Robert Mueller

Dazed and Confused: Trump Can’t Keep His Mueller Stories – or Anything Else – Straight

Posted by on May 30, 2019 at 12:03 pm. 3 Comments :

Since Donald Trump ordered the White House Press Office to stop doing daily press briefings nearly three months ago, the only media access to the President has been his impromptu harangues on the White House lawn in front of the whirring blades of his helicopter. And there has been a noticeable deterioration of his mental faculties in each one of these reality TV style spiels. The latest on Thursday morning is a real display of his paranoid dementia.

Donald Trump Zombie

Trump addressed several subjects including his insistence that Russia didn’t help him get elected. In his typically narcissistic fashion he told the assembled press “You know who got me elected? I got me elected.” He also briefly touched on the matter of his potential impeachment. In doing so he demonstrated that he has no idea how it works. He doesn’t know what “high crimes and misdemeanors” means. And he he wonders how the courts could allow it. Of course every high school civics student knows that impeachment is entirely within the jurisdiction of Congress and the courts have nothing to with it.

However, perhaps the most ludicrous exchanges occurred when Trump was lashing out at special counsel Robert Mueller. The recent public statement by Mueller affirmed that his investigation had found evidence of criminal activities and obstruction of justice by Trump (even Fox News said so), but that no indictments were filed due to an old and questionable policy memo at the Department of Justice. This predictably triggered Trump’s worst instincts to attack Mueller and his work (video below):

“He was conflicted. Look, Robert Mueller should have never been chosen because he wanted the FBI job and he didn’t get it, and the next day he was picked as special counsel. So you tell somebody ‘I’m sorry, you can’t have the job.’ and then after you say that he’s gonna make a ruling on you? It doesn’t work that way. Plus we had a business dispute. Plus his relationship with Comey was extraordinary.”

None of this is new in the armory of Trump’s assault rhetoric. It has all been used before by Trump so many times that he seems to be stuck in an endless and tedious tape loop. But he is also contradicting himself with regards to his opinion of Mueller. It was just two months ago that Trump told reporters that he believed that Mueller had “acted honorably” following the completion of the probe. He even gloated that “The Mueller report was great. It could not have been better.” That moment of confidence, however, was short lived.

Now Trump is back to maligning Mueller as “conflicted” for reasons that totally reside in his warped imagination. Mueller was not seeking to return to the FBI. He met with Trump only as a courtesy and to provide consultation. Mueller also did not have a “business dispute” with Trump. Although there was a minor incident when Mueller resigned his membership at Trump’s National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, because he no longer lived in the area and wasn’t using it. And Mueller has never been a close friend of James Comey. In fact, they were not even casual friends. Comey testified before Congress that he had dinner once with Mueller, but had never been to his home, didn’t have his phone number, and didn’t know the names of his kids.

But Trump wasn’t through. He still needed to repeat the same lies a few more times to make sure his gaslighting would take hold among his cult disciples.

“I think he is a totally conflicted person. I think Mueller is a true never-Trumper. He’s somebody who dislikes Donald Trump. He’s somebody that didn’t get a job that he requested that eh wanted very badly. And then he was appointed. And despite that, and despite $40 million dollars, eighteen Trump haters, including people who worked for Hillary clinton, and some of the worst human beings on Earth, they got nothing. It’s pretty amazing.”

What’s “pretty amazing” is that Trump thinks that the career law enforcement professionals that Mueller recruited from the FBI and the Justice Department are “some of the worst human beings on Earth.” That puts them in the same league – in Trump’s mind – as child molesters, drug traffickers, and terrorists. And despite the obvious insanity of these remarks, Trump’s supporters in his administration, in Congress, and in the general public, still don’t think he’s nuts. Which leads once again to the perennial question: WTF is gonna take?

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

UH-OH! Fox News on Mueller: This Was Not, As Trump Says, ‘No Collusion, No Obstruction’

Posted by on May 29, 2019 at 12:14 pm. 3 Comments :

Special counsel Robert Mueller took the stage on Wednesday to clarify that his investigation was not an exoneration of Donald Trump in any way shape or form. While his remarks did not expand on what he previously wrote in his report, they were a spotlight on the most relevant facts that contradict Attorney General William Barr’s dishonest mangling of the report’s conclusions and Trump’s specious claims of innocence.

Fox News, Robert Mueller

But there is something that is far more devastating for Trump than anything the special counsel said. And that’s the analysis on Fox News after Mueller’s statement. The network immediately turned to their chief political anchor, Bret Baier, for commentary on the unusual and surprising public address by Mueller. Baier wasted no time making the point that Mueller’s remarks would be troublesome for Trump (video below). He said that…

“I was struck by the tone and tenor of those remarks as he laid out his case wrapping up this report. This was not, as the president says time and time again, ‘no collusion, no obstruction.’ It was much more nuanced than that. […] He said specifically that if they had found that the President did not commit a crime on obstruction, they would have said that.”

