Republicans Were Warned About Coronavirus Yet Failed to Act

Donald Trump is trying mightily to (i) make the public forget his previous lies about the coronavirus and his regime's failure to act when it should have, and (ii) change the subject such as co-opting today's press conference with a drug trafficking announcement.  But, it is important to remember that Trump was aided and abetted in his failure to properly respond by Republicans, especially those in the U.S. Senate who ignored the pandemic threat and did what they always do: kiss Trump's ass and attack Democrats sounding the alarm. Among the worse offenders is Mitch McConnell who is in a race with Trump for the title of who most damaged constitutional government. A column in the Washington Post looks at McConnell's recent disingenuous remarks and his own malfeasance in failing to protect the nation while preoccupied protecting Trump (and lining his own and his wife's pockets),  Here are column excerpts:

Mitch McConnell got an early jump on April Fools’ Day this year, blaming Democrats for the Trump administration’s failure to prepare for the novel coronavirus pandemic.

“It came up while we were, you know, tied down in the impeachment trial,” the Senate majority leader said Tuesday. “And I think it diverted the attention of the government.”

In addition to implicitly acknowledging that President Trump wasn’t paying attention to the growing danger, it was a curious entry into the blame game for the Kentucky Republican, who recently said this isn’t “a time for partisan bickering.”

If anybody was diverted, it was McConnell, who, along with most of his GOP colleagues, again put lockstep defense of the president ahead of the national interest. During the three weeks of the impeachment trial, public health experts gave stark warnings about the growing biological threat. In that same time, several Senate Democrats (and a few Republicans) urged a more robust mobilization.

You know who said nothing? McConnell. . . . the first time he spoke about the coronavirus in public was Feb. 25, nearly three weeks after the impeachment trial ended, when he was asked at a news conference whether administration officials are “on the same page when it comes to combating coronavirus.”

In his first substantive remarks on the virus, two days later, he praised the Trump administration’s response to the virus and condemned Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s “partisan political attacks,” “posturing” and “performative outrage” because Schumer called Trump’s coronavirus funding request inadequate.

After the impeachment trial ended and as the coronavirus menace grew, McConnell had the Senate take up two campaign-year abortion bills that had no chance of passage.

It was an echo of the impeachment trial itself. During impeachment, public servants and Democrats warned that Trump was putting his political interests (an announced probe of his opponent) over national security (by withholding military aid to an ally in distress) — and Republicans stood by him. Likewise, as the virus spread, experts and many Democrats pleaded for more urgency. But Trump put his political interests (stock market gains) ahead of public health (by playing down the virus danger). And Republicans averted their gaze.

In the middle of the impeachment trial, on Jan. 26, Schumer demanded that the administration declare a public health emergency so that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention could access more funds. . . . Senate Democrats point to 32 other warnings, requests and statements they made seeking action against the virus — all while the Senate impeachment trial was underway.

More general warnings long pre-dated impeachment and came from a few Republicans, too. Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) warned in 2017 about Trump’s attempts to cut funding for pandemic preparedness. In 2018, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) repeatedly warned the White House that we are “unprepared for pandemic outbreaks.”

Senate Republicans knew the coronavirus danger. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (N.C.), while saying publicly that we were “better prepared than ever,” seems to have been spooked enough about the coming pandemic to sell off stock worth as much as $1.7 million in mid-February and is now under Justice Department investigation. Around the same time, Sen. Ron Johnson (Wis.), the Republican chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, complained that administration officials refused to participate in a hearing where he received alarming forecasts about the virus.

And so a bad situation turned into a catastrophe because of a familiar pathology: a president who repeatedly puts self-interest above the national interest — and political allies in Congress who let him.

Scamvangelists Put the Collection Plate Ahead of the Safety of Congrgations

I for one favor taxation of religious organizations except for operations that directly engage in true charitable activities - e.g., feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, tending the sick and housing the homeless.  Other activities, including worship services need to be taxed as other businesses because spreading Bronze Age myths and all too often preaching division are NOT charitable activities. With the coronavirus sweeping the country, a number of pastors - scamvangelists, in my view - are showing that keeping the collection plate full is more important that the safety of their congregants who are ignoring science and fact based recommendations in order to allow themselves to be played and shaken down for money.  Last I heard, here in Virginia Liberty University (any oxymoron since it ties what should be legitimate university level learning to right wing Christianity) is still holding classes since Jerry Falwell, Jr., says the virus alarm is all a hoax to hurt Donald Trump's re-election chances.  Another is pastor Robert Jeffress, a gay hater and Trump sycophant, who held packed church services despite the calls for social distancing last weekend.  A piece in Politico looks at these false "men of god" putting money ahead of lives.  Here are highlights:

Thousands of people streamed through the church lobby and into the pews. Ushers at First Baptist Dallas invited members to the front rows, gesturing to the prime seats still available. Trumpets blared, bright blue and purple lights illuminated the stage, and behind the orchestra pit the 100 or so members of choir—ranging from late teens to late 60s—stood inches apart, ready to sing for the next 30 minutes.

