Collusion - a/k/a Conspiracy - Is a Crime

Donald Trump and his sycophants are running about claiming that collusion is not a crime.  Like much of what comes out of Trump's mouth - and those of his enablers -  the claim under analysis is untrue. Indeed, collusion is simply another term for conspiracy and numerous federal statutes confirm that, if Trump and his campaign are guilty of what is claimed, then crimes did indeed occur and Trump is guilty of crimes.  A piece in The Atlantic by former Republican David Frum, lays out why saying "collusion is not a crime" is simply untrue and lying.  Indeed, Trump is a national security threat (as is Mike Pence, in my opinion since he was Trump's lackey throughout the 2016 presidential campaign).  Here are article excerpts:

It’s a crime for a U.S. presidential campaign knowingly to receive—or even solicit—anything of value from any foreign entity. It’s a crime for anyone, campaign or not, to knowingly receive stolen data. In fact, receiving stolen data triggers a complex nexus of crimes, both state and federal. Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, and other top Trump aides met with a lawyer who identified herself as an agent of the Russian government offering damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

Lying to Congress is a crime, albeit one seldom prosecuted. Trump Jr. was under oath when he testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 17, 2017, that he did not tell his father about the Trump Tower meeting with the lawyer. “I wouldn’t have wasted his time with it,” he said. Should that testimony prove untrue, the younger Trump could also face perjury charges.

Money laundering is a crime. Tax evasion is a crime. Obstruction of justice is a crime. Lying to federal investigators is a crime.

It’s true, as Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani keeps insisting, that you will not find the word collusion in the federal criminal code. You will not find the word hacking there either. But that does not mean that hacking is legal, only that lawyers speak differently from other people.

The kernel of truth in the “collusion is not a crime” defense is this: If the Trump campaign avoided tripping over federal election law and computer fraud in the course of a hypothetical collaboration with the Russian GRU, then it is very possible it did not violate any criminal statutes. I wrote about such a possibility here last May. But the predicate for that possibility is that there be no direct contact between the Trump campaign and the Russian state . . .
 But Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s second indictment of Russians claimed that voter analytic data was stolen by Russian hackers from Democratic servers. If those analytics were shared by the Russians with the Trump campaign, that would be a straightforward crime, just as much as the Watergate burglary of the Democratic National Committee in 1972.

The crucial context for assessing the claim that “collusion is not a crime” is the way the Trump-Russia story has emerged into the light, denial after denial collapsing into dust.

Trump, his campaign, and the White House have denied the campaign had Russia contacts. The campaign met with Russian agents.  They denied that the meeting discussed stolen email. The meeting discussed stolen email.

They denied that the Russian intervention was intended to help elect Trump. At the Helsinki summit of the two leaders, Vladimir Putin said, plainly, that he had wished to see Trump elected.

Only this year, and only thanks to the Mueller investigation, have Americans begun to learn the full industrial scale of the Russian intrusion into the 2016 election. Only last month, and again only thanks to the Mueller investigation, was it confirmed that the hackers of the Democratic Party were indeed agents of the Russian state—a truth that Trump still will not unequivocally accept.

Yet there is one way in which the “collusion is not a crime” talking point actually directs attention in the right direction. The Trump presidency’s connections to Russia are a national-security issue first, a criminal-justice issue only second.

Donald Trump owes his presidency at least in considerable part to the illegal assistance of the Russian state: hacking, data theft, prohibited election advertising. This compromised president has in office launched himself against U.S. alliances and trade arrangements built by administrations of both parties over the past three-quarters of a century. The president describes the European Union as a “foe,” quarrels with Canada and Germany, and enters into agreements with Putin that he seems not to have shared even with his own secretary of state and national-security adviser. He blabs vital secrets to the Russian foreign minister, resists holding Russia to account for nerve-agent attacks on British soil, and refuses to implement sanctions voted almost unanimously by Congress.

Meanwhile, the single data point that supposedly proves how tough he is on Russia—the provision of lethal aid to Ukraine—may actually prove something very different. Ukraine halted its cooperation with the Mueller probe ahead of the sale, to “avoid irritating the top American officials.”

It was—or should have been—obvious to anyone paying attention on voting day 2016 that Donald Trump was not an honest businessman. What has come further and further into the light since Election Day is something much more dangerous even than dishonesty.