Baier also blasted Barr’s misrepresentation of the Mueller report saying that it was more nuanced than Barr’s portrayal and “In fact, it was almost exactly the opposite.” That’s the Fox News way of saying that Barr lied through his teeth. But that’s not all. There were other portions of Mueller’s statement that should also worry the White House. Including his explanation for why no criminal charges were brought. Mueller reiterated his opinion that a Department of Justice memo prohibited him from indicting a sitting president. That opinion is rejected by many legal experts and has never been affirmed by any court. But Mueller is a stickler for procedure. Consequently, his decision not to indict doesn’t mean that no crimes occurred, only that he didn’t believe that he had jurisdiction to press charges.

What’s even worse for Trump is that Mueller unambiguously threw the question of criminality squarely into the lap of Congress. He said that…

“Charging the president with a crime was not an option that we could consider” [because] “the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing.”

That’s an explicit reference to the constitutional duties of Congress and its responsibility to initiate impeachment proceedings. Mueller could not be more clear. It emphatically refutes Trump’s tedious and repetitive whining about “witch hunts” and “hoaxes.” But that didn’t stop Trump from issuing the same impotent defense via his campaign that there was “no collusion…no case for obstruction [and that] Trump has been fully and completely exonerated.” Only a confirmed Trump cultist could still believe that.

It’s going to become harder for Trump’s allies and supporters to remain on board this sinking ship. It’s ability to stay afloat has been largely due to the buoyancy of Fox News propaganda. But with analyses like that of Baier – who was joined by Fox’s senior legal analyst Andrew Napolitano, their ultra-conservative contributor Andrew McCarthy, and others – the USS Trump is taking on water at a dangerously high rate. So expect to hear some more frantic gurgling by Trump in the hours and days to come.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

GOP Rep. Justin Amash Butchers Trump’s Disgraced AG Barr in a Brutal Twitter Truthstorm

Posted by on May 28, 2019 at 11:12 am. 4 Comments :

Two months ago special counsel Robert Mueller completed his report on Donald Trump’s unsavory connections to Russia during his campaign, and his obstruction of justice as President. He delivered the report to Trump’s handpicked flunky at the Justice Department, Attorney General William Barr. And ever since, Barr’s brazenly prejudiced mangling the contents has been the subject of harsh criticism and ridicule.

William Barr, Donald Trump

However, most of the critics have predictably been Democrats appalled by the dishonesty and suppression of the facts. One notable exception is the Republican congressman from Michigan, Justin Amash. Last week Amash publicly called for impeachment proceedings of Trump based on what is already known about his criminal behaviors.

For the time being, Amash is the only Republican congressman courageous enough to take this stand for the rule of law and the honor of America’s government. And on Tuesday morning Amash went further with a tweeted essay condemning Barr’s perversion of justice and the integrity of the department he is tainting with partisan lies. The series of twenty-five tweets is a testimony that needs to be seen by every citizen. It is thorough and scathing and truthful and speaks for itself. Therefore it is presented here unedited in its entirety (each paragraph being one tweet):

Attorney General Barr has deliberately misrepresented key aspects of Mueller’s report and decisions in the investigation, which has helped further the president’s false narrative about the investigation.

After receiving Mueller’s report, Barr wrote and released a letter on March 24 describing Barr’s own decision not to indict the president for obstruction of justice. That letter selectively quotes and summarizes points in Mueller’s report in misleading ways.

Mueller’s report says he chose not to decide whether Trump broke the law because there’s an official DoJ opinion that indicting a sitting president is unconstitutional, and because of concerns about impacting the president’s ability to govern and pre-empting possible impeachment.

Barr’s letter doesn’t mention those issues when explaining why Mueller chose not to make a prosecutorial decision. He instead selectively quotes Mueller in a way that makes it sound—falsely—as if Mueller’s decision stemmed from legal/factual issues specific to Trump’s actions.

But, in fact, Mueller finds considerable evidence that several of Trump’s actions detailed in the report meet the elements of obstruction, and Mueller’s constitutional and prudential issues with indicting a sitting president would preclude indictment regardless of what he found.

In noting why Barr thought the president’s intent in impeding the investigation was insufficient to establish obstruction, Barr selectively quotes Mueller to make it sound as if his analysis was much closer to Barr’s analysis than it actually was:

Barr quotes Mueller saying the evidence didn’t establish that Trump was personally involved in crimes related to Russian election interference, and Barr then claims that Mueller found that fact relevant to whether the president had the intent to obstruct justice.

