Tag Archives: Woodward

The Triumph of Hope Over Experience?

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Once again, the rush is on to drop mask mandates and “get back to normal.” Because, Freedumb. This past Presidents Day weekend we visited Wilmington and places along the way. Masks were already the marked exception, even for restaurant staff. Signs referring to masks were mostly gone or disregarded. In our 10-story hotel, one of the two elevators was out of service, many people were perfectly content to, maskless, get on the elevator with you.

As a society we have asked, nay, demanded of our health care workers in hospitals and elsewhere an extraordinary degree of commitment and sacrifice, not to mention life-threatening risk. Small wonder that so many have quit in exhaustion & despair. For a while we made celebrated their sacrifice as we would have for soldiers in time of war (Vietnam excepted)., but that time has passed, it seems.

There are other phrases for what we’re doing now. “Whistling by the graveyard” comes to mind. Dr. Chris Beyrer, professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, summed it up nicely: “… this does look like the beginning of a next phase and let’s hope it lasts.” https://bit.ly/3smMxqk  Indeed, let’s hope. Experience suggests otherwise but we’ll see. I will be quite happy to be wrong about my skepticism.

The over-privileged whiny babies seem to have carried the day with their relentless complaining, arrogant ignorance about the science of the virus and violence. Their hatred and fear of the federal government, their obeisance to the Liar King Trump and other factors have led them to a degree of self-indulgence and dangerous behavior to themselves and others that defies understanding. They must have their seat at the bar, their time at the gym, whatever, and many will simply not accept anything else. Freedumb.

Now, we are on the verge of a shooting war with Russia, a nuclear-equipped country dominated by a former and ruthless KGB operative now essentially Russia’s president for life. Republicans around the country and in Congress have now progressed from the Big Lie of Donald Trump to overt support for a country with which the United States may be at war soon. Their traitorous conduct in supporting, perhaps even planning and certainly defending, the January 6 coup attempt has moved on to more adventurous treasons. Here are their names:

Rep. Elise Stefanik

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene

Rep. Lauren Boebert

Rep. Paul Gosar

Rep. Matt Gaetz

Rep. Andy Biggs

Rep. Jim Jordan

Rep. Greg Steube

Rep. Byron Donalds

Rep. Jody Hice

Rep. Thomas Massie

Rep. Kat Cammack

Rep. Jim Banks

Rep. Lee Zeldin

Rep. Bill Johnson

Rep. Dan Crenshaw

Sen. Ted Cruz

Sen. Tom Cotton

Sen. Ron Johnson

Sen. Marsha Blackburn

Sen. Tim Scott

Sen. Rick Scott

Sen. Marco Rubio

Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith

Sen. Cynthia Lummis

Sen. Lindsey Graham

GOP Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel

GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy

GOP Candidate Ronny Jackson

All Republicans.

There was a time when American politicians would not criticize an American president when we was conducting the nation’s business overseas. And while they reserve the right to oppose U.S. engagement in armed conflict or declarations of war/authorization for the use of force, it was rare that they would overtly side with the enemy in an armed conflict.

No so, today’s Republicans. Given their statements and conduct, it does not challenge the imagination to think they would support Russia’s declaring that all of Europe was Russian territory. Recall Hitler. “The troops massing on your border are just a military exercise. Don’t be alarmed. Our territorial ambitions are quite limited. Believe me.”

But that is a subject for another day. In this post, I want to remind everyone, and hope they share it with others I can’t reach, how Donald Trump, in his official capacity as President of the United States, deliberately and repeatedly lied to the American people for over two years about the COVID-19 virus. In his constant lying, he persuaded his gullible followers that the virus was no threat, that masks were evil, that even the vaccine he claimed to have inspired was not to be trusted, and more. He admitted to having deliberately downplayed the threat in his interview with Bob Woodward. Of course, to deny that he downplayed it would have been another blatant lie because the record of his lies is clear and unflinching.

As a result, Donald Trump is personally responsible for the avoidable deaths of, most likely, hundreds of thousands of Americans. If you think that number is too large, remember that, as of February 22, 2022, the U.S. death total attributable to COVID is 932,894. It seems clear we will come near to or exceed a million dead before this is “over,” if it ever is.

Trump is responsible for many of those that could have been, and still could be, avoided if public health advice had been fully respected. Instead, acts of violence are perpetrated every week in airports and on aircraft, in restaurants and elsewhere – all in the name of Freedumb, encouraged by Trump and his cabal of traitors and incompetents.

It’s tempting, of course, to point fingers at the tens of thousands, or millions, of Americans who have fallen prey to Trump’s siren song. And they are worthy of profound disdain, particularly those who followed his call to storm the Capitol on January 6 and steal the election. Many Americans have proved themselves unworthy of the designation, “American.” They are soft, entitled, and unbending in their disrespect of the needs of others.

And, yet, here we are again, making political decisions about medical issues in our rush to deflect the anger of the self-absorbed cry babies who refuse to wear masks, reject vaccines, and generally behave in a way that assures the pandemic will remain with us longer, perhaps forever. Mostly, if not entirely, in the service of the lies told by Donald Trump and the sycophants who continue to surround him and do his bidding to unlawfully reinstall him as president. It’s a pathetic display of ignorance, arrogance, and insolence. It will not end well.

Here is a chronology of Trump’s lies and deflections about COVID-19. I don’t expect you to read all of the detail, but it may be useful in the coming elections. You may want to just skim through it to get the gist of just how many lies and deflections Trump said just in 2020.