When Robert Jeffress, the senior pastor, walked onto the stage, wearing a dark suit and shiny teal tie, he thanked the musicians.

Jeffress’ sermon that morning, presented in his usual stoic-but-chipper demeanor, was titled “The Road to Armageddon,” and focused largely on biblical stories of God’s punishments.

Aside from a few empty pews in the back of the sanctuary, this seemed like any other Sunday. Except it wasn’t. This was Sunday, March 15. Most of the country was already being reminded to stay at home, to practice social distancing, to flatten the curve of the coronavirus outbreak, which President Donald Trump, the man Jeffress supports at every turn, had just declared a national emergency. Every major sports league had suspended play. The city of Dallas had banned gathering over 500 people and canceled its beloved St. Patrick’s Day parade and party, scheduled for the same weekend. Most ministers, rabbis and imams in North Texas had decided it was safer to share the faith on camera rather than in person. But not Jeffress.

Dr. Shelley Conroy, dean of the Louise Herrington School of Nursing at Baylor University—the same university Jeffress attended in the mid-1970s—tweeted: “We should not be putting our elderly members at risk by encouraging them to come to church right now. We should have complied with the intent of the public health orders to keep everyone socially distant for one week to control the spread of this virulent disease.”

Against all these criticisms, the doomsaying and alarming news on television screens and newspaper headlines, Jeffress remained resolute and unmoving.

For the past five years, he [Jeffress] has been Donald Trump’s most visible, most vocal Evangelical supporter. In addition to leading the 13,000-member megachurch in Dallas, one of the oldest in the country, Jeffress appears regularly on Fox News and Fox Business, excoriating the president’s critics while enthusiastically defending the administration’s policies on everything from child separation at the border to saber rattling on the Korean Peninsula. In the past, he has preached sermons with titles like “Gay Is Not Okay,” he’s called Islam “a false religion based on the teachings of a false prophet,” and he referred to Oprah Winfrey as “a tool of Satan.”

Jeffress told the congregation he was uncertain about what the church would do over the next week. He announced that they would cancel evening service and weekday gatherings. But whether to meet the following Sunday—this Sunday—was still being evaluated.

Early this week, the city of Dallas closed down bars and restaurants, except for to-go orders, and told theaters to close. On Monday, Trump suggested keeping gatherings to 10 people or fewer. Soon the virus was detected in all 50 states, and the number of positive tests and deaths looked like they were mirroring the early growth in Italy, where they’re now seeing more than 600 coronavirus deaths a day.

In contrast, all services in the Catholic Archdiocese of New York - an institution for which money is usually the most important god - cancelled all services last weekend. 

The Nightmare in the White House

While the nation goes into lock down and the economy heads towards a collapse, the malignant narcissist in the White House does what he always does: lies nonstop and throws out boasts to inflate his insatiable ego.  When not lying outright, Trump attacks those in the media trying to get out the truth and accurate information and throws governors - including Republican governors who have previously prostituted themselves to Trump - to their own devices in protecting their citizens. Frank Rich has a column in New York Magazine looks at the ongoing lack of honesty and glaring failed leadership in the White House even as Trump sycophants try to change the subject from the failure of the Trump regime to prepare for the pandemic. Here are column excerpts:

As the coronavirus-related layoffs and medical needs pile up, experts are concluding that a strong federal response is needed. Is the Trump administration capable of rising to the occasion?

The president who is leading this country into battle cares about no one but himself, continues to lie to Americans daily about the most basic imperatives of a public-health catastrophe, and presides over an administration staffed with incompetent, third-tier bootlickers and grifters. And I am not just talking about Mike Pence, Jared Kushner, and Wilbur Ross. There are now three college seniors serving in White House positions, thanks to a new purge of ostensibly disloyal staffers being conducted by Trump’s former body man, the 29-year-old John McEntee, recently installed as director of the Presidential Personnel Office. Trump calls himself a “wartime president,” but his only previous wartime experience was partying during Vietnam, when he was spared military service because of “bone spurs.” Those bone spurs long ago migrated to his brain. If America rises to the occasion, it will be despite him, not because of him. We’re at the point where even if Trump were to start telling the truth, no one except the most mad-dog MAGA-ites would believe him.

