The Mitchell Report

Trump Sinks in Helsinki

 

 "I think that press conference was the single most embarrassing performance by an American president on the world stage that I've ever seen.”

Ambassador William J. Burns, President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 

July 16, 2018

 

 “The damage inflicted by President Trump’s naiveté, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate. But it is clear that the summit in Helsinki was a tragic mistake,”  

Senator John McCain

July 16, 2018

 

 

 

 

Dear Friends,

 

If you weren’t able to watch today’s press conference with Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin following their brief meeting in Helsinki, put it at the very top of your “To Do" list.” 

 

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/shameful-treasonous-disgrace-lawmakers-pundits-react-trump-s-joint-news-n891736

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2018/jul/16/key-moments-from-the-trump-putin-press-conference-video

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HlYCyJ2znc

 

 

To borrow from President Franklin Roosevelt’s opening remarks in his speech to Congress on December 8th, 1941, I believe it can be said that July 16th, 2018 is also a date which will live in infamy. It was a day on which an American president stood next to and stood up for the president of the Russian Federation versus the word of America's intelligence agencies, run by his own political appointees, in response to a clear and direct question from Associated Press reporter Jonathan Lemire about the U. S. intelligence community's report that Russians had directly interfered in the 2016 elections — a charge which Putin has consistently denied, and which was just reaffirmed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictments of twelve Russian intelligence officers last week.

 

Q: "Who do you believe? Would you now, with the whole world watching, tell President Putin, would you denounce what happened in 2016, and would you warn him to never do it again?"

 

A:  ‘President Putin says it’s not Russia . . . and I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be [Russia].”    

 

Instead of defending the findings of the country's intelligence agencies and publicly supporting its most valued law enforcement and intelligence resources, while sharing a stage with President Putin, Donald Trump launched into a rambling, rancorous, and risible monologue about ’servers,’ 'Hillary Clinton’s emails,’ ‘a Pakistani gentleman who worked for the DNC,’ and multiple plaints about ‘What happened to [those] servers? Where are they?”

 

It was a disgraceful performance by Donald Trump, an astonishing moment for all in the room and those watching around the globe, an unrivaled embarrassment for American citizens, and a senseless, indiscriminate utterance that suggested a reversal of seven decades of (mostly) bipartisan national security policy, capping off several days of a shallow, shabby show of disrespect and dissembling throughout Europe.

 

If Donald Trump believes Putin, he is a fool. If he was there to placate or pander to Putin, he is a coward. If he said it because he seeks alignment with Putin rather than America’s traditional allies in NATO and the EU, he is in violation of his oath, of the Constitution, and has met the standard for ‘high crimes and misdemeanors.”

 Now, let us see whether we have a Congress and an administration of patriots or quislings, combatants or collaborators.

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

Of Me I Sing

 

Dear Friends,

 

With thanks and apologies to the Gershwins, George and Ira, and their ‘collaborator,’ George S. Kaufman. TMR offers a bit of doggerel on a day when more Americans have reason to wonder whether we have actually lost our way, or whether we are simply in the temporary clutches of the kind of person we thought existed only in B movies, pulp novels, and the occasional Broadway musical. After Helsinki, we have our answer. And after yesterday’s sham performance in the Cabinet Room of the White House, where he was surrounded by a bevy of toadies from the House of Representatives, and where the stage went dark for a brief, Freudian moment, we also know that little has changed for this President with his Congressional base. Despite a handful of genuine expressions of outrage, and a larger number of ‘tsk-tsk’s’ from Congressional Republicans, we recognize that Mitch McConnell will continue to preside over a Senate majority caucus that operates on an amended version of the Constitution’s ‘Advice and Consent” clause— aka, ‘Curtsy and Comply.’

 

With that in mind, we turn to doggerel.

 

 

Of Me I Sing

 

I meant to say wouldn’t, instead I said would

So listen up, folks, and listen up good

I know what I meant, of that there’s no doubt

So, let’s move on from Helsinki and enough of your pout(s)

 

I love America and Americans love me

At the higher ends of intelligence, it’s plain to see

I put America first with nary an exception

Any thought to the contrary is a yuuuuuuge misconception

 

There are snowflakes a-plenty who think otherwise

But they’re really just quislings in patriotic disguise

What do they know about hacking and cyber-infiltration

Or the preposterous notion that there was collaboration

 

They love the fake media and believe every word

In transcripts or videos whose verbatims are absurd

BBC, CNN, PBS, and Bezos’ Post

Are the fraudulent offspring of Gorby’s glasnost

 

So, stand up for America — walk tall and  be proud!

And let’s shit-can Bob Mueller who has created this cloud

Filled with indictments of more than two dozen folks

And call it what it is — a ginormous hoax

 

It’s a witch-hunt, a ruse, and an elegant deception

All cooked up by sore losers who lost an election

Now they bring shrinks who say that I’m ‘dangerous,’

Next thing you know, some will claim that I'm 'treasonous!'