The Year 2020 [italics & bolding added]

January 22:  “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine,”

January 30: World Health Organization declares a public health emergency of international concern.

January 30: “We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment — five — and those people are all recuperating successfully. But we’re working very closely with China and other countries, and we think it’s going to have a very good ending for us … that I can assure you.”

January 31: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services declares a public health emergency for the U.S.

January 31: HHS Secretary Alex Azar announces travel restrictions, effective February 2, prohibiting non-U.S. citizens, other than permanent residents and the immediate family of both citizens and permanent residents, who have traveled to China within the prior two weeks from entering the U.S. No consideration is apparently given to people coming to the U.S. from Europe who had been in China or in contact with Chinese people.

February 7: Trump Interview with Woodward: “It goes through air, Bob. That’s always tougher than the touch … You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed. And, so that’s a very tricky one. … It’s also more deadly than your – you know, your, even your strenuous flus. … This is more deadly. This is 5, you know, this is 5% versus 1% and less than 1%. You know, so, this is deadly stuff.

February 10: You know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat — as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go away in April.

February 24: Trump in a tweet: The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!

February 25: China is working very, very hard. I have spoken to President Xi, and they’re working very hard. And if you know anything about him, I think he’ll be in pretty good shape. They’re — they’ve had a rough patch, and I think right now they have it — it looks like they’re getting it under control more and more. They’re getting it more and more under control. So I think that’s a problem that’s going to go away. 

February 26: …when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.

February 27: It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear. And from our shores, we — you know, it could get worse before it gets better. It could maybe go away. We’ll see what happens. Nobody really knows.

March 2 — 5 average daily new cases

March 6 — 32 average daily new cases – increase of 5.4 x over 4 days

I don’t think people are panicking. I said last night — we did an interview on Fox last night, a town hall. I think it was very good. And I said, ‘Calm. You have to be calm.’ It’ll go away. 

March 10 — 102 average daily new cases – increase of 2.2 x over 4 days

We’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.  

March 12 — 201 average daily new cases – increase of 2x over 2 days

You know, we need a little a separation until such time as this goes away. It’s going to go away. It’s going to go away. 

March 29 — 15,514 average daily new cases – increase of 76 x over 17 days prior

March 3O: Stay calm. It will go away. You know it — you know it is going away, and it will go away. And we’re going to have a great victory

March 31 — 19,337   average daily new cases – increase of 24 % over two days

It’s going to go away, hopefully at the end of the month. And, if not, hopefully it will be soon after that.

April 3 — 26,081   average daily new cases – increase of 35 % in 3 days

It is going to go away. It is going away. 

April 7 — 31,238 average daily new cases – increase of 20 % over 4 days

It did go — it will go away.

April 28 — 28,568 average daily new cases – decrease of 8 % over 21 days

But a lot of movement and a lot of progress has been made in a vaccine. But I think what happens is it’s going to go away. This is going to go away. And whether it comes back in a modified form in the fall, we’ll be able to handle it.

April 29 — 28,171 average daily new cases – decrease of 1 % over 1 day

It’s going to go. It’s going to leave. It’s going to be gone. It’s going to be eradicated. And it might take longer. It might be in smaller sections. It’ll be — it won’t be what we had. And we also learned a lot.

May 5 — 27,134 average daily new cases – decrease of 4 % over 7 days

And I think we’re doing very well on the vaccines but, with or without a vaccine, it’s going to pass, and we’re going to be back to normal.

May 6 — 26.830 average daily new cases – decrease of 1 % over 1 day

Because, you know, this virus is going to disappear. It’s a question of when. Will it come back in a small way? Will it come back in a fairly large way? But we know how to deal with it now much better. You know, nobody knew anything about it, initially. Now we know we can put out fires.

May 8 — 25.475 average daily new cases – decrease of 5 % over 2 days

Well, I feel about vaccines like I feel about tests. This is going to go away without a vaccine. It’s going to go away, and it’s — we’re not going to see it again, hopefully, after a period of time. You may have some — some flare-ups and I guess, you know, I would expect that. Sometime in the fall, you’ll have flare-ups maybe. Maybe not. But according to what a lot of people say, you probably will. We’ll be able to put them out. You may have some flare-ups next year, but eventually, it’s going to be gone. I mean, it’s going to be gone. 

 May 15 — 22.337 average daily new cases – decrease of 12 % over 7 days

We think we’re going to have a vaccine in the pretty near future. And if we do, we’re going to you had a problem come in, it’ll go away — at some point, it’ll go away. It may flare up, and it may not flare up. We’ll have to see what happens.

May 19: “When we have a lot of cases, I don’t look at that as a bad thing,” the president said. “I look at that in a certain respect as being a good thing, because it means our testing is much better. So, if we were testing a million people instead of 14 million people, we would have far few cases, right?

“So, I view it as a badge of honor. Really, it’s a badge of honor,” he added. “It’s a great tribute to the testing and all of the work that a lot of professionals have done.”

Days later, the U.S. recorded 100,000 known deaths from COVID-19. 

June 15 — 21.987 average daily new cases – decrease of 2 % over 31 days

So I think that’s — but even without that [a vaccine or therapeutics], you know, at some point this stuff goes away and it’s going away. 

 June 16 — 22,613 average daily new cases – increase of 3 % over 1 day

I always say, even without it [a vaccine], it goes away. 