Scott Taylor Paid to Get Failed Democrat Candidate on Ballot as "Independent"

Scott Taylor and his apparent role model, Donald Trump

I have made no secret of the fact that I want to see GOP Congressman Scott Taylor defeated this November and replaced by an individual who will not vote for Donald Trump's agenda roughly 98% of the time.  Now, Taylor, whose chances of re-election have been re-categorized as a "toss up"  has been exposed of engaging in dirty tricks and deceptive acts in  what can only be deemed an act of desperation given his seemingly declining re-election hopes. As the Virginian Pilot is reporting, Taylor paid his campaign workers to assist a failed Democrat primary candidate, Shaun Brown, who is facing charges of defrauding the federal government on the ballot for November as an independent.  The obvious goal - peeling off votes from his Democrat challenger, Elaine Luria.  Dirty tricks and corruption are one of the leading problems with Congress and by this action, Taylor has shown that he is indeed part of the problem and willing to engage in fraud and deception.  Here are highlights from the Pilot: 

Four of U.S. Rep. Scott Taylor’s paid campaign workers gathered more than half the signatures needed to assure Shaun Brown a spot on the November ballot as she faced charges of defrauding the federal government.

Brown, who had originally sought the Democratic nomination to challenge Taylor, is now running as an independent against Taylor, seeking to represent the Williamsburg-to-Eastern Shore 2nd Congressional District. Norfolk business-owner Elaine Luria is the Democratic candidate.

The staff members’ efforts were first reported by WHRO-FM radio, which obtained the records through a Freedom of Information Act request and are published on its website.

Stephen Farnsworth, a political scientist at the University of Mary Washington, said the Taylor campaign’s work was most likely an effort to split the vote against him.

“The first rule of politics is to figure out a way to divide your opposition,” Farnsworth said. “It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book …

Brown was still pushing hard on deadline day to nail down enough signatures – she herself gathered more than 50 that day, the elections department records show.

Federal Election Commission records, meanwhile, show that Taylor’s four staff members – Lauren Creekmore, Roberta Marciano, Nicholas Hornung and Heather Guillot – were each paid more than $1,200 the week after turning in the signatures.

Asked if Taylor was aware of what the four were doing, spokesman Scott Weldon replied: “Yep, of course he knew.”

Brown, who was charged in December with defrauding the federal government, had originally planned to run as a Democrat. But after the Democratic Congressional Campaign Commission endorsed Luria, a Norfolk business owner, Brown began gathering signatures in May, seeking a place on the ballot as an independent. Luria campaign manager Kathryn Sorenson issued a statement Wednesday afternoon:

“Dirty and deceptive politics like this are exactly why Washington is broken and people are losing faith in their government. Clearly, Scott Taylor is terrified and willing to do anything to avoid going head to head with Commander Luria.”

Brown’s trial on charges of defrauding the government by overstating the number of meals her nonprofit agency distributed under a federal summer program for young people goes to a jury this week.

In a court filing for the case, prosecutors said they have evidence Brown lied to an investor while seeking funds for that agency, and that she falsified campaign finance filed with the Federal Elections Commission.

Lies, questionable morality, and loyalty to Trump define Taylor.  If you live in the 2nd Congressional District, vote for Luria in November and send Taylor into forced retirement.

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Will Southern Suburbs Abandon the GOP?

One of the keys to turning Virginia blue in statewide elections has been growing support for Democrats in suburban areas, particularly Northern Virginia.  The reality has become that if a Democrat carries the so-called "urban crescent" from Northern Virginia southward to Richmond and then southeaster to Hampton Roads, there simply are not enough votes in the rural, reactionary regions of the state to overcome the deficit.  One aspect of this change has been the flight of college educated whites from the GOP, a party that now is overtly racist, panders to Christian extremists, and embraces ignorance - all thing deemed offensive by a majority of college educated whites (and I would argue, decent, truly moral people). As the 2018 midterms approach (and 2020 two years from now), one of the questions of the day is whether the flight from the GOP in other southern suburbs can propel Democrats to statewide victories and flipping congressional districts.  A piece in CNN looks at the phenomenon.  Here are excerpts:

One key measure of any Democratic wave in the midterm elections will be whether it crests high enough to overcome the formidable Republican defenses in the growing suburbs across the South. The answer will have implications that extend far beyond 2018.