But Mueller’s quote is taken from a section in which he describes other improper motives Trump could have had and notes: “The injury to the integrity of the justice system is the same regardless of whether a person committed an underlying wrong.” None of that is in Barr’s letter.

As a result of Barr’s March 24 letter, the public and Congress were misled. Mueller himself notes this in a March 27 letter to Barr, saying that Barr’s letter “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this Office’s work and conclusions.”

Mueller: “There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations.”

To “alleviate the misunderstandings that have arisen,” Mueller urged the release of the report’s introductions and executive summaries, which he had told Barr “accurately summarize [Mueller’s] Office’s work and conclusions.”

Barr declined; he allowed the confusion to fester and only released the materials three weeks later with the full redacted report. In the interim, Barr testified before a House committee and was misleading about his knowledge of Mueller’s concerns:

Barr was asked about reports “that members of [Mueller’s] team are frustrated…with the limited information included in your March 24th letter, that it does not adequately or accurately necessarily portray the report’s findings. Do you know what they’re referencing with that?”

Barr absurdly replied: “No, I don’t…I suspect that they probably wanted more put out.” Yet Mueller had directly raised those concerns to Barr, and Barr says he “suspect[s]” they “probably” wanted more materials put out, as if Mueller hadn’t directly told him that.

In subsequent statements and testimony, Barr used further misrepresentations to help build the president’s false narrative that the investigation was unjustified.

Barr notes that Mueller did not “find any conspiracy to violate U.S. law involving Russia-linked persons and any persons associated with the Trump campaign.” He then declares that Mueller found “no collusion” and implies falsely that the investigation was baseless.

But whether there’s enough evidence for a conviction of a specific crime which Mueller thought was appropriate to charge is a different and much higher standard than whether the people whom Mueller investigated had done anything worthy of investigation.

In truth, Mueller’s report describes concerning contacts between members of Trump’s campaign and people in or connected to the Russian government.

For instance, Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner took a meeting with a Russian lawyer whom Trump Jr. had been told worked for the Russian government and would provide documents to “incriminate Hillary,” as part of the Russian government’s “support for Mr. Trump.”

It’s wrong to suggest that the fact that Mueller did not choose to indict anyone for this means there wasn’t a basis to investigate whether it amounted to a crime or “collusion,” or whether it was in fact part of Russia’s efforts to help Trump’s candidacy.

Barr says the White House “fully cooperated” with the investigation and that Mueller “never sought” or “pushed” to get more from the president, but the report says Mueller unsuccessfully sought an interview with the president for over a year.

The report says the president’s counsel was told that interviewing him was “vital” to Mueller’s investigation and that it would be in the interest of the public and the presidency. Still Trump refused.

The president instead gave written answers to questions submitted by the special counsel. Those answers are often incomplete or unresponsive. Mueller found them “inadequate” and again sought to interview the president.

Ultimately, the special counsel “recogniz[ed] that the President would not be interviewed voluntarily” and chose not to subpoena him because of concerns that the resulting “potentially lengthy constitutional litigation” would delay completion of the investigation.

Barr has so far successfully used his position to sell the president’s false narrative to the American people. This will continue if those who have read the report do not start pushing back on his misrepresentations and share the truth.

Amash pointedly began this rebuke of Barr by chastising him for “deliberately misrepresent[ing] key aspects of Mueller’s report.” He concluded by charging that Barr “used his position to sell the president’s false narrative.” And finally, Amash could not be more on point by calling on his Congressional (mainly Republican) colleagues to “start pushing back … and share the truth.” This has not been articulated better by any Democrat or other Trump critic. And with a few more Republicans joining the crusade for truth and accountability, the American people may finally get justice and Trump’s fate will be sealed.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Trump Whines (Falsely) that Democrats ‘Do Nothing’ then He Literally Pledges to Do Nothing

Posted by on May 23, 2019 at 12:03 pm. 3 Comments :

On Thursday morning House Speaker Nancy Pelosi addressed the mental infirmity of Donald Trump by pointedly saying “I wish that his family or his administration or his staff would have an intervention for the good of the country.” She was responding to Wednesday’s Trumpian tantrum when he stormed out of a meeting with Democrats at the White House. And his behavior since then has only gotten worse.

Donald Trump

On Thursday Trump took to his Twitter machine and blasted out a barrage of barely coherent messages that appeared to be some sort of cathartic release by a man tortured by fear and the consciousness of guilt. They were overtly hostile and entirely devoid of substantive facts. One of the recurring themes was his deliberately dishonest allegation that Democrats in the House of Representatives have been doing nothing but persecuting him. The extended harangue went something like this:

Trump’s phony fear of the Democrats becoming “irrelevant” was more wishful thinking than anything approaching reality. He knows that they control his fate with the power of subpoena and ultimately impeachment. And he knows what he’s done and how damaging it will be for him when Democrats reveal it to the nation. He feels the hot breath of the law on his neck.