June 17 — 23,380 average daily new cases – increase of 3 % over 1 day

…if you look, the numbers are very minuscule compared to what it was. It’s dying out.

But I will tell you, we’re very close to a vaccine, and we’re very close to therapeutics, really good therapeutics. And — but even without that — I don’t even like to talk about that, because it’s fading away. It’s going to fade away. 

June 18 — 24,195 average daily new cases – increase of 3 % in over 1 day

And it is dying out. The numbers are starting to get very good.

July 1 — 44,875 average daily new cases – increase of 85 % over 13 days

And I think we are going to be very good with the coronavirus. I think that, at some point, that’s going to sort of just disappear, I hope.

July 19 — 64,754 average daily new cases – increase of 44 % over 18 days

I’ll be right eventually. I will be right eventually. You know I said, ‘It’s going to disappear.’ I’ll say it again. It’s going to disappear, and I’ll be right. 

NPR: July 19: Trump Interview:   “Many of those cases are young people that would heal in a day,” “They have the sniffles, and we put it down as a test.” He added that many of those sick “are going to get better very quickly.”

At the time of Trump’s interview, more than 3.7 million coronavirus cases had been confirmed in the United States, and more than 140,000 Americans had died.

July 21 — 65,073 average daily new cases – increase of .5 % over 2 days

Well, the virus will disappear. It will disappear.

July 22 — 65,321 average daily new cases – increase of .4 % over 1 day

We’re gonna beat it, yeah. We’re going to beat it. And with time, you’re going to be it — time. You know, I say, it’s going to disappear. And they say, ‘Oh, that’s terrible.’ He said — well, it’s true. I mean, it’s going to disappear. Before it disappears, I think we can knock it out before it disappears. 

August 5 — 56,585 average daily new cases – decrease of 13 % over 14 days

This thing’s going away. It will go away like things go away… 

 It’s going away. No, it’ll go away like things go away. Absolutely. No question in my mind. It will go away. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

August 7 — 54,756 average daily new cases – decrease of 3 % over 2 days

And we’re getting them [manufacturing jobs] even in a pandemic — which is disappearing; it’s going to disappear.

August 13 — 56,371 average daily new cases – increase of 3 % over 6 days

Think of it, we’re almost back to where we were [stock market], and we’re still in the pandemic, which will be going away, as I say, it’ll be going away. And they scream, how you can you say that? I said, because it’s gonna be going away.

August 17 — 51,244 average daily new cases – decrease of 9 % over 4 days

And as soon as the plague is gone — we have vaccines coming, we have therapeutics coming, and it’s going to be gone. And it’s gonna be gone soon.

And the China Plague will fade.

August 24 — 42,123 average daily new cases – decrease of 18 % over 7 days

It’s all coming back so fast and you’ll see it, and the pandemic goes away. The vaccines are going to be, I believe, announced very soon.

August 31 — 41,719 average daily new cases – decrease of 1 % over 7 days

Well, once you get to a certain number — you know, we use the word herd, right. Once you get to a certain number, it’s going to go away. 

September 15 — 38,922   average daily new cases – decrease of 7 % over 16 days

It is gonna disappear. It’s gonna disappear. I still say it.

NPR: September 21: Interview:   “It affects elderly people, elderly people with heart problems, if they have other problems, that’s what it really affects, that’s it. In some states thousands of people — nobody young — below the age of 18, like nobody — they have a strong immune system — who knows?” Trump said.

“Take your hat off to the young because they have a hell of an immune system. It affects virtually nobody,” he added. “It’s an amazing thing — by the way, open your schools!”

October 10 — 47,466 average daily new cases – increase of 22 % over 25 days

But it’s going to disappear. It is disappearing. And vaccines are going to help, and the therapeutics are going to help a lot.

October 15 — 53,152 average daily new cases – increase of 12 % over 5 days

The vaccine will end the pandemic. But it’s ending anyway. I mean, they go crazy when I say it. It’s going to peter out and it’s going to end. But we’re going to help the end and we’re gonna make it a lot faster with the vaccine and with the therapeutics and frankly with the cures.

October 16 — 55,144 average daily new cases – increase of 4 % over 1 day

Even without the vaccine, the pandemic’s going to end. It’s gonna run its course. It’s gonna end. They’ll go crazy. He said ‘without the vaccine’ — watch, it’ll be a headline tomorrow. These people are crazy. No, it’s running its course.

All of the foregoing occurred in 2020. Through Oct. 19, 2020 more than 220,000 people had died from Covid-19 in the US.  Well over a year after Trump’s last quoted remark above, the pandemic death toll in the U.S. is approaching 1,000,000 human beings of all ages and stages of life and health. We will never know precisely how many deaths and other long term/permanent devastating health impacts could have been avoided if Trump had not consistently and repeatedly misled his devoted followers, but it not unreasonable to believe that the pandemic would have entered the endemic stages long ago. Instead, the death and destruction continue. And Trump, well, Trump has moved on. His sole concern is with being restored to the presidency by whatever means – lying, cheating, stealing – will work.

