Trump Adopts the "Dictator's Handbook" as He Sinks in the Polls

Many of us realized that Donald Trump's election posed a grave threat to American democracy and moral decency.  Since his inauguration, Trump has shown that he will lie, slander others, put children in cages and now make illegal use of federal agents against citizens to try to prop up his sinking poll numbers.  His tactics are akin to those of Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad who would destroy their nations before they would relinquish power.  Frighteningly, Congressional Republicans are deliberately looking the other way as Trump engages in illegal and dangerous conduct.  Meanwhile, those of us who pay attention find ourselves wonder if this is how decent moral Germans felt as they saw Hitler turned Germany into a police state.  Make no mistake, Trump cares nothing about the damage he does to the rule of law and the harm inflicted on citizens.  As always, with Trump, it is only about himself and his malignant ego.  A column in the New York Times looks at the parallels between Trump's current actions and those of cruel dictators.  Here are highlights, including what liberals and progressives need to do to blunt Trump's tactics:

Some presidents, when they get into trouble before an election, try to “wag the dog” by starting a war abroad. Donald Trump seems ready to wag the dog by starting a war at home. Be afraid — he just might get his wish.

“As the virus spread, and businesses had to shut down again and schools and universities were paralyzed as to whether to open or stay closed in the fall, Trump’s poll numbers nose-dived. Joe Biden opened up a 15-point lead in a national head-to-head survey.

“So, in a desperate effort to salvage his campaign, Trump turned to the Middle East Dictator’s Official Handbook and found just what he was looking for, the chapter titled, ‘What to Do When Your People Turn Against You?'

“Answer: Turn them against each other and then present yourself as the only source of law and order.”

America blessedly is not Syria, yet, but Trump is adopting the same broad approach that Bashar al-Assad did back in 2011, when peaceful protests broke out in the southern Syrian town of Dara’a, calling for democratic reforms; the protests then spread throughout the country.

But al-Assad did not want to share power, and so he made sure that the protests were not peaceful. He had his soldiers open fire on and arrest nonviolent demonstrators, many of them Sunni Muslims. Over time, the peaceful, secular elements of the Syrian democracy movement were sidelined, as hardened Islamists began to spearhead the fight against al-Assad. In the process, the uprising was transformed into a naked, rule-or-die sectarian civil war between al-Assad’s Alawite Shiite forces and various Sunni jihadist groups.

In the end, his country was destroyed and hundreds of thousands of Syrians were killed or forced to flee. But al-Assad stayed in power. Today, he’s the top dog on a pile of rubble.

[W]hen I heard Trump suggest, as he did in the Oval Office on Monday, that he was going to send federal forces into U.S. cities, where the local mayors have not invited him, the first word that popped into my head was “Syria.”

Listen to how Trump put it: “I’m going to do something — that, I can tell you. Because we’re not going to let New York and Chicago and Philadelphia and Detroit and Baltimore and all of these — Oakland is a mess. We’re not going to let this happen in our country.”

This is coming so straight from the Middle East Dictator’s Handbook, it’s chilling. In Syria, al-Assad used plainclothes, pro-regime thugs, known as the shabiha (“the apparitions”) to make protesters disappear. In Portland, Ore., we saw militarized federal forces wearing battle fatigues, but no identifiable markings, arresting people and putting them into unmarked vans. How can this happen in America?

Illiberal populists — whether Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Vladimir Putin in Russia, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Jaroslaw Kaczynski in Poland, or al-Assad — “win by dividing the people and presenting themselves as the savior of the good and ordinary citizens against the undeserving agents of subversion and ‘cultural pollution,’” explained Stanford’s Larry Diamond, author of “Ill Winds: Saving Democracy From Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency.”

In the face of such a threat, the left needs to be smart. Stop calling for “defunding the police” and then saying that “defunding” doesn’t mean disbanding. If it doesn’t mean that then say what it means: “reform.”

All of this street violence and defund-the-police rhetoric plays into the only effective Trump ad that I’ve seen on television. It goes like this: A phone rings and a recording begins: “You have reached the 911 police emergency line. Due to defunding of the police department, we’re sorry but no one is here to take your call. If you’re calling to report a rape, please press 1. To report a murder, press 2. To report a home invasion, press 3. For all other crimes, leave your name and number and someone will get back to you. Our estimated wait time is currently five days. Goodbye.”