Right now the country is waiting for a bomb to drop: that much-predicted turning point when the metastasis of illness and mass death in the U.S. could match the curve we’ve seen in Italy. Trump’s nonstop lies — and those of toadies like Pence — are not just intended to cover up the many failures to prepare for the looming apocalypse (“I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic”), or to blame those failures on China and Obama, or to luxuriate in unearned self-congratulation (“I’d rate it a 10”). What the lies are doing now is throwing gasoline on the gathering fire.

Why does a president cite the Defense Protection Act, which allows him to commandeer industry to produce emergency supplies, while simultaneously telling the states to find much-needed ventilators on their own?

Trump’s answer to that last question was that the federal government is “not a shipping clerk.” He seemed not to understand that it’s ventilators that the nation’s hospitals urgently need, not the postal service. Such is his minimal comprehension of the urgent tasks at hand that Trump’s level of competence doesn’t rise to that of the skipper of the Titanic. The Titanic’s captain may have hit an iceberg, but at least he recognized the scientific reality that icebergs exist.

Up until now Trump’s motives for lying have been to (1) cover up what may prove the most catastrophic failure in the history of the American presidency; (2) to distract the country from the continuing failure in the effort to keep his reelection campaign afloat; (3) to boost the stock market. But another motive is emerging that’s entirely in keeping with the history to date of Trump’s kleptocratic White House: rewarding his family and cronies financially.

Based on his [Jared Kushner] and his father-in-law’s past behavior, we have every reason to believe that entrepreneurs in the Mar-a-Lago circuit, assuming they are not killed off by the virus, will benefit from any bailouts crafted by the White House and Republicans in Congress, starting perhaps with casino entrepreneurs like Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn.

This is in keeping with a president who remains passive as athletes and celebrities mysteriously cut the long line to be tested for the coronavirus. It is in keeping with a Vichy Republican Party where the senators Richard Burr and Kelly Loeffler were dumping stocks pre-crash, seemingly exploiting inside information about the coming fiasco for huge personal profit while keeping their own voters in the dark about it. Today Tucker Carlson is receiving some applause for being a rare truth-teller on Fox News because last night he called out Burr in no uncertain terms: “There is no greater moral crime than betraying your country in a time of crisis.”

By now, a number of promises Donald Trump has made directly to the press — universal access to testing, a nationwide medical-screening website, the deployment of hospital ships — have failed to pan out after initially receiving breathless headlines. Should the press change the way it covers Trump’s promises?

The challenge to the press remains what it’s been from the start: How do you challenge a lying president on the facts in real time when he is lying as fast as he can speak? The difference now is that more than ever lives are dependent on Americans getting the truth.

Change is needed, and it will require collaboration of the best brains in the news business to reinvent practices and formats. Even hours after Trump had floated bogus miracle drugs before the public yesterday, at least one network evening news broadcast was teasing the story with a hopeful headline before disemboweling it.

Call Trump’s News Conferences What They Are: Propaganda

The current situation with COVID-19 is showing examples of amazing leadership among many stet governors and foreign leaders as well as lying and propaganda most obvious in the form of Donald Trump where even his group of experts are forced to correct Trump's lies. Shockingly, Trump's base continues to believe the lies and tout the liar-in-chief as "doing a good job" in the fight against the virus even as he has thrown states and hospital systems to fend for themselves. Being a leader means accepting responsibility and giving accurate information, not dishing a sleazy reality TV spiel. Of course, Trump wants to take no responsibility and his idea of leadership is boasting and saying whatever he believes his knuckle dragging base wants to hear.  Meanwhile, his sycophants prostitute themselves constantly to stay in the good graces of the "glorious leader."    A column in the New York Times looks at the disturbing situation.  Here are excerpts:

In a time of global emergency, we need calm, directness and, above all, hard facts. Only the opposite is on offer from the Trump White House. It is therefore time to call [Trump's] the president’s news conferences for what they are: propaganda.

