Is Trump's Satanic Nature Sparking An American Religious Revival On The Left?

Saturday, in the Washington Post Dan Balz reiterated an important point: Señor Trumpanzee Has No Understanding Of Governing... and nothing but disdain for anything to do with learning. Balz wrote that "After a week in which the threat of recession rocked global financial markets, his trade war with China showed no signs of progress and the government of Israel got into a nasty dispute with two members of Congress, President Trump went to bed Thursday night with other weighty issues on his mind. He tweeted: 'Great news. Tonight we broke the all-time attendance record previously held by Elton John at #SNHUArena in Manchester!' This is the frivolous mindset of the president of the United States. His flurry of statements over the past few days have brought into focus once again something fundamental about the president: He has little understanding of what it means to govern. He would rather tweet from the bleachers."

Balz wrote that Señor Trumpanzee's "trade war with China has contributed to the problems now facing the global economy. Yet the president accepts no responsibility-- for his policies, his statements or his tweets, all of which have added to the uncertainty. He has a mixed message: Everything is great, and what isn’t great is somebody else’s fault. Trump was reduced again last week to doing what he always does when there is trouble brewing. He attacked others. He hurled more insults at Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell, a Trump appointee who has become the president’s favored whipping boy... Meanwhile, a new Fox News poll of the 2020 campaign showed Trump losing to every Democrat tested. More telling was that the incumbent president did not break 40 percent against any of them. Polls are polls, and the election is more than a year away, but those numbers should concern the president’s advisers."

You say "good, who wants this asshole interfering in governance?" Well, ok, except look who he's empowered to do it instead. Family members as clueless as he is himself. A Cabinetful of self-serving, wealthy imbeciles. And as funny as it is to hear The Mooch rubbing his snout in the mud and shit now, we're currently stuck with Neo-Nazis like Cuccinelli and Stephen Miller.

Yesterday, Bloomberg New reporters Jennifer Jacobs and Justin Sink wrote some of the Trump appointees, led by Miller, have been trying for almost 2 years to give states the power to block undocumented immigrant children from enrolling in public schools. They wrote that "Miller had been a driving force behind the effort as early as 2017, pressing cabinet officials and members of the White House Domestic Policy Council repeatedly to devise a way to limit enrollment, according to several people familiar with the matter. The push was part of a menu of ideas on immigration that could be carried out without congressional approval." Somewhere along the way someone must have told the neo-Nazis that their plan was illegal and violated a 1982 Supreme Court ruling (Plyler v Doe) that found that punishing children for their parents' actions "does not comport with fundamental conceptions of justice." I wonder why that doesn't apply to putting children in cages and selling them to commercial foster homes and adoption centers. Strange that evangelicals don't seem to mind. Although... The Conversation has a post about the revival of a "Christian left" for just that reason.

Holding pictures of migrant children who have died in U.S. custody and forming a cross with their bodies on the floor of the Russell Senate Office Building, 70 Catholics were arrested in July for obstructing a public place, which is considered a misdemeanor.

The protesters hoped that images of 90-year-old nuns and priests in clerical collars being led away in handcuffs would draw attention to their moral horror at the United States’ treatment of undocumented immigrant families.

American Catholics, like any religious group, do not fit neatly into left-right political categories.

But ever more they are visibly joining the growing ranks of progressive Christians who oppose President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and federal agencies’ negligent, occasionally deadly treatment of immigrants on his orders.

American Christianity is more often associated with right-wing politics.

Conservative Christian groups advocating for public policies that reflect their religious beliefs have conducted extremely visible campaigns to outlaw abortion, keep gay marriage illegal and encourage study of the Bible in schools. Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis, an Apostolic Christian, was jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses after the U.S. legalized same-sex marriage in 2015.

But there’s always been progressive Christian activism in the United States.

I have studied religious thought and action around migrants and refugees for some time-- including analyzing the New Sanctuary Movement, a network of churches that offers refuge to undocumented immigrants and advocates for immigration reform.

Black churches were central in the civil rights movement in the 1960s, and black Christians have continued to engage in advocacy and civil disobedience around poverty, inequality and police violence. Latinos and Native Americans, too, have for centuries fought for “progressive” causes like labor rights, environmental protection and human rights.

So it’s not quite right to herald the “rise” of a religious left, as several think pieces have done since Christians began openly resisting Trump’s immigration enforcement and other policies. That erases the historic resistance of religious communities of color.

Still, Trump’s hardline immigration policies seem to have spurred a broader population of Christians into action. And their civil disobedience crosses racial, ethnic and even party lines in new ways.

One reason for this is simple: Migration has become increasingly visible in recent years, especially under Trump.

The number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. peaked at 12.2 million in 2007. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama approached this issue by using relatively pro-immigrant language while deporting hundreds of thousands each year.

Though immigration at the United States’ southern border has actually been decreasing since 2000, the number of Central American asylum-seekers has grown. In 2014, an unprecedented surge in Central American children seeking asylum protections got significant media attention.

Donald Trump began his presidential campaign the next year with a speech maligning migrants. During his administration, his rhetoric has slowly become policy.

But the primary reason Christian groups are now focusing on immigration, I’d argue, is simply that the notion of welcoming strangers and caring for the vulnerable are embedded in the Christian tradition.

In the Biblical text Matthew 25, the “Son of Man”-- a figure understood to be Jesus-- blesses people who gave food to the hungry, cared for the sick and welcomed strangers. And in Leviticus 19:34, God commands: “The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you.”

These texts help explain why support for immigrants crosses traditional left-right religious boundaries.

Denominations that are generally considered left-leaning, like the United Church of Christ and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America publicly oppose Trump’s harsh treatment of immigrants. So do the Catholic bishops and Southern Baptists, which are typically more socially and politically conservative.