While Democrats have notched significant gains since the 1990s among white-collar suburban voters in most parts of the country, they have until recently made very little progress at loosening the Republican hold on affluent and increasingly racially diverse suburbs around such Southern metro areas as Atlanta, Houston and Dallas. But suburban unease with Donald Trump's turbulent presidency may finally provide Democrats an opening to establish a beachhead in such places -- a development that would rattle the electoral map. Although the recoil from Trump among white-collar suburbanites inside the South is not as great as outside of it, both public and private polls signal that enough suburban voters are pulling away from him to create much greater opportunity than usual for Democrats this fall in the governor's race in Georgia, Senate races in Tennessee and Texas, and several suburban House seats across the region.
 [W]e are also definitely making inroads first and foremost with college-educated white women, but also college-educated white men." Many of the most vulnerable Republican House seats around the country are centered on white-collar suburbs. Democrats have strong opportunities in suburban seats from New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia through Northern Virginia, Chicago, Minneapolis, Detroit, Denver and Los Angeles. That vulnerability is rooted in the unusual resistance Trump faces among well-educated white voters: Three national polls last week each found that around 60 percent of whites holding at least a four-year college degree disapproved of his performance.
 In addition, gains in white-collar suburbs will be critical to Democratic prospects in the Georgia governor's race between African-American Democrat Stacey Abrams and Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp; the highly competitive Tennessee Senate contest between former Democratic Governor Phil Bredesen and Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn; and the more uphill, but still competitive, challenge by Democratic Rep. Beto O'Rourke against Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in Texas.
 Even if Democrats fall short in some or all of these races, a significantly improved performance in white-collar suburbs could offer them a roadmap for seriously contesting North Carolina, Georgia and perhaps even Texas against Trump in 2020 -- when African-Americans, Latinos and other minority voters, who mostly lean Democratic, will likely comprise a bigger share of the electorate than this fall. But in virtually every state in which Democrats have grown more competitive since the early 1990s, increased minority participation has been only part of the equation -- it has been necessary, but not sufficient. Whether in California, Illinois and New Jersey, which tilted toward Democrats in the 1990s, or Colorado, Virginia and (more equivocally) North Carolina, where the party strengthened its position in the 2000s, the winning Democratic formula has combined both an increase in minority participation and improved performance among college-educated white voters. In the states where Democrats have gained ground in recent decades, those two changes have offset lackluster, and an often deteriorating, performance with evangelical, rural and non-college educated white voters. [Wendy] Davis pointed to two principal reasons Southern suburbs have remained so difficult for Democrats.  "One is that we've had a booming economy and it's the economy stupid as the saying goes, so people have felt pretty satisfied with where things are," Davis said. "We also suffer the problem of being absolutely ignored in presidential election contests which means that we haven't built the infrastructure that's necessary to communicate with a lot of the voters that are needed."
 The Democratic improvement in white-collar suburbs in other regions has been keyed largely by cultural affinity, since many college-educated voters, especially women, take more liberal positions on social issues from abortion and gay rights to gun control. But fewer Southern suburbanites are social liberals, probably because more of them than elsewhere are evangelical Christians or otherwise religiously traditional. Democrats still confront all of these barriers this year. But Trump's rise has provided them a new opening. With his racially infused nationalism and belligerent personal style, Trump conspicuously lost ground across many Southern suburbs in his 2016 race against Hillary Clinton when compared to Mitt Romney's performance in the same places in 2012. . . . in key suburbs around the major metropolitan areas, such as Gwinnett and Cobb counties outside of Atlanta, the shift away from the GOP was undeniable and ominous for Republican strategists. . . . Basically we've traded the smaller, slower growing more rural counties for larger fast growing suburban counties." In last November's Virginia governor's race, Democrat Ralph Northam posted big advances not only in suburbs outside of Washington DC, which politically behave more like Northern suburbs, but also the suburban communities around Richmond, which have tilted more reliably Republican. A more immediate problem for Texas Democrats, he said, may be improving their performance among Latino voters, among whom Republicans have retained a significant minority of support even under Trump. Still, the most recent statewide poll conducted by the University of Texas and the Texas Tribune in June shows some clear openings for Democrats among well-educated white voters who have previously resisted them.
 [N]ow in Georgia, he adds, "If you are the business community, you have to think twice about do you get behind a Republican as you normally would, or would Kemp scare away business?" . . . Whether or not Abrams makes history as the nation's first female African-American governor, November's results in suburban Atlanta will provide one revealing measure of whether Democrats can truly pressure Trump in 2020 in Georgia -- and perhaps elsewhere across the South.