Sources:

NPR: https://n.pr/35rwzSW

Factcheck.org: https://bit.ly/35x0SYd

Guardian: https://bit.ly/3HvJMrm

Vox.com: https://bit.ly/3t4ZJ2c

CNN: https://cnn.it/3M7wvsv

 

The Fourth Reich — It’s Them or Us

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Disclosure: Much of this post depends on information from the Bob Woodward- Robert Costa book, Peril. Woodward and I were friends in college and have had sporadic contact since then. I still consider him a friend, though we do not communicate regularly. Back in the day, a national magazine (not to be named) briefly suspected I might be Deep Throat. As everyone now knows, I was not Deep Throat. I never was.

This post is also inspired both by the column in the Washington Post by Margaret Sullivan [https://wapo.st/3v4LeMv] that asks the question why the “news” has largely ignored or downplayed the revelation that John Eastman, a Trump lawyer (and thus, legally, Trump himself), produced an outline for the steps to overturn the 2020 election and replace the real winner, Joe Biden, with Donald Trump.

The third inspiration is a line in Steven Pinker’s new book, Rationality:

Many facts, of course, are hurtful: the racial history of the United States, global warming, a cancer diagnosis, Donald Trump. Yet they are facts for all that, and we must know them, the better to deal with them.

So we must.

Since I began thinking deeply about this, we have also learned that Trump’s Department of Justice deliberately sat on its hands and did not brief Congress or others in the administration about what it apparently understood could be a day of violence against the government. https://bit.ly/3npJLON

We have also become aware that,

Republican leaders loyal to Trump are vying to control election administrations in key states in ways that could drastically distort the outcome of the presidential race in 2024. With the former president hinting strongly that he may stand again, his followers are busily manoeuvring themselves into critical positions of control across the US – from which they could launch a far more sophisticated attempt at an electoral coup than Trump’s effort to hang on to power in 2020.

… in recent months Trump has emerged as an unashamed champion of the insurrectionists, calling them “great people” and a “loving crowd”, and lamenting that they are now being “persecuted so unfairly”.

A poll released this week by the Public Religion Research Institute found that two-thirds of Republicans still believe the myth that Trump won. More chilling still, almost a third of Republicans agree with the contention that American patriots may have to resort to violence “in order to save our country”. [https://bit.ly/3ckbwlq]

As Donald Trump Jr has asserted, the Republican Party is now the Party of Trump. He owns it. His army of sycophants are as loyal to him as ever. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, his people believe the 2020 election was stolen, just as Trump continues to claim.

This is so despite Trump’s admitted bungling of the response to COVID that added significantly to the death toll, his incessant grifting and lying and treasonous acts of disloyalty to the United States, and, of course, his many “ordinary” crimes, such as giving secrets to Russia, extorting the president of Ukraine and a multitude of documented obstructions of justice, among many others. Evidence of cultish blindness to Trumpism is everywhere – mainstream media, Fox Propaganda, Twitter, Facebook, even LinkedIn and more.

Even with all that, the Eastman memo, unearthed in Woodward and Costa’s book, is shocking. As explained by Sullivan,

Written by Trump legal adviser John Eastman — a serious Establishment Type with Federalist Society cred and a law school deanship under his belt — it offered Mike Pence, then in his final days as vice president, a detailed plan to declare the 2020 election invalid and give the presidency to Trump.

In other words, how to run a coup to overturn the election in six easy steps.

Yet, Sullivan reports, the mainstream media largely ignored it at first. She rightly asks why this was not the multi-alarm firestorm – a presidential advisor casually informing him of the steps needed to undermine the outcome of a national election and claim the presidency that he had clearly lost.

The answer, it turns out, is as disturbing as the memo itself.

As reported by Sullivan, network executives thought the story unworthy because it was “crazy” and unsurprising. In effect, Trump has so normalized the idea of overthrowing the election that evidence of actual work to do so is not important enough to report. Another didn’t address it because “There’s no indication that Pence considered it seriously.” Others responded that there was much other news that seemed more important. What would be more important than an attempt to overthrow the government?

The normalization of the Trump-Republican attempt to subvert the Constitution and reinstall Trump as president, and de facto dictator, is being enabled by publications as venerable as the Wall Street Journal. The Journal published a letter from Trump on October 27. It did so without comment or any attempt to address the truth or falsity of his claims. The grotesque problems with the letter and the Journal’s decision to publish it are addressed in detail by Philip Bump in the Washington Post. https://wapo.st/3GTiYCg

The obvious and logical, and profoundly disturbing, conclusion is that WSJ supports Trump’s claims of election fraud and his belief that he was denied re-election by widespread vote fraud. Thus, the Wall Street Journal joins the campaign to undermine American democracy and replace it with a Republican autocracy led by Trump and his family.

At the same time, Trump is desperately fighting to prevent the release to the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection/coup attempt of a large trove of documents that would reveal his role, and that of his key enablers, in the attack on the Capitol. https://nyti.ms/3wgXYAc His claims of executive privilege have been rejected by President Biden, but Trump maintains he can assert the privilege even though no longer in office. Trump’s claim of privilege fails on multiple grounds, not least of which is that most of the documents sought have nothing to do with this execution of the job of president – they are related to his personal political objective to remain in office despite the electoral outcome.

Thus, Trump continues to maintain his thoroughly debunked claims of election fraud while resisting efforts to uncover facts that might expose his role in trying to overthrow the federal government.

What else does the Woodward/Costa book contribute to our understanding of all this? A lot.