We may as well be watching newsreels approved by the Soviet Politburo. We’re witnessing the falsification of history in real time. When Donald Trump, under the guise of social distancing, told the White House press corps on Thursday that he ought to get rid of 75 to 80 percent of them — reserving the privilege only for those he liked — it may have been chilling, but it wasn’t surprising. He wants to thin out their ranks until there’s only Pravda in the room.

Sometimes, I stare at Deborah Birx during these briefings and I wonder if she understands that this is the footage historians will be looking at 100 years from now — the president rambling on incoherently, vainly, angrily, deceitfully, while she watches, her face stiff with the strangled horror of a bride enduring an inappropriate toast.

If the public wants factual news briefings, they need to tune in to those who are giving them: Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, whose addresses appear with English subtitles on Deutsche Welle. They should start following the many civic-minded epidemiologists and virologists and contagion experts on Twitter, like Harvard’s Marc Lipsitch and Yale’s Nicholas Christakis, whose threads have been invaluable primers in a time of awful confusion.

These are people with a high tolerance for uncertainty. It’s [Trump's] the president’s incapacity to tolerate it — combined with his bottomless need to self-flatter and preserve his political power — that leads, so often, to his spectacular fits of deception and misdirection.

Only a liar — and a weak man with delusions of competence — would be so unnerved by the facts.

Compare this to Cuomo, who takes questions at his news conferences calmly and systematically — and, more to the point, has a substantive response when asked the same questions about anxiety. He hears it. He relates to it. He says it’s real.

On Friday, Cuomo said something else that was quite striking, as he was issuing his executive order for nonessential workers in New York to stay home, other than to run errands or exercise outside. “If someone wants to blame someone or complain about someone, blame me,” he said. “There is no one else who is responsible for this decision.”
Cuomo is nothing if not politically shrewd. He knows full well how this comment compares to Mr. Trump’s “I don’t take responsibility at all.”

But telling the media that they’re peddling fake news is straight from the playbook of the political gangsters of the last century. So many of Trump’s moves are.

How about Orwellian doublespeak? Ooooooh, check. Trump and his team are continually deploying words and phrases that disguise a reality that suggests the opposite. Vice President Mike Pence talks about a “strong and seamless” partnership with the states, when at the same time Mr. Trump is trolling the states, telling Cuomo to get his own respirators.

Pence speaks relentlessly of a “whole-of-government approach,” when in fact the government is hollowed out — defunded to fight pandemics, denuded of experts — and broken in shards, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sidelined in this fight, and the president’s task force now mutely competing with a shadow group run by the president’s son-in-law.

But most dangerous of all is Trump’s insistence that things are fine, or will be shortly, that they’ll be stronger and better and greater than ever. We don’t have any evidence that this is true, and the president finds any suggestion to the contrary quite rude. When a journalist pointed out to him on Thursday that the economy had all but ground to halt, Trump cut him off.

Here’s the truth: Things might be hard — unfathomably hard — for months, perhaps even north of a year. Anyone who’s reading or listening to other sources of news besides the president knows that. It takes sensitivity and strength and intelligence to speak truthfully to the public about imminent hardship, the prospect of enduring pain.

So I listen to Justin Trudeau, a sci-fi experience, a dispatch from an alternate universe that prioritizes the needs and anxieties of the middle class.

And I listen to Cuomo, who says the same thing. His news conference on Friday was about the practical things, knowing the entire state — country, globe — had just taken a precipitous slide down Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, with food, shelter and safety now topmost on many people’s minds. No one can evict you for 90 days. We’re getting hospital beds. We’re recruiting doctors and nurses in training to fight this fight, and we’re coaxing medical professionals out of retirement.

Mike Pompeo: A Case Study in "Evangelical Christian" Hypocrisy

Perhaps I am a cynic when it comes to supposed Christians once they enter the realm of politics, especially evangelicals who make great show of wearing their religion on their sleeves even as they grasps for power and throw the gospel message to the gutter. From my experience, whether elected to political office or running allegedly "family values" organizations, no one lies more or is more willing to engage in the personal destruction of others.  Indeed, the Pharisees of the Bible appear down right virtuous and and suffused with kindness in comparison.  Which brings me to loudly self-proclaimed "Christian" Mike Pompeo who could be the poster child for evangelical Christian hypocrisy (Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell, Jr., white supremacist Tony Perkins of FRC are other strong contenders).  In his complete self-prostitution to Donald Trump, Pompeo seemingly has no limit to how low he will go and to the lies he will disseminate.  A column in the Washington Post looks at Pompeo's moral bankruptcy.  Here are excerpts: 

I would like to apologize to Rex Tillerson.  I’m not apologizing for writing that he was “quite possibly the most ineffectual secretary of state since America’s rise to global prominence in 1898.”. . . . But I am apologizing for underestimating his virtues. Now that his successor as secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, is verbally assaulting a reporter and refusing to defend a career ambassador from character assassination — and possibly worse — I miss ol’ Rex and his Boy Scout ethos.