I truly hope that Democrats replicate Northam's ground game which resulted in a surge of Democrat turn out across demographic groups.  Of course, Gillespie's decision to tie himself to Trump made that all the easier.  

Facebook Identifies Likely Russian Political Influence Campaign in Midterm Elections

American intelligence officials stated that Vladimir Putin
personally controlled the 2016 cyber-attacks.

Given Donald Trump's refusal to (i) admit the role of Russian efforts in his squeaker of a win in 2016, and (ii) his refusal to launch any significant effort to block future cyber-attacks, it isn't surprising that Facebook has announced that it has identified yet another active political campaign by likely Russian agents in the run up to the 2018 midterm elections.  Should Democrats win control of Congress, Putin's asset, Donald Trump, could at minimum face troublesome hearings and subpoenas, or even articles of impeachment. Hence the effort to reprise the 2016 cyber-attack. While Facebook released the information, one has to wonder why Facebook hasn't clamped down on the ability of foreign interest to purchase and moderate political efforts aimed at American elections.  The New York Times looks at this development.  Here are story highlights:

Facebook said on Tuesday that it had identified a political influence campaign that was potentially built to disrupt the midterm elections, with the company detecting and removing 32 pages and fake accounts that had engaged in activity around divisive social issues.

The company did not definitively link the campaign to Russia. But Facebook officials said some of the tools and techniques used by the accounts were similar to those used by the Internet Research Agency, the Kremlin-linked group that was at the center of an indictment this year alleging interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Facebook said it had discovered coordinated activity around issues like a sequel to last year’s deadly “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va. Activity was also detected around #AbolishICE, a left-wing campaign on social media that seeks to end the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

The jolting disclosure, delivered to lawmakers in private briefings on Capitol Hill this week and in a public Facebook post on Tuesday, underscored how behind-the-scenes interference in the November elections had begun.

In recent weeks, there have been reports of other meddling, including a Daily Beast report that the office of Claire McCaskill of Missouri, one of the Senate’s most vulnerable Democrats up for re-election this fall, was unsuccessfully targeted by Russian hackers last year, which Ms. McCaskill confirmed. American intelligence officials have indicated that at least one other unnamed Democratic senator up for re-election has been targeted.

Officials at Facebook, which is based in Silicon Valley, said they were working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other intelligence agencies on their discovery of the influence campaign.

Earlier on Tuesday, Mr. Trump declared again on Twitter that there had been “No Collusion” between his campaign and the Russians, and asserted that, in any case, “collusion is not a crime.”

Lawmakers from both parties quickly set aside questions of who had perpetrated the influence campaign and said Facebook’s disclosure only clarified what they had feared since the extent of Russian involvement in 2016 became clear more than a year ago: that social media companies would be unable to keep up with the pace and scope of malicious efforts to abuse their platforms.

Senator Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, the Republican chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said he would make the disclosure a central part of a previously scheduled hearing on Wednesday, when lawmakers plan to press outside experts on the pervasiveness of foreign influence on social media networks like Facebook.

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the committee, praised Facebook on Tuesday for bringing the activity out into the public, but asked for its cooperation in updating laws to prevent influence campaigns.

“Today’s disclosure is further evidence that the Kremlin continues to exploit platforms like Facebook to sow division and spread disinformation,” he said.

Finding suspicious activity was harder this time around, Facebook said. Unlike many of the alleged Russian trolls in 2016, who paid for Facebook ads in rubles and occasionally used Russian internet protocol addresses, these accounts used advanced security techniques to avoid detection. For instance, they disguised their internet traffic using virtual private networks and internet phone services, and used third parties to buy ads for them.

“These bad actors have been more careful to cover their tracks, in part due to the actions we’ve taken to prevent abuse over the past year,” Mr. Gleicher said.