 

Let ‘em claim, let ‘em fume, let ‘em say what they want

I’m a (card-carrying) malignant narcissist and an idiot savant

Who learned years ago that remorse and contrition

Are simply specious detours on the road to perdition.

 

“I yam what I yam,” and I like it, you see

It got me to the White House, where you thought I’d never be

You can huff and can puff and can throw rocks in my path

But you can never discomfit a born psychopath.

 

 

 

 

Desperately Seeking Perspective

 

 

 

"PM Justin Trudeau of Canada acted so meek and mild during our @G7 meetings only to give a news conference after I left saying that, 'US Tariffs were kind of insulting' and he 'will not be pushed around, "Very dishonest & weak. Our Tariffs are in response to his of 270% on dairy!”

Trump tweet

 

"There's a special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump and then tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door, and that's what bad faith Justin Trudeau did with that stunt press conference. That's what weak, dishonest Justin Trudeau did, and that comes right from Air Force One.”

Peter Navarro, Trump trade adviser

 

“[Trudeau] really kind of stabbed us in the back. You know what, he did a great disservice to the whole G7.”

Larry Kudlow, Trump economic adviser

 

"To our allies: bipartisan majorities of Americans remain pro-free trade, pro-globalization & supportive of alliances based on 70 years of shared values. Americans stand with you, even if our president doesn’t.”

Senator John McCain

 

"Canada does not believe that ad hominem attacks are a particularly appropriate or useful way to conduct our relations with other countries.”

Chrystia Freeland

Minister of Foreign Affairs, Canada

 

"International cooperation can't depend on anger and small words. Let's be serious and worthy of our people. We spent two days obtaining a draft and commitments. We stick to it. And anyone who leaves and turns their back on them shows their inconsistency.”

Élysée Palace

 

"It's actually not a real surprise. We have seen this with the climate agreement or the Iran deal. In a matter of seconds, you can destroy trust with 280 Twitter characters. To build that up again will take much longer.”

Heiko Maas

Foreign Minister, Germany

 

 

“I think our whole relationship with North Korea and the Korean peninsula is going to be a very different situation than it has in the past,” he said. “We’ve developed a very special bond.” 

[Kim] "a very worthy, very smart negotiator,” a "very talented man" who "loves his country very much.”

Trump comments in Singapore

 

 

 

Dear Friends,

 

In the immediate aftermath of two sequential diplomatic gatherings with starkly divergent optics and rhetoric, and with pivotal implications for the liberal democratic order, the imperative for strategic perspective is paramount. 

 

For those who watched the churlishness of the American president at Charlevoix, followed by an unctuous performance and fawning pronouncements in Singapore, it would be reasonable to wonder whether the current administration (and its Congressional supporters) has lost its bearings on who and who are not friends, allies, partners, and trusted colleagues. In addition, to the extent that there was a strategy at work in Singapore, it did not seem to reflect a comprehensive understanding of the Asian political calculus.

 

And on that question, TMR recommends an insightful and strategically balanced analysis of where our diplomatic focus ought to be in, “America is Fumbling Its Most Important Relationship,” by James Fallows, one of America’s most seasoned and insightful “China hands." He sets the stage with these observations:

 

"It’s instructive to think about the relationships for the US that are “most” by a range of a variety of standards. I would assert that as of 2018:

• America’s most volatile relationship is with North Korea, for obvious reasons.
• Its most damaging relationship would seem to be with Russia.
• Its most dangerously taken-for-granted relationships would be (a four-way tie) with Mexico, Canada, the European Union as an economic group, and NATO as a strategic alliance. Each of these relationships is crucial to America’s long-term economic, diplomatic, military, and national-security well-being. All are now under more-or-less acute strain, based on each group’s calculation on how long Trump-style erratic “America First!”-ism will guide U.S. actions.
• Its most subject-to-change relationships are, for a widely varying range of reasons, with Saudi Arabia, with Iran, with Israel, with Pakistan, with Turkey, with Australia, with South Korea, with the Philippines, with half a dozen others I can think of.

But its most important relationship, beyond any reasonable dispute—“bar none,” you might say—is with China.”

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/05/china-trump/561359/

 

As Americans, its allies, and others around the globe attempt to divine the logic of the Janus-like Trumpian diplomacy demonstrated during the past several days, they would do well to recall an observation of a Turkish general who was asked about the wisdom of his country’s pending membership in NATO:

 

“The real problem with having the Americans as your allies is you never know when they will turn around and stab themselves in the back.”

 

The salient communiqué cobbled together in the comments from our closest friends in Canada, France, Germany, and elsewhere in the liberal democratic order, is that Donald Trump put the shiv squarely between the shoulder blades of America’s most important alliance in a petulant fit of pique. And in doing so, he skewered America’s standing in places where it counts. If that’s MAGA, so much for greatness and all that winning he warned us we’d tire of. 