Tillerson was the only person with the guts to chew out Trump when the president denounced senior generals as a “bunch of dopes and babies” in a Pentagon meeting. “No, that’s just wrong,” Tillerson is quoted as saying. “Mr. President, you’re totally wrong. None of that is true.”

[A] former senior White House official described Pompeo as “among the most sycophantic and obsequious people around Trump.” That’s saying something, because Trump is surrounded by more servile courtiers than a medieval monarch.

While Tillerson worked to restrain Trump from leaving the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate accord, Pompeo has been nothing but a smirking cheerleader for the president’s most pugnacious instincts. He is, in fact, the mastermind behind a standoff that has left Iran closer to having a nuclear weapon than when Trump took office.

Pompeo’s rise to preeminence has not served either [Trump] the president or the country well. The secretary of state had a front-row seat to Trump’s efforts to blackmail Ukraine into announcing an investigation of Joe Biden — and he did nothing to stop the unethical actions that have now gotten Trump impeached. Pompeo readily cooperated when Trump’s goon squad, led by Rudolph W. Giuliani, decided that Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch had to be ousted so they could carry out what John Bolton called their “drug deal.” Although he later played dumb, Pompeo was a participant in the July 25 phone call in which Trump threatened Yovanovitch (“She’s going to go through some things”) and asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to “do us a favor” by investigating Biden. Pompeo refused to come to Yovanovitch’s defense even after the release of text messages showing that one of Giuliani’s confederates, Robert F. Hyde, claimed to have a team surveilling her and even implied that she might be harmed. On Friday, Mary Louise Kelly, the host of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” asked Pompeo if he owed Yovanovitch an apology. Pompeo didn’t like that question; he preferred to talk about Iran. He claimed (falsely), “I’ve defended every single person on this team,” and ended the interview. Afterward, Kelly reports, Pompeo “shouted at me for about the same amount of time as the interview itself,” dropping several “f-bombs” along the way. She said the secretary of state demanded, “Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?” and had an aide bring a blank map to see if she could point out where it’s located. She says she did. (One wonders if Trump — who reportedly doesn’t know that China and India share a more than 2,000-mile border — could pass the same test.) In any other administration (or, for that matter, any major company), Pompeo would be reprimanded, at the very least, for his abusive behavior. In this administration, his incivility will no doubt win further favor with [Trump] a president who views rudeness as a virtue. Pompeo has become a Trump mini-me who emulates his master in boorishness, bombast, bullying — and dishonesty. Every day that Pompeo stays in office, he makes Tillerson — once seen as the worst secretary of state ever — look better by comparison.

Indeed, Pompeo makes the case as to why evangelical Christians should be barred from public office.  

Trump Allies Attack and Intimidate Journalists

Taking another page from the Nazi regime in Germany in the early 1930's, Trump minions and sycophants are now actively targeting journalists and legitimate news outlets that report on the misdeeds and corruption of Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer on this blog, and his cronies and cabinet officials.  The goal is to intimidate the press and impose a form of self-censorship that is a direct attack on democracy and the role of the free press in exposing official corruption and wrongdoing.  Anyone who cares about democracy and the U.S. Constitution should be very afraid of what this organized campaign says about Trump's contempt for the rule of law and desire to rule as an authoritarian. Do NOT fall for Trump's claims that he is not directly involved in this effort. Here are highlights from the New York Times, one of the targeted news outlets, on this dangerous and sinister development:

A loose network of conservative operatives allied with the White House is pursuing what they say will be an aggressive operation to discredit news organizations deemed hostile to President Trump by publicizing damaging information about journalists.

It is the latest step in a long-running effort by Mr. Trump and his allies to undercut the influence of legitimate news reporting. Four people familiar with the operation described how it works, asserting that it has compiled dossiers of potentially embarrassing social media posts and other public statements by hundreds of people who work at some of the country’s most prominent news organizations.