Today’s protesters need to trump Trump by taking a page from another foreign leader — a liberal — Ekrem Imamoglu, who managed to win the 2019 election to become the mayor of Istanbul, despite the illiberal Erdogan using every dirty trick possible to steal the election. Imamoglu’s campaign strategy was called “radical love.”

As a recent essay on Imamoglu’s strategy in The Journal of Democracy noted, he overcame Erdogan with a “message of inclusiveness, an attitude of respect toward [Erdogan] supporters, and a focus on bread-and-butter issues that could unite voters across opposing political camps. On June 23, Imamoglu was again elected mayor of Istanbul, but this time with more than 54 percent of the vote — the largest mandate obtained by an Istanbul mayor since 1984 — against 45 percent for his opponent.”

I bet that could work in America, too. It’s the perfect answer to Trump’s politics of division — and it’s the one strategy he’ll never imitate.

Trump Lashes Out as His Re-Election Prospects Darken

Donald Trump's lashing out in a desperate efforts to "change the discussion" may be working with some of his Kool-Aid drinking supporters - I just had a Facebook set to with one - but the polls, both nationally and in key swing states, show that more and more Americans are growing fed up with Trump gross malfeasance in handling the Covid-19 pandemic and the cratering economy.  Down ballot Republicans are worrying that Trump may drag them down with him.  Though Trump fails to see, it, many are belatedly tiring of his incessant lies. Nonetheless, expect more and more lashing out and more and more lies as Trump seeks distract and deflect from his horrific failures and continues his efforts to gaslight voters in general.  Trump seemingly cannot recognize that his crime boss-like ways in his shady real estate business do not translate to holding high elected office.  A piece in Time looks at the behavior of the psychotic occupant of the White House. Here are highlight:

President Trump wanted to see a rocket launch. On the day the U.S. topped 100,000 deaths from COVID-19, Trump was at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center to watch two astronauts blast off inside a capsule built by billionaire Elon Musk. The President may have been hoping for an escape—maybe not from the Earth, but from the drumbeat of devastating headlines. The stormy skies above Cape Canaveral seemed to echo Trump’s temper.

A tragic time for the country has become a dire moment for the President’s re-election prospects. The toll of the coronavirus pandemic is mounting, nearly 40 million Americans are out of work, and Trump is trailing presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden among key sectors of the population and in crucial swing states. His ability to communicate directly to his voters has been undercut by Twitter’s decision to begin fact-checking misinformation in his feed, and he still cannot hold the large rallies that are crucial to his campaign strategy.

The circumstances have left Trump fuming behind the scenes. . . . . Trump has lashed out repeatedly at his critics, to a degree that is rare even for him. He has been stoking unfounded conspiracies about a decades-old accidental death in the former congressional office of Joe Scarborough, now his cable news nemesis, prompting the family of the deceased woman to ask Trump to stop.

He has continued to undermine public-health efforts by refusing to wear a mask in public. He’s further frayed the country’s democratic institutions by conducting a purge of the inspectors general tasked with ferreting out government waste. And he’s sought to undermine faith in November’s election, attacking states’ use of mail-in ballots, which are legal, have a track record of expanding voter access and have not been linked to wide-spread fraud.

It’s the instinct to punch back which sometimes plays out in ways like this,” the White House official says, warning against trying to ascribe “too much grand strategy” to the outbursts. Aides close to Trump have come to see his Twitter feed as a release valve for the President, and have given up on trying to rein in his impulses on the platform.

Some observers see in Trump’s outbursts an attempt to change the subject. . . . . This isn’t the first time Trump has lobbed incendiary tweets to try to deflect. But a “look over there” strategy has rarely been tested during a public health crisis in a time of national grief, with American lives on the line and a presidential election just months away. As the pandemic continues, Trump’s electoral prospects are worsening. The Real Clear Politics polling average finds Trump trailing Biden by an average of more than 5 points nationally, and losing to the former Vice President in most key swing states, including Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania—the troika that delivered him the White House in 2016.