Beyond directly assisting migrants at the U.S. border by offering food, shelter, translation and legal services, many of these Christian groups also believe that in democratic societies they should pursue laws founded on Christian moral teachings.

After all, they point out, God’s command in Leviticus was to the nation of Israel-- not just individual Israelites. And Jesus often told religious and political officials how to act and criticized the oppression of foreigners, widows and orphans by those in authority.

Faith-based support for immigrants is not limited to Christian groups.

Jewish and Muslim organizations have both provided humanitarian aid to Central American asylum seekers and protested a federal ban on travel from Muslim countries.

And 40 Jewish leaders were arrested in New York City on Aug. 12 for protesting the Trump administration’s detention policies.

The 2020 election season has brought Christian faith-based activism into the political fore. Several Democratic presidential candidates have spoken openly about the faith-based roots of their progressivism.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has referenced the biblical text of Matthew 25 as a touchstone for her critique of wealth inequality and insistence on universal health care.

In pushing for criminal justice reform, Sen. Cory Booker speaks about the Christian tradition of “grace.” He’s also been known to quote the Prophet Muhammad, Buddha and the Hindu god Shiva.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg is a devout churchgoer who is also gay. He says that his sexual orientation is God-given and that his marriage, in the Episcopal church, to another man, has brought him closer to God.

Talk of an emerging “religious left” is ahistoric. American Christianity has always had its liberal strains, with pastors and parishioners protesting state-sponsored injustices like slavery, segregation, the Vietnam War and mass deportation.

But the high profile, religiously based moral outrage at Trump’s immigration policies does seem to be spurring some long-overdue rethinking of what it means to be Christian in America.

Dance Around The Golden Calf (1910)- Emil Nolde

Now a little history. This is from an oldie but goodie that Gregory Paul wrote in 2003 for the U.K. website Free Inquiry: The Great Scandal: Christianity’s Role in the Rise of the Nazis. Keep in mind that early on, Hitler was quite popular on the right-- among Republicans in the U.S. and Conservatives in the U.K. and among the ultra conservative high clergy. Paul points out that a growing body of scholarly research reveals that a convoluted pattern of religious and moral failure in how Christianity dealt with Naziism, considering that it "had the capacity to stop Nazism before it came to power and to reduce or moderate its practices afterwards, but repeatedly failed to do so because the principal churches were complicit with-- indeed, in the pay of-- the Nazis. Most German Christians supported the Reich; many continued to do so in the face of mounting evidence that the dictatorship was depraved and murderously cruel. Elsewhere in Europe the story was often the same. Only with Christianity’s forbearance and frequent cooperation could fascistic movements gain majority support in Christian nations. European fascism was the fruit of a Christian culture. Millions of Christians actively supported these notorious regimes. Thousands participated in their atrocities. What, in God’s name, were they thinking?"

Keep in mind that Christianity was historically anti-Semitic and "largely hostile toward modernism and democracy... Jews were seen as materialists who promoted and benefited from Enlightenment modernism." American Evangelicals under Trump, have been twisting Christianity so that it's almost unrecognizable as having anything to do with Jesus. In the 1930s and '40s, "Aryan Christianity differed from traditional Christianity in denying both that Christ was a Jew and that Christianity had grown out of Judaism. Adherents viewed Christ as a divine Aryan warrior who brought the sword to cleanse the earth of Jews. Aryans were held to be the only true humans, specially created by God through Adam and Eve; all other peoples were soulless subhumans, descended from apes or created by Satan with no hope of salvation. Most non-Aryans were considered suitable for subservient roles including slavery, but not the Jews. Spiritless yet clever and devious, Jews were seen as a satanic disease to be quarantined or eliminated... German Aryanism, whether Christian or pagan, became known as 'Volkism.' Volkism prophesied the emergence of a great God-chosen Aryan who would lead the people (Volk) to their grand destiny through the conquest of Lebensraum (living space). A common motto was 'God and Volk.' Disregarding obvious theological contradictions, growing numbers of German nationalists managed to work Aryanism into their Protestant or Catholic confessions, much as contemporary adherents of Voudoun or Santería blend the occult with their Christian beliefs. Darwinian theory sometimes entered Volkism as a belief in the divinely intended survival of the fittest peoples."

According to standard biographies, the principal Nazi leaders were all born, baptized, and raised Christian. Most grew up in strict, pious households where tolerance and democratic values were disparaged. Nazi leaders of Catholic background included Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, and Joseph Goebbels.

Hitler did well in monastery school. He sang in the choir, found High Mass and other ceremonies intoxicating, and idolized priests. Impressed by their power, he at one time considered entering the priesthood.

Rudolf Hoess, who as commandant at Auschwitz-Birkinau pioneered the use of the Zyklon-B gas that killed half of all Holocaust victims, had strict Catholic parents. Hermann Goering had mixed Catholic-Protestant parentage, while Rudolf Hess, Martin Bormann, Albert Speer, and Adolf Eichmann had Protestant backgrounds. Not one of the top Nazi leaders was raised in a liberal or atheistic family-- no doubt, the parents of any of them would have found such views scandalous. Traditionalists would never think to deprive their offspring of the faith-based moral foundations that they would need to grow into ethical adults.

...The Nazis championed traditional family values: their ideology was conservative, bourgeois, patriarchal, and strongly antifeminist. Discipline and conformity were emphasized, marriage promoted, abortion and homosexuality despised.

Traditionalism also dominated Nazi philosophy, such as it was. Though science and technology were lauded, the overall thrust opposed the Enlightenment, modernism, intellectualism, and rationality. It is hard to imagine how a movement with that agenda could have been friendly toward atheism, and the Nazis were not. Volkism was inherently hostile toward atheism: freethinkers clashed frequently with Nazis in the late 1920s and early 1930s. On taking power, Hitler banned freethought organizations and launched an “anti-godless” movement. In a 1933 speech he declared: “We have . . . undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.” This forthright hostility was far more straightforward than the Nazis’ complex, often contradictory stance toward traditional Christian faith.