 

 Coda: If the Trump administration is able to orchestrate sustained, strategic progress following the Singapore summit — extracting substantive commitments from the North Koreans, establishing a verifiable inspection process, effectively engaging South Korea, Japan, and China in the process, and articulating a strategy for the region — then the ingratiating, hollow plaudits for a tyrannical leader and the dearth of DPRK commitments at Singapore will have been worth it. But for the moment, Donald Trump and his many Congressional allies ought to put zippers on their lips about the alleged copious, deleterious, and egregious flaws in the JCPOA, aka, the Iran deal, which this President has frequently described as ’the worst deal ever negotiated . . .’  When he’s finally completed one, instead of exiting or trashing them — Paris Accords, JCPOA, Trans Pacific Partnership — he will have a basis upon which to crow. Until then, he should be considered all hard hat and no condominiums (on the ‘great beaches’ of North Korea.)

 

RGM

 

   

 

When the President Does It, It's Not Illegal: Redux

 In a brash assertion of presidential power, the 20-page letter — sent to the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and obtained by The New York Times — contends that the president cannot illegally obstruct any aspect of the investigation into Russia’s election meddling because the Constitution empowers him to, “if he wished, terminate the inquiry, or even exercise his power to pardon.”

New York Times, June 2. 2018

 

 

 

Dear Friends,

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/02/us/politics/trump-lawyers-memo-mueller-subpoena.html?emc=edit_na_20180602&nl=breaking-news&nlid=33123388ing-news&ref=cta

 

Whoa! 

 

Break out the Constitution, boys and girls, and read the sections of Article II, or subsequent amendments, perhaps, that exempt POTUS from the laws that govern the country while granting him ‘unfettered authority’ over federal investigations. And then check to see if the document you're interpreting says, “Constitution of the United States,” or “Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran” or, perhaps, “Constitution of the Republic of Turkey.” It might also be something that President Trump and his lead counsel, Rudolph Confusiani, have been discussing for quite some time, lifting wherever possible from the “Constitution of the People’s Republic of China," as amended in 2018.

 

At least we know what their game is, and whether they fear there may be things that go bump-in-the-night in the closets at Trump Tower, Mar-a-Lago, and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And you thought it was just Trump being Trump when he declared the press the ‘enemy of the people.” 

 

Keep your eyes on the machinations of Turkey’s President Recip Tayyip Erdogan and then have another close look at what America’s 45th president is doing with virtually no pushback from the vast majority of Republicans in Congress, and the astonishing acquiescence of their Republican constituents. These two men are playing from a similar handbook, which operates on the premise that many take comfort in having ‘strong leaders’ (sic), and will cede acres and acres of authority to those who are willing to seize it. Even in a democracy as rock-solid as ours, a demagogue with a malignant personality disorder, a penchant for spite and malevolence, and an impotent Congress, can make inroads that are difficult to reverse.

 

With Donald Trump, it began with no tax returns, the sheer crudeness of his public demeanor and unparalleled slimy characterizations of competitors, the trashing of Gold Medal parents and one of America’s great war heroes and public servants, the refusal to divest from his personal business, trampling on the emoluments clause, the appointment of his daughter and son-in-law as Assistants to the President, the pardon of Joe Arpaio and recent indications he will use the power of the pardon like comp tickets to a Trump golf course, the blatant infractions of the law, rules and regulations by his EPA Administrator, similar behavior by his Secretary of Interior, the decision by his Secretary of Education to close down ongoing investigations into fraudulent behavior at for-profit colleges (while hiring their executives to serve in senior positions at the department,) the gutting of qualified scientific expertise at the Departments of Energy and Agriculture, the downgrading of activities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, discontinuing public logs of White House visitors, barring the press from public meetings at cabinet agencies, and, and, and . . . Oh yes, the firing of prosecutors who would not do his bidding — Bharara, Yates, Comey — and the contemptible private harassment and public berating of his Attorney General.

 

And this is a partial list.

 

We’re not talking policy here, folks. That’s another conversation on which reasonable people will be sure to disagree — tax reform, judicial appointments, immigration, trade, and more. In these and countless other instances, we are referring to a code of human behavior, a protocol of personal ethics, and the customs, conventions, and public decorum that come with holding the highest office in the land. Others before him have failed on occasion, but for Donald J. Trump it is the hallmark of his performance in office — it is who he is and it is what he does and has done throughout his adult life. The records are there to show that, including 4,095 law suits in a 30-year period of his business career. 

 

So, now, we have this to contend with. Read on and recognize that all of the noise, all the accusations about the ‘deep state’ and the conspiracists in the FBI and Department of Justice, the “Democrats” who work for Robert Mueller and are out to get Donald Trump, all now operate under the branding umbrella of “Spygate . . . one of the biggest political scandals in history.” And all of this is simply prologue to the dismissal of Special Counsel Mueller. The only questions are (a) when, and (b) how far down in the ranks of the Justice Department President Trump will have to go before finding an operative who is willing to do the dirty work of the dirtiest human being ever to enter the Oval Office.