Some prominent Republicans say the President has crossed the line with the attacks he’s lobbed in recent days. “We’re in the middle of a pandemic, he’s the Commander-in-Chief of this nation, and it’s causing great pain to the family of the young woman who died, so I would urge him to stop it,” Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the chair of the House Republican Conference, said May 27, referencing Trump’s repeated implication that Scarborough had been involved in the death of staff member Lori Klausutis in 2001.

For its part, Trump’s 2020 campaign is attempting to reframe his tantrums as part of his blunt personality that gets results. . . . . But as Trump continues grasping for distractions, even the rocket launch couldn’t provide the outlet he craved. Just 16 minutes before liftoff, the launch was scrubbed because of bad weather.

The issue is tht Trump is Trump and ignores advice and counsel.  He is a self-centered narcissist incapable of telling the truth and who ignores anything and anyone who doesn't tell him what he wants to hear. Nothing would be more sweet than to see him suffer a landslide defeat which might be more than his fragile mental state can handle. That said, the worse the polling, the more dangerous Trump will become.  Nothing and no one matters to the man except his ego and sense of self-importance. .  

Behind Trump’s Demand to Reopen Churches: Slipping Poll Numbers

This post is a follow up on one from yesterday but is important because it reveals that Donald Trump doesn't give a rat's ass about churches, the free exercise of religion, or the safety of congregants at church services.  Rather, it is ALL about him and alarm withing his campaign that his polling with white evangelicals and white Catholics has taken a major hit thanks to his bungling of the federal response to the Covid-19 pandemic.  His demand the church services be deemed "essential services" is a desperate attempt to restore slipping support among the falsely named Christian Right - which is neither Christian nor right on almost any issue. Trump knows that without the support of this demographic he will likely be toast in November, and hence his call to allow church services even if it means infecting congregants.  Anyone who believes Trump gives a damn about them is delusional.  With Trump, it is all about him 27/7 and nothing and no one else matters except in the context of how it helps him.  A piece Politico looks at what is really motivating Trump and it has NOTHING to do with religious freedom (A piece in Business Insider notes that church services are "super spreaders" of covid-19).  Here are article highlights:

A sudden shift in support for Donald Trump among religious conservatives is triggering alarm bells inside his reelection campaign, where top aides have long banked on expanding the president’s evangelical base as a key part of their strategy for victory this November.

The anxiety over Trump’s standing with the Christian right surfaced after a pair of surveys by reputable outfits earlier this month found waning confidence in the administration’s coronavirus response among key religious groups, with a staggering decline in the president’s favorability among white evangelicals and white Catholics. Both are crucial constituencies that supported Trump by wide margins in 2016 and could sink his reelection prospects if their turnout shrinks this fall.

The polls paint a bleak picture for Trump, who has counted on broadening his religious support by at least a few percentage points to compensate for weakened appeal with women and suburban populations. . . . . Another person close to the campaign described an April survey by the Public Religion Research Institute, which showed a double-digit decline in Trump’s favorability among white evangelicals (-11), white Catholics (-12) and white mainline protestants (-18) from the previous month, as “pretty concerning.”

To safeguard his relationship with religious conservatives, Trump on Friday demanded that America‘s governors permit houses of worship to immediately reopen, and threatened to “override“ state leaders who decline to obey his directive. The announcement . . . . featured clear appeals to white evangelicals, many of whom have long supported Trump's socially conservative agenda.

Following the PRRI survey, which was conducted while Trump was a dominant presence at televised daily briefings by his administration's coronavirus task force, Pew Research Center released new data last week that showed a 7-point increase from April to May in white Catholics who disapprove of Trump’s response to the Covid-19 crisis and a 6-point decline among white evangelicals who previously gave him positive marks.

Trump campaign aides, White House officials and outside allies are responding to the threat by boosting their outreach to religious voters and promising to prioritize religious gatherings as they push to reopen the U.S. economy.

It was not immediately clear whether the president's order on Friday — that state and local officials must take immediate action to reopen religious institutions — was legally permissible, nor was it clear how administration officials planned to enforce the guidance.