As detailed by historian Ian Kershaw, Hitler made no secret of his intent to destroy democracy. Yet he came to power largely legally; in no sense was he a tyrant imposed upon the German people.

The Nazi takeover climaxed a lengthy, ironic rejection of democracy at the hands of a majority of German voters. By the early 1930s, ordinary Germans had lost patience with democracy; growing numbers hoped an authoritarian strongman would restore order and prosperity and return Germany to great-power status. Roughly two-thirds of German Christians repeatedly voted for candidates who promised to overthrow democracy. Authoritarianism was all but inevitable; at issue was merely who the new strongman would be.

What made democracy so fragile? Historian Klaus Scholder explains that Germany lacked a deep democratic tradition, and would have had difficulty in forming one because German society was so thoroughly divided into opposing Protestant and Catholic blocs. This division created a climate of competition, fear and prejudice between the confessions, which burdened all German domestic and foreign policies with an ideological element of incalculable weight and extent. This climate erected an almost insurmountable barrier to the formation of broad democratic center. And it favored the rise of Hitler, since ultimately both churches courted his favor-- each fearing that the other would complete the Reformation or the Counter-Reformation through Hitler.

...[F]or obvious reasons-- Chancellor Hitler had greater initial success reaching accommodation with Roman Catholic leaders than with the Protestants. The irony lay in the fact that the Catholic Zentrum (Center) Party had been principally responsible for denying majorities to the Nazis in early elections. Although Teutonic in outlook, German Catholics had close emotional ties to Rome. As a group they were somewhat less nationalistic than most Protestants. Catholics were correspondingly more likely than Protestants to view Hitler (incorrectly) as godless, or as a neo-heathen anti-Christian. Catholic clergy consistently denounced Nazism, though they often undercut themselves by preaching traditional anti-Semitism at the same time.

Even so, and despite Catholicism’s minority status, it would be German Catholics and the Roman Catholic Church whose actions would at last put total power within the Nazis’ reach.

Though it was not without antimodernists, the Catholic Zentrum party had antagonized the Vatican during the 1920s by forming governing coalitions with the secularized, moderate Left-oriented Social Democrats. This changed in 1928, when the priest Ludwig Kaas became the first cleric to head the party. To the dismay of some Catholics, Kaas and other Catholic politicians participated both actively and passively in destroying democratic rule, and in particular the Zentrum.

The devoutly Catholic chancellor Franz von Papen, not a fascist but stoutly right-wing, engineered the key electoral victory that brought Hitler to power. Disastrously Papen dissolved the Reichstag in 1932, then formed a Zentrum-Nazi coalition in violation of all previous principles. It was Papen who in 1933 made Hitler chancellor, Papen stepping down to the vice chancellorship.

The common claim that Papen acted in the hope that the Nazis could be controlled and ultimately discredited may be true, partly true, or false; but without Papen’s reckless aid, Hitler would not have become Germany’s leader.

The church congratulated Hitler on his assumption of power. German bishops released a statement that wiped out past criticism of Nazism by proclaiming the new regime acceptable, then followed doctrine by ordering the laity to be loyal to this regime just as they had commanded loyalty to previous regimes. Since Catholics had been instrumental in bringing Hitler to power and served in his cabinet, the bishops had little choice but to collaborate.

German Catholics were stunned by the magnitude and suddenness of this realignment. The rigidly conformist church had flipped from ordering its flock to oppose the Nazis to commanding cooperation. A minority among German Catholics was appalled and disheartened. But most “received the statement with relief-- indeed with rejoicing-- because it finally also cleared the way into the Third Reich for Catholic Christians” alongside millions of Protestants, who joined in exulting that the dream of a Nazi-Catholic-Protestant nationalist alliance had been achieved.[27] The Catholic vote for the Nazis increased in the last multi-party elections after Hitler assumed control, doubling in some areas, inspiring a mass Catholic exodus from the Zentrum to the fascists. After the Reichstag fire, the Zentrum voted en masse to support the infamous Enabling Act, which would give the Hitler-Papen cabinet executive and legislative authority independent of the German Parliament. Zentrum’s bloc vote cemented the two-thirds majority needed to pass the Act.

Why did the church direct its party to provide the critical swing vote? It had its agenda...

Even after the Enabling Act, Hitler’s position remained tenuous. The Nazis needed to deepen majority popular support and cement relations with a skeptical German military. Hitler needed to ally all Aryans under the swastika while he undermined and demoralized regime opponents. What would solidify Hitler’s position? A foreign policy coup: the Concordat of 1933 between Nazi Germany and the Vatican.

The national and international legitimacy Hitler would gain through this treaty was incalculable. Failure to secure it after intense and openly promoted effort could have been a crushing humiliation. Hitler put exceptional effort into the project. He courted the Holy See, emphasizing his own Christianity, simultaneously striving to intimidate the Vatican with demonstrations of his swelling power.

Catholic apologists describe the Concordat of 1933 as a necessary move by a church desperate to protect itself against a violent regime which forced the accord upon it-- passing over the contradiction at the heart of this argument. Actually, having failed in repeated attempts to negotiate the ardently desired concordat with a skeptical Weimar democracy, Kaas, Papen, the future Pius XII (who reigned 1939–1958), the sitting Pius XI, and other leading Catholics saw their chance to get what they had been seeking from an agreeable member of the church-- that is, Hitler-- at an historical moment when he and fascism in general were regarded as a natural ally by many Catholic leaders. Negotiations were initiated by both sides, modeled on the mutually advantageous 1929 concordat between Mussolini and the Vatican.