  • The chair of the Joint Chiefs, Mark Milley, after plenty of chances to observe Trump’s thinking and behavior as president, agreed with Speaker Pelosi’s observation that Trump was “crazy” and had been “crazy for a long time.” Peril at xxii. Colin Powell, former Chair of the Joint Chiefs described Trump as a “f*cking maniac.” Peril at 106.
  • Pelosi characterized the Oval Office under Trump as an “insane snake pit.”Peril at xxiii.
  • Referring to the white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville, and under pressure from then-Speaker Paul Ryan, Trump refused to criticize the marchers because “These people love me. These are my people. I can’t backstab the people who support me.” Peril at 8.
  • Trump was often unaware of his own actions. He did not know that the money for the border wall in the early 2018 spending bill was an amount he had approved. He finally agreed to sign the bill to prevent a government shutdown. Marc Short, Trump’s legislative advisor told Ryan this chaos was typical of “every day around here.” Peril at 9. Bill Barr, who was committed to run the Justice Department in Trump’s best interest to promote his re-election thought Trump’s big problem was his “pigheadedness and his blindness.” Peril at 71.
  • Trump failed to grasp the nature of the threat posed by COVID-19 and refused to accept information that conflicted with his view. Peril at 82.
  • Trump rejected advice of Gen. Milley and other senior advisors to rename military bases from Confederate traitors to Medal of Honor winners. Peril at 108-109.
  • Even as the U.S. pandemic continued to escalate (approaching 4.9 million cases and more than 160,000 deaths), Trump insisted that it was “disappearing. It’s going to disappear.” Peril at 113.
  • Trump tweeted that the “deep state” was interfering with the development of vaccines. When his own appointed head of the FDA tried to explain the process, Trump changed the subject. “the president had no idea how the FDA operated and had made no effort to find out.” Peril at 113-115.
  • Aware of his failing election campaign, Trump primed his followers for the possibility of defeat by repeatedly claiming that the only way he could lose was a rigged election. Peril at 131.
  • As soon as Trump’s defeat was reported, he announced from the White House that the election was a “fraud on the American public.” Peril at 133.
  • Even Michael Pompeo, one of Trump’s most loyal sycophants, told Gen. Milley that “The crazies are taking over,” referring to Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Michael Flynn and Mike Lindell, the key players on Trump’s legal defense team. Peril at 150.
  • On November 10, following Trump’s firing of the Secretary of Defense, Gina Haspel, the CIA Director, presciently predicted, “We are on the way to a right-wing coup.” Peril at 152.
  • Mark Meadows made repeated efforts to install a Trump super-loyalist into a leadership position at the FBI and, stymied by Barr, later at the CIA, stymied by Haspel. Peril at 154-156.
  • Trump acknowledged that Giuliani was “crazy” but claimed that “sane lawyers” would not represent him in attacking the election. Peril at 164. Trump’s AG Barr referred to Trump’s legal team as a “bunch of clowns.” Peril at 170. See also Peril at 180.
  • Trump’s team of incompetents had no plan to efficiently distribute COVID vaccines. Peril at 187.
  • Steve Bannon advised Trump to focus on January 6, the day the Electoral College votes would be certified by Congress, the last step to elect Joe Biden as President:

We’re going to bury Biden on January 6 …. If Republicans could cast enough of a shadow on Biden’s victory on January 6 … it would be hard for Biden to govern. Millions of Americans would consider him illegitimate. They would ignore him. They would dismiss him and wait for Trump to run again. “We are going to kill it in the crib. Kill the Biden presidency in the crib… [Peril at 207-208]

  • Trump directly threatened VP Pence if he refused to reject the Biden Electoral votes and hand the election to Trump. Peril at 229-230.

The above references are just a small taste of the astonishing revelations in Peril. Most of the rational people in the White House at the time of the election and its aftermath appeared to believe that Trump was mentally unstable, incapable of and uninterested in the complexities of governing and focused only on retaining power. There was palpable fear, even among some Republican leaders, that Trump was so unhinged and desperate that he might start a war or try to use the military to retain power. His distraction likely played a role in the continued spread of COVID and  his administration’s failure to respond appropriately.

These concerns, which continue in the wake of the January 6 insurrection that Trump inspired and encouraged, raise the gravest questions about the capacity of the American democratic republic, and the Constitution on which it is based, to survive the presidency of an incompetent psychopath like Trump.

Thus far, the only action against the insurrectionists has been to arrest just over 700 of the perpetrators out of what appeared to be several thousand involved in the assault. No charges have been leveled against anyone in Congress or the Trump administration in relation to the attempted coup. Trump continues to claim in every available forum, without any factual basis and in the face of more than 60 defeats in legal proceedings, that the election was stolen. His supporters in Congress continue to obstruct President Biden’s efforts to end the pandemic and restore the economic health of the country.

Republicans around the country continue to alter election rules, gerrymander districts and prepare to overturn the results of any election defeats they may experience in 2022 and 2024. The Doomsday Clock on American democracy is ticking down and, as far as can be told, more than a year after Joe Biden’s election, no meaningful actions to hold the real leaders of the January 6 coup attempt accountable has been made.

Watch this video, produced by Don Winslow Films, listing 19 critical questions central to the January 6 insurrection, that remain unaddressed as far as anyone can tell.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2cG1PIhLIA

We are told we must be patient, that building a solid criminal case against a former president requires time. To a lesser extent the same “principle” is offered regarding the members of Congress who actively promoted the insurrection and have worked very hard to sustain a ludicrous phantasmagorical version of what occurred on January 6.