Guidelines released this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about reopening certain establishments — including schools, public transit systems and child care facilities — did not mention how religious institutions should go about returning to in-person worship services and ministry opportunities. One senior administration official said the guidance was omitted due to concerns that the prescriptions CDC staffers planned to provide were too restrictive.

It’s unlikely that critics of church closings alone are responsible for the decline in Trump’s favorability among critical religious demographics. According to the Pew survey, 43 percent of white evangelicals and 52 percent of white Catholics think the current restrictions on public activity in their areas are appropriate versus 42 percent and 31 percent, respectively, who think fewer restrictions would be better. Greater shares of white evangelicals and white Catholics also said they are more afraid about their state governments lifting restrictions on public activity too soon than they are about leaving the restrictions in place for too long.

Laura Gifford, a historian of politics and religion at George Fox University, said it’s likely become harder for the president’s supporters to embrace his plans for an accelerated reopening of the country. The more Trump contradicts health officials who have warned against reopening schools and nonessential businesses, she suggested, the less accepting his usual supporters might become of his overall response. . . . . “This is something where that is harder to ignore than previous controversies or crises because it has life-and-death consequences for congregations and religious populations.”

Part of the strategy Trump allies have adopted to protect his relationship with conservative Christians is to frame the novel coronavirus — and church closures in response to social distancing restrictions — as a threat to religious freedom. . . . . But the religious freedom framing might not matter if the economy remains in free fall through the November election, even after churches are permitted to reopen and conservative outside groups ramp up their outreach to religious voters.

Hopefully, Trump's Poll Bump Is Over

At one point slightly over 50% of Americans reportedly approved of Donald Trumps's leadership during the coronavirus pandemic leaving me wondering what the hell was wrong with many of my fellow citizens.  Thankfully, sanity seems to have been restored as reported at Mother Jones and the Washington Post and Trump's approval numbers have fallen as he lies, preens and provides no leadership while at times silencing actual experts.  One can only hope that more Americans will continue to wake up and that Trump's approval truly plummets outside white supremacist and Christofascists circles, two groups to blind to see reality. Mother Jones sums it up this way:

[P]olling shows that a growing number of Americans feel that Trump downplayed the crisis, was unprepared, and failed to respond quickly. In the latest poll out Saturday, 59 percent of respondents said they had “serious concerns” that Trump failed to take decisive action in the early stages of the outbreak. Even 40 percent of voters who supported Trump in 2016 now believe he failed to take the crisis seriously enough early on. The number of people saying Trump was honest about the crisis has declined, the poll showed, and 53 percent now believe he has been dishonest.

The Post column likewise shows that there may yet be hope for the country as Trump's failed leadership and lies becomes more obvious.  Should red states where Republican governors - like Trump - have failed to act begin to suffer and see virus cases soar, even more sanity may prevail.  Here are column excerpts:

Whatever small bump in the polls President Trump received at the onset of the covid-19 calamity was minuscule in comparison with the surges of support for previous crisis presidents and puny compared with the lift other world leaders were receiving for their efforts. . . . And Americans have seen the contrast between Trump and their far more competent governors.

While American manufacturers are trying to help out, whatever materials they produce for health-care workers likely will be too little and too late. In light of all this, it’s no surprise that the Trump bump may well have dissipated.

The perception of Trump’s performance has changed dramatically. “Trump’s approval for his management of the coronavirus is now under-water, 47-52%. Approval is down from 55% in the poll released on March 20, and closer to where it was in the March 13 poll, when it was 43%.”

Trump’s approval may well decline even further as he weirdly seeks to avoid taking decisive action.

He announces the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendation that Americans wear masks in public, but declares he will not wear one.

He insists the national stockpile is a backup, effectively demanding states fight among themselves for scarce supplies and thereby bid up the price.

He shamelessly tries to blame the Obama administration for the testing debacle, though he has been president for over three years; he dissolved the National Security Council position on pandemics; and he disregarded his own experts’ warnings, thereby losing weeks to prepare for the virus’s onslaught.