Now Zentrum’s pivotal role in assuring passage of the Enabling Act can be seen in context. It was part of the tacit Nazi-Vatican deal for a future concordat. The Enabling Act vote hollowed Zentrum, leaving little more than a shell. Thus, a clergy far more interested in church power than democratic politics could take control on both sides of the negotiating table. In a flagrant conflict of interest, the devout Papen helped to represent the German state. Concordat negotiations were largely held in Rome, so that Kaas could leave his vanishing party yet more rudderless. Papen, Kaas, and the future Pius XII worked overtime to finalize a treaty that would, among other things, put an end to the Zentrum. In negotiating away the party he led, Kaas eliminated the last political entity that might have opposed the new Führer. Nor did the Vatican protect Germany’s Catholic party. Contrary to the contention of some, evidence indicates that the Vatican was pleased to negotiate away all traces of the Zentrum, for which it had no more use save as a bargaining chip. In this the Holy See treated Zentrum no differently than it had the Italian Catholic party, which it negotiated away in the Concordat with Mussolini.

...The Concordat was a classic political kickback scheme. The church supported the new dictatorship by endorsing the end of democracy and free speech. In addition it bound its bishops to Hitler’s Reich by means of a loyalty oath. In exchange the church received enormous tax income and protection for church privileges. Religious instruction and prayer in school were reinstated. Criticism of the church was forbidden. Of course, nothing in the Concordat protected the rights of non-Catholics.

...The practical results of the collaboration were clear enough. Most Catholics “soon adjusted to the dictatorship;” indeed they flocked to the Party. Post-Concordat voting patterns suggest that Catholics, on average, even outdid Protestants in supporting the regime, further undermining any efforts by the clergy to challenge Nazi policies. In any case much of the Catholic clergy was Nazifying. Even the idiosyncratic S.S. welcomed Catholics, who would ultimately compose a quarter of its membership.

The Concordat’s disastrous consequences cannot be exaggerated. It bound all devout German Catholics to the state—the clergy through an oath and income, the laity through the authority of the church. If at any time the regime chose not to honor the agreement, Catholics had no open legal right to oppose it or its policies. Opponents of Nazism, Catholic and non-Catholic, were further discouraged and marginalized because the church had shown such want of moral fiber and consistency... [T]he 1933 Concordat stands as one of the most unethical, corrupt, duplicitous, and dangerous agreements ever forged between two authoritarian powers. Perhaps the Catholic strategy was to outlast the Nazi’s frankly popular tyranny rather than try to bring it down. But the Catholic Church made no attempt to revoke the Concordat and its loyalty clause during the Nazi regime. Indeed, the 1933 Concordat is the only diplomatic accord negotiated with the Nazi regime that remains in force anywhere in the world.

Germany’s Protestant sects were too decentralized to be coopted by a single document. To this extent Protestants who disputed Nazi policies could be said to enjoy a more favorable position than Catholics. But opposition was rare among Protestants too. Hitler cynically courted the major denominations even as they cynically courted him. Most smaller traditional Christian sects did little better. For example, Germany’s Mormons and Seventh-Day Adventists bent over backwards to accommodate National Socialism.

Catholics and Protestants at first embraced the new German order. Germany was regaining international prestige, the economy improving thanks to growing overseas support.[36] Industrialists like Henry Ford invested heavily in the new Reich. German Christians also looked to the Nazis for a revival of “Christian” values to help counter the rise of nontheism. Most welcomed the Nazis’ elimination of chronic public strife by terrorizing, imprisoning, and killing the fast-shrinking German Left. The leftists had long been despised by traditionalists, who composed four fifths of the population. The state purged a far higher proportion of atheists than traditional Christians. In newspapers and newsreels the Nazis proudly publicized their new concentration camps. Reports sanitized the camps’ true nature, but no one could mistake that they were part of a new police state—to which most German followers of Jesus raised no objection. The very high rate of “legal” executions reported in the press also met with mass indifference or positive approval.

Far from being hapless victims, the great bulk of German Christians joined, eagerly supported, collaborated with, or accommodated to a greater or lesser degree, the new tyranny.

I don't want to leave this on such a downer note tonight. So... my friend Doug Pagitt, the head of Vote Common Good, has a new book out today, Outdoing Jesus. It's so uplifting. Watch him talking about it. I'm hoping that it will help cleanse your mind of all that right-wing satanic crap above:

Five True Things About Mike Pence

Image courtesy The Atlantic, "God's Plan for Mike Pence"

by Gaius Publius

In the wake of ultra-right bombings and shootings, with the Mueller investigation in mind and thoughts of the 2020 election close at hand, it seems appropriate to look at Vice President Mike Pence. He could be made president before 2020, and if so, he may be president afterward as well.

So let's consider this set of five true things about Mike Pence.

1. Mike Pence Is the Most Powerful Christian Supremacist in U.S. History

In 2016, just after the November election, Jeremy Scahill wrote this about the soon-to-be vice-president:

Pence’s ascent to the second most powerful position in the U.S. government is a tremendous coup for the radical religious right. Pence — and his fellow Christian supremacist militants — would not have been able to win the White House on their own. For them, Donald Trump was a godsend. “This may not be our preferred candidate, but that doesn’t mean it may not be God’s candidate to do something that we don’t see,” said David Barton, a prominent Christian-right activist and president of Wall Builders, an organization dedicated to making the U.S. government enforce “biblical values.” In June, Barton prophesied: “We may look back in a few years and say, ‘Wow, [Trump] really did some things that none of us expected.’”

Trump is a Trojan horse for a cabal of vicious zealots who have long craved an extremist Christian theocracy, and Pence is one of its most prized warriors. With Republican control of the House and Senate and the prospect of dramatically and decisively tilting the balance of the Supreme Court to the far right, the incoming administration will have a real shot at bringing the fire and brimstone of the second coming to Washington.

“The enemy, to them, is secularism. They want a God-led government. That’s the only legitimate government,” contends Jeff Sharlet, author of two books on the radical religious right, including “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.” “So when they speak of business, they’re speaking not of something separate from God, but they’re speaking of what, in Mike Pence’s circles, would be called biblical capitalism, the idea that this economic system is God-ordained.”