 

And as Walter Cronkite might say, “That’s the way it is.”

 

R. Garrett Mitchell
The Mitchell Report
themitchellreport.typepad.com

 

 

 

Header

Breaking News Alert June 02, 2018 NYTimes.com »

 

BREAKING NEWS In a confidential memo to the special counsel, President Trump’s lawyers made broad claims of executive power in a bid to avoid a subpoena Saturday, June 2, 2018 2:26 PM EST   A 20-page letter from President Trump’s lawyers to the special counsel, obtained by The New York Times, argues that the president could not possibly have committed obstruction because he has unfettered authority over all federal investigations. Read More »

Getting Out Over One's Cleats

Dear Folks,

 

Give Roger Goodell and his brotherly band of billionaires an opportunity to come down on the side of 1st Amendment freedoms, reinforced by the Supreme Court decision of Texas v. Johnson, 1989, and again in U. S. v. Eichman, 1990 or to take an action that takes exception to it, and which would otherwise constitute an anti-trust violation (were it not for the NFL’s exemption here,) and every time they’ll go for the easy path. As no less than Walter Isaacson — a Time alum and renowned biographer — observed a few years back:

 

“The patriotic mind recoils,” TIME’s Walter Isaacson commented in the weeks that followed the decision. “Reverence for the flag is ingrained in every schoolchild who has quailed at the thought of letting it touch the ground, in every citizen moved by pictures of it being raised at Iwo Jima or planted on the moon, in every veteran who has ever heard taps played at the end of a Memorial Day parade, in every gold-star mother who treasures a neatly folded emblem of her family’s supreme sacrifice."

 

Yet, he continued, that was precisely the reason why the court, in the case Texas v. Johnson, declared that federal and state laws that protect the flag are in violation of free-speech protections. The flag is so revered because it represents the land of the free, and that freedom includes the ability to use or abuse that flag in protest.

http://time.com/3907444/flag-supreme-court-history/

 

We may disagree on the propriety or morality of flag desecration and/or this equivalent gesture, but according to the Supreme Court, we are not in doubt about its legality. On that basis, I’d suggest that the NFL ought to rethink whether it should be in the business of crafting policies that are at odds with the Constitution, even if they genuinely grate on the psyches and sentiments of their fans, and millions and millions of Americans who hold the flag in a special place in their hearts and minds.

 

It’s one thing to rule that a direct hit with a helmet ought to result in ejection from the game — that’s their turf, and it’s about time! — but quite another to dictate how individuals express their 1st Amendment freedoms. You might say, the NFL is getting out over its cleats on this one.

 

Just sayin’.

 

RGM

Breaking News Alert May 23, 2018 NYTimes.com »

 

BREAKING NEWS N.F.L. owners agreed to a new national anthem policy: Teams will be fined if players kneel on the field or sidelines Wednesday, May 23, 2018 12:27 PM EST   The owners of N.F.L. teams agreed on Wednesday to a new policy for player conduct during the playing of the national anthem, an issue escalated last season into a national debate that involved President Trump. Commissioner Roger Goodell said that owners voted to fine teams if their players are on the field or sidelines but do not stand during the national anthem, though players will be allowed to stay in the locker room if they choose. Read More »

 

 

 

 

One Brief Shining Moment

 

A thousand-year-old English castle echoed with the exhortations of a black preacher and a gospel choir on Saturday, as Prince Harry wed Meghan Markle, an American actress, nudging the British royal family into a new era.

New York Times, 19 May 2018

 

"Camelot, located no where in particular, can be anywhere.”

Norris J. Lacy, Arthurian Scholar

 

 

Dear Friends,

 

Like millions of people around the globe, I began yesterday morning at St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, albeit from the comfort of a couch, not a wooden pew. I was prepared to start the morning with grim television reportage of the tragic school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas, or a fresh round of conspiratorial condemnations from America’s prevaricator-in-chief, aided and abetted by his roving barrister, Rudy Giuliani. 

 

Instead, I was transported to the wedding of Prince Harry and his bride, Meghan Markle, and for an hour or more, I watched in silence as the ceremony, whose choreography derives from centuries of custom, but which was enhanced by bold new cultural infusions, took me by total surprise. I had no expectations, nor did I anticipate that I would last long as a viewer.  

 

It was a Proustian moment, however, without the madeleine and the tea, for the thoughts it engendered about how far we have fallen from our tradition of behaving well during moments of national ceremony. Though a royal wedding and a presidential inauguration are wholly different occasions, they are both moments in which we are expected to display our best face and to honor our common values.

 

To enjoy this particularly festive wedding was to be reminded of how dreadful the inaugural ceremony of the 45th President was, from the divisive, discordant presidential address about “American carnage” and the failure of all those presidents who had preceded him, to the day-after shenanigans about crowd size, climatological conditions, and the sorry spectacle of the speech at the CIA.