Like the 2016 Russian interference campaign, the recently detected campaign sought to amplify divisive social issues, including through organizing real-world events. On Capitol Hill and in congressional races across the country, the #AbolishICE campaign has divided Democrats and provided Republicans with fodder to paint Democratic candidates as extremists who want open borders. The issue, Republicans hope, could help drive a wedge between liberal Democrats and the moderate voters the party needs to retake control in Washington. Mr. Trump has gone as far as encouraging Democratic candidates to embrace the campaign. The American midterms, though, are a major test for the company [Facebook], which is trying to show that it can handle its role as a global arbiter of conversation and commerce — even with interference by others.

Earlier in July, Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, warned that Russian interference remains an active threat to November’s elections.  “The warning lights are blinking red again,” he said.

Sadly, many - including some local "friends" seem to have learned nothing from 2016 and continue to fall for blatantly fake news and even re-post it.  Seemly, their racial bigotry and selfish motivations outweigh common sense.

The Justice Department’s Troubling Ties to Alliance Defending Freedom

Jeff Sessions announcing his new anti-gay task force.

While the "Alliance Defending Freedom" ("ADF") describes itself as a "Christian" law firm, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups across America, has certified ADF as a hate group.  The principal target of ADF's efforts is the LGBT community whose civil rights it seeks to rescind in order that Christofascist can discriminate at will and be exempt from public accommodation laws.  Given the significant overlap between ADF's evangelical base and white supremacists, the LGBT community is not ADF's lone target.  A prior blog post earlier this week noted how  Attorney General Jeff Sessions - a man with a long history of homophobia and racism - announced at "task force" within the Department of Justice which would enforce exemptions from non-discrimination laws. A piece in Media Matters looks at the insidious relationship between the Trump/Pence DOJ and ADF.  Trump may be breaking promises to much of his base, but he is pandering overtime to the Christofascists thanks in no small part I suspect to Mike Pence, an extreme far right wing religious zealot in his own right.  Here are article highlights:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the creation of a Department of Justice (DOJ) task force to enforce “religious liberty” rules that make it easier to discriminate against the LGBTQ community and others under the guise of “religious freedom." Such discrimination is a major part of the mission of anti-LGBTQ legal powerhouse Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), and the announcement was followed by a panel that included a major ADF client and was moderated by an ADF staff alumna. Coupled with ADF's involvement in the announcement, the new task force demonstrates the influence of the group's extreme anti-LGBTQ views on the administration.

On July 30, Sessions launched a new “Religious Liberty Task Force” that would enforce discriminatory religious exemptions guidance that the DOJ released in October 2017. (Sessions had worked with ADF on the guidance before its release.) Religious exemptions policies, such as those the DOJ released, allow people and businesses to be exempt from nondiscrimination laws and policies by citing a burden on their religious beliefs. People have frequently used the exemptions to discriminate against the LGBTQ community and others.

ADF was one of the first to break the news of the July 30 “Religious Liberty Summit” in which the task force was announced, noting that the event would feature a panel including the group’s client Jack Phillips, a Christian baker who refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple and who took his case to the Supreme Court in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commision. ADF’s news release, however, did not mention that the panel’s moderator, DOJ media affairs specialist Kerri Kupec, worked at ADF for four yearsbefore joining DOJ in January. 

The Trump-Pence administration has shown a coziness with extreme anti-LGBTQ groups and with ADF, in particular. Sessions’ DOJ issued an unusual brief on behalf of Phillips before oral arguments in Masterpiece Cakeshop, and ADF alumni and allies have been hired by various agencies and nominated for federal judgeships. As Media Matters’ recently released research book details, ADF holds dozens of extreme anti-LGBTQ positions on nearly every every aspect of life, including supporting laws that would punish sodomy by imprisonment, writing in favor of Russia’s so-called “gay propaganda” law, and advocating against efforts to protect LGBTQ youth from the harmful and discredited practice of conversion therapy. The group is in many ways the most influential group working to roll back LGBTQ equality in the country, frequently targeting basic protections for transgender students and pushing religious exemptions policies.