However, it’s his attempt to paint Democrats as the “Do Nothing Party” that truly defines the dementia in Trump’s gripe-feasting. After all, he just literally pledged to the American people in a nationally televised press avail that he would refuse to work with Democrats on any legislation unless and until they abandoned their constitutional right – and duty – to engage in oversight and to hold the President accountable for his many crimes.

So while Trump has publicly promised to do nothing – a breach of his oath of office – he is also ignoring the highly productive work of the Democratic controlled House. Take for instance this partial list of Democratic accomplishments this year:

  • H.R. 1, The For the People Act
  • H.R. 2, Infrastructure
  • Lowering Prescription Drug Costs
  • H.R. 4, Voting Rights Advancement Act
  • H.R. 5, Equality Act
  • H.R. 6, Dream and Promise Act
  • H.R. 7, Paycheck Fairness Act
  • H.R. 8, Bipartisan Background Checks Act
  • H.R. 9, The Climate Action Now Act
  • H.R. 582, Raise the Wage Act
  • H.R. 1585, Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act
  • H.R. 1884, Protecting Pre-existing Conditions and Making Health Care More Affordable Act of 2019
  • H.R. 676, NATO Support Act
  • S.J.Res.54, Yemen War Powers Resolution
  • H.J.Res.46 – Resolution to End National Emergency Declaration
  • S. 47, John D. Dingell Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act
  • H.R. 1994, the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement
  • H. Res. 271, Condemning the Trump Administration’s Legal Campaign to Take Away Americans’ Health Care
  • H.R. 1644, Save the Internet Act of 2019
  • H.Res. 124, Expressing opposition to banning service in the Armed Forces by openly transgender individuals
  • H.Con. Res. 24, Resolution on the Mueller Report

Here’s an even more comprehensive list of bills passed by Democrats in Congress.

This puts the lie to Trump’s ludicrous assertion that “It is not possible for them to investigate and legislate at the same time.” It may not be possible for a world-class idiot like Trump who hasn’t the foggiest notion of how to govern, or any experience in legislating, but it isn’t really that hard for those with intelligence and a desire to advance the interests of the American people. Many presidents have had to balance these burdens.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

The only interest that Trump has is to evade responsibility for his unlawful activities and obstruction of justice. That’s why he’s willing to put his personal issues before the welfare of the nation by turning into a cranky baby and refusing to play with those meanie Democrats. He doesn’t need an intervention. He needs a time-out.

A Paranoid Portrait of an ‘Innocent’ Man, Tweetstorm in 10 Panicked Parts By Donald Trump

Posted by on May 22, 2019 at 10:26 am. 4 Comments :

Sometimes it is only possible to convey the insanity of a man by presenting his own words verbatim. That’s the case with Donald Trump’s latest tirade on Twitter where he lashed out at what he repeatedly, and falsely, calls a “Witch Hunt.” The tone of this extended harangue is one that only makes Trump appear more guilty, and demented, than ever.

Donald Trump Zombie

Innocent people don’t behave this way. They don’t exhibit such a deranged mentality that is gushing with the consciousness of guilt. Trump is quite obviously scared, paranoid, and desperate to persuade his Deplorables that he hasn’t committed all the crimes that evidence shows he committed. And that psychotic condition led to this frighteningly deranged outburst (footnotes below):

Everything the Democrats are asking me for is based on an illegally started investigation that failed for them, especially when the Mueller Report came back with a NO COLLUSION finding (1). Now they say Impeach President Trump, even though he did nothin wrong, while they “fish!”

After two years of an expensive and comprehensive Witch Hunt, the Democrats don’t like the result and they want a DO OVER (2). In other words, the Witch Hunt continues!

The Democrats are getting ZERO work done in Congress (3). All they are focused on is trying to prove the Mueller Report wrong, the Witch Hunt!

PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT! (4)

Without the ILLEGAL Witch Hunt, my poll numbers, especially because of our historically “great” economy, would be at 65%. (5) Too bad! The greatest Hoax in American History.

Everybody, including me, thought that when the 40 Million Dollar Mueller Report was released with No Collusion and No Obstruction (of a crime caused by others), that was the end. (6) But no, the Democrats want to keep it going in an effort to help them in 2020. Bad for the Country!