The group has already released information about journalists at CNN, The Washington Post and The New York Times — three outlets that have aggressively investigated Mr. Trump — in response to reporting or commentary that the White House’s allies consider unfair to Mr. Trump and his team or harmful to his re-election prospects.

The research is said to extend to members of journalists’ families who are active in politics, as well as liberal activists and other political opponents of the president. . . . . Some involved in the operation have histories of bluster and exaggeration. And those willing to describe its techniques and goals may be trying to intimidate journalists or their employers.

[A]mong the central players in the operation is Arthur Schwartz, a combative 47-year-old conservative consultant who is a friend and informal adviser to Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son. Mr. Schwartz has worked with some of the right’s most aggressive operatives, including the former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon.

“If the @nytimes thinks this settles the matter we can expose a few of their other bigots,” Mr. Schwartz tweeted on Thursday in response to an apologetic tweet from a Times journalist whose anti-Semitic social media posts had just been revealed by the operation. “Lots more where this came from.”

The information unearthed by the operation has been commented on and spread by officials inside the Trump administration and re-election campaign, as well as conservative activists and right-wing news outlets such as Breitbart News. In the case of the Times editor, the news was first published by Breitbart, immediately amplified on Twitter by Donald Trump Jr. and, among others, . . .

The Trump campaign said it was unaware of, and not involved in, the effort, but suggested that it served a worthy purpose. “We know nothing about this, but it’s clear that the media has a lot of work to do to clean up its own house,” said Tim Murtaugh, the campaign’s communications director.

The campaign is consistent with Mr. Trump’s long-running effort to delegitimize critical reporting and brand the news media as an “enemy of the people.” [Trump] The president has relentlessly sought to diminish the credibility of news organizations and cast them as politically motivated opponents.  Journalism, he said in a tweet last week, is “nothing more than an evil propaganda machine for the Democrat Party.”

[U]sing journalistic techniques to target journalists and news organizations as retribution for — or as a warning not to pursue — coverage critical of [Trump] the president is fundamentally different from the well-established role of the news media in scrutinizing people in positions of power.

“If it’s clearly retaliatory, it’s clearly an attack, it’s clearly not journalism,” said Leonard Downie Jr., who was the executive editor of The Post from 1991 to 2008. Tension between a president and the news media that covers him is nothing new, Mr. Downie added. But an organized, wide-scale political effort to intentionally humiliate journalists and others who work for media outlets is.

A. G. Sulzberger, the publisher of The Times, said in a statement that such tactics were taking the president’s campaign against a free press to a new level.  “They are seeking to harass and embarrass anyone affiliated with the leading news organizations that are asking tough questions and bringing uncomfortable truths to light,” Mr. Sulzberger said. “The goal of this campaign is clearly to intimidate journalists from doing their job, which includes serving as a check on power and exposing wrongdoing when it occurs. The Times will not be intimidated or silenced.”

In a statement, a CNN spokesman said that when government officials, “and those working on their behalf, threaten and retaliate against reporters as a means of suppression, it’s a clear abandonment of democracy for something very dangerous.”

Why Democrats Must Retake Control of the House of Representatives

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). (

As pathetic and hypocrisy-filled as Paul Ryan has been as Speaker of the House of Representatives, his likely successor should Ryan be forced out of the speakership before the end of his term or if Republicans manage to hold control of the House after the midterm elections, would likely be far worse in countless ways.  As one former Republican White House official puts it, Rep. Kevin McCarthy would be a "mindless" Trump sycophant and an out right threat to constitutional government.   As a former Republican myself, McCarthy embodies much of what is wrong with today's Christofascist/white supremacist controlled GOP.  The take away?  It is crucial that Democrats retake control of the House and protect the nation from the likes of McCarthy.  A column in the Washington Post looks at why McCarthy is so dangerous.  Here are excerpts:

On the evidence of House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s CNN interviewover the weekend, the likely next speaker of the House is a mindless sycophant and a threat to the constitutional order.
 Confronted with a simple ethical question — would he condemn demonstrable White House lies in covering up President Trump’s role in drafting his son’s account of the now-infamous 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russians — McCarthy, a California Republican, was initially dumbstruck, then shifted into a prerecorded attack on special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. It would have been easy enough to say: “The president and his team are hurting themselves with unnecessary falsehoods. Their overall case, however, is strong.” But such is the atmosphere of intimidation in the Republican Party that affirming the Ninth Commandment is seen as an act of disloyalty. When the king is a liar, truth becomes treason.

