JUNETEENTH, CRITICAL RACE THEORY AND ITS REVERBERATIONS

Dr. Common Good

The efforts by Republicans such as Ron Johnson, Ted Cruz, Matt Gaetz, Tucker Carlson and others on the right to cast Critical Race Theory (CRT) as, of all things, “racist” – as racist as the Klan itself, said Cruz – would be laughable, absurdist theater, except that these efforts are part of a broader, insidious narrative perpetrated by the right that is creeping across the media-space like a biblical miasma. Even the newly elected head of the Southern Baptist Convention, Ed Litton, a staunch conservative, knows better, and to his credit, said so in public. So did General Lloyd Austin, Secretary of Defense, and General Mark Milley, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in response to inane political questioning by Gaetz.  Get it straight. Critical Race Theory is not racist. That is a patent falsehood that needs to be countered. It is the idea that race is a social, not a meaningful biological category, together with the simple acknowledgment that racism has infested the very structure of our society and its mechanisms of social well-being for a long, long time, and that to achieve the goals embedded in the Constitution, these structural impediments to equality need to be eliminated. There is nothing in CRT that calls all white people racists, or that seeks to pit racial groups against each other.  CRT does not advocate violence, terror, hatred or racial/ethnic subjugation as did the Klan.  

Aside from the obvious history of slavery and Jim Crow, who can dispute, for example, that African Americans were denied the opportunity to buy homes through redlining and segregated housing policies – even policies implemented by the Federal Housing Administration? For generations, owning a home has been the most basic means of accumulating wealth and passing it on. Who can deny that African American farmers in the South were explicitly denied loans and credit (including by the US Department of Agriculture) that would have supported the sustainability and thriving of their farming enterprises, driving most African Americans out of farming entirely? Who can deny school segregation and inequality, whether de jure or de facto, curtailing the ability of African Americans to attain the academic credentials that contribute to better income and the ability to influence the generation of knowledge? Who can deny the racial bias that has pervaded the criminal justice system for years, resulting in vastly disparate incarceration rates and far higher rates of police violence victimization for African Americans and other peoples of color? Who can deny the discrimination, explicit and hidden, that has existed in so many of the basic institutions of society, from recreational spaces, to media and entertainment, to workplaces, to civic organizations and clubs – all part of the network of social and cultural capital through which people gain access to resources, social position, political power, and jobs? You can’t deny it. Period. You just can’t.

In fact, I dare you, Ron Johnson, Ted Cruz, Matt Gaetz, Tucker Carlson and all the rest, to deny any of that, and to back it up with any facts. This is not about being “woke” or whatever other distorted label you want to use to divert attention from historical truth.

So what are the Cruzes, Johnsons, Gaetz’s and Carlsons doing? They are throwing up smoke and lies in order to ride a political bandwagon that is, at its core, largely driven by white racial revanchism, the effort to re-assert dominance and control in a world where some people believe that they are being pushed out, that they are losing control of a way of life that has always been predicated on a racialized social hierarchy. Moreover, this broader, and dangerous right-wing narrative that includes the effort to label CRT as racist and an affront to our history is of a piece with the attempt to portray the January 6 insurrectionists as mere “tourists” (e.g., comments by Republican Rep. Andrew Clyde) or as patriots in some way, the conspiracy theories that seek to blame “antifa” or even now the FBI for January 6, the attempt to whitewash the destructive Trump presidency, the dogged attempt to perpetrate the mendacious lie that the 2020 election was a fraud and must be overturned, the concerted attempt to restrict voting rights as an undemocratic means of ensuring political power, and the perpetration of ugly claims that immigrants are dangerous, and that they pollute the cultural purity of a white, Protestant-based society (by the way, where does the Constitution characterize the United States as constituted by one religion? It, of course, does the opposite).   

This broader narrative is anti-democratic, racist, culturally bigoted, and a threat to the future of this country. Yet because it undergirds the politics of the right and all its media handmaidens, and because, for utterly selfish and venal purposes so many politicians and media charlatans on the right have chosen to stick to this message, it is gaining a kind of currency it in no way deserves. Enough is enough.    

The following document is lengthy, and I am going to post in sections soon, but for now, this is a rundown of lies vs. facts that should be useful for those who might have originally supported Trump, or even still do…

A MESSAGE — IF YOU THINK TRUMP HAS BEEN GOOD FOR AMERICA, PLEASE CONSIDER THIS

Dr. Common Good

www.dr-common-good.com

          Let me start with a blunt truth. Today we as Americans are faced with the most damaging and destructive president in American history. I am telling you, this doesn’t have much to do with being a Republican or Democrat. If you are a Republican, just think. Trump has ignored or just tossed aside key elements of the traditional Republican political platform – he has built up a massive national debt ($24 trillion as of April 2020, and $22 trillion in late 2019, before the effect of COVID-19), unquestionably weakened America’s security and strength in the world (don’t take it from me, take it from our generals), destroyed the long history of Republican support for free trade, and destroyed America’s reputation as the most important guardian of democracy in the world. He exhibits no part of the conservative and Republican value of personal responsibility, blaming anyone and everyone for anything that does not go well. I encourage you to read the statement I have attached to this document, written by a life-long Republican who, among other things, was campaign chair for John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign.

If you are a Democrat, or a broad-minded person of any party, or just a patriot who values the American experiment, it is clear that Trump has willfully trampled on the rule of law in this country, and the checks and balances built in to the Constitution that is the heart and soul of the United States. He uses the Justice Department and legal system like a dictator, as a tool to get what he wants, constantly interfering in the legal process, threatening witnesses (e.g., Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, and Michael Cohen proceedings), and firing prosecutors involved in actions against him. He disdains the free press, attempting to legitimize only news outlets that parrot his views and achievements and do not criticize him, like Fox News or One America News. On the rare occasions when Fox News does contradict him or reports something unfavorable, he complains that, just maybe, they are not “his network” any more (since when have American presidents had their own networks?). He has rejected the longstanding commitment of the United States to human rights in the world. He has stoked and inflamed racism and bigotry of all kinds. He has gutted and demoralized government agencies and programs that have been central to the achievement of the American dream and America’s reputation – like the State Department, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), even the Department of Agriculture – by getting rid of scientists, experts and career professionals, leaving many positions unfilled, installing subservient political appointees without even relevant experience (witness the recent mass firings at the Voice of America and affiliated U.S. broadcast units under the U.S. Agency for Global Media) or just publicly ignoring and devaluing them. He has ignored and discounted critical global challenges, including climate change and now the COVID-19 pandemic, and completely thrown away America’s leadership role on climate change (which China has now taken over) and in any other area – except when it comes to COVID-19 cases, where, yes, we are Number One in the world. He has severely damaged our historic and longstanding relationships with allies in Europe and around the world that have been the basis of our security and prosperity since World War II and before, insulting our friends and instead choosing to cozy up to dictators and autocrats like no American president of any party has ever done (or should do). As a person, he is a loudmouthed coward, who lies without restraint, acts like a child and spends an extraordinary amount of time calling people names, degrading them, blaming others, and boasting about himself. He is the only president in American history who acts as if what is good for him personally is good for America. In fact, there is no national interest for Trump, only Trump’s interest.