 

On the one hand, there was the joy of being present at such a moment — with its glorious assemblage of choral and musical performances, the Kingdom Choir and “Stand By Me,” the exquisite cello artistry of Sheku Kanneh-Mason, the soaring oratory of an African-American Episcopal preacher, the vibrant colors and architectural shapes of hat-fascinators, and the invigorating sense of energy and promise that all of this and the bride, Meghan, and groom, Prince Harry personify. It was a magnificent start for the day, and for that hour or more, it seemed like the brilliant blue, sunny skies of Windsor were right outside our window.

 

But, of course, they were not.

 

All of that was thousands of miles away, across an ocean, and in a country where the monarchy is the institutional rock upon which is anchored  the nation’s solidity, continuity, and tradition. Meanwhile, England’s Brexit-stained political landscape is buffeted by the ill winds of nativism, faux-nationalism, and fear of the foreigner.   

 

Here at home, we have the ill winds, but no rock. 

 

Where once we could believe that a President could be the standard-bearer of our best traditions — not unfailingly, but when kismet came calling — and the White House the repository of our Constitutional bedrock, today we are bereft, bankrupt at the very top. 

 

Instead of a paragon or even a journeyman, we have a grifter, an habitual fabricator and fabulist, a malignant presence who delights in the dismantling of existing relationships, partnerships, and alliances, and who has assembled through a mixture of cunning and crass communications tactics and techniques, an army that wears red hats, cheers wildly at his attacks on the ‘deep state,’ and which delights in his  stentorian denigration of the institutions upon which this democracy was built — the judiciary, the press, and the exercise of First Amendment rights. 

 

His former opponent called these people ‘deplorables,,’ which placed the name tag on the wrong party. Instead, it’s an apt characterization for the President himself and the corps of collaborators who are his lieutenants, enablers, and proxies, and who participate in the boorish, vindictive behaviors that are at the core of the Trump disposition.

 

But for ‘one brief, shining moment’ yesterday, we were with Harry and Meghan, their family, friends, and supporters around the globe in celebration of their marriage. It was a moment of unexpected exuberance, genuine glee, and a nourishing vacation from the vulgarity that is our lot for the nonce.

 

We may not have our Camelot, but we can surely set our sights on ridding ourselves of this Babylonian dominion and America’s Nebuchadnezzar.

 

 

 

 

ET TU SOTU

 

 

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”

Anonymous

 

Dear Friends,

 

As the clock strikes 9:00 p.m. EST, tonight, President Donald J. Trump will engage in the annual ritual known as the State of the Union Address, aka, SOTU. 

 

For reasons that seem logical inside the Beltway, much time and energy has been spent on trying to divine what the President will say, whether it will be a message of national unity, a call for bipartisanship, which special guests will be seated with First Lady, and what themes will be struck in this first official address to Congress, as stipulated in Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution: 

 

He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; 

 

Tonight, I’ll join with those who have concluded that time spent listening to Donald Trump’s public pronouncements is time wasted.  And worse, that at some point taking his pronouncements and performances seriously is the definition of  . . . yes, insanity.

 

It’s been like this since January 20th, 2017 when President Trump took the oath of office and began lying about the weather and the size of the crowd.  

 

On the day after his “American carnage” address, the President made his way to the CIA and offered these thoughts in what can charitably be called a rambling oration:

 

“And the reason you’re my first stop is that, as you know, I have a running war with the media.  They are among the most dishonest human beings on Earth. And they sort of made it sound like I had a feud with the intelligence community.  And I just want to let you know, the reason you’re the number-one stop is exactly the opposite -- exactly.  And they understand that, too. 

 

“And I was explaining about the numbers.  We did a thing yesterday at the speech.  Did everybody like the speech?  I’ve been given good reviews.  But we had a massive field of people.  You saw them.  Packed.  I get up this morning, I turn on one of the networks, and they show an empty field.  I say, wait a minute, I made a speech.  I looked out, the field was -- it looked like a million, million and a half people.  They showed a field where there were practically nobody standing there.  And they said, Donald Trump did not draw well.  I said, it was almost raining, the rain should have scared them away, but God looked down and he said, we’re not going to let it rain on your speech. 

“In fact, when I first started, I said, oh, no.  The first line, I got hit by a couple of drops.  And I said, oh, this is too bad, but we’ll go right through it.  But the truth is that it stopped immediately.  It was amazing.  And then it became really sunny.  And then I walked off and it poured right after I left.  It poured.  But, you know, we have something that’s amazing because we had -- it looked -- honestly, it looked like a million and a half people.  Whatever it was, it was.  But it went all the way back to the Washington Monument.  And I turn on -- and by mistake I get this network, and it showed an empty field.  And it said we drew 250,000 people.  Now, that’s not bad, but it’s a lie.  We had 250,000 people literally around -- you know, in the little bowl that we constructed.  That was 250,000 people.  The rest of the 20-block area, all the way back to the Washington Monument, was packed.  So we caught them, and we caught them in a beauty.  And I think they’re going to pay a big price.” 