The “Religious Liberty Task Force” is yet another example of a cabinet-level agency devoting significant resources to make it easier to discriminate against LGBTQ people. In January, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced a new division to enforce laws protecting “health care workers who express religious objections to performing abortions and certain other procedures,” including providing medical services to transgender and other LGBTQ people.

When groups like ADF have a seat at the table with the upper echelons of our federal government, discriminatory policies such as these come as no surprise.

Many secular straights and other minorities likely yawn at this news and figure that it does not affect them.  However, if one has followed the Christofascist agenda for years, gays are only the first on ADF's hit list.  These folks are so extreme that they would like to make contraception illegal once more.  If Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed to the Supreme Court, they might just have the votes needed to overrule Griswold v. Connecticut.  ADF and its supporters are nothing short of frightening. 

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The Right's Normalization of Immorality

Trump/Pence sycophant Alex Jones.

Former George W. Bush White House official Michael Gerson has another lament in the Washington Post about the normalization of immorality steadily taking place under the Trump/Pence regime and the lap dog like Republican Party. Gerson is an old style Republican - as I once was - where morality and the truth or at least some semblance of it - mattered. Not so under Trump/Pence despite Pence's feigned piety and religiosity.  Now, lies and outright lunacy are embraced so long as they evidence fealty to Der Trumpenführer.  A perfect example is Trump world's rallying to defend Alex Jones, a delusional liar.   Yet Jones symbolizes what the Republican Party has become.  Republican "friends" who like to think otherwise are only deluding themselves.  Here are excerpts from Gerson's column: 

One of the current complaints of the Trump right concerns the treatment given to Alex Jones by Facebook, which has temporarily banned the Internet radio host for videos that violated “community standards.” 

At various points, Jones has promoted the belief that 9/11 was an “inside job,” that Hillary Clintonwas running a child sex ring out of a pizzeria, that NASA had built a child slave colony on Mars in order to harvest blood and bone marrow, that the Oklahoma City bombing, the Boston Marathon bombing and the Sandy Hook school shooting were government “false flag” operations, that some shooting survivors were “crisis actors,” that “globalists” are intent on committing genocide and that Democrats are on the verge of launching a second civil war.

There are few things I enjoy less than spilling ink on Jones’s vile lunacy. But President Trump has made a great many unpleasant things unavoidable. He has appeared on Jones’s Infowars program and assured Jones that his “reputation is amazing.” The White House briefly gave Infowars a press credential. And Donald Trump Jr. has retweeted Infowars stories.

So what explains this theatrical wink and nod to the bedlam wing of the hard right?

This instance is important, not just for its directly destructive influence on political discourse, but also for its explanatory power. It represents not only a certain approach to political strategy but also a certain approach to morality, pressed to its logical extreme. Trump is not a dogmatist; he is an egotist. He judges others not by their convictions, or even by their hold on reality, but by their fidelity to his person. It is a form of identity politics in which all that counts is one man’s identity.

This is but one example of Trumpian ethics. Remember when a white man in Boston, spouting Trump slogans, beat up a homeless man outside a subway station? Trump responded: “People who are following me are very passionate.

Remember when a Trump supporter punched an African American man at a rally? Trump said that his follower “obviously loves his country.”

Remember when the alt-right provoked violence in Charlottesville? Trump pronounced some white nationalists to be “very fine people.”

[Trump] The president has a nearly impossible time criticizing his fans, even when they are guilty of hate crimes and violence. In Trump’s own private creed, they are absolved of guilt by their loyalty to him.

Any political movement is defined not just by what it aspires to, but also by whom it excludes. And the alt-right, the Alex Jones right, the white nationalist right know that they are fully included in Trump’s definition of his movement. They have become experts in tacking to the shifting winds of his whims. They know that their loyalty to him has been rewarded with a legitimacy they have craved for decades. And they are full, enthusiastic partners in the Trump project — to delegitimize any source of authority and information but his own.

Back in the world of actual morality, there is serious collateral damage. Congressional Republicans are further tainted by their association with right-wing extremism. Genuine populists are discredited by consorting with people who accuse elites of arming for mass murder. The religious right is caught in bed with a diseased, seeping moral relativism. And Fox anchors come to the defense of a man who verbally defiles the graves of murdered children.

Despite attempts at utilitarian justification — despite outrage-dulling repetition — this is not normal or moral. It will never be normal or moral.