McCarthy seems to be more of a memory-foam Republican — taking the exact shape of presidential pressure. Ryan was clearly uncomfortable when ignoring his principles. McCarthy seems to view surrender to the president as a matter of principle — as part of the tribal code of the partisan. His is the loyalty of the lap dog, the devotion of the dupe.

This is problematic for at least two reasons. First, Trump and his team are testing the limits of executive power in increasingly bold and reckless ways. . . . Trump and his lawyers are not just asserting presidential freedom of action, but presidential freedom from accountability. . . . This means obstruction of justice by the president is a practical impossibility, because his actions are the definition of justice.

Since, in this view, any violation of federal law by the president (including, according to his lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, the shooting of former FBI director James B. Comey) could be immediately self-pardoned — and any resulting investigation ended on his order — the only relevant legal check during his time in office is impeachment. 

This brings us to the second, less obvious reason McCarthy’s sycophancy is alarming: the strength of the economy. A 3.8 percent unemployment rate — the lowest in 18 years — is good for the country. It also creates an atmosphere in which a leader might grab powers with less dissent. This is precisely what happened in Turkey, where Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s oppressive populism was enabled by strong economic growth. The same might be argued about Venezuela, where Hugo Chávez initially used his nation’s oil wealth to ease the way toward authoritarianism.

American institutions are stronger than those of Turkey or Venezuela. But one reason they are stronger is a balance of institutional power in which the legislature is willing to check the excessive ambitions of the executive branch.

Would McCarthy be willing to play that role as speaker? Consider the scenario in which Republicans narrowly maintain control of the House in November’s midterm elections — which Trump would claim as complete vindication for his approach to governing.

In this environment, will the FBI survive as an independent institution? Will all the corruption of Trump’s campaign team, his White House appointments, his family and his own past business and political dealings be washed away in a flood of self-interested pardons? Will Trump be able to harass and intimidate his enemies in politics, business and the media with impunity?

[Trump]The president has now claimed the entire executive branch as his private fiefdom, and every federal law enforcement official as his personal servant. Would a Speaker McCarthy stand athwart Trumpism yelling “Stop!”? There is no reason to think it.

McCarthy has been a leader in Trump’s troop of enablers. America urgently requires leaders made of sterner stuff.

Trump's Degradation of the Honorable

Draft dodger versus war hero.

With five young grandchildren, I shudder to think of the example they are witnessing on display by the current occupant of the White House, a man who embodies everything that one would NOT one's grandchildren to grow up to be.  Constant lies, unbridled worship of money, zero social consciousness, an apparent inability to keep his zipper done up, and the endless trashing of honorable people.  That is not who I want my grandchildren to emulate - indeed, I wish they did not even know about such morally reprehensible people.  The irony is that neither I nor my children are church goers, yet we have a higher sense of morality than the evangelical Christians who pack the pews on Sunday morning, falsely profess piety and endlessly condemn others, especially gays and non-Christians, while supporting the foul individual in the White House.  Indeed, they give a daily witness of why not to wear the Christian label.  A column in the Washington Post by Joe Scarborough - a former Republican like myself - reminds us of how Trump is attacking and seeking to degrade honorable men and women in his quest to hide his crimes from view.  Here are highlights:

These are desperate times for the quislings of Trump. The cost of collaborating with President Trump in the continued debasement of American democracy is becoming far too high. Fifteen months into his presidency, Trump has seen a national security adviser, a former campaign chairman, a foreign policy adviser and another high-ranking campaign official face charges of serious crimes. This week, [Trump] the president must have felt the walls closing in even more tightly around him when FBI agents searched the home, office and hotel room of his longtime personal lawyer, whom associates call Trump’s “fixer.”

[Trump's response] was to reflexively trash law-enforcement officers, undermine the rule of law and slander a Vietnam War hero who has committed his adult life to the service of America. . . . . But this week provided insight into just how desperate Trump and his courtiers have become in their defenses of an indefensible administration. [Trump] The president promoted a Fox News show via Twitter that starred a steady stream of sycophants who slandered special counsel Robert S. Muller III.

Mueller, who led a Marine rifle platoon in Vietnam, has been awarded a Bronze Star, two Navy commendations, a Purple Heart and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry. After being shot through the leg, the young Princeton grad continued leading his troops in battle. Later he would continue his service in Vietnam even after he was given the opportunity to go home.