None of this has “made America great.” Trump has, in just three years, turned this country into an embarrassment, a third rate nation that is increasingly shunned by other industrial democracies and is no longer an example to anyone. And, he is clearly responsible for turning the U.S. into a pandemic disaster zone. Unfortunately, all of this has worked to the advantage of countries that are enemies or at least rivals for global reach, including China and Russia. They are loving it – it’s a free win. No wonder they want to see Trump as president. No enemy in modern times could have done more damage.

Now, if you don’t agree with the above description, let’s take a look at some of the facts – and I do mean facts. You can check any of them!  I will cover only a selection of facts (and Trump’s lies about them) here, because it is simply impossible to address all of Trump’s malfeasance in one brief document.

Lies, Lies and Boasting

In a sense, everything we cover here is going to be partly about Trump’s incessant lying, because it’s important, when we talk facts, to include the lies that Trump and company have thrown around about those facts. But just for reference, fact-checkers (e.g., Associated Press, Washington Post) generally agree that Trump has stated, and repeated, an estimated 18,000 lies and misleading statements (with some variation depending upon how “lie” and “misleading statement” are defined) since becoming president. Whatever the exact number, that is a record no president or leader in this country has ever come near.  

Phrases he uses when lying

It’s useful to point out some of the phrases and tactics that Trump routinely uses when he misleads and lies:

• “They say…”, “people say”…”people are calling me and telling me…” Trump uses these statements all the time as “proof” that something he is saying must be true. Funny, he never says who “these people” are.

• “As you know…””you know this well…” and other such statements. Whenever Trump says that, it is a false way of pretending that whatever he is about to say is “known” by his listeners, or interviewers, and therefore true. He gets away with it because he is the one speaking, he has the floor. In fact, his listeners often know they are in for a lie.

• “Oh, that’s fake news.” One of his favorite phrases, and a favorite tactic of Trump supporters and media. If there is a story about him he doesn’t like, poll numbers he doesn’t like, or any fact out in the public that he doesn’t want people to believe because it contradicts his story, he calls it “fake news,” creating distrust in the American people. He will even call something fake news when there is clear evidence, on paper, on video (straight, undoctored), or anything else, of something he said or did. With 18,000 lies, Trump is the actually the biggest fake news generator this country has ever seen, as this document shows.

Big lies about himself:

Trump is a performer, and he likes to create a myth, a narrative about who he is, that he guards jealously (that is at least one reason he has fought like a rabid dog to keep his taxes from being released):

• “I am a great genius.” Wow, what a grotesque lie. By any measure he is the most ignorant president in American history, without exception. As president of the U.S., you should know at least basic information about the history and function of countries and organizations that are the foundation of the world out there, and about the history and function of your own country. Trump knows none of this, and doesn’t even want to know. He doesn’t even know anything about the U.S. Constitution, which he swore in his oath of office to uphold. (He claimed, for example, that Article II gave him the right to “do whatever he wants”) He clearly has a hard time actually reading speeches that are written for him, and his tweets are full of misspellings, enough to embarrass a 5^th grader. He constantly makes statements that are just plain stupid – Windmills (his word for wind-powered generators) cause cancer, coronavirus can be cured by somehow putting UV light or antiviral bleach cleaners into the body, expressing surprise that Finland is a country, and so on. No genius is he.

• “I am a great dealmaker.” Wow, another ridiculous claim. Whatever he claims about his real estate career (most of which is also a well-documented lie, as he was bankrolled by his father’s money and still filed multiple bankruptcies), he knows nothing about how “deal-making” works in the world of global and domestic politics. In order to make deals in the world, you actually need some knowledge about it, which he does not have and shows no interest in gaining, as noted in the previous comment about his “genius.” Let’s see, how does pleading on the phone to the Mexican president to give him something on the wall so he wouldn’t look bad strike you as a big “deal” strategy. How about mooning and fawning over murderous dictator Kim Jong Un as a nuclear deal-making strategy? He achieved nothing other than contempt from Kim Jong Un and concern from the rest of the world. How about begging China’s Xi Jing Ping to give him a break by buying soybeans and wheat from the U.S. to help his re-election? And to help make that happen and curry favor, telling Xi that he supported the Chinese policy of confining a million minority Uighur people in concentration camps? Hmmm, that’s some real deal-making. 

Trump’s Big Economy (vs. the Environment)

• Trump constantly claims that has created the best economy in American and even world history. That is some wild claim! Even before the pandemic, this was not true. To be fair, the economy did grow, and unemployment dropped (pre-pandemic). But this did not start with Trump. He inherited a growing economy from Obama, who led the recovery after the 2008 depression. Trump promised over 4% growth, which has not happened. Yet Obama delivered four quarters over 4%, and an average monthly job growth of 224,000 compared to 182,000 under Trump. And apart from that, the economy under Trump did not do as well as it did under presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson or Bill Clinton. The gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 2.3 percent in 2019, slipping from 2.9 percent in 2018 and 2.4 percent in 2017. But in 1997, 1998 and 1999, GDP grew 4.5 percent, 4.5 percent and 4.7 percent, respectively. Yet even that period was not as good as the 1950s and 1960s – when growth rates between 1962 and 1966 ranged from 4.4 percent to 6.6 percent. In postwar 1950 and 1951, growth hit 8.7 percent and 8 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate reached a low of 3.5 percent under Trump, but it dipped as low as 2.5 percent in 1953.

• Trump has leveraged his short-term gains with debt. The Congressional Budget Office announced in 2019 that the national debt (what the US owes to creditors) under Trump had grown to $22 trillion, up about $2 trillion since Trump took office. As of April 2020, the debt reached $24 trillion. The 2019 budget deficit (the annual budget shortfall) was about $750 billion, up 25% over the previous year.

• The big tax cut – OK, under the leadership of House speaker Paul Ryan, a substantial tax cut was enacted in 2017. But what did that really do? The benefits did not go to the “folks who work in the mailrooms and machine shops” as Trump promised in 2017. According to the Tax Policy Center, more than 60% of the tax savings went to people in the top 20% of the income scale, and the corporate tax rate was cut by 40%. Supporters of the tax cut said that it would grow the economy so fast that the tax revenue gained from economic growth would more than make up for the revenue lost due to lower tax rates. Nope. Wrong. Didn’t happen (see budget deficit numbers above). It’s an old “supply-side economics” argument that never seems to pan out. There was a short-term boost in investment, and that, along with higher government spending, gave the economy a brief lift, though not that much (just 2.9% in 2018). According to a Gallup poll, only about 14% of people surveyed thought their taxes actually went down. Yes, the stock market jumped up, but remember, the stock market is not the economy. And much of whatever gains did occur were pulled back by Trump’s crazy trade wars, and now the economy has tanked in part because of Trump’s disastrous pandemic management. . 

• The big tariff wars – Trump really likes to make himself look “tough,” doesn’t he? He constantly boasts that the U.S. has taken billions of dollars from China as a result of his tariffs. This is just a load of crap, to be nice. Trump clearly does not know what a tariff is. Tariffs are placed on goods coming in to the U.S., which raises their prices for American buyers. They are not “taken” from China. Let me say that again — American businesses and consumers are the ones who pay, not China (or anyone else he places a tariff on). He also said China promised to buy $50 billion in American agricultural products. Lie again. Never happened.

• The economy and the environment – From the very beginning of his administration, Trump has framed environmental regulations and business/economic growth as oppositional, as a zero-sum game. He famously touted his love for coal during the campaign, and he has stripped or rolled back around 100 environmental protection rules put in place over many years – including clean water regulations implemented during the Obama administration (following lobbying by business groups) which means pesticides and other pollutants can be dumped in many wetland areas without penalty, stripping wildlife protections (e.g., in the Migratory Bird Treaty Act), rolling back automobile fuel efficiency regulations, rolling back pollution control and soot control regulations on power plants, and many others. This has been framed as “freeing up” economic activity. But that counter-positioning of economic activity and environmental responsibility is and always has been “trumped up,” so to speak. The economies of the future are going to be built on green technologies. Other countries know this and are doing very well with it – Northern European countries, even China, to name a few. And giant companies in the U.S. like Tesla are clearly capitalizing on this understanding. Trump and his supporters are backward-looking, and this anti-environmental stance will leave the U.S. trailing in global economic competition. It already has.

• On the previous point, Trump and his supporters still deny or brush off the conclusion that climate change is occurring and that it is human-caused (anthropogenic), despite the fact that 97-98% of all actively publishing climate scientists support this claim, with the tiny 2-3% of others publishing studies that cannot be replicated or contain errors (per a 2010 review in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).  

The Big, Tough Immigration President

• Trump’s “immigration policy” has been little more than a series of hateful, spiteful and bigoted jabs, with no attempt at comprehensive immigration reform. It has included the travel ban on immigrants from Muslim countries, the attempt to eliminate DACA (now stopped by a Supreme Court decision), a disastrous southern border policy of separating families and children (and in doing so violating the UN Convention on Rights of the Child), setting up mass detention camps, and slowing down green card applications. And of course, the “wall.”

• Trump’s obsession with a “wall” – This would be a joke, if it weren’t so serious because of his insistence on using billions of dollars of taxpayer money (illegally, according to a recent federal court ruling) to fund something that is useless, ineffective, and nothing more than a reality show stunt. A 2019 video showed climbers scaling Trump’s wall in seconds, and people easily sawing through it. I can tell you from personal experience doing work in the border region that a wall is a mindless “solution” that will do nothing.   

• “Mexico will pay for the wall”: Don’t need to say too much about this one. Mexico didn’t, hasn’t, and won’t do such a crazy thing. On top of that, he is not and cannot build a wall – no matter how many times he lies about it. As of March 2020, he had only built about 3 miles of barriers in places where barriers of some kind didn’t already exist. And it’s you – the American taxpayer – who are paying for his silly attempts to build a wall, at the expense of funds that could be spent, say, on medical equipment to help in treating COVID-19 victims.

• Whipping up anti-immigration sentiment – This has been a major focus of Trump’s immigration “policy.” From the start, he called Latino immigrants criminals and gang members: Yet there is no evidence that Latino immigrants commit crimes at a higher rate than non-immigrants. For example, a 2016 study published in Social Science Quarterly tested and found no significant link between undocumented immigrants and crime. It is no accident that much of Trump’s immigration policy and statements are shaped by political advisor Stephen Miller, someone known to have disseminated articles from white nationalist publications and, among other things, instigator of many false claims about voter fraud.   

Terrible, Terrible Obama

• Trump is clearly obsessed with smearing and rewriting the achievements of President Obama. Why is that? No one has ever seen such a strange obsession from any president, ever. Not only has he pointedly tried to reverse programs instituted under the Obama presidency just because they are Obama programs (by his own words), but he has routinely fired and/or smeared agency professionals and federal judges with the charge that they are Obama appointees, and thus, ipso facto conspiring against him in some way. He even refused, in an appalling show of pettiness, to unveil Obama’s portrait for the White House, a ritual engaged in by all presidents, regardless of party.  

• So-called “Obamagate” — This is just silly bullshit. Trump can’t really even describe what this alleged “crime” is, talking about “terrible things that happened,” calling it “treason,” and asserting that the “crime is obvious to everybody” (like who?).  He constantly makes reference to spying on his campaign (tapping phone lines at Trump Tower), yet there is no evidence at all for such a thing. Were the FBI and national intelligence agencies concerned about Russian involvement in the 2016 U.S. election, and apparent contacts between members of Trump’s campaign and Russia? Yes, absolutely. They should be concerned about this kind of activity, no matter who is running for president. Did they seek to obtain information on a range of contacts that were occurring between Russians/Russian government proxies and Michael Flynn, Carter Page, and others? Yes, as they are supposed to do. There was no advance plan to do this. The investigations were triggered by the occurrence of those contacts, period. Not a crime, but the appropriate counterintelligence functions of those agencies.   

• Trump says, over and over again, and every which way, that Obamacare was a “disaster.” Really? Obamacare (actually the Affordable Health Care Act or ACA) prevented insurers from turning away or charging more to those with pre-existing conditions, and over 20 million people gained coverage under Obamacare by 2020, through the ACA exchanges or Medicaid expansion – not a perfect solution, but a historic first attempt at addressing the inequities of America’s health care system. Senior citizens saved money on their Medicare coverage and prescription drugs. Children could stay on their parents’ health insurance plans until they turn 26. Consumers could get free birth control, mammograms and cholesterol tests. They could also get information — the law meantmanyrestaurants have had to post the calorie counts of their menu items. The ACA reduced out-of-pocket prescription costs for seniors (and did not, as some allege, prevent insurance companies from competing to offer lower costs). A 50% discount that Obamacare secured from drug makers on brand name medicines yielded an average savings of $581 in 2011 for seniors with high drug costs. A research team analyzed data from the 2012-2015 Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, a national telephone survey, involving 507,055 adults. Results showed that before the ACA, all the points covered in the survey were getting worse. However, by the first quarter of 2015, these negative health trends turned around and began to improve.

• As for Trump and Republican claims that they will keep the pre-existing conditions mandate, the House and Senate GOP plans backed by Trump likely would result in higher costs for people with pre-existing conditions in some states, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

• More recently, Trump has blamed Obama for leaving him with bad COVID-19 tests and a lack of ventilators, among other things. This is of course impossible. There was no COVID-19 under Obama, so he could not have done any such thing. But, as is so common, the ridiculous is asserted as “fact.” And as for ventilators, there were somewhere around 19,000 ventilators in the national stockpile, more than 16,000 of which were ready to use (according to Trump’s own Dept. of Health and Human Services). All of these were put there by the Obama administration, none by Trump. Again, just out-and-out lying.

Foreign Policy – Making the World Respect Us Again?

• Trump actually started out with a few respectable cabinet and military officials on his foreign policy team (regardless of whether or not I agreed with their policies) – particularly Rex Tillerson (State) and General James Mattis (Defense). This caused many to take a “wait and see” attitude towards his foreign policy. But one by one, almost everyone on Trump’s team that had expertise and independence of mind left or was fired. He then proceeded to appoint people with no experience whatsoever to various postings, the prime example being the naming of Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, to handle diplomacy with Mexico, Middle East peace efforts, and as point person with China, in addition to running the effort to address the opioid crisis, veteran’s health, and other tasks on the home front. Kushner has no relevant experience. None. And along with that, Trump’s daughter Ivanka is called a “senior advisor” and has been tasked with several diplomatic efforts. She has no experience either. No one takes these two seriously, and both have used their nepotistic appointments for personal gain (Ivanka obtaining approval for several Chinese trademarks following a lifting of the US ban on Chinese company ZTE for violating US sanctions, and Kushner seeking $100 million investment in his family’s real estate business, not to mention long financial ties between the Saudis and the Trump organization – where, for example, Saudis have bought $40-$50 million in Trump properties).

• Trump’s “America First” foreign policy (a creation of Steve Bannon, in part), has been a disaster, and that is being nice. He pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accords, for which the U.S. had played a leading role, pulled the U.S. out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, leaving the Pacific Rim region more vulnerable to China, has constantly belittled NATO and European allies, and tried to promote the reinstatement of Russia into the G-7, from which they were booted after attacking the Ukraine and annexing Crimea. He has threatened a pullout from the Open Skies Treaty, in place since 1992 and part of a web of treaties intended to reduce the likelihood of serious and unintended military conflict in Europe. He announced a withdrawal of funds for the WHO, a mindless act in the midst of a pandemic since WHO is coordinating the global effort to develop vaccines, among other things, and is and has been the key global organization promoting public health. All of the above and more have led to an increase in both Chinese and Russian influence, and to the gradual distancing of the EU/European allies from the US, a disaster for national security.

• Like many other treaties and agreements, Trump called NAFTA “our country’s worst trade deal.” His administration began talks to renegotiate it in 2017, culminating in the signing of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) in 2019. The two agreements are in actuality not that different, and it might be fair to call the USMCA “NAFTA.2”. Why? The new agreement makes a number of changes to the original NAFTA – many of which were included by the Democratic House – but it is more of an update than a new agreement. For example the USMCA ups the percentage of US car parts that have to be made in one of the three countries, strengthens labor law enforcement (a Democratic addition), increases dairy farmer access to markets, increases protections related to digital data, increases some environmental protections, and eliminates drug company exclusivity provisions. So while many consider it improved, it is hardly a scrapping of the original deal. 

• Disastrous Middle East policies: There are so many! He has completely destroyed what legitimacy the U.S. had with respect to supporting the negotiation of an Arab-Israeli peace settlement that would go a long way towards removing a central obstacle to US relationships in the Middle East. He did this by abruptly moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, something no previous president thought wise to do (see note below in brackets), and assigning Jared Kushner to develop a “peace plan,” which, when unveiled in 2019, was a complete insult to any notion of Palestinian sovereignty and the long-held goal of a two-state solution – setting up a Palestinian entity under almost complete Israeli security control and legitimizing much of the Israeli settlement activity (illegal under UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 446) that has turned the West Bank into a Swiss-cheese of control and difficult to conceptualize as a viable Palestinian state. Then of course Trump pulled out of the Iran Nuclear deal, painstakingly negotiated under the Obama Administration and by all counts successful in preventing Iran’s development of nuclear weapons without having to resort to a disastrous war. Then there is the Trump administration’s unquestioned support for Saudi Arabia’s high-casualty bombing of Yemen, which has creating a famine and human rights disaster. This, of course, is in accord with his open support for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (known as MBS), who, among other things, was clearly involved in the grotesque murder and dismemberment of Saudi journalist (working in the U.S.) Jamal Khashoggi, as well as massive royal family purges and the suppression and torture of opponents. All of that, according to Trump, had to be swept under the rug because the Saudis buy so many weapons from the U.S., and likely due to the personal business ties between the Saudis, the Trump organization (e.g., bailouts by Saudis for Trump hotels), and Kushner’s real estate business (Saudi investments). [Why has it long been considered unwise to move the Israeli embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv? Because Jerusalem is uniquely a holy city for three religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – and the US stamp of approval for a symbol that marks the city as controlled by the state apparatus of one religion is by nature inflammatory.]

• Trump claimed he was “pulling troops out of Syria” in 2019. He did no such thing. Even Fox News called it untrue. He just moved troops from northern parts of Syria to guard oilfields in Eastern Syria. And he did this by doing what Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan wanted him to do in a phone call, shamefully abandoning our longstanding Kurdish allies who did most of the hard work in fighting ISIS, and further destroying U.S. credibility in the Middle East.

• Trump likes to claim that he “defeated ISIS.” Here are the facts. The Obama Administration set up virtually all the structures responsible for fighting the Islamic State that were carried forward under the Trump Administration, and there were more fighters trained and munitions provided under Obama than under Trump. Under Obama, all Iraqi cities (with exception of western half of Mosul) held by ISIS—such as eastern Mosul, Fallujah, Ramadi, Tikrit—were retaken by the end of his term, as was much of northeastern strip of Syria along Turkish border. The basic plan of attack in 2017 was also developed under Obama, though Trump did speed up the pace by changing the rules of engagement.

• Trump and the military – He likes to say that “we’ve rebuilt our military.” Not only is this a vague concept (what does it even mean to “rebuild a military”?), but his administration has done no such thing, other than to increase the military budget, even more than was requested by Congress. He also makes false and exaggerated claims about his efforts for veterans, claiming that, for example, he had done something for vets that “they” were unable to do “for 40 years” – referring to the Veteran’s Choice health care program and accountability measures. Sorry, not true again. The Veteran’s Choice program was put in place in 2014, under Obama (through the Veteran’s Access, Choice and Accountability Act). What Trump did was eliminate the expiration date and continue funding the program. At the same time, he has insulted decorated military veterans (e.g., John McCain) and interfered in the military justice system, granting pardons and reinstating soldiers convicted by the military of war crimes and other violations.

On (Not) Draining the Swamp, and Abusing Power

• The Trump administration is unquestionably the poster child for abuse of power, including his refusal to truly separate his businesses from his role as president, his use of Trump properties to make money from official visits (e.g., by the Saudis and others) and even from our own military, his daily and pervasive lying, hush payments to suppress negative evidence during his campaign, abusive interference in the legal process whenever his interests are involved, the removal of multiple Inspectors General whose duties were to investigate and stop corruption within their agencies, the removal of prosecutors, and underhanded and truly treasonous dealings with multiple countries in which he trades favors for actions that will help his re-election campaign (e.g., in Ukraine, China and elsewhere).

• Constant interference in legal proceedings – Especially since the selection of William Barr as his Attorney General, Trump has routinely abused the power of the Justice Department, interfering in legal proceedings like no other president in history – including even former president Nixon. This has included threatening witnesses and even defendants (e.g., Michael Cohen), dangling pardons as a reward for silence in court, attempts to replace prosecutors and even judges in judicial proceedings against him, and the use of the Justice Department (through his willing Attorney General Barr) to conduct investigations of his political opponents and to undermine investigations against him (by investigating the investigators).

• Twisting, blocking and distorting the Mueller investigation and the Mueller Report, beginning with his refusal to allow administration staff or officials to testify even under subpoena, and amplified by Attorney General Barr’s willful distortion of the report’s conclusions (Mueller himself objected to Barr’s summary), falsely asserting that there was “no collusion, no obstruction.” This is simply a dangerous lie, a deception of the American public, perpetrated by Trump, Barr and other Republicans. If you don’t believe me, try reading the Report yourself, which documents more than 100 contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian representatives, and 10 instances of obstruction of justice. The report did not say there was no collusion, it did not exonerate him from obstruction of justice offenses, and it clearly stated that Trump could be criminally liable once out of office. The investigation resulted in 34 indictments and 7 convictions – including of Trump campaign staff. Along with the Trump/Barr deception are all the related lies, including that the Russia probe was a “witch hunt” or a “hoax,” and that Russia did not interfere in the 2016 election to help Trump win – a claim even the pro-Trump Republican Senate agreed is not true in its recent Intelligence Committee report. The evidence is stunningly clear that Russia did interfere, and that investigating this would be normal under any president. Every reputable intelligence agency has definitively stated that Russia interfered, and on the side of Trump. There is no “deep state” attempting to push this theory – another lie Trump likes to use (aided and abetted by conspiracy theorists on social media).

• Suppression of voting and false claims of “voter fraud”. Trump and his supporters (including Barr) constantly seek to limit opportunities to vote, including opposition to mail-in balloting and the expansion of polling places – openly acknowledging that fewer voters benefits Republicans. Yet the fraud allegations are not backed by any data, and repeated studies have shown that voter fraud is rare, including with absentee ballots. Richard L. Hasen, an elections expert at the University of California Irvine, wrote (in an essay for the Washington Post) that “there were 491 prosecutions related to absentee ballots in all elections nationwide between 2000 and 2012, out of literally billions of ballots cast.” Not only that, but research published in 2020 found that encouraging widespread voting by mail yielded “a truly negligible effect” on turnout and vote share by party.

• Ignorance regarding the Constitutional role of president (including the system of checks and balances and limits on presidential power): Trump has no idea what role a president plays in the American system of government. He recently stated that Article II of the U.S. Constitution allows him to do “whatever he wants.” What? Read Article II folks. It has several sections, but Section 2 is most relevant to presidential powers. While it states that the president is commander in chief, and can grant pardons and make recess appointments, most presidential powers are limited by the requirement that he have the advice and consent of the Senate and Congressional approval in some cases. He also claimed in an April news conference that he had the unilateral power to order states to lift stay-at-home orders and that he could order businesses to re-open. Dangerous ignorance. He cannot do that. In a way, it could be argued that his presidency should be annulled, since he swore to uphold a Constitution he is not even familiar with. What then, did his oath actually mean?  

Racism, Bigotry – Fragmenting the Country

• A constant feature of Trump’s campaign and his ongoing rhetoric has been to inflame racial tensions and stoke the “culture wars.” How does he do this? By tweeting and retweeting racist information and images (even if he doesn’t generate them himself), using overt or coded racist language, using culturally-referenced terms to extol the virtues of white Americans (“our valued heritage”), and blatant threats.

• There are many, many specific examples of racist rhetoric, racist “dog-whistles,” and the retweeting or other dissemination of racist material. These include his infamous quote regarding the white-power (and anti-Semitic) demonstrations in Charlottesville, VA, saying that there were “good people on both sides”; his constant reference to Latino immigrants as “invaders,” “criminals” and “rapists”; openly stating a preference for immigrants from good Northern European countries as opposed to “shithole countries”; his recent threats against Black Lives Matter demonstrators using language practically lifted from George Wallace (“…when the looting starts, the shooting starts”); his reference to Confederate statues as “our heritage”: and even a recent retweet of Trump supporters in golf carts who, along with holding Trump 2020 signs, were yelling “white power.”

• In addition to racist hatemongering, Trump constantly inflames and feeds the culture-war narrative that there is a hostile division between “real Americans” and “Democrat elites” or other “elites” who are framed as wanting to oppress and restrict the rights of real Americans by mandating coronavirus-protective masks, restricting Second Amendment (gun) rights, or suppressing the free exercise of religion, including religious bigotry.   

Doing More for Coronavirus than Anyone (Not)?

• The U.S. is currently the world epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, with more cases than any country, and as of yet little demonstrated effectiveness at addressing it – in part because, still, astonishingly, there is no national coordinated plan and Trump will not follow even the recommendations of his own CDC and Coronavirus Task Force. Even in late June, as COVID-19 cases shot upwards following a re-opening in many states that were not ready (under CDC guidelines), Trump (and VP Pence) continued to say that the U.S. is bringing COVID-19 under control, the case numbers are miniscule, and – astonishingly – that if we just slowed down testing we wouldn’t have so many cases (from Tulsa OK and Phoenix AZ rallies). He pointedly refuses to wear a mask, and has positioned mask-wearing as a culture-war symbol of subservience to “left-wing Democrats” and elites.   

• According to Trump, coronavirus is “like the flu,” it will “go away,” “die during the summer months when it is hot”, the “pandemic is dying out” and many, many other dangerous. NONE of these claims have been true, yet, especially when echoed by Trump-subservient media like Fox News, they have caused many Americans who look to the president to guide them to ignore medical, public health and scientific advice – making the pandemic and its economic impact worse. And his claims about his massive successes in testing are just false. Along with that are some of his many related, ridiculous claims, like “we inherited a broken test from Obama.” Really? How could that be? There was no coronavirus under Obama.

More Outrageous Lies from the Barrel

• Trump’s outrageous claim that MSNBC host Joe Scarborough killed one of his Congressional staff aides in 2001. That is just disgusting. An aide in his office did die, but from heart disease. But there is Trump, saying that “a lot of people suggest” that this was a homicide. There he goes again. Who are those “lot of people”?

• Remember his big public warning that Alabama was going to be a focus of Hurricane Dorian in 2019? That was not true per the forecasts from all relevant weather agencies. Oh, but Trump, so sensitive about being contradicted and looking bad, continued to insist on the Alabama focus, even holding a press conference with an amateur “chart” that had a pretend hurricane path written in black marker as “evidence.” Truly, truly pathetic.

ATTACHMENT 1: STATEMENT BY S. SCHMIDT, LIFELONG REPUBLICAN WHO SERVED IN MULTIPLE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS

“Donald Trump has been the worst president this country has ever had. And I don’t say that hyperbolically. He is. But he is a consequential president. And he has brought this country in three short years to a place of weakness that is simply unimaginable if you were pondering where we are today from the day where Barack Obama left office. And there were a lot of us on that day who were deeply skeptical and very worried about what a Trump presidency would be. But this is a moment of unparalleled national humiliation, of weakness.”

“When you listen to the President, these are the musings of an imbecile. An idiot. And I don’t use those words to name call. I use them because they are the precise words of the English language to describe his behavior. His comportment. His actions. We’ve never seen a level of incompetence, a level of ineptitude so staggering on a daily basis by anybody in the history of the country whose ever been charged with substantial responsibilities.

“It’s just astonishing that this man is president of the United States. The man, the con man, from New York City. Many bankruptcies, failed businesses, a reality show, that branded him as something that he never was. A successful businessman. Well, he’s the President of the United States now, and the man who said he would make the country great again. And he’s brought death, suffering, and economic collapse on truly an epic scale. And let’s be clear. This isn’t happening in every country around the world. This place. Our place. Our home. Our country. The United States. We are the epicenter. We are the place where you’re the most likely to die from this disease. We’re the ones with the most shattered economy. And we are because of the fool that sits in the Oval Office behind the Resolute Desk.”

THE ENEMY WITHIN

Dr. Common Good

It has by now become crystal clear the degree to which Donald Trump is effectively an enemy of all that this country stands for, or should stand for if we are true to the basic principles of democracy, justice, and rule of law that are the bedrock of the Constitution. I would not call any public official an enemy lightly, much less the president. But the grotesque spectacle that occurred yesterday in which Trump used federal police to violently clear out peaceful protesters so that he could stage a crude photo-op walk over to a church that did not invite or want him, and then have the gall to wield a bible in the air as he threatened demonstrators with violent force, calling himself the “law and order” president, a display that was preceded by bullying tweets, speeches and a call with governors during which he called for the military to go in and “dominate” the protestors, locking them up for long jail terms, and crudely bragging that he would do the job if “weak” governors who look like “jerks” would not, is the most appalling and alarming display of dictatorial thuggishness this writer has ever seen from a U.S. president. This is the stuff of Putin, or Dutarte, not an American president. On top of that, it is an odious and fraudulent charade from a man who doesn’t even have the guts to fire someone in person (except on his reality TV show), and who hid in the bunker of the White House while warning anyone thinking of breaching the fences that they would face “vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons.” He is as weak as he is vile, a “little man,” as CNN’s Anderson Cooper rightly called him.

And the entire time, not one word about the massive injustice that sparked the protests in the first place, the blatant police killing of George Floyd, the latest in a long line of such killings. Not a single word.

There is not one ounce of leadership in Trump. He has shown himself, day after day, to be ignorant, brutish, venal, narcissistic, vindictive and without a shred of empathy or principle. He is not capable of leading. His only qualifications are a lifetime of ruling his little house of cards by diktat, the creation of a phony reality-TV show persona, and the amassing (and manipulation) of a mountain of debt in service of a glitzy real-estate sham-pire. He knows less about the U.S. system of government than any immigrant who passes the citizenship test. And yet he is president, at a time when there is a national pandemic crisis (about which he has foundered, lied shamelessly, peddled quackery, and manipulated for political ends) and now a crisis of racial justice. No enemy of the United States could do better than this to mismanage a country and destroy its social fabric as well as basic governing principles, not to mention its global alliances and leadership position. In the space of three years, the world has witnessed the U.S. degenerate into a tin-pot, cartoon dictatorship-in-the-making, our once-admired scientific and policy expertise shredded in favor of know-nothing sycophants, our friends at arm’s length, and the credibility of our word and our principles evaporated.  

At this point, any Republicans who continue to justify or enable Trump’s wannabe autocracy (including Barr, McConnell and company) are equally culpable, and will be cast in this nation’s history as collaborators in calamity.

As I have said before, this is no longer a partisan issue. This is a national issue. Remember in November. Trump and Trumpism must be voted out, for the preservation and good of the country. We have all heard the explanations and reasons for his election in the first place. Points taken. This time, there is no excuse.

Dr. Common Good’s Pandemic Response Strategy

Right now, stunning as it is, there is still no leadership and no plan to systematically address the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. There is only “negative leadership.” So here is a basic organizing strategy for a response. This is not rocket science. The response could be organized at the federal level through four national councils and one unit, as follows:

• A Resource Organizing Council (ROC): This should include representatives from at least the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Army Corps of Engineers, the National Governors Association, and a national health officials organization such as the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO). The goal of this Council would be to centralize the data around need across the country, for PPEs, testing, ventilators, and trained workforce, and, based on regular analysis of these data, direct the allocation of resources based on identified need.

• A Business and Work Organizing Council (BWOC): This should include representatives from business and labor, along with CDC and NIAID, with teams organized by a typology of work — e.g., manufacturing, agriculture, small personal service, restaurant/hospitality, transportation, construction, IT, service industry/office work (e.g., insurance, banking), health sector, and education. The goal of this Council would be to determine and coordinate steps and processes to re-open the economy where possible, based on the best protective/preventive procedures possible. This should be a national approach, shaped by local differences in circumstance.

• A Health Strategy Council (HSC): This should include key scientific research and medical representatives from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), CDC, academia, and specific industries such as the pharmaceutical industry. The goal of this Council would be to organize/coordinate efforts to identify treatments and vaccines, in collaboration with other global entities such as WHO, to issue recommendations/guidelines regarding prevention and treatment, and to disseminate factual and clear messages about the state of the science regarding the above issues.

• A National Resilience Council (NRC): This should include representatives from federal/state agencies and non-profits involved in providing and disseminating funds and other essential needs for people to help bridge the gap while prevention, treatment, and return-to-work efforts are underway.  

• A Pandemic Preparation Unit (PPU): This should be a revival and expansion of the (Executive Office) unit put in place under the Obama administration, with a goal of identifying likely trends, needs and resources for potential future waves of this pandemic as well as future pandemics – to include resource and equipment needs, health workforce and training needs, and specific policies. The PPU should work with heads of all the above four councils, and should be coordinating with global counterparts. 

All the above councils and the PPU should regularly report to Congress and should be under the general leadership of the president/vice president (provided, of course, that there is a president and a vice president capable of and willing to manage such a task), or a designated point person.

There, was that so hard? No. Yet our country is shamefully stymied by the unprecedented and apparently unapologetic incompetence and venality of the Trump administration. All I can say is Remember in November!

What we have seen so far from Trump, the nation’s unfit president, and his host of followers, has been appalling, or at best mediocre. First outright denial of the situation, then calling it “the next Democratic hoax,” then repeated brushoffs — calling it nothing, “it will go away when it is warmer,” and saying that there were just a few cases and they were getting better, that tests were easily available to anyone who wanted them, surrounding himself with sycophants to praise how well he was doing, to a final admission, in the past few days, that the situation is truly serious.

By contrast, I give Joe Biden credit for a speech that sounded like what a president should sound like in these times, expressing empathy, detailing a wide range of steps and the enlistment of the country’s resources to fight this, just like a war, followed by a positive note and call for decency and mutual support.

Now is the time for the funds Trump essentially stole from the military budget for his inane vanity wall to be returned to the military for use in constructing emergency hospital and other necessary facilities. Now is the time to return to the goal of rebuilding our infrastructure with a new American Recovery Act to put people to work who have lost jobs and income due to the crisis. Now is the time to stop trying to gut whatever is left of Affordable Healthcare Act (“Obamacare”). Now is the time to provide quick investment funding to businesses that have innovative solutions to provide goods and services while so many are in lockdown or near-lockdown status.

Now is the time to be as un-Trump as possible.

THE LEGAL SCOOP ON IMPEACHMENT

Dr. Common Good

Here is the legal scoop on impeachment. While I am not a lawyer, this is, I believe, a reasonably accurate summary of key legal issues surrounding the Trump impeachment case:

First of all, there does not have to be legally-defined crime to impeach a president. The Constitution (Article II, Section 4) states that a president can be removed from office by impeachment for “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors,” the definition of which is a political judgment. Moreover, Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution states that a president, even after impeachment, is still “liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law,” thus clearly separating impeachment from a legal proceeding. Impeachment is aimed at removing a president or other officeholder who has abused their office.

Then there are actual crimes for which Trump which can be tried under an impeachment proceeding. These include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Bribery and solicitation of foreign assistance in an election campaign: Under 18 U.S.C. 201, it is a crime for a public official to directly or indirectly corruptly demand, seek, receive or accept anything of value in return for being influenced in the performance of an official act. Trump requesting Ukraine to seek dirt on the Bidens, and a public announcement of their investigation, in return for the release of military assistance and a meeting with the president, falls clearly under this violation. Moreover, as you can read, the mere act of seeking such assistance, regardless of whether or not it is provided, is a violation.

• Extortion: Another reading of Trump’s actions can be seen as extortion, that is, when a public official obtains something of value by threatening another party.  In this case, the threat was the withholding of necessary military aid.

• Obstruction of justice, defined as “the crime or act of willfully interfering with the process of justice and law especially by influencing, threatening, harming, or impeding a witness, potential witness, juror, or judicial or legal officer or by furnishing false information in or otherwise impeding an investigation or legal process” (from Merriam-Webster legal dictionary). There have been so many of these violations by Trump it is hard to count – impeding witnesses and blocking testimony, witness tampering via threats and promised pardons, withholding documents, requests to change judges in a court proceeding, and flat out lying, to name a few. These obstructions have occurred with respect to the Ukraine bribery and with respect to Russian interference and collusion in the 2016 election – which, although Mueller did not feel he had enough evidence to make a criminal charge of criminal conspiracy, he documented extensively.

• Other violations: There is a litany of other violations which could be brought to bear, including violations of the Foreign Emoluments Clause of the Constitution (Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution, prohibiting the receipt of any gift, benefit, title, etc. from a foreign state or official), and campaign finance violations (payments made via Michael Cohen and American Media Inc. to silence women during the election with allegations against Trump, and potential liability (not yet established for Trump, but established for Rudy Giuliani and two associates) the channeling of illegal foreign donations to a pro-Trump political action committee (America First Action) through a false, “front company” that disguised the actual foreign donors.

THE TASK: Democrats, and Republicans who still have some belief in Constitutional integrity, need to make this case clearly to the American people. It is being diffused and misdirected by Trump followers, to the serious detriment of our country and democracy.

MORE FROM THE REAL SWAMP

Dr. Common Good

I used it in the title of this post, but the swamp metaphor has become completely inadequate to capture the degraded, defiled, dishonorable rot that is the Trump presidency – and by that I include the truly shameless minions in Congress and at Fox News who willingly disgorge the surreal web of lies and conspiracy theories that Trump spouts or retweets daily to cover up the most aberrant, vile and inept administration this country has ever seen, and who support the thoughtless, amoral, corrupt, self-serving and essentially un-American “policies” this observer has ever witnessed or even read about. Yes, I just used strings of adjectives to describe the situation. Why? Because there is no one adjective that will suffice. Here are a few selected items from recent weeks (and this compilation doesn’t include at least half of what has occurred):   

• The combined weight of the testimony from a litany of (mostly) stalwart impeachment witnesses has painted a clear picture of a President and his personal crew of carpetbaggers and bag-men (starring Rudy Giuliani) who had no qualms about extorting a vulnerable Ukraine, a U.S. ally, to dig up dirt on Trump’s political opponent Joe Biden and son as a condition for receiving military assistance that Congress had already approved and securing a meeting with the president. What gaps exist in the record of this sordid escapade have been blocked by Trump’s refusal to allow key witnesses to testify or pertinent documents to be released — yet another obstruction of justice. But really, this is all of a piece with the violations well-documented in the Mueller Report (despite continuing and false assertions to the contrary by the likes of Representatives Devin Nunes and Jim Jordan), and validated anew with evidence from the trial and conviction of Roger Stone indicating, among other things, that Trump lied to Mueller about his communications with Stone regarding WikiLeaks.  

• Trump’s minion Pompeo blithely declared Israeli settlements legal, contravening all previous U.S. policy, international law, and human rights, and violating the Fourth Geneva Convention. This was announced in a week so rife with Trump-scandal that it hardly caused a ripple in the news. This is – to use a word that has long reached its semiotic ceiling in these times – an absolute outrage, and may very well have been done to coincide with a perceived need to support Netanyahu, Trump’s fellow-in-corruption Israeli PM, or right-wing evangelicals who believe that the Second Coming will happen when all of the West Bank is returned to Israel.

• Trump has pardoned soldiers convicted of committing war crimes, including the unlawful killing of civilians and illegal execution, and restored to full rank a Navy Seal who was convicted of posing with a Taliban corpse (and accused of much more). These pardons occurred in the face of strong objections from the military itself, charging that Trump’s actions undermine military justice and America’s moral authority – what little we have left since Trump became president.  

• I don’t need to elaborate, but Trump’s disgusting betrayal of Kurds in Syria who bore the brunt of casualties in support of U.S. efforts to defeat ISIS is also a betrayal of American values, policies, and national security. Then, throwing salt in the wound, he hosted fellow autocrat President Erdogan of Turkey at the White House – to whom the Kurds were betrayed — right in the middle of impeachment hearings.

• Trump and the Republican’s tax cut has, in yet another report, been revealed as a shell game and a deception of the American public. Few jobs were created as a direct result (contrary to promise), and most corporations have pumped gains from the tax cuts into their own stock, thereby driving up stock prices. That is largely why we are seeing stock market gains, fellow Americans.

And through all of this, the Democratic Party has proved unable to mount an effective counter-narrative that will help the American public more fully realize what we are facing, and what kind of a charlatan and scoundrel the president really is. As stated in a previous post, Trump continues to defile the Constitution, abuse his office, and disgrace the name and standing of the United States in the world.

WHY THE RETRENCHMENT AFTER MUELLER?

Dr. Common Good

News reports seem to be saying that the Mueller testimony was a setback to Democratic impeachment goals and there is a retrenchment underway. Why is that? Why is the Democratic Party so poor at taking advantage of what it has and communicating well about it? Regardless of what kind of witness Mr. Mueller was, if you pull out key soundbites they are powerful and damning:

• Trump is NOT EXONERATED, period.

• The Russia investigation is NOT A HOAX. Anything but. In fact, Mr. Mueller was highly animated in describing it as a systematic threat to our democracy that continues at this moment.

• The Mueller investigation was NOT A WITCH HUNT, period.

• The president COULD BE CHARGED WITH OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE AFTER HE LEAVES OFFICE. There is a clear message in that statement.

• Trump’s conduct in inviting cooperation from WikiLeaks and from Russians is, in Mueller’s words, “problematic…that’s an understatement. It’s criminal.” Yes. No doubt about it. And unethical, as he also agreed.

• Mueller confirmed that Trump refused to testify in person and that his written responses (to only some of the issues) were generally FALSE.

• While a lot of this was likely confusing to many viewers, Mueller confirmed everything stated by Democrats (from the report) about at least five of the obstruction instances, and confirmed the many contacts with Russians and Trump campaign officials and lies about those contacts.

So, I ask, what is the problem? Democrats should be jumping up and down! There are more than enough soundbites to counter almost every lie Trump and Barr have put out on this matter. Yet there is hand-wringing, disarray. Right now, if not two days ago, Democrats should be blasting clips of the above segments on every possible social media channel, and linking with every Democratic-friendly organization across the country to coordinate dissemination of those clips. It should be coordinating a media strategy in which those clips are transmitted in short, easily understood form everywhere possible, each one directly contrasted to Trump/Barr lies. Is that happening? If it is not, Democrats do not deserve any better.

As noted in previous posts, Democrats cannot seem to get a handle on the basics of effective communication. They should never have relied on the Mueller testimony in the first place to get the message out to the American people. They should have mounted an effective counter campaign the minute Barr mischaracterized the report. (Do not, I repeat, do not rely on hearings.) But now that the hearings are done and there is so much to work with, get it out there! In order to even consider impeachment, Democrats need to pull in the public, and so far they have been highly ineffective in doing so.  

HAVEN’T WE HAD ENOUGH?

Dr. Common Good

Really, how much of this can the nation take? This president is and has been an insult to all that this country purports to represent, however imperfectly. Just in the past two weeks:

• He openly said, dismissively, that he could “wipe Afghanistan off the face of the earth if he wanted to.” What president of the United States, much less any other country, says such things?

• He held, and reveled in, a grotesque and ugly rally in North Carolina following a string of racist tweets demanding that four duly elected Congresspersons “go back to where they came from,” prompting the crowd at his “rally” to chant “send them back, send them back” as he basked in the success of his manipulation. He followed this rally with a transparently phony attempt to reframe his actions, then reversed himself and bragged about the “great chant” by “great patriots.” The last time the country has seen such noxious and contemptible public discourse was when the openly racist George Wallace was running for President, way back in 1968.

• As a direct result of Trump’s ignorant, disgraceful and unjust “policy” (if it can be called that) regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Israelis just callously knocked down buildings housing Palestinian apartments near East Jerusalem, in Palestinian territory, forcing all within to lose their homes – with no recourse. The Israelis claimed that those buildings were a security risk. This continues, very openly, the ongoing pattern of human rights violations committed by Netanyahu’s Israel, aided and abetted by Trump policy – or lack thereof (I do not even count Kushner’s “Palestinian Economic initiative”).

• This week, an army of white-shirted thugs brutally beat Hong Kong protesters with metal rods. The thugs are widely held to have come from China at the behest of the Chinese government. Trump’s reaction? A shrug, and a nonchalant statement that things have been “peaceful.” His utter lack of any principled statement of concern is a result of a previous, obsequious promise he made to Chinese president Xi Jing Ping that he would not interfere in whatever China chose to do in Hong Kong. It is also completely consistent with his fundamentally un-American embrace of authoritarians and dictators.

• In a television interview, Trump, with his usual smirk, commented that he is the “best thing to happen to Puerto Rico.” Nauseating.

• In the past several weeks, multiple investigative reports and even testimony from Border Patrol staff have revealed once again the depths of Trump’s crude, inhuman, and despicable “internment camps” for people fleeing from Central America. He is completely ignorant regarding the circumstances prompting their migration, racist and vile in his characterizations of these children and families, and his senior political advisor Stephen Miller is now calling for an end to all refugee admittance to the U.S. Are there no depths to which he will not go? Is there no respect for American history and values? 

• Once again, regarding the impending Mueller testimony, Trump repeated his brazen, outlandish lie that Mueller is “conflicted” because he wanted to be Attorney General and Trump did not pick him, and because of a “business dispute” at one of his golf clubs. He will make up any vile, base and manipulative lie to position himself as the one always on top. Of course, he finished off that specious tale with his usual fabrication — “no collusion, no obstruction.”   

• This week the Congressional Budget Office announced that the budget deficit under Trump has grown to $22 trillion, up about $2 trillion since Trump took office. This year’s deficit is $750 billion, up 25% over last year. Where art thou, o fiscally conservative Republicans? Nowhere. Cowered by Trump. Why? He is a venal coward unworthy of any respect whatsoever.

• The Iran nuclear deal negotiated under President Obama, which had clearly been effective with respect to its goal of controlling Iran’s nuclear program, has truly began to unravel and Trump’s sanctions are driving Iran to new alliances with China and Russia, and to aggressive actions in the Gulf. This is ignorant and dangerous, and prosecuted by his Secretary of State Pompeo, whose transparent focus on Iran stands in stark contrast to his tacit acceptance of egregious human rights violations by Saudi Arabia, acceptance of Israeli violations of Palestinian rights, and total lack of objection to Assad’s revived, brutal reign in Syria, supported by the Russians (and, to be fair, by Iran’s Hezbollah surrogate as well, which is a fully legitimate subject for criticism of Iran).  

• With no replacement plan, Trump and his fellow Republican minions are litigating a case against Obamacare that they hope will be the final blow, resulting in the loss of health insurance for millions of Americans.

• Trump’s Department of Agriculture proposed new rules that would cut some 3 million people from the food stamp program, continuing a trend of cutting funds from programs for poor and vulnerable Americans — even while previously passing a massive tax cut to corporations.

• Recently, the Trump administration is seeking to fire key scientists who work on climate change from the Agriculture Department, following previous cuts in science staff and the advisory board at the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies. His climate denial and destruction of regulations benefits when Americans know less.   

And this week, last week, and all the weeks since his campaign and election, Trump continues to disgrace the name and standing of the United States in the world.