reminded himself that he has the respect of millions of others, the love of his family, and his own self esteem. That last quality is something his Republican colleagues will never experience. Or deserve. Or even understand.

"I really believe that I'd run in there even if I didn't have a weapon"

So says Trump, whose crippling-then-vanishing bone spurs kept him from running into any Viet Cong when his country called, but who is convinced that he would have personally stopped Nikolas Cruz, even if it meant using his bare hands against that AR-15.

This is the deranged narcissist who told us that "I alone understand the problem, and I alone can fix it." Who wins every golf game. Who wins the popular vote despite all evidence to the contrary. Who gets the biggest crowds. Who has the best words. Who gets the best ratings. Who can assault women with impunity simply because he is who he is. Who is faster than a speeding bullet and more powerful than a locomotive.

This is also the man who is using images of Parkland survivors in the hospital to solicit donations to his reelection campaign.

My conscious self understands that Trump's personal insanity is on some level a sideshow that keeps us distracted from the grinding, horrific destruction and damage his administration is inflicting, but it means something that we have a dangerous lunatic as our President and that his very real mental derangement is the public face of our country and the driver of his policy.

ron porter's wonderful career

Donald Trump, who has been charged with sexual assault by 16 women, allowed a known wife beater to serve as White House secretary for over a year. Two of Ron Porter's ex-wives and a girlfriend warned the FBI and the White House about his years of abusive behavior. Porter was unable to get a security clearance because of his past, but Trump allowed him to manage top-secret information on a daily basis.

No one in the White House acted on this information until his past appeared in the newspapers. Hope Hicks, Trump's communications director and Porter's current girlfriend, wrote a White House statement that lauded Porter's service. Chief of Staff John Kelly urged Porter to stay in his role. The White House told Senator Orrin Hatch that Porter was the victim of a smear engineered by Corey Lewandowski, former Trump campaign manager and Hope Hicks' former boyfriend. Today Trump spoke to reporters about Porter.

Trump said absolutely nothing about the three women who suffered abuse at the hands of Porter, noting instead that "this is a tough time" for Porter. Trump said absolutely nothing about ensuring a zero-tolerance policy regarding sexual assault in the White House, instead noting that Porter is asserting his innocence. Trump today praised Porter for "an excellent job" and said that he hoped that Porter would go on "to have a wonderful career."

The fix is in

One by one the GOP is picking off, like birds on a wire, every career public servant who could damage Trump. Sally Yates fired. Comey fired. Sessions publically humiliated into submission. McCabe fired with no objection from FBI chief Christopher Wray.

Rosenstein is next. The upcoming release of the phony memo written by the GOP staff of the House Judiciary Committee is being done explicitly to provide the rationale to fire deputy attorney general Ron Rosenstein.

After the Ken Starr disaster, Congress rewrote the special prosecutor law. Under that law, Mueller has to send his findings and recommendations not directly to Congress but to the attorney general, who then has to decide what to do with that report, including making it public or passing it along to Congress for action. Sessions has recused himself from the Russia investigation, so it is Rosenstein who will receive Mueller's recommendations and decide what do to about them. Without Rosenstein's support, the Mueller report won't see the light of day (legally) or lead to any action being taken against Trump.

Trump will soon fire Rosenstein based on the rigged House memo. No doubt he will fire Mueller too, but even if he doesn't all he has to do to bury Mueller's report is to find a new deputy attorney general who would be willing to do that. In a Washington full of Republicans who are willing to destroy the FBI and the DOJ in order to save Trump, that won't be very difficult.

The real shithole

The real shithole is the empty, frozen wasteland inside Trump's rotten carcass where an American heart should be beating. And his tiny, pursed mouth permanently stained by his constant, racist vomiting.

I want to see the Americans stand up loudly and clearly, with no equivocation. I want to see Republicans rise up and call bullshit on this racist President. No hemming and hawing. No comments about a "new normal" or "a unique approach to the Presidency" or requests for an apology. No dodging the questions. No more support of blatantly racist immigration legislation.

When Trump spewed his nakedly racist comments about Haiti, Africa, and Norway across the conference table during his meeting with Congressional leaders of both parties, who, if anyone, spoke up to condemn him to his face?