“The Democrats are in danger of becoming irrelevant (7) because of their decision to keep taking the country on wild goose chases. They ought to start governing. You know, for a change.” Michael Goodwin @newyorkpost

“He (Jerry Nadler) wants a show. He wants to use Mr. McGahn as a prop to spend three hours claiming that Mr. Trump tried to obstruct the Mueller investigation. YET MR. MUELLER WASN’T OBSTRUCTED IN ANY WAY, HIS COPIOUS REPORT WAS RELEASED FOR ALL TO SEE (8), & THERE WAS NO COLLUSION..

..BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN. Mr. McGahn can be forgiven for declining the honor (9) of appearing in Mr. Nadler’s pseudo-impeachment drama.” Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, Today – May 21, 2019

As I have long been saying, and has now been proven out, this is a Witch Hunt against the Republican Party and myself, and it was the other side that caused the problem, not us! (10)

Following this bizarre spectacle, Trump took the wholly unprecedented step of blackmailing Congress to force them to stop doing their constitutionally mandated job of oversight. He told House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer that he would not consider the pending infrastructure bill, or any legislation, until they ended their investigations of him.

That’s not going to happen. So Trump is putting himself and his personal issues above the welfare of the nation. AGAIN! This abdication of his responsibilities is just another reason that he must not be permitted to continue to occupy the White House. It adds to his recent refusals to obey the laws regarding the provision of public documents and his attempts to prohibit public servants from giving testimony. And it is why more and more members of Congress – and American citizens – believe it it imperative that we impeach Trump.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

FOOTNOTES (with links to tweet):
1) The Mueller report did NOT find no collusion. But it did find ten instances of obstruction od justice.
2) Democrats do NOT want a do-over. They want all of the facts to be disclosed.
3) Democrats in the House have passed dozens of bills that are being held up by Republicans in the Senate.
4) PRESIDENTIAL WHINING!
5) Trump’s approval rating has NEVER exceeded the forties.
6) Mueller left the conclusions up to Congress. His report was a beginning, not an end.
7) If Trump really believed that Democrats are becoming irrelevant, he wouldn’t be throwing these tantrums.
8) Trump is unlawfully prohibiting McGahn from testifying. And the Mueller report has NOT been released for all to see.
9) A subpoena is NOT an optional invitation to appear. It is lawful and mandatory, and declining is a crime.
10) There has never been any evidence of crimes by “the other side.”

Big Baby Trump Resorts to Whining and Lying When Fellow Republican Says He’s Impeachable

Posted by on May 19, 2019 at 11:50 am. 3 Comments :

Nothing is more predictable than the response from Donald Trump whenever anyone has the audacity to challenge or criticize him. He lashes out uncontrollably like a petulant child who doesn’t get his way. And his assaults are always slathered in impotent insults and seasoned with the hate of a wounded narcissist.

Donald Trump

So naturally when Republican congressman Justin Amash of Michigan made the courageous decision to put his country before his party. Trump went ballistic. Amash is one of the few Republican members of Congress who read the report by special counsel Robert Mueller with an independent eye. Consequently he came away with the objective realization that Trump “has engaged in impeachable conduct.” The report is rife with evidence of the unsavory connections to Russia by Trump and his campaign, as well as multiple documented incidents of obstruction of justice.

Trump typically chose Twitter as his preferred presidential communications platform to strike back at Amash. Lately Trump has been spectacularly deranged, even for him. But Trump’s pitiful retort to Amash is just further evidence of his mental infirmity and unfitness for office. He tweeted that he was…

The pattern of Trump’s attack is typified by first maligning his foe as an inferior with ulterior motives. Thus, Amash is a “lightweight” who is just looking for attention. But then Trump made the laughable charge that Amash had not read the Mueller report, which Trump absolutely didn’t read. At best he had one of his nannies summarize it with a few charts and pictures that made him look like a superhero.

In what might ordinarily be considered a hysterical satire, Trump dismissed the Mueller report as the “biased” product of “18 Angry Dems who hated Trump.” (For the record, there are more like 65 million angry Democrats who hate Trump). However, he also said that it found “NO COLLUSION and, ultimately, NO OBSTRUCTION.” But if the report that allegedly exonerated him was biased, doesn’t that mean that it DID find collusion and obstruction? And typical of any Trump tirade, it was overflowing with lies:

  • It’s absurd to suggest that Amash, a conservative Republican, was looking to advance himself by defying his own party and its leader.
  • Amash’s detailed commentary proves that he did read the Mueller report, despite Trump’s implying that he didn’t.
  • The report was produced by a lifelong Republican who was chosen by a Republican acting Attorney General who Trump appointed.
  • It was neither “strong on no collusion” nor “ultimately no obstruction.”
  • You can charge obstruction of justice even if there is no underlying crime. Obstruction is a crime in itself.
  • There no discernible crimes by “the other side” despite repeated attempts by the GOP to find something.