And over the course of the next twelve months, Donald Trump set the record for falsehoods uttered by any of his forty-four predecessors:

 

“With just 18 days before President Trump completes his first year as president, he is now on track to exceed 2,000 false or misleading claims, according to our database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement uttered by the president.

“As of Monday, the total stood at 1,950 claims in 347 days, or an average of 5.6 claims a day.” (Washington Post, Fact Checker, 1/2/2018)

In a comprehensive review of the Trump falsehood phenomenon and its comparison to others, the New York Times made this report:

“We applied the same conservative standard to Obama and Trump, counting only demonstrably and substantially false statements. The result: Trump is unlike any other modern president. He seems virtually indifferent to reality, often saying whatever helps him make the case he’s trying to make.

 

“In his first 10 months in office, he has told 103 separate untruths, many of them repeatedly. Obama told 18 over his entire eight-year tenure. That’s an average of about two a year for Obama and about 124 a year for Trump.

 

“Trump is different [than George W. Bush and Barack Obama.] When he is caught lying, he will often try to discredit people telling the truth, be they judges, scientists, F.B.I. or C.I.A. officials, journalists or members of Congress. Trump is trying to make truth irrelevant. It is extremely damaging to democracy, and it’s not an accident. It’s core to his political strategy.” (New York Times, 12/14/2017)

 

And for those who thought Donald Trump might turn a new page with the opening of a new year, guess again.

 

In a White House meeting with Congressional leaders from both  parties, he made this public commitment about immigration legislation:

 

“If you want to take it that further step, I’ll take the heat,” Trump replied. “You are not that far away from comprehensive immigration reform.”  

 

And then, as Seinfeld would say, he folded faster than Superman on laundry day. Or Donald Trump on pay day

 

As if all this weren’t enough, in the moments leading up to Donald Trump’s inaugural SOTU, we have observed unprecedentedly dark behavior from him and his chief of staff in efforts to interfere in personnel and policy issues at the Department of Justice. 

 

Not coincidentally, Republicans in the House Select Committee on Intelligence, led by their once-recused Chair, Congressman Devin Nunes, are doing battle with DOJ career officials over a decision to release a classified document crafted by Republican staffers that will allege foul play in FBI investigations of Russian meddling in U. S. elections and other inquiries.  

 

And so it goes.

 

Ergo, sitting out tonight’s SOTU is neither an act of political pique nor  personal petulance. It’s simply a refusal to play a game with a man who delights in trespassing on the goodwill of the American people and trashing the institutions on which American democracy rests.

 

So, if you watch, take good notes. But take them in pencil. Then wait for the drumbeat of tweets reinforcing the case against the FBI, Robert Mueller, fake news, witch hunts, and all the other contrivances that this most deceitful of presidents has mastered. 

 

And that, dear readers, is the real state of the union on January 30 2018. No matter what Donald Trump tells you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Man Who Would Be Sun King

 

 

 

L’Etat c’est moi

Louis XIV

 

While all agree the U. S. President has the complete power to pardon, why think of that when only crime so far is LEAKS against us.FAKE NEWS

POTUS  XLV 

 

 

Dear Friends,

 

Yesterday morning while you were having coffee, POTUS XLV was at it again, tweeting away in a thrust-and-parry, rapier-like fury that lashed out at a range of mostly familiar targets, and in trademark   disjointed phrasing:

 

• the Amazon Washington Post 
• The Failing New York Times 
• the A. G. and Special Council (sic) 
• the many Hillary Clinton and Comey crimes 
• Clinton ties to Russia  
• the Podesta company
• Uranium deal
• Russian Reset
• big dollar speeches
• Crooked Hillary Clinton deleted (& acid washed) 33,000 e-mails

 

Despite his fondest conceit — ‘all agree the U. S. President has the complete power to pardon’ — ‘all’ do not, and even he cannot will that assertion into existence. Courts stand in between America’s Sun King and his imperious ambitions, unlike his ami, Louis XIV.

 

It is at moments like this when we are unhappily reminded that the mad tweeter is the same person who occupies the Oval Office, travels about the globe on Air Force One, has the (ostensible) final say on the use of America’s nuclear weapons, and has altered the contours and conduct of the American presidency in less time than it takes to build a golf course.

 

Oh, how these Sun Kings govern. And, in turn, how they are governed by shiny  objects, gold, opulence, excess, and the seductive allure of inauthentic adoration.   

 

Friday’s press conference with Anthony Scaramucci, President Trump’s newly-named director of communications, was an opportunity to take Yogi’s wise counsel: “You can observe a lot just by watching.”

 

And watch we did. 

 

“Mooch” lived up to the hype: smart, smooth, unctuous, quick, debonair, assertive, convincing. And if I’m any judge of character, I’d wager a princely sum that he is also what Sam Goldwyn had in mind when asked  to reveal the secret to success in Hollywood — “Sincerity. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”  

 

Mooch is counterfeit, 24 karat. Hence the appeal to his boss and vice versa. And when this turns, as it surely will, it won’t be pretty. He has just boarded the Trump bus, possessed of the kind of confidence that allows otherwise smart, successful, self-assured people to tempt fate. It’s been going on since Icarus.