Global Strategy Group’s Navigator poll found that “40% of 2016 Trump voters say the president did not take coronavirus seriously enough early in the crisis, up 17 points since early last week.” Americans overall — and 66 percent of independents specifically — say Trump did not take the threat of covid-19 seriously enough early on, up 10 points from the preceding week.

Noticeably, “the majority of white non-college Americans, a usually supportive group, say they are seriously concerned that Trump downplayed the threat of coronavirus early on.” Trump’s personal qualities are shining through — and that is bad news for him. “While 61% say Trump is unprepared, 52% say he is ‘chaotic’ and ‘erratic,’ and 51% say he is ‘irresponsible.’ ”

[H]is slow start and continued erratic presence may very well haunt him, causing all but his core base to throw up their hands in horror and disgust. Facts matter. And right now, the facts are grim.

Poll: Half of Americans Question Trump’s Mental Stability

With the federal government in a GOP forced shut down and Donald Trump continuing to be the least popular president in the history of polling, congressional Republicans nonetheless continue to prostitute themselves to Trump.  Meanwhile just shy of half of Americans believe Trump is mentally unstable despite the bizarre press conference by the White House physician which seemingly added to Trump's height, downplayed potentially serious heart attack risks, and would have one believe that Trump is cognitively normal.    ABC News has the details of new poll results which ought to terrify Republicans in advance of the 2018 midterm elections which many see as the only meaningful way to limit Trump's ability to do lasting damage to America.  Here are poll findings that indicate that Trump and Republicans are on the wrong side of virtually every issue:

A year in the presidential spotlight hasn’t been kind to President Donald Trump: His approval rating is the lowest in modern polling for a president at this point, with deep deficits on policy and personal matters alike. Strikingly, the public divides evenly on whether or not he’s mentally stable.

[A] lopsided majority, 73 percent of those polled, rejects Trump’s self-assessed genius.

Seventy percent say he fails to acquit himself in a way that’s fitting and proper for a president.

Two-thirds say he’s harming his presidency with his use of Twitter.

And 52 percent see him as biased against blacks -- soaring to 79 percent of blacks themselves.

Just 36 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s job performance, while 58 percent disapprove, essentially unchanged since midsummer. Next lowest at one year was Gerald Ford’s 45 percent in 1975; average pre-Trump approval -- since Harry Truman’s presidency -- is 63 percent.

Women are especially critical of Trump in this poll, produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates: A mere 29 percent approve of his work, vs. 44 percent of men. And a remarkable 55 percent of women doubt Trump’s mental stability.

Trump’s signature achievement, the new tax law, is unpopular; 60 percent say it favors the wealthy (even most well-off Americans say so), and the public by a 12-point margin, 46 to 34 percent, says it’s a bad thing for the country. At the same time, a majority celebrates his most prominent failure, on Obamacare; 57 percent say the program’s continuation is a good thing.

A vast 87 percent support the DACA immigration program that Trump ended and whose fate in Congress is uncertain -- including two-thirds of strong conservatives, three-quarters of evangelical white Protestants and as many Republicans, core Trump groups.

And 63 percent overall oppose a U.S.-Mexico border wall, essentially unchanged since before the 2016 election.

As reported Friday, Trump -- and his party leaders -- also are at greater risk in the government shutdown, with Americans 20 points more likely to say they’d blame Trump and the Republicans in Congress than the Democrats in Congress.

[H]alf of Americans think members of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign colluded with Russia to try to influence the election. About as many, 49 percent, think Trump himself obstructed justice in the Russia investigation.

Fifty-eight percent say the economy is in good (or even excellent) shape, the most in 17 years. But just 38 percent say the Trump administration deserves credit; many more, 50 percent, credit the Obama administration.

One has to ask why Republicans seem to have a death wish and continue to basically flip a majority of citizens the middle finger.  Let's hope that get a return hand gesture at the polls in November, 2018.

New Polls: Trump Least Popular First-Year President In History

Donald Trump and his objective reality rejecting supporters got a harsh Christmas gift in the form of new polls that show that Trump is the least popular occupant of the White House of any president in history.  His approval rate is 32% while disapproval stands at a staggering 67%.  A piece in Newsweek looks at the bubble bursting findings which could likely result in yet more delusional claims by Trump and his apologists about his non-existent popularity.  69% believe the country is headed in the wrong direction under Trump/Pence and the GOP.  Here are results excerpts:

According to President Donald Trump, his administration has been one of the most successful in American history. But the public strongly disagrees.