I understand the need for careful preparation, but in a little over a month we will have reached the one-year anniversary of the attack on Congress. I ask what evidence of conspiracy, perjury, sedition and obstruction of justice, to mention just a few of Trump and team’s major crimes, is missing? Has a grand jury been impaneled?

As Don Winslow’s video compellingly asks, why have so many key witnesses not been subpoenaed by the House Select Committee and placed under oath? What kind of investigation is this? Are we going to get another version of the Mueller Report that says we can’t find enough evidence to indict but neither do we exonerate? How could such a conclusion be reached without a full investigation? Mueller failed to fully investigate, as revealed in Andrew Weissmann’s book, discussed at length in an earlier post in this blog, “Lawless White House” – the Mueller Report – “Oh! What A Tangled Web We Weave …” https://bit.ly/32GUDA1

Trump is infamous for using legal processes to stall and delay investigations and actions against his multi-various criminal activities and civil offenses. If the government takes much longer, there will be no chance for meaningful action while Republicans scheme to undermine the democratic process whose survival is central to a full accounting from Trump and his enablers. I am encouraged, not much but more than zero, by the fact that the Biden administration has not announced that it is closing any investigations but that is not sufficient.

Winter for American democracy is theatening and once it is here, there may be no chance for a renewal.

 

 

 

Trump Goes Full Dictator

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The president has been asked multiple times if he will respect the result of the vote and participate in the peaceful transfer of power that has been a hallmark of American democracy since the Founding. His chilling responses are, in essence, “only if I win,” just as he said before the 2016 election. In that election he made much of claims that the election was being “rigged” by Democrats against him. Little was known at that time about the support he was getting from Russia which wanted Trump to defeat Hillary Clinton at all costs. Of course, a significant majority of voters went for Clinton anyway. Trump’s squeak-by win was the product of a few votes in a few states favored by the Electoral College.

This time, Trump has gone all-in with his “election rigging” claims, focusing mainly on the on-going shift toward mail-in voting compelled by the COVID-19 pandemic crisis that the president himself has admitted he deliberately downplayed the danger and misled the public despite his early knowledge of how deadly and easily transmitted the virus was. Details in Bob Woodward’s Rage. Trump claims that mail-in voting, in which ballots are sent to all registered voters rather than the traditional absentee method that send ballots only to voters who ask for them, are inherently infected with fraud.

These assertions have no basis in history. Multiple states, including Republican-led states, have long used mail-in voting without material evidence of voter fraud. Paul Begala’s recent book, You’re Fired, The Perfect Guide to Beating Donald Trump, shares some compelling data on this subject. He reminds us of the Pence-Kobach voter fraud commission, ponderously named by Trump as the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. Kobach was the lead horse in the Trump wagon train seeking evidence that voter fraud was rampant in the United States.

During its roughly seven-month life, the Commission came up with … nothing of substance. The pathetic history of this effort at voter suppression, inspired by Trump’s hurt feelings over having lost the popular vote in 2016, are set out at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Advisory_Commission_on_Election_Integrity, including the finding by a federal magistrate that Kobach had engaged in “patently misleading representations” in a court dispute over document access.

Begala reports that the Bush administration had also tried to unearth voter fraud. Then Attorney General Ashcroft investigated hundreds of campaigns involving 197 million votes and prosecuted 26 people. In a study of 14 years of elections (1 billion votes), the Washington Post found 31 cases of actual or plausible voter fraud. For the 2016 election, a WAPO investigation revealed 4 published reports of fraud in an election with 135 million votes. Sidebar: one of those cases was someone who voted twice for … Donald Trump.

Begala observes that voter fraud involves a very small gain for the fraud-favored candidate (one incremental vote) whereas the perpetrator faces the prospect of federal prison. If you think that’s fanciful, recall Crystal Mason who cast a provisional ballot, which was never counted, in Texas while on federal supervised release following a prison term for tax fraud. She was sentenced to five years – five years – in prison for an uncounted vote when she had never been told of her disqualification under Texas law. https://bit.ly/3mVm4eI

Never deterred by facts, Trump and his enablers have been stoking the fears of massive voter fraud and other problems for months. As reported by Politico,

This past spring, President Donald Trump began a full-fledged assault on voting by mail, tweeting, retweeting and railing about massive fraud and rigged elections with scant evidence. Then the Republican apparatus got to work backing up the president. In the weeks since, Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee have taken to the courts dozens of times as part of a $20 million effort to challenge voting rules, including filing their own lawsuits in several battleground states, including Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Nevada. And around the time Trump started musing about delaying the election last week, aides and outside advisers began scrambling to ponder possible executive actions he could take to curb mail-in voting — everything from directing the postal service to not deliver certain ballots to stopping local officials from counting them after Election Day. https://politi.co/33ZERNl

The more recent developments are pretty well known, including the efforts of Trump’s Postmaster General, a man with zero experience managing the Postal Service, to slow down mail deliveries, removing automated mail-sorting machines, altering delivery schedules to force mail to be undelivered or delayed, and so on. This is classic voter suppression by other means in the face of a national health crisis that has, due in large part to the president’s lying, killed more than 200,000 Americans and left tens of thousands more with permanent, crippling organ damage.

We are now in the final two months run-up to Election Day. Trump is desperate. He is behind in almost every poll, including many  battleground/swing states and his lies/distortions/deflections have not moved the needle in his favor.