 

The problem at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue hasn’t got a thing to do with the communications director, press secretary, or even the chief of staff. And replacing the current occupants with the most seasoned, savvy, forceful, disciplined, and authoritative personalities won’t change a thing. 

 

Expecting Scaramucci to make the difference in the public acceptance  and approval of this doomed presidency is akin to recruiting a prepossessing,  maître ‘d for an exquisitely designed restaurant where the chef is untrained, untrainable, and an unrepentant repeat offender. The problem isn’t the service, it’s the food.

 

Donald Trump is the problem. His psychopathology is the driver. And nothing will change that. 

 

Donald Trump and American democracy are on a collision course. Like Nero, as he tweets, the government’s ability to function deteriorates. Together with his enablers in Congress and the cabinet, they are presiding over a decline in the institutions of governance that have made America the bulwark of global leadership.   

 

The picture is clear. The price is steep. The worst is yet to come. And though he is incapable of understanding this, in the battle between the Hun and the republic, the Hun will lose.

 

 

 

 

A-Parsing We Will Go

 

 

"In analyzing history, do not be too profound for often the causes are quite superficial.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

Dear Friends,

 

FBI Director James Comey was back on Capitol Hill this week testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee at its annual agency oversight hearing, and addressing questions concerning his decisions and public pronouncements during the 2016 presidential campaign and post-election period. 

 

For those who might have missed the proceedings and who may be confined indoors during this weekend of inclement weather, we enclose a link to his testimony:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/05/03/read-the-full-testimony-of-fbi-director-james-comey-in-which-he-discusses-clinton-email-investigation/?utm_term=.5c20e0864a7a 

 

Good luck with that.

 

For those who have other plans, TMR offers a couple of thoughts about Director Comey’s syntax, which seemed more curious and revealing than the meat of the testimony itself.

 

First, it’s about the choice of adverb in his most quoted remark — ‘It makes me mildly nauseous . . .’? 

 

Why ‘mild’? Why not just simply ‘nauseous’? 

 

Or why not a more demonstrative adverb — profoundly, acutely, severely, or yuuuuuuugely — to convey a greater sense of concern about the possibility that he erred in his judgments about who needed to know what about whom? 

 

Was Comey suggesting that while the flap might have been disconcerting, it was neither dispositive or damning in his estimation? Was this intended to underscore his conviction that he never overstepped precedential boundaries?

 

He should be sounded out on those question. They are not merely idle inquiry, nor exercises in syntactical esoterica. 

 

Second, what about the choice of pronouns in his testimony? What accounts for the curious shift from first person singular to plural? And what are we to make to of that?

 

Follow along, and note where the Director’s “I-me-my” references take a sharp turn to “we:”

 

“Concealment, in my view, would have been catastrophic,” he said, adding later that he knew the decision would be “disastrous for me personally.”

 

“Her meeting with President Clinton … was the capper for me,” he said. “And I then said, you know what, the department cannot by itself credibly end this.”

 

“If I did something wrong, I want to hear that,” he said, calling the choices he has made “painful.”

 

"Lordy, has this been painful," he told committee members. "I've gotten all kinds of rocks thrown at me, and this has been really hard, but I think I've done the right thing at each turn, he added.”

 

But in his most quoted statement, in which he addresses the question of potential blame or causality, suddenly the shift is to first person plural:

 

“It makes me mildly nauseous to think that we might have had some impact on the election,” he told the senators. “But honestly, it wouldn’t change the decision.”

 

We? 

 

And note further that after all the I-me-my references to Comey’s decisions, in this sentence the pronoun of choice — my - is replaced with a definite article — the.

 

The?

 

Make what you will of Comey’s decisions along the way and his explanations at this and prior hearings. But remember that this fellow has a history of being precise about his choice of words, and when they deviate from the norm, we are well-advised to pay attention. As Morning Joe co-host noted recently:

 

‘There was only one person on election day when Americans went to vote that was under investigation by the FBI and it was not Hillary Clinton and history will look back and ask a thousand times over why Hillary Clinton was the focus ...’

 

As Emerson suggests, sometimes it’s the superficial things that mean the most.  

 

 

 

 

Meltdown at Mar-a-Lago

 

 

 

"He just put another quarter in the conspiracy parking meter.”

 

Mike Rogers, former Congressman and Chair

 of House Select Committee on Intelligence 

CBS Face the Nation, 3/5/2017

 

 

 

Dear Friends,

 

During the last 48 hours, we’ve been witness (again) to the theatrics of a malignant narcissistic personality disordered person’s response to the perception of loss of power and importance — a chink in the armor of grandiosity and a deplorable display of petulance.