No Democrats knuckling under and compromising with a racist President and a racist majority party on immigration reforms.

If you support this President, who spends his minimal working hours defecating on each and every one of the aspects that are supposed to define the United States--a respect for the law, a rejection of totalitarianism, a commitment to a free press, a desire to be a force for good in this country and in the world, the championing of opportunity for all, the understanding that we are a nation of immigrants, a commitment to help the less fortunate--you need to look deep in your heart and refresh yourself on what has made this country great. You've lost your way--and the right to call yourself an American. You're a Trumpist, which is something else entirely.

The shallow state

Trumpworld is a reality that is tough to comprehend for those of us who born before last year. It helps if we understand the science behind this new order instead of react emotionally. The physics that drive Trumpworld were put in motion by an explosion last January (popularly known as the "Big Blunder") that created a universe designed not to expand over eons but to quickly destroy itself.

This fundamental Death Force, administered by a "shallow state" of Trumpist bureacrats, explains why every bad thing in Trumpworld is self inflicted and why "truth" and "logic" are irrelevant in it. Just this week there have been some excellent examples of this.

A book is published by a well-known incendiary journalist who was allowed to set up shop in the White House. The book claims that the Oval Office is a completely chaotic and incompetent place. The Trumpian shallow state vigorously attacks the book, which makes it an instant blockbuster and also proves the point that only a chaotic and incompetent administration would allow a well-known incendiary journalist to set up shop in the White House.

Said book includes hair-raising testaments from the White House staff that Trump has the mind of a child and is mentally unfit to be President. Trump responds by releasing childlike, unhinged tweets claiming that "I am like really smart," "I went to the best colleges," and "I am a stable genius."

Methodical, close analysis of the actions of the shallow state will deliver daily--if not hourly--proof that Trumpworld is hurtling toward its own demise.

It's not a witch hunt if the republicans are running it

Fox News and Congressional Republicans are making an aggressive case that the special prosecutor’s investigation into the Trump campaign and Russian interference in the election is a completely biased witch hunt run by the Democrats.

I was initially skeptical of this claim, but after looking into it there is no longer any doubt in my mind that the Russian investigation is nothing but a carefully orchestrated Democratic smear campaign. Don’t believe me? Just look at the following facts and timeline:

The Republican head of a special House committee spends 28 straight months conducting multiple investigations into Hillary Clinton’s actions in the Benghazi incident. No charges are filed.

The Republican head of the FBI leads an investigation into claims that Clinton improperly stored and transmitted information on a personal email server and decides that no charges are warranted.

The Republican head of the FBI launches an investigation into whether Russian operatives colluded with the Republican presidential campaign to influence the upcoming election.

The Republican former director of intelligence, who is secretly meeting with Russians, appears at the Republican national convention and leads the Republican delegates in chants of “lock her up, lock her up.”

The Republican head of the FBI announces just days before the election that the Clinton email investigation is being reopened. No charges are filed, but the news throws the Clinton campaign on the defensive and contributes to a Republican victory.

The newly elected Republican President appoints the Republican former director of intelligence as national security advisor, a Republican former member of his transition team as attorney general, and another Republican as deputy attorney general.

The Republican national security advisor meets with the Russians and discusses the lifting of sanctions.

The new Republican White House counsel is informed by the Justice Department that the Republican national security advisor has lied to the FBI about his contacts with Russians.

Weeks later, news reports appear detailing meetings between the Republican national security advisor had the Russians.

The Republican President fires the Republican national security advisor, saying that he was doing so because the Republican national security advisor had lied to the Republican Vice President.

The Republican attorney general testifies before Congress that he had no contacts with Russians during the campaign. When that statement is proven to be inaccurate, the Republican attorney general amends his testimony and recuses himself from any Russian investigations. This means that the Republican deputy attorney general will direct such investigations going forward.

In testimony to Congress, the Republican head of the FBI reveals that his agency has been investigating Russian interference with the election and possible collusion with the Republican presidential campaign.