Despite playing tennis, golf and football during his college days, Trump took five deferments, four for college and one for bone spurs in his feet. On the day Trump graduated from college, 40 Americans were killed in Vietnam.

Newt Gingrich, who went on Fox News and compared “the American FBI” to Joseph Stalin and Nazis, also did not serve. And Joe DiGenova, who now spends his days sliming law-enforcement officers who investigate crimes in Washington, took student deferments, even admitting in 2003 that anyone who did the same should seriously consider never seeking public office “when you didn’t serve, when you had a chance to.”

In fact, Mueller’s record has been so spotless that none other than Gingrich himself tweeted 11 months ago, “Robert Mueller is superb choice to be special counsel. His reputation is impeccable for honesty and integrity. Media should now calm down.”

What a difference a year makes. Gingrich has now joined the chorus of collaborators attacking Mueller. 

Even the most terrified politician must know that Trump and his stooges have reason to be rattled. And an ABC News-Washington Post poll shows that almost 7 in 10 Americans want Mueller to continue his investigation into possible Russian collusion with the Trump campaign. Sixty-four percent support the special counsel’s investigation into Trump’s past business dealings. And nearly 6 in 10 Americans believe that the special counsel must continue investigating Trump’s payoff to women for the purpose of keeping them quiet during the 2016 election.

Trump will one day leave Washington. And when he does, the steady stream of attacks on Justice Department professionals, FBI agents and all the honorable men and women who daily defend Americans against enemies foreign and domestic will forever stain the reputations of Trump’s most shameless apologists. All this for a man who has spent decades showing loyalty to little else but his ravenous pursuit of money and fame.

Conservative Pundits Launch Smear Campaign on Special Counsel Mueller

Perhaps expecting the worse results possible from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russiagate and most likely attempts by Der Trumpenführer, conservative pundits and perennial windbag Newt Gingrich have launched a smear campaign against Mueller.  The obvious goal is to discredit Mueller in advance in the eyes of the ignorance embracing core of Trump's supporters who whine about "wake news" and the news media even as they themselves fall for utterly fabricated and untrue stories.  Of course, Trump isn't the only one with much to lose if Mueller confirms collusion with Russia by the Trump campaign and/or that Trump is guilty of obstruction of justice.  Every Republican who has been an apologist for Trump or who has turned a blind eye to his illegal and unethical actions is likewise at risk of being held accountable.  A piece in Talking Points Memo looks at the preemptive assault on Mueller.  Here are highlights:

As the special counsel in charge of the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election assembled key staff, several prominent Trump supporters questioned his impartiality, and whether the appointment was necessary at all. Bloomberg first reported on June 1, citing two unnamed people, that Department of Justice fraud chief and former FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissman would join special counsel Robert Mueller’s so-called “murderer’s row” of prosecutors. And the National Law Journal reported Friday, citing unnamed people familiar with the arrangement, that Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben — who in 2016 argued his 100th case in front of the Supreme Court — would assist Mueller on a part-time basis.

Perhaps the biggest flip-flop among high-profile Trump supporters came from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who changed justifications multiple times for his new opposition to Mueller.

Gingrich said Mueller’s position had been compromised by fired FBI Director James Comey’s admission that he had authorized a friend to pass details of his meetings with Trump to the press in order to justify a special counsel. The next day, he said evidence that Mueller wouldn’t be fair could be found in his new hires’ political donations. Conservative provocateur Ann Coulter jumped on board Sunday, writing that Comey’s acknowledgement that he told Trump he wasn’t personally under investigation was grounds for dismissing Mueller altogether. Radio host and LifeZette Editor-in-Chief Laura Ingraham posted a column from the Washington Examiner’s Byron York to her 1.5 million Twitter followers early Monday. York asked five unnamed Washington lawyers if they thought Comey’s reported friendship with Mueller presented a conflict. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, acting in his capacity as the then-lead of the Russia investigation at the Justice Department, chose Mueller to lead the investigation. The Hill noted Monday that four members of Mueller’s investigative team, each seasoned criminal prosecutors with extensive experience at the Justice Deparment or Washington, D.C. law firms, had donated to Democrats, including Hillary Clinton.

Expect the efforts to discredit Mueller and his team to intensify.  I suspect that the Trump apologists know or strongly suspect that Mueller will find offense committed by Trump and or his campaign. It's amazing how these supposed super patriots are now only too happy to close their eyes to possible treason and/or obstruction of justice.  The GOP has fallen  so far that it is almost unrecognizable.