This is extreme as it gets in the world of Christian dominionism. "They want a God-led government" — their god that is, an Old Testament god who terrorizes enemies, punishes unsanctioned sex and permanently assigns to women a status less than human. If you were to equate this god's dogma with Sharia law, you'd not be wrong.

Interestingly, one of the most prominent voices for dominionism, R.J. Rushdoony, was also a fan of Ludwig von Mises and his extreme form of economic libertarianism, a belief that put Rushdoony in the same economic camp as Charles Koch. Expect a President Pence to follow in those footsteps as well — religious restriction for you, extreme economic freedom for him and his friends.

2. Mike Pence Is Anti-Science

In 2002 Mike Pence said on the floor of the House (h/t Mike Stone at Progressive Secular Humanist):

I would simply and humbly ask, can we teach it as such and can we also consider teaching other theories of the origin of species? Like the theory that was believed in by every signer of the Declaration of Independence. Every signer of the Declaration of Independence believed that men and women were created and were endowed by that same Creator with certain unalienable rights. The Bible tells us that God created man in his own image, male and female he created them. And I believe that, Mr. Speaker. ...

I believe that God created the known universe, the earth and everything in it, including man. And I also believe that someday scientists will come to see that only the theory of intelligent design provides even a remotely rational explanation for the known universe. ...

I just would humbly ask that, as new theories of evolution find their ways into the newspapers and into the textbooks, let us demand that educators around America teach evolution, not as fact, but as theory [among competing explanations]. ... But let's also bring into the minds of all of our children all of the theories about the unknowable, [so] that some bright day in the future, through science and perhaps through faith, we will find the truth of from whence we come. [bolding mine]

It's easy to imagine a Mike Pence Education Department mandating this teaching to the extent it can, and a Supreme Court dominated by "five Antonin Scalias" — Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh — upholding him.

3. Mike Pence Is Virulently Homophobic

Pence is not only anti-woman, he's rabidly anti-gay, so much so that others suspect he has "those urges" himself. So far those suspicions have proved groundless, but there's no doubting the virulence of his homophobia.

Just one example (h/t Mike Gallagher at LGBTQ Nation): As Governor Mike Pence signed a bill to jail same-sex couples who apply for a marriage license. "To prove that he wasn’t singling gay people out, Pence was also willing to jail marriage clerks who supplied a license or clergy who performed the wedding."

4. Mike Pence Could Well Be Guilty of Obstruction of Justice in the Comey Firing

From Jed Shugerman at Law and Crime in 2017 (emphasis added):

On Friday, news broke that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had obtained a draft letter written by President Trump and advisor Stephen Miller explaining Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director Jim Comey. They wrote the letter over the weekend of May 5-7, and then on May 8th, Trump distributed and read the letter to senior officials, including White House Counsel Don McGahn and Vice President Mike Pence. Then the letter was edited, and Trump fired Comey the next day.  On Friday, I suggested on Lawrence O’Donnell’s “The Last Word” on MSNBC that the most significant development was Pence’s potential criminal liability for his role in obstruction of justice (and I emphasize “potential,” because all we have at this stage are allegations in media reports and a lot more questions about the contents of the letter and Pence’s role in revising or editing it).

I have explained in other posts why Trump’s firing of Comey constitutes obstruction of justice under 18 U.S.C. 1512(c)(2), and arguably Sections 1503 and 1505. “(c)Whoever corruptly- (2)… obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.” 18 USC 1515 defines “official proceeding,” and includes Congress and authorized government agencies. The 2d and 5th Circuits have held that an FBI investigation is an official proceeding (but a 9th Circuit case raises questions about that interpretation). But keep in mind that 1) Congress had already started its investigation (including having Comey testify about the Russia probe), and 2) prosecutors had already obtained grand jury subpoenas in the Flynn case. These official proceedings had already begun, particularly in the Flynn investigation, which had been the focus of Trump’s questions to Comey in January through April. Firing Comey would impede those official proceedings, and Trump himself more or less confessed to trying to influence and impede the Russia investigation by firing Comey: first on national TV to NBC’s Lester Holt, then in the Oval Office to Kislyak and Lavrov on an official transcript.

In this new post, I explain Vice President Pence’s potential criminal jeopardy for conspiring to obstruct justice, aiding the obstruction of justice, and “misprision of a felony” in concealing the obstruction of justice. ...

This should put him squarely in Robert Mueller's crosshairs. But the point may be moot, because...

5. Robert Mueller Appears to Be Protecting Mike Pence

I've always seen Robert Mueller as a political actor, a Republican political actor, the greatest evidence of which is his apparently deliberate mishandling, as head of the FBI, of the Bush era anthrax attack investigation, about which Marcy Wheeler has written a great deal.

As I read the evidence, the motive for sabotaging the investigation appears to be that it was veering in the wrong direction, beginning to point to domestic terrorists on the right. Evidence of domestic terrorism was not countenanced under President Bush, and Mueller was, among other things, a "loyal Bushie." The only other explanation for this obviously bungled investigation is incompetence, and I think Mueller is perfectly competent at what he considers his job. The question was, what did he consider the more important aspect of his job, finding the truth or supporting the Bush-Cheney agenda? (I may write more on the anthrax attack later, pulling all that evidence together, but it's too much to go into here.)

So I don't believe Robert Mueller's mission in the Trump-Russia investigation is to "find the truth." I think his mission is to "find enough truth to get rid of Donald Trump," and in that mission he's supported by the whole of the Democratic Party, the centrist media establishment, the national security establishment, and any elements of the Republican Party establishment not dependent on Trump supporters for power.

It's beyond obvious that anyone looking for crimes by Donald Trump will find them. He's been soaking in criminality his entire career. Mueller is very likely finding enough financial crime to blackmail Trump from office should he want to take that route.