Then the question is put: will you respect the vote and participate in a peaceful transfer of power? His answer remains, in effect, NO.

Does he mean it? We would be foolish to think it’s just a ploy on his part, part of Trump’s bag of braggadocio that so excites his political base at rallies. When you ask someone, “what do you do?” and he answers, “I’m a thief,” you should believe him.

Trump’s campaign to undermine the legitimacy of the election is unrelenting, supported by Russia again, and like an elixir for his base. However, many of Trump’s key enablers, like Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, are falling behind their Democratic opponents and pleading for help from Fox Propaganda News viewers.

Remember Trump’s answer: ‘NO, I will not respect the election result because I know, in advance with the use of my mystical powers to see the future, that it will be unfair to me and I won’t stand for it.’ There are suggestions that he will order the U.S. military and state National Guard units to the polls, for the sole purpose of intimidating voters. His supporters in open-carry states have already appeared at some protests related to the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor armed with AR-15s and other weapons. They call themselves militias, but they are actually armed gangs who will not hesitate to participate in voter suppression in support of Trump’s white supremacy agenda.

Lastly, and most recently, in a now common apparent effort to bolster Trump’s claims of voter fraud working against him, the Justice Department announced it was investigating nine “discarded military ballots” that were cast for Trump in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. https://cnn.it/2FZzo1a

The announcement is extraordinary in multiple respects: DOJ does not normally announce pending investigations absent compelling circumstances, especially if they may influence an election. That is true notwithstanding the astounding, history-changing decision by James Comey, then Director of the FBI, to announce a reopened email investigation of Hillary Clinton only days before the 2016 election. That decision, in which Comey overrode the advice of virtually everyone else at Justice, is recounted in Jeffrey Toobin’s True Crimes and Misdemeanors.

The initial announcement regarding the Pennsylvania ballots was wrong regarding how many votes were for Trump and had to be reissued. As noted by CNN, the disclosure of the candidate’s identity

immediately raised suspicions that the Justice Department was trying to furnish material that Trump could promote for political gain. Indeed, Trump and other White House aides used the information, even before it was made public, to attack mail-in voting. Election officials go to extraordinary lengths to protect ballot secrecy. It’s unclear how investigators figured out who the votes were for, and why they made that information public.

Not surprisingly, the federal inquiry was prompted by a request from the Republican District Attorney in Luzerne County; the DOJ attorney announcing the case is also a Trump-appointed Republican.

As usual with vote fraud cases, the “discarded” ballots are a tiny fraction of the “normal” voter turnout in Pennsylvania (6.1 million votes in 2016). Because the envelopes appeared similar to the ballot application envelopes, the story goes, the local officials decided to open them for fear of missing absentee ballot requests from the military, a problem that had cropped up in the last primary and, apparently, not cured.

This is, I believe, related to an ongoing problem with ballots, the requesting and use of which has become so complicated that many mistakes are made by ordinary voters whose votes are then rejected. This happens even in jurisdictions that have no history of voter suppression.

Another curiosity about this situation is that the investigation apparently had not yet learned who “discarded” the ballots or why. Yet, DOJ was most anxious to make public statements about the investigation and, it turns out, brief Trump in detail before the DOJ’s public announcement of the situation.

Trump spoke to Fox News Radio about it and the White House Press Secretary was informed and advised reporters before DOJ’s announcement.

CNN’s report continues:

Trump and Attorney General William Barr …have promoted debunked conspiracy theories and blatant disinformation to claim that mail-in voting leads to massive fraud. Election officials from both parties have rejected these claims and say there are tried-and-true safeguards prevent and quickly detect fraud.

The unorthodox Justice Department announcement is sure to fuel suspicion that Barr is using the Justice Department as a political weapon to help Trump’s reelection.

In recent months, Barr has aided Trump’s effort to label Democratic-run cities as “anarchist” strongholds, and has targeted Democratic-run states over Covid-19 deaths at nursing homes. Barr has also intervened in criminal cases to help prominent Trump allies.

David Becker, founder of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation, and a former DOJ attorney himself, said

the announcement didn’t say anything about the voters’ preferences in the down-ballot races, and that it said nothing about how the ballots were actually discovered.… to release a public statement with so little info, at the beginning of an investigation, is inexplicable, and law enforcement malpractice.

Becker was not alone in his condemnation of the early partial release of what amounts to political campaign material supporting Trump. For example,

It’s wildly improper, and it’s truly unconscionable,” said Justin Levitt, a former Justice Department official who is now a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. https://wapo.st/334NpDv

But, wouldn’t you know, the reality turns out to be quite different than the hysterical web of deceit and conspiracy that Trump and his sycophantic enablers weave. The discarding of ballots was a mistake by an inexperienced contractor, since fired. Another nothing-burger in the Trump pantheon of wounds and slights in the fantasy word he has concocted around voting fraud. https://cnn.it/2Sen7IV

Trump’s ongoing campaign to undermine confidence in the election, assisted by his Attorney General acting, and using the resources of the Justice Department, as de facto personal attorney for Trump and his re-election campaign. Barr’s involvements on behalf of the president and his enablers is so bad that more than 1,100 former DOJ officials publicly urged Barr to resign last February. https://n.pr/3hXHNPG

Trump’s plan seems clear. He intends to resist with every available tool, legal or otherwise, the outcome of the election. There are reports that his statements and claims have alarmed the generals in the Chiefs of Staff and in the Pentagon that they may be called on by Trump to intervene in the election. https://wapo.st/2Gawcj7 Trump would not hesitate to order the military to intervene if he thought that would save his presidency from electoral defeat.