 

This latest round of episodes began on Friday afternoon with a ‘ballistic’ tirade in the Oval Office when President Trump learned that Attorney General Sessions had (ostensibly) recused himself from certain Justice Department investigations.

 

That was followed by a flurry of tweets Saturday morning with ludicrous, libelous charges about President Obama allegedly engaging in wiretapping, which public law prevents presidents from doing in the first place.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/04/us/politics/trump-obama-tap-phones.html?emc=edit_th_20170305&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=33123388&_r=0

 

 And on Sunday, there was a tweet calling for a Congressional inquiry into this manifestly bogus claim. Doubling down on ignorance.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/03/05/trump-seeks-congressional-probe-into-politically-motivated-investigation-during-2016-campaign/?utm_term=.d4255b60d4c9 

 

This isn’t populism. It’s psychopathology. It’s gaslighting on steroids.  It’s the unleashing of a diversionary tactic designed to call the mainstream media bloodhounds off the scent of the latest threat to the Trumpian gambit. 

 

And it’s part of a fusillade of behaviors that pose a serious threat to America’s national security interest because the world is watching an American president attempt to undermine the institutions that make for a functional democracy, and which strengthen America’s leadership role in a world where autocracy is gaining market share. 

 

It’s also how Donald Trump has played every game he’s been in during his adult years, and if there is doubt, you have only to consult with American banks that no longer lend to him, tradesmen and women whose businesses and personal lives were destroyed by his abusive behavior, and the millions of people who watched him play the birtherism game for years simply to nourish his own narcissistic needs.

 

And now the ‘celebrity apprentice-in-chief’ actually resides in the Oval Office where neither he nor his coterie of enablers understand the basics of the business they are in, including what a FISA Court is, how it operates, and who can and cannot make application to the court.

 

As Casey Stengel poignantly asked about his hapless New York Mets team, “Can’t anybody here play this game?”

 

We are less than seven weeks into the 45th presidency and new records are set and then broken with each passing week. Instead of ‘draining the swamp,’ America’s 45th president is giving the country a whopping case of vertigo. And despite those stentorian pronouncements about building walls and issuing stern immigration executive orders to protect Americans from external threats, the thing we are beginning to fear most is the malignancy inside the White House — a profoundly ill-prepared and psychologically compromised president staffed by a pernicious combination of inexperienced aides and dystopian, demogogic counselors, including Steven Bannon, Stephen Miller, Sebastian Gorka, and others whose names we have yet to learn.

 

That’s how democracies and republics fail — from within, not from without. 

 

Ten years ago, Cullen Murphy, then managing editor of The Atlantic, authored a remarkably prescient book, “Are We Rome: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America,” which received much deserved acclaim, then fell from the charts, but now merits reconsideration given the turmoil in our politics.

 

Murphy concludes the book with a consideration of Roman historian Titus Livius’ (Livy) axiom, “An empire remains powerful as long as its citizens rejoice in it.” 

 

Taking that thought, he outlines his own “Titus Livius Hundred Year Workout Plan.” whose principles are nearly in direct contradistinction to the insular, dystopian, America First, Trump-Bannon formula:

 

• First, instill an appreciation of the wider world. Start teaching it round instead of flat. Immigration helps us here. The influx of foreign students does too . . . there is no substitute for fluency in another language . . .Americans have their priorities backward. They worry needlessly . . . whether immigrants will ever learn English. They should be worrying about . . . whether elites will every speak anything else.  

 

 • Second, stop treating government as a necessary evil, and instead rely on it proudly for the big things it can do well . . . letting government step in (to open the West, distribute land, nurture business, reduce poverty) is part of the American reality . . . The social security check every month, the safe drugs and highways, the guaranteed student loans, the health-care safety net in old age, the sandbags when rivers flood . . . these things promote a sense of common alliance and mutual obligation.

 

• Third, fortify the institutions that promote assimilation . . . The answer to public schools and public health services for immigrants should always be yes — these do more, with less, than any fence can accomplish. And yes should be the answer to a program of national service for all young people which would revive the militia ethic of . . . ‘we’re all in it together.’

 

• Fourth, take some weight off the military. National service will help at the margins. But if America enjoys the kind of economic vitality it hopes for, were never going to attract enough qualified people into an all-volunteer military to perform all the global tasks we have in mind. No one wants to pay for an army of that size anyway. 

 

And just this past week, General James Mattis told members of Congress at a National Security Advisory Council meeting, “If you don’t fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition ultimately,"

 

The point is not whether Murphy’s “Livy Plan” is the precise Rx for America, circa 2017. What does matter is that it beats the stuffing out of the anti-immigrant, anti-intelligence, anti-media, anti-you-name-it rhetoric and faux, flawed policy declarations that have been emanating from this White House at virtually every public appearance. 

 

For all those who have spent much of the last eight years scoffing at the ‘audacity of hope,’ let us be clear that Americans are not about to trade hope for the ‘deconstruction of the administrative state’ or settling for a blizzard of ‘alternative facts.’