As you read above, Mike Pence looks very much a part of that criminality by his behavior during the James Comey firing. So why isn't Pence being investigated by Robert Mueller along with the myriad others whose lives Mueller has pulled open?

From Allegra Kirkland at Talking Points Memo:

‘A Bit Of A Mystery’: Why Is Mueller Keeping His Distance From Pence?

...Pence was absent from many of the key incidents Mueller is reportedly investigating as part of his sprawling probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. But he was intimately involved with several, including the firing of former FBI director James Comey, and the subsequent efforts to settle on a rationale for that firing, which appear to be at the center of the Mueller investigation.

So it’s puzzling that Mueller appears to have made no attempt to talk to the administration’s second-highest-ranking official. Pence’s lawyer met with Mueller last year to offer Pence’s full cooperation.

“It’s a bit of a mystery to me that Pence’s name hasn’t really surfaced at all,” Michael Zeldin, a former federal prosecutor who worked closely with Mueller in the Justice Department’s criminal division, told TPM. “There are things that Pence seems to be relevant to. So I’m surprised.”

Pence’s lawyer, Richard Cullen, declined to comment to TPM on the record, while the special counsel’s office declined comment. Pence press secretary Alyssa Farah did not respond to TPM’s request for comment, but in December [2017] forcefully denied to CNN that Pence’s office was preparing for a meeting with Mueller.

As of mid-January [2018], NBC reported that the special counsel had made no overtures to Pence about an interview.

Just a few things you should know as you wait the outcome of the Mueller-Trump cage match. The Koch-funded radical right accomplished one of its most-cherished goals when Brett Kavanaugh replaced Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court. It now has "five Scalias" on the bench, and radical rule from the judicial branch is assured for the next generation, if not far longer.

An emotionally stable, ideologically reliable, radical rightwing president is the next goal. Meet Mike Pence.

GP
  

When Trump Falls, Here's How The White Evangelical Leadership Will Explain And Profit From His Fall

by Frank Schaeffer

Trump has a lifetime of criminal activity to hide. The dumbest thing he ever did was run for president. He’s going down. How will the white evangelical leaders that talked their followers into voting for Trump explain this, then come out winners?

Trump broke the number one rule of con-artists and grifters: never attract attention to yourself. But according to his evangelical backers this too-- Trump’s ego-driven stupidity – is going to be “used by God.”

Trump now has real reason to be afraid. He’s has spent his whole career in the company of cons and crooks (that includes his new evangelical leader pals like the con-artist Pat Robertson). Now the law is coming and he’s waking up to the fact that being president is the worst decision he ever made.

A raid on a lawyer’s office doesn’t happen every day; it means that multiple government officials and a federal judge had reason to believe they’d find evidence of a major crime and that they didn’t trust Trump’s lawyer not to destroy that evidence.

Trump is the gift white evangelical voters gave America: A con-man who has been protected by threats of litigation, hush money and his own bravado. Those mob-thug-con-artist “methods” are proving to have their limits when they are applied from the highly exposed Oval Office. Trump is going down sabotaged by his own stupidity and ego. And as history will show that self-sabotage was made possible by white evangelical leaders.

So… again, how will they save face?

Will evangelicals ever say sorry?

No.

God is still “at work” from their point of view. Here’s how:

If Trump’s impeached the presidency will fall to the pro-theocracy crank Mike Pence. He’s just the kind of Reconstructionist theocrat the religious right has always really wanted in the Oval Office: an evangelical gay-hating, woman-belittling family man with a safe checklist of Wall Street/Republican/NRA/pro-white/pro-Israel/white oligarch beliefs.

White evangelicals came to believe in Trump as indispensable to God’s providence. They bought into Trump using analogies to King David (who slept around a lot, too). They invented a new theological core belief that Trump’s against-the-odds victories meant that God chose him to battle for evangelicals’ religious liberties.

That view can be crafted into a new theological revelation and direction by face-saving evangelical leaders like Jerry Falwell Jr., if and when Trump falls. Here’s what they will say: Trump’s fall is all part of God unveiling HIS REAL PLAN!

This new plan will be sold by the likes of Falwell, Franklin Graham and Jeffress, as the chance to reestablish moral order (no more having to explain a porn-president) and to replace Trump with a fellow religious true believer, born-again conservative – Mike-Theocracy-Is-Great-Pence.

This new divine intervention will explain why evangelicals (after a bitter fight and “Deep State” accusations) will lie down and accept Trump’s fall as “God’s will.” It will be claimed by people like the con-artist Ralph Reed, that this was God’s plan all along, an updated version much like the updated versions of the End Times scenarios evangelicals trot out to explain why, in fact, Jesus didn’t come back as predicted last time… but will now…

To get a true believer, who doesn’t pay off porn stars but will ban all abortions, gay marriage and transgender rights, and will keep blacks in their “place,” loves the NRA and will persecute brown minorities, and wants to hang gays, and defends the “religious liberty” to discriminate against gays and women, into the White House, is, clearly, what God intended all along.

Praise Jesus!

If you are an American who would rather not go from a porn-presidency to an Iranian-style theocracy (having swapped a joke version of Tony Soprano/Heffner for the Ayatollah Khomeini), then vote. Help sweep the entire edifice of the enabling, hateful bought and paid for Republican Party into the dustbin of history by working for a massive history-changing Democratic Party victory in 2018 and 2020.

Who Will Be The First Trump Regimistas To Go To Prison For Treason?

Last weekend, we looked at the enormity of the horror Vladimir Putin represents. A Maddow clip I embedded, showing the slavish obeisance with which a growing number of poorly educated so-called "Christian conservative" Trumpists in red state America treat Putin, was removed from YouTube by MSNBC. Yesterday Think Progress' senior religion reporter, Jack Jenkins, reported about this bizarre emerging alliance between Putin and Trump’s God squad. Treason is very much in the air.