You have to hand to Trump. Not many people could squeeze that many falsehoods into two measly tweets. But he had inspiration. He was driven by the fact that someone chose to be disobedient by criticizing Dear Leader. That is the deadly sin of the Trump Era. And such impudence must be met head on with whining and crying and lying and the throwing of tantrums. Thankfully, those are the only skills that Trump has been shown to have in abundance.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Senile or Stupid? Trump is Ecstatic About His Total Misreading of a Devastating Fox News Poll

Posted by on May 17, 2019 at 10:54 am. 3 Comments :

The age old question has arisen again in this historically warped Era of Trump. Is the President suffering from a severe mental collapse, or is he just the biggest dumbass to ever reside in the White House? It’s a question that has perplexed seasoned politicos and concerned citizens alike. And of course, one answer doesn’t negate the other.

Donald Trump

The latest episode of Donald Trump’s cognitive infirmity arose – as it often does – in his Twitter feed that violently shifts from the hysterical to the frightening. It is a unique compendium of his rampant lies, consuming paranoia, and vile hostility. It is also an outlet for his narcissistic exaltations of himself. The latter was evident on Friday morning when he tweeted that…

The first thing that reveals the irrelevance of this post is that Trump is citing the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends as his source. So naturally the substance can be presumed to be bullshit. In fact, the Fox News poll to which he is referring actually shows a very different result than Trump’s skewed anlaysis. A majority (51 percent), when asked how likely it was that intelligence agencies like the FBI broke the law while investigating Trump’s collusion with Russia and obstruction of justice, said “Not At All” or only “Somewhat.” What’s more, a more detailed breakdown showed that only 24 percent said it was “Extremely” likely, while 31 percent said “Not At All.” That, however, was not the only bad news for Trump in this poll. It also showed that:

  • 46% of voters approve of the way Mueller handled the Russia investigation, while only 32% disapprove.
  • A plurality said that they trust Mueller (45%) more than Trump (27%).
  • Voters also trust Mueller over Attorney General Barr (40% to 22%), and Democrats over the Trump administration (44% to 33%).
  • They said that AG Barr is covering up for Trump (45% to 33%).
  • 42% said they favor impeaching Trump.
  • They say that Democrats in Congress are seeking the truth rather than attacking Trump (49% to 41%).
  • On whether they would vote for Trump in 2020, 54% say No, 38% say Yes. (Definitely No: 46% to definitely Yes only 28%).

Yet somehow Trump managed to spin this poll (did I mention that it’s by Fox News?) as positive for him. He went on to tweet more nonsense that is only true in his diseased brain. Such as his ludicrous assertion that his “Campaign for President was conclusively spied on.” Even his own, hand-picked FBI director, Christopher Wray, disputes that. But Trump tweeted that this delusion was “TREASON.” He also tweeted more lies about Hillary Clinton’s emails (when will it end?).

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

You really have to wonder how Trump manages to maintain his utterly deranged fallacies about himself and the world. His perspective is so far removed from reality that it’s hard to imagine how he gets through the day. But what’s worse is that he has a small base of supporters who hang on his every lie as if it were gospel. And his Republican Nationalist Party backs up his dementia all the way. This isn’t the behavior of a political movement. It’s the behavior of a cult. And like all such cults, it’s going to end badly for the deceived believers.

Wannabe Dictator Trump Thinks He Decides Which Congressional Investigations are ‘Authorized’

Posted by on May 15, 2019 at 3:06 pm. 4 Comments :

Considering Donald Trump’s embarrassing ignorance of the Constitution, it’s not surprising that he is now advancing a position that flagrantly breaches one of the foundational principles in the document. Trump’s White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, sent a letter to Jerry Nadler, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, that totally obliterates the notion of co-equal branches of government.

Donald Trump Tyrant Dictator

Rep. Nadler had previously sent requests to eighty-one individuals and entities for documents pertaining to his committee’s investigation “into the alleged obstruction of justice, public corruption, and other abuses of power by President Trump, his associates, and members of his Administration.” These are serious matters that factor into the President’s ability and legitimacy to govern. And they are squarely within the jurisdiction of Congress to investigate. Which makes the response by Cipollone all the more peculiar. He wrote that:

“The White House will not participate in the Committee’s ‘investigation’ that brushes aside the conclusions of the Department of Justice. […] Congressional investigations are intended to obtain information to aid in evaluating potential legislation, not to harass political opponents or to pursue an unauthorized ‘do-over’ of exhaustive law enforcement investigations conducted by the Department of Justice.”

First of all, the Committee did not “brush aside the conclusions of the Department of Justice.” Rather, it sought to complete a process that had not come to any conclusions. In fact, the report by special counsel Robert Mueller for the Justice Department, explicitly left it up to Congress to pursue any further investigation. And the White House is not empowered to declare that investigations by Congress that they don’t like are “unauthorized.”

But Cipollone went even further than that. In his refusal to cooperate with the Committee, he asserted that:

“…it is not the Committee’s legislative function to conduct a detailed inquiry into a particular event or series of events in order to construct a precise picture of the facts.”

Really? That’s a twisted interpretation of what are permissible congressional investigations. Congress has always had the responsibility of conducting oversight of the executive branch in order to maintain the lawful exercise of governing authority. If Cipollone’s argument were operative there could have been no investigations into Watergate or 9/11. The Republican chaired hearings on Benghazi and Hillary Clinton’s emails would have been improper. Even the new hearings called for by GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham into the origins of the Trump/Russia probe would be beyond the jurisdiction of Congress.

But what’s really troubling about this is the White House position that they have the power to dictate the authorities of Congress. Trump thinks that he can simply declare that Congress isn’t allowed to investigate him, and then decline to cooperate in the investigation. That’s not how the Constitution defines the roles of these bodies and the separation of powers. But it is how tyrants seek to impose their will in countries that reject freedom and democratic rule of, by, and for the people.

So naturally Trump is trying to assume the mantle of the tyrant and force Congress – and the nation – to submit to his will. Hopefully Congress and the courts will not allow him to get away with subverting American democracy with his aspirations for a monarchal reign of terror.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Trump Freaks Out on Twitter, While Fox News Has Been Boycotting it for 6 Months

Posted by on May 11, 2019 at 1:10 pm. 2 Comments :

This is all perfectly normal. No reason to get excited or to worry about the fate of the nation. Just because the President of the United States spent two hours Saturday morning posting sixty-two (that’s 62!) retweets of mostly ultra-rightist douchebags piling up worshipful praise for their Dear Leader, Donald Trump.

Donald Trump

This happens all the time. Although usually in countries where the dictators in charge mandate wholehearted support and unconditional love. That’s rapidly becoming the standard for the U.S. under Trump who repeatedly refers to himself as “your favorite president.” Never mind that he is the most despised president in modern times with poll numbers that have never reached fifty percent. He openly pines for the sort of devotion that his idols (Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin, etc.) receive.

Trump regards brutal tyrants as his models of strong leadership. No, really. He seeks to emulate them with public remarks that advocate shooting asylum seekers. He congratulated Duterte of the Philippines for personally murdering drug dealers. He goaded his rally-goers into assaulting protesters, and promised to pay their legal fees. He has eliminated the daily White House press briefings, revoked press passes of reporters that aren’t sufficiently obedient, and routinely uses the Stalinist phrasing of “enemy of the people” to describe the media as a whole.

So the sixty-two rage-tweets that gushed from Trump like explosive diarrhea are now part of the official presidential record. They include twenty-nine tweets about the Russia/Mueller affair. Other hot topics include the tariffs on China, the border, and even a bunch about – don’t laugh – Hillary Clinton’s emails! He also threw in some jabs at Joe Biden and a few pompous exaltations of himself. Nineteen of the retweets mentioned Don Jr. This accounting of the tweet topics tells you what Trump is most afraid of.

Trump has also been consumed with abusing his power by exploiting his Justice Department to persecute his political opponents. That’s another character flaw that Trump shares with authoritarian dictators. He aimed his prosecutorial wrath at Joe Biden, John Kerry, and James Comey. Those are in addition to his similar previous attacks on Hillary Clinton, President Obama, and various other Democrats and FBI officials.

In the meantime, Fox News is continuing a boycott of Twitter that they began last November. Their stated reason at the time had something to with how Twitter handled a protest at the home of Tucker Carlson. But Twitter apologized and suspended the account of the user that triggered Fox’s complaint. And six months later they still haven’t posted a single tweet.

Perhaps Fox News is satisfied with the job that Trump is doing promoting their programs and hosts. Trump spends much of his day watching watching Fox News and live-tweeting what he sees. It’s hard to tell if Trump is serving as President of the United States, or president of Fox’s marketing and PR division. In addition to posting videos by his favorite Foxies (Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Jeanine Pirro, Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, etc), Trump randomly posts demands that his cult followers watch the network’s programs. See? Not at all unusual.

Trump has three times the number of Twitter followers that Fox News has, although most of those are probably Russians or bots. So maybe Fox thinks they get better PR by letting Trump handle it than doing it themselves. Trump is clearly able to commit an extraordinary amount of time and effort to it. And now that Trump fans like Alex Jones have been booted from Twitter, he can (and does) take up their cause and advance their crackpot conspiracy theories. So Fox News can relax and let the President handle their Twitter promos. At least until Trump gets banned for his obvious and dangerous hostility and hate speech.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Trump’s Rambling, Lie-Riddled Rant About Mueller and Russia Exposes His Panic and Fear

Posted by on May 9, 2019 at 12:44 pm. 2 Comments :

On Thursday morning Donald Trump held an impromptu press conference to announce an initiative related to drug pricing disclosures. But as often occurs at any Trump affair, it wandered off topic and wound up miles from reality. Trump’s rambling discourse (video below) was further evidence of his severely declining mental state that is stressed by anxiety, consumed by paranoia, and fraught with hostility toward his perceived enemies.

Trump Fear

The diversions littered throughout this spectacle included utterly false claims that Trump had provided Puerto Rico Rico with $91 billion dollars in aid following the devastation of Hurricane Maria. It was only $11 billion. He also repeated his frequently told lie that tariffs on China are paid by China. They are actually paid by by American companies who pass those costs on to American consumers.

Trump defended his son, Don Jr, who was just subpoenaed by the GOP-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee, by saying that special counsel Robert Mueller had exonerated him. He didn’t. And Trump recklessly accused former Secretary of State, John Kerry, of having violated the Logan Act, and called for his prosecution. That’s just another example of Trump using his Justice Department to persecute his political opponents, the way dictators are known to do.

However, the most strikingly deranged portion of this babbling tirade was Trump’s surreal portrayal of what happened in the aftermath of the release of the redacted version of Mueller’s report. He began by misrepresenting the special counsel’s team as being comprised of “seventeen or eighteen very angry Democrats who hated Donald Trump.” It was actually led by Mueller, a lifelong Republican, who was appointed by a Republican Acting Attorney General, who was appointed by Trump.

Following that, Trump claimed that no one was ever more transparent than he has been. This is despite his recent declaration that he is suppressing, via executive privilege, the entire Mueller report, denying Congress the right to interview anyone associated with the affair, and opposing all attempts to have witnesses testify before Congress, including those served lawful subpoenas.

Trump further misrepresented what took place by claiming that Mueller was unfit to conduct the investigation because of “conflicts” he had with Trump. Those alleged conflicts were fabrications from the diseased mind of a paranoid president. He first stated that he and Mueller had some sort of bad business relationship. And it went downhill from there:

Trump: Mueller’s no friend of mine. I had conflicts with him. We had a business dispute. We had somebody that is in love with James Comey. He like James Comey. They were very good friends. Supposedly best friends. Maybe not, but supposedly best friends. You look at the picture file and you see hundreds of pictures of him and Comey. And with all of that and other things – he wanted the FBI job. I don’t know if anybody knows that.

First of all, the business dispute Trump refers to was a minor incident when Mueller resigned his membership at Trump’s National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, because he no longer lived in the area and wasn’t using it. That hardly qualifies as a business dispute.

Secondly, Trump’s assertion that Mueller was “in love” with Comey is laughable. Especially after Trump confessed that he was in love with Kim Jong Un. What’s more, there is absolutely no evidence that Mueller and Comey had anything other than a work relationship. They were not even casual friends. Comey testified before Congress that he had dinner once with Mueller, but had never been to his home, didn’t have his phone number, and didn’t know the names of his kids. Trump has told this lie before, embellishing it with claims that there were hundreds of pictures of them “hugging and kissing.” No one has ever found a single one.

Trump did interview Mueller for FBI director, which shouldn’t surprise anyone since he previously held that job for twelve years. But if Trump is insinuating a conspiracy, then Rod Rosenstein must have been in on it, because he picked Mueller to lead the special counsel probe. If there was a conspiracy, it didn’t work very well because Rosenstein later stood quietly behind Trump’s Attorney General, William Barr, as he brazenly lied about the contents of Mueller’s report. But here’s where this really gets weird:

Trump: Here’s what happened. The report comes back, it’s perfect it’s beautiful. There’s no collusion. Nobody even talks about collusion. You know, I haven’t heard the word Russia in a long time [he talked to Putin six days ago]. There’s no more talk about Russia What happened to Russia. The Russia witch hunt – they don’t talk because it was so on collusion. Which by the way is by far, that’s the big deal.

Let’s just set aside the fact that everyone is talking about Russia. Now Trump is ecstatic about what he claims is the result of the investigation that he also claims was a “hoax” and a “witch hunt.” He describes as “perfect” and “beautiful” a report that he insists was the work of an allegedly conflicted and embittered enemy who hates him.

It appears that Trump can’t keep his rattled attention focused long enough to decide whether he is the victim of an evil cabal, or the joyful winner of “total exoneration.” All of this is on public display every time he steps in front of a camera. And for some reason, the press is still reluctant to say what is so glaringly obvious: Donald Trump is totally nuts and unfit to serve.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.