The Republican President meets with the Republican director of the FBI and asks him whether he was a target of the investigation and requests that he end the FBI’s investigation of the Republican national security advisor.

The Republican President lets the Republican attorney general and the Republican deputy attorney general know that he is going to fire the Republican head of the FBI and asks them to prepare a written justification for that firing.

The Republican President fires the Republican director of the FBI, using a letter from the Republican attorney general and the Republican deputy attorney general as justification.

The Republican President then goes on national television and states that he had decided to fire the Republican director of the FBI before hearing from the Republican attorney general and the Republican deputy attorney general and that Russian investigation was a factor in that decision.

The Republican President meets with the Russian ambassador and discusses the firing of the Republican director of the FBI, calling him “a nut job” and noting that “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”

A week after the Republican President fires the Republican director of the FBI, the Republican deputy attorney general announces the appointment of a prominent Republican as a special prosecutor to look into Russian interference with the election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign. Several Congressional Republicans hail the Republican special prosecutor as an ideal choice for the role.

The Republican special prosecutor moves quickly, and within five months files charges against the Republican former chairman of the Trump campaign, the Republican former deputy of the Republican former campaign chairman, the Republican former national security advisor, and the Republican foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign. The Republican former national security advisor and the Republican foreign policy advisor plead guilty to lying to the FBI and agree to cooperate with the Republican special prosecutor by telling what they know about the activities of other Republicans.

Despite the Republican President repeated insistence that no one in his election team or administration had any contacts with the Russians, the following members of the Republican President’s team had meetings with the Russians before or after the election: the Republican President himself, the Republican son of the Republican President, the Republican Secretary of State, the Republican Secretary of Commerce, the Republican campaign manager, the Republican deputy of the Republican campaign manager, the Republican attorney general, three Republican foreign policy advisors, a Republican campaign advisor, the Republican President’s Republican lawyer, the Republican real estate advisor to the Republican President, and the Republican brother of the Republican Secretary of Education.

Which brings us to the critical juncture that we have reached today, when it is completely obvious to the entire world that there is zero substance to the Russian investigation, that the investigation has not accomplished a damn thing, that there was absolutely no contact between the Trump campaign and the Russians, that Trump will be completely exonerated, and that this whole mess is just another plot by the lame stream media and the traitorous Democrats to ensure that America never becomes great again. It's easy: All you have to remember is that it’s not a witch hunt if the Republicans are running it!

A special place in hell

here is a special place in hell for those who prey on children. I have no reason to doubt these young women." -- Ivanka Trump on GOP Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore

"Roy Moore denies it. And by the way he totally denies it. I can tell you one thing, we don't need a liberal person in there, a Democrat. I've looked at Doug Jones' record--it's terrible. Women are very special. I think it is a very special time, people are coming out and I think that's good for our society and I think it's very good for women and I'm very happy." -- Donald Trump today

After twelve full days of cowardly silence--during which Roy Moore was denounced as a child molester by the three largest newspapers in Alabama, GOP Congressional leaders Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, the Republican National Committee, the National Senatorial Republican Committee, the Alabama Young Republicans, Attorney General and former GOP Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, Alabama GOP Senator Richard Shelby, and GOP Senators Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Jeff Flake, John Cornyn, Cory Gardner, Orrin Hatch, Todd Young, Lindsey Graham, Susan Collins, John McCain, and Steve Daines--Donald Trump (who himself stands accused by 16 women of sexual harrassment and who bragged about committing multiple sexual assaults on tape) has finally put the Republican Party on record as an amoral tribe that puts partisanship above the safety of children. The leading Republican, who ran last year as the first openly racist candidate for President in modern times, has finally made it clear that the GOP prefers a sexual predator and a liar to any Democrat. A known predator who was banned from his local shopping mall and YMCA for harrassing young girls is more deserving of a Senate seat than a former prosecutor with a spotless record. And that's because the Democrat (who made his reputation putting Ku Klux Klansmen in prison for life for the murders of four young African American girls) is, according to Trump, "soft on crime."

Murdering children and sexually assaulting 14-year-old girls are not crimes in the mind if the President if the United States--get your head around THAT new reality, if you can.