The Republican Trump is now the least popular first-year president in the country’s history and a vast majority believes he has failed to keep the promises that won him the White House, according to two new Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research polls.

The results showed a poor approval rating for Trump. The president [Trump] received a 32 percent rating, marking Trump as the least-popular commander-in-chief since approval ratings were recorded. Conversely, Trump received a 67 percent disapproval rating.

Those figures also included a “quarter” of Republicans disapproving of Trump’s first year in office, perhaps suggesting the billionaire’s hold on his base is slipping.

Trump has routinely boasted that he’s kept campaign promises, but the AP-NORC polls indicate Americans have a far different opinion. Only 23 percent of those polled stated Trump had kept his campaign promises, while 45 percent believe he’s failed to do so and 30 percent think Trump has tried and “failed.”

Merry Christmas Der Trumpenführer!!

Trump's Transgender Ban Is Becoming Official Policy

Time and time again the only campaign promises Donald Trump is keeping are those made to Christofascists leaders in June, 2016, at a meeting at Trump Tower.  For background, on June 21, 2016, Donald Trump met with a who's who of far right Christian groups - a number of which are certified hate groups - in New York City.  The purpose?  To win the support of these Christian extremists who could then rally their followers to vote for the Trump/Pence ticket through their insidious, under the radar networks.  Among the rallying points promised to these extremists were the appointment of anti-abortion and anti-gay justices to the U.S. Supreme Court, repealing the six decade old Johnson Amendment so that churches could engage in political campaigns, anti-transgender bathroom bills, and license to discriminate laws disguised as efforts to protect the "religious freedom" of Christian extremists.  Trump delivered on the first promise when he placed Neil Gorsuch on the Court, his Justice Department and Department of Education are aggressively rolling back LGBT protections, and now Trump has targeted transgender members of the U.S. military.  As a piece in the Los Angeles Blade written by fellow LGBT blogger, Karen Ocamb, reports, Trump's anti-transgender tweets are becoming official policy. The issue will be whether or not the military leadership complies with Trump's openly discriminatory directives.  Here are article excerpts:

President Donald Trump may be on a 17- day vacation but his White House has been scrambling to hand him a “win” by the time he returns. Trump’s tweets last week announcing a ban on transgender individuals serving openly in the U.S. military was turned into a “guidance” policy for implementation that passed muster with the White House Counsel’s office Friday night. Approved by Trump, the new policy is expected to be now delivered into the hands of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who has been quiet on the issue with approximately 15,000 trans servicemembers under his command.

After his review, Mattis is expected to order a deliberate implementation by the Pentagon, which could take a period of time.

Though the policy—called “A Guidance Policy for Open Transgender Service Phase Out”—has not yet been made public, sources familiar with the planning said it would encourage early retirement, usher out any enlisted personnel after their contract is up, and would fire trans officers up for promotion. Basically, said a source, “the administration want to get rid of transgender servicemembers as fast as they can.”

No one yet knows what will happen to the servicemembers currently fighting in combat. The new policy does allow trans servicemembers to continue serving but apparently does not offer any protection from harassment or other efforts to get them to quit.

Trump said in his tweets that the decision to ban trans military service was made after consultation with his generals and to safeguard the readiness of the armed forces. That flies in the face of a Rand study  commissioned in 2016 by then-Sec. of Defense Ash Carter that said there were “few obstacles” to lifting the existing ban against trans service.