In that case military leaders will have to choose between Trump and the Constitution – saying they’ll leave it to the courts will not suffice if Trump, as Commander-in-Chief, orders them to intervene on his behalf. And resignation, the other suggested option, will not work either. The decision-making authority would simply devolve down the chain of command until someone –- there’s always someone – says “I’ll give the order.” It will be someone least capable of leading but who is intoxicated by the power or the attention, however brief it may be.

Trump is half-way there. He has been asked repeatedly and continues to hedge: “we’ll see what happens.”

One suggested solution is that the Democratic vote must be so overwhelming that there simply is no basis for a claim of electoral fraud. A gigantic Blue Wave would be helpful, but it is no guarantee against a desperate man who has no allegiance to the Constitution or anything else beyond himself. Everyone should prepare for the worst. And, without fail, VOTE. VOTE like your country’s life and your own depend upon it. Because they do.

 

Woodward & Rhodes – Two Worlds

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I have just finished reading two books: Bob Woodward’s Fear: Trump in the White House and Ben Rhodes’ The World as It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House. I read them more or less together, two chapters of Woodward, then one or two chapters of Rhodes. I did this because reading the inside story of Trump and his enablers inside the nation’s presidential home was so disturbing that I literally needed an ongoing antidote to avoid being ill. Woodward’s authorial bio needs no recital here. Rhodes was officially the Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting.

It did not help that the fools comprising the Republican majority on the Senate Judiciary Committee were, as I neared the end of my reading, pretending to take seriously the testimony of a woman claiming that Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court had sexually assaulted her in high school. That charade ended in what purported to be a serious investigation by the FBI into the allegations, and similar ones from other women, but it’s now abundantly clear that the FBI’s investigation was compromised by the instructions issued by the White House to assure that it led nowhere. And the so-called president of the United States has quickly, and predictably, moved from stating that he was impressed by Dr. Ford’s testimony to openly mocking her at yet another of his mob gatherings in Mississippi. And, also quite predictably, Press Secretary Sanders once again spoke the ludicrous words that Trump was not mocking Dr. Ford but repeating “facts.” Of course, Trump’s mockery itself denied there were any facts, so Sanders once again is tangled up in her own deceits.

Returning to the matter at hand, I have thought a lot about the essential narratives of the two books. The table below represents what I believe are the fair and true portraits of the two presidents. One , who was elected twice, successfully led the country out of a recession/depression that threatened to bring down the world economy and also tracked down and directed the killing of Osama bin Laden. The other, elected with the help of a hostile foreign power whose authoritarian leadership he now embraces, is dedicated mainly to enriching himself, his family and the already extremely well-off top one percent of Americans while reversing as fast as possible the environmental and financial protections emplaced by the Obama administration for the welfare of all Americans.

OBAMA TRUMP
Collaborative Solitary
Reflective & Deliberative Impulsive
Honest Remorseless liar
Intelligent & Studious Uninformed & uninterested in learning
Empathetic Completely lacking empathy
Student of history Driven by money
Outwardly focused Self-centered
Hard working Lazy, physically & intellectually
Able to understand complex ideas Simplistic; gets ideas from Fox News
Calm under pressure Chaotic & unstable
Reads Watches TV
Listens to advice Claims to already know everything
Humane Cruel & shallow
Appeals to traditional American values Appeals to economic fear & racial anxiety

Anyone watching closely has to be aware that there are many Trump supporters who literally hate Barack Obama. The source of those feelings remains something of a mystery, though many of us believe it’s racism, pure and simple. But one thing seems certain – no matter what one may think of Obama’s policies, no one of even modest intelligence could argue that Barack Obama was dumb. On the other hand, several of Trump’s enablers in the White House have characterized him asa “moron” who is “unable to learn anything.”

One of the most prominent ideas in Rhodes’ memoir is the sheer difficulty of accomplishing anything meaningful, especially in foreign affairs, even without considering the relentless Republican obstruction of virtually everything that Obama sought to do. Obama had a clear-eyed understanding of what he wanted to achieve, not just because he had campaign promises to keep, but because he was trying to establish policies that would lift up the entire country for the benefit of all its citizens.

Trump, on the other hand, has surrounded himself mainly with right-wing ideologues who are often blatantly incompetent to manage a complex government while dishonestly stealing from the government, and thus from the people. They don’t understand how the government works, and they don’t expect it to work. Their goal is to undermine it. Theirs is a victory of ignorance, assisted by a foreign power hostile to the interests of the United States. The Party of Lincoln is now the Party of Putin. Trump led his party there and it went along enthusiastically. Republicans in Congress and at his “rallies” cheer wildly for his sneering denunciation of American values.

Rhodes’ personal life was drastically affected by his tenure in the Obama White House, as you would expect. His memoir is worth reading for its insights into the person of President Obama and as an insider reveal of life in and around the White House during a tumultuous period in our history. We can only hope that Trump’s administration will somehow avoid any major crises during what I hope will be a one-term, or less, presidential term. We must hope for this because there is a serious question whether the leadership can manage a crisis with Donald Trump at the helm of the ship of state. According to many reports, Trump will clean house after the mid-term elections. If that happens, we will have yet another collection of inexperienced incompetents surrounding the president and another otherworldly leadership failure.