This is the Republican Party today: the supporters of partisanship over human decency, the proud proponents of racist policies, the hit men for the rich and powerful, the traitors who welcome foreign interference in our elections, and the enemies of a free press and the rule of law.

Trump lashes out at Gold Star widow

She buried her husband just days ago. She is thirty-one years old. She is pregnant and the mother of a four year old and a six year old. All must be provided for. The government has yet to respond to her basic questions: How did my husband die? Why can't I see my husband's body? Where did my husband die? Why was he missing action for 48 hours?

Ponder how it would feel to be grappling with those issues.

Now imagine that on top of all this calamitous heartache and confusion you find yourself under attack from the alt-right, the White House Chief of Staff, and the President of the United States. The President is a Vietnam War draft dodger who during his election campaign pointed to working long hours in the real estate business when asked if he had ever made a personal sacrifice. When he wasn't busy this week publicly attacking this widow and her husband's legacy, he was sending rushed letters of condolences to Gold Star families via overnight mail after assuring the country that he had already contacted all of them.

If this country ever had a moral compass, it's now a ghostly chimera quickly receding in the rearview mirror.

TRUMP RESPONDS TO LAS VEGAS TRAGEDY BY BANNING TRAVEL TO NORTHERN EUROPE AND SCANDINAVIA AND REFOCUSING WALL EFFORT ON CANADIAN BORDER

Speaking from the White House in front of a group of Americans who have lost relatives to Anglo-Saxon terrorism, President Donald Trump announced sweeping new security measures in reaction to the horrific shooting last night in Las Vegas.

“My biggest job,” Trump stated, “is to keep America safe. Guns don’t kill people, so don’t give me that tired old stuff. Who are the people who are doing this killing? That’s the question. I am a businessman, and the way this businessman thing works—if you wanna be successful at it, and, believe me, I was phenomenally successful at it, some people say that I was the best at it—is that you have to know how to run the numbers. And when these numbers are run we see that the fact is—the mainstream media won’t tell you this, but I will—that Americans are ONE HUNDRED AND TWELVE times more likely to be killed by a white American than by a foreign terrorist.”

The President condemned in the strongest possible terms radical Anglo-Saxon terrorism and the philosophy it represents. “We cannot let this evil continue,” Trump stated. “Nor can we let the hateful, perverted ideology of Anglo-Saxonism – its oppression of women, gays, children, and nonbelievers – be allowed to reside or spread within our own countries.”

Trump announced that he was taking the following steps to protect Americans:

Immediately instituting a total ban on travel between the United States and northern Europe and Scandinavia. “I am calling for a total and complete shutdown of Anglo Saxons entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

Shifting the focus of his border-wall effort from the southern border to the northern. “Since I was inaugurated,” said Trump, “I have learned—among other things, I have learned many things—that Canada is full of Anglo-Saxons and that they are pouring over our northern border. This stops TODAY.”

Taking the war on radical Anglo-Saxon terrorism to Anglo Saxon strongholds in the United States. “We’re going to hit them and we’re going to hit them hard,” Trump said grimly. “I’m talking about a surgical strike on these Anglo-Saxon stronghold cities using Trident missiles.” The White House later qualified that the first targets would be the ten most Anglo Saxon cities in the United States: Hialeah, Florida; Scottsdale, Arizona; Boise Idaho; Laredo, Texas; Lincoln, Nebraska; Gilbert, Arizona; Corpus Christi, Texas; El Paso, Texas; Madison, Wisconsin; and Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Bringing back torture. The President announced that he was authorizing the military and all intelligence agencies to use enhanced interrogation techniques on Anglo-Saxon prisoners. “Torture works--okay, folks? Believe me, it works. Just ask Jeff Sessions.”

Taking revenge on the families of Anglo-Saxon terrorists. “You have to take out their families,” Trump insisted. “They care about their lives, don’t kid yourself. When they say they don’t care about their lives, you have to take out their families.”

The President promised “total victory” in the war against radical Anglo-Saxon terrorism. “Americans have defeated other threats before—unions, science, universal health care, voting rights—and we’re going to defeat this one with a force and fury that the world has never seen.”