Trump focused his attention on the cost of medical care for trans servicemembers who want to transition on the job. But, the New York Times reported: “Paying for the procedures would cost the Pentagon between $2.9 million to $4.2 million a year, the report said. By comparison, the Pentagon each year spends $6 billion of its $610 billion budget on medical costs for active-duty service members.”
 Last Tuesday, 56 retired generals and admirals came out against Trump’s proposed ban. “This proposed ban, if implemented, would cause significant disruptions, deprive the military of mission-critical talent, and compromise the integrity of transgender troops who would be forced to live a lie, as well as non-transgender peers who would be forced to choose between reporting their comrades or disobeying policy,” the retired officers said in a statement, The Hill reported. Two sources says they have confirmation from their sources at the White House and Pentagon that the “phase out” policy is on its way to the Secretary of Defense.
 Matthew F. Thorn, Executive Director of OutServe-SLDN, released the following statement:

“The President’s order to remove transgender service members from the United States armed forces is nothing less than a purge. He is implementing this purge based on bigotry, motivated by agents of an ideology that has no concern for the national defense, and in blatant disregard of the experience of career officers who spent more than a year developing and implementing the current policy. . . . OutServe-SLDN with our partner Lambda Legal will be immediately filing a lawsuit in federal court to challenge this action.”

As Trump's approval numbers continue to fall it seems clear that he will do anything to appease the Christofascists - along with white supremacists - who put him in office.  My August VEER Magazine piece (which is on the streets around the 15th of the month) covers the intensifying attacks on LGBT Americans.

Trump’s Unpopularity Threatens His Presidency

If there is any good news to be found as the prospect of "President Trump" gets closer to becoming a reality it is the fact that his widespread unpopularity may hamper his ability to enact his agenda - whatever it might actually be.  Yes, the Republican controlled Congress will move forward on many heinous and dangerous plans, but in the end the fact that Trump received votes from less than a 27% of registered voters and lost the popular vote could come back to haunt him.  Despite his rhetoric and that of his sycophants, he has no mandate.  Not factored into the piece is the reality that much of the Congressional GOP's agenda will prove catastrophic for many Trump supporters who, hopefully, will figure out that they have been betrayed and seek revenge on the GOP in future elections.  A piece in Politico looks at reality even if Trump will not.  Here are excerpts:

President-elect Donald Trump will descend on Washington next month, buoyed by his upset victory and Republican control of Congress to implement his agenda.

But he’s facing a major obstacle: Trump will enter the White House as the least-popular incoming president in the modern era of public-opinion polling.

The down-in-the-dumps figures raise hard questions about whether he’ll have the political capital needed to push through his more controversial nominees and his aggressive legislative goals of repealing Obamacare, passing a major infrastructure spending plan and reforming immigration and tax policies.

On Election Day, just 38 percent of voters had a favorable opinion of Trump, compared to 60 percent who viewed him unfavorably — unheard of for a presidential-election victor.

Trump’s persistent and deep unpopularity – combined with the fact that he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million ballots – means he lacks the potent argument that the will of the people are behind his agenda.

“He’s clearly not doing as well as other presidents-elect,” said GOP pollster David Winston, a long-time adviser to Republican leaders in both the House and Senate. “We’ve never had a president-elect that had more unfavorables than favorables. He’s started in a pretty big hole in terms of favorables.”

And even though Democrats are in the minority in both chambers of Congress — Republicans will control 241 of 435 House seats and 52 out of 100 Senate seats — the party sees an opening in Trump’s poor poll standing.

“The lack of support for the president-elect means that Democrats can oppose him when they believe they should,” said Jesse Ferguson, the former Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee independent-expenditure head who worked as a spokesman for Clinton’s campaign this year. “They can be confident that there’s no pressure for them to support him out of fear of his political prowess and political power, because his coattails look a little more like a T-SHIRT.”

The outlook for Trump’s nominees is generally positive, but some have already caused agitation not only among Democrats but also among his fellow Republicans. The loudest intra-party dissent has come in reaction to Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, who has extensive ties with Russia. That has raised the ire of Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), two notable Russia hawks.

While both chambers of Congress appear daunting for Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections – given the cycle’s Senate map and House districts that favor the GOP every two years – Ferguson said voters who backed Trump in this year’s election can flip if they don’t approve of his job performance two years from now.

That raises the stakes for Trump and the congressional GOP’s first months next year, Winston said. Voters sent a clear message on Election Day: They are eager for action, and they aren’t afraid to rock the boat again in the next election.

“[Voters] want to see things get done,” he added. “Members understand that. They understand that the ball’s now in their court, and they’re going to have to put points on the board. The electorate is looking for things to happen pretty quickly here.”