As evidence continues to emerge of Russia’s alleged attempts at the direction of Vladimir Putin to disrupt the 2016 election through nefarious means, President Donald Trump has endured fiery criticism from all sides regarding his ties to the authoritarian leader. In addition to an avalanche of progressive detractors, Republican senators such as Lindsay Graham (R-SC) have expressed unease about the connection, and Pope Francis declared the budding alliance between the U.S. and Russia “dangerous.”

But as Trump prepared for his first face-to-face meeting as president with Putin this past weekend, his attempt to thaw relations with Moscow was blessed by a seemingly unusual source: Rev. Franklin Graham, a prominent member of the Religious Right and the son of evangelist Billy Graham. Days before the meeting, the younger Graham--  a longtime Trump supporter who led a prayer at the president’s inauguration--  published a Facebook post voicing optimism about a potential Trump-Putin partnership.

“The media and enemies of President Trump have tried to drive a wedge between Russia and the United States,” Graham, who is known for spouting Islamophobic and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, wrote. “Our country needs Russia as an ally in the fight against Islamic terrorism. Join me in praying for President Trump and President Vladimir Putin as they have this very strategic meeting.”

An evangelical heaping praise on a U.S.-Russian partnership may surprise some, but the pastor’s prayerful post belies a deeper history that is already shaping American politics: Graham, working tandem with Russian church officials and select few of his right-wing Christian colleagues, has already formed an alliance with the Russian president --  all while Putin continues to use faith as a tool to accrue power.

...Graham’s remarks are the result of a years-long international power consolidation effort by Putin, who is is well known for using faith--  particularly the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), a subset of Eastern Orthodox Christianity whose reach extends beyond Russian borders--  as a mechanism to expand his country’s influence and antagonize Western opponents.

According to Christopher Stroop, a visiting instructor at the University of South Florida honors college and a published expert on modern Russian history, Putin became close with the ROC after beginning his third term in 2012.

“The Orthodox church domestically shores up the [Putin] regime, but it also works internationally to push the party line in pursuit of its own goals as well--  and the church hierarchs are genuinely socially conservative,” Stroop told ThinkProgress, noting that Putin’s embrace of the ROC coincided with a broader shift toward right-wing populism.

...[A]s the New York Times reported last fall, Putin lifts up the church’s moral authority as a “traditional” answer to the west’s increasing liberalism, positioning Russia as an opponent to progressive causes such as LGBTQ rights and multiculturalism. This allows Putin to perpetuate the idea that Europe and America--  not Russia--  are faithless nations by comparison.

“Putin has rebranded himself as a champion of traditional values,” Stroop said.

...The push against the liberal west slowly won converts the world over, with Russia analyst Casey Michel describing the country in February as “the leader of the global Christian Right.”

“American fundamentalists bent on unwinding minority protections in the U.S. have increasingly leaned on Russia for support --  and for a model they’d bring to bear back home, from targeting LGBT communities to undoing abortion rights throughout the country,” Michel wrote in Politico.

The potential political benefits for the Kremlin are obvious: The Religious Right would be a prize for anyone looking to gain influence American politics, as right-wing faith leaders--  especially those who claim evangelical Christianity--  have long played an active role in elections. What’s more, some of their most controversial members (including Graham) have only gained influence during Trump’s rise.

...[T]he shift has accelerated in recent years. Other anti-LGBTQ groups such as the American Family Association, American Center for Law and Justice, and National Organization for Marriage (NOM) have all endorsed various anti-gay legislation in Russia. NOM head Brian Brown even traveled to Russia to testify on behalf of anti-gay legislation and deem Putin a “lion of Christianity.”

Evangelical leaders such as pastor Rick Joyner have also spoken favorably of Russia in the past year, and Ken Ham--  an ardent creationist who erected both the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter in Kentucky--  praised Putin’s jabs at the West in a Facebook post in 2014.

“Putin is actually seeing what is described in Romans 1 happening before our eyes in the USA (and the West in general) and being exhibited before the world. We are in a massive spiritual battle--  I pray the church wakes up,” Ham said, referencing Putin’s rejection of LGBTQ rights.

Now let's move to a different part of this treachery, one that is more center-stage in today's political conversation-- the treasonous posture of the Trump family during the 2016 election. Yesterday Peter Stone and Greg Gordon, reporting for McClatchy, broke the explosive story about how Jared Kushner-in-law is being investigated by the House and Senate Intelligence committees and the Justice Department for helping to guide Russia’s sophisticated voter targeting and fake news attacks on Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Congressional and Justice Department investigators are focusing on whether Trump’s campaign pointed Russian cyber operatives to certain voting jurisdictions in key states-- areas where Trump’s digital team and Republican operatives were spotting unexpected weakness in voter support for Hillary Clinton, according to several people familiar with the parallel inquiries.

Also under scrutiny is the question of whether Trump associates or campaign aides had any role in assisting the Russians in publicly releasing thousands of emails, hacked from the accounts of top Democrats, at turning points in the presidential race, mainly through the London-based transparency web site WikiLeaks.

Rep. Adam Schiff of California, ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told McClatchy he wants to know whether Russia’s “fake or damaging news stories” were “coordinated in any way in terms of targeting or in terms of timing or in terms of any other measure … with the (Trump) campaign.”

By Election Day, an automated Kremlin cyberattack of unprecedented scale and sophistication had delivered critical and phony news about the Democratic presidential nominee to the Twitter and Facebook accounts of millions of voters. Some investigators suspect the Russians targeted voters in swing states, even in key precincts.

Russia’s operation used computer commands knowns as “bots” to collect and dramatically heighten the reach of negative or fabricated news about Clinton, including a story in the final days of the campaign accusing her of running a pedophile ring at a Washington pizzeria.

One source familiar with Justice's criminal probe said investigators doubt Russian operatives controlling the so-called robotic cyber commands that fetched and distributed fake news stories could have independently "known where to specifically target … to which high-impact states and districts in those states."

All of the sources spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation, led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, is confidential.

Top Democrats on the committees investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election have signaled the same.

Schiff said he wants the House panel to determine whether Trump aides helped Russia time its cyberattacks or target certain voters and whether there was “any exchange of information, any financial support funneled to organizations that were doing this kind of work.”

Trump son-in-law Kushner, now a senior adviser to the president and the only current White House aide known to be deemed a “person of interest” in the Justice Department investigation, appears to be under the microscope in several respects. His real estate finances and December meetings with Russia’s ambassador and the head of a sanctioned, state-controlled bank are also being examined.

Kushner’s “role as a possible cut-out or conduit for Moscow’s influence operations in the elections,” including his niche overseeing the digital operations, will be closely looked at, said the source knowledgeable about the Justice Department inquiry.

Kushner joined Donald Trump Jr. and Trump campaign Chairman Paul Manafort at a newly disclosed June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in New York.. The meeting, revealed by the New York Times, followed emails in which Trump Jr. was told the lawyer for the Russian government would provide him with incriminating information on Clinton and he replied “If it’s what you say I love it.”

That disclosure could only serve to heighten interest in whether there was digital collaboration.

Mike Carpenter, who in January left a senior Pentagon post where he worked on Russia matters, also has suspicions about collaboration between the campaign and Russia’s cyber operatives.

“There appears to have been significant cooperation between Russia’s online propaganda machine and individuals in the United States who were knowledgeable about where to target the disinformation,” he said, without naming any American suspects.

Trump has repeatedly repudiated or equivocated about the finding of four key intelligence agencies-- the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency and the Directorate of National Intelligence-- that Russian cyber operatives meddled with the U.S. election.

Last Friday, during their first face-to-face meeting, Trump questioned Putin about Russia’s role in the election meddling and Putin denied culpability, said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who was present. Trump then said the two countries should find ways to move forward in their relationship, Tillerson said.

A Russian official who was at the meeting said the two sides agreed to form a working group to address cybersecurity, including interference in other countries’ internal affairs. However, Trump backtracked Sunday night, saying in a tweet that he doesn’t believe such an effort can happen.


As more has been learned about the breadth of the Russian cyber onslaught, congressional Democrats have shown growing resolve to demand that the Republican-controlled intelligence committees fully investigate ways in which Trump associates may have conspired with the Russians.

Among other things, congressional investigators are looking into whether Russian operatives, who successfully penetrated voting registration systems in Illinois, Arizona and possibly other states, shared any of that data with the Trump campaign, according to a report in Time.

“I get the fact that the Russian intel services could figure out how to manipulate and use the bots,” Virginia Sen. Mark Warner told Pod Save America recently. “Whether they could know how to target states and levels of voters that the Democrats weren’t even aware (of) really raises some questions … How did they know to go to that level of detail in those kinds of jurisdictions?”

The Russians appear to have targeted women and African-Americans in two of the three decisive states, Wisconsin and Michigan, “where the Democrats were too brain dead to realize those states were even in play,” Warner said.

Twitter’s and Facebook’s search engines in those states were overwhelmed, he said, meaning they couldn’t discern fake news from real news.

“On your news feed, you suddenly got … ‘Hillary Clinton’s sick’ or ‘Hillary Clinton’s stealing money from the State Department,’” said Warner.


It started even before Trump locked up the nomination. Throughout the Republican primary elections in early 2016, Russia sent armies of bots carrying pro-Trump messages and deployed human “trolls” to comment in his favor on Internet stories and in social media, former FBI special agent Clint Watts told Congress weeks ago.

Watts, now a cybersecurity specialist with the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said the targets included former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham.

As Donald Trump was locking up the Republican presidential nomination in May 2016, a U.S. intelligence intercept picked up Russians discussing ways to spread news damaging to Clinton, two people familiar with the matter said.

No one has proved that Russia’s attack influenced the vote count in the Nov. 8 general election., but it wouldn’t have taken much to tip the results and change the course of history.

Clinton lost the decisive states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania by a combined 77,744 votes out of 13.9 million ballots cast. She could have won Michigan if 5,353 Trump voters had gone for her instead, Wisconsin if 11,375 votes had flipped to her and Pennsylvania if 22,147 Trump voters had instead picked her.

Kushner’s pivotal role in the Trump cyber effort was underscored by his hiring in 2015 of Brad Parscale, a Texas-based digital guru who previously had done work for the Trump Organization, said two GOP operatives familiar with the campaign.

Parscale’s company raked in about $90 million for work targeting many states with paid advertisements, social media messages and other cyber tools.

As the Trump campaign’s top digital director, Parscale ran much of the operation from his San Antonio offices. He is expected to appear before at least one of several congressional committees investigating aspects of Russia’s interference in the election.

Parscale could not be reached for comment.

CNN quoted him last month as dismissing suggestions that Russian-directed online bots would have been effective in swinging votes to Trump. He said the campaign did not find Twitter-- where those bots mainly functioned-- to be an effective tool.

Washington attorney Abbe Lowell, who was recently hired to be Kushner’s chief defense counsel and has “a reputation as a guy you hire if you're going to do battle with the government,” according to one former federal prosecutor, declined to comment on the Russia inquiries facing Kushner.

Shortly after his name arose in the inquiry, Kushner publicly volunteered to tell Congress about his Russia contacts and to answer questions about all issues for which he’s being scrutinized. Another of Kushner’s lawyers, Jamie Gorelick, says he will cooperate with both congressional and Justice Department investigations.

However, no interview date has been set, and Kushner’s attorneys decline to say whether he has produced records sought by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Smart money in DC indicates Kushner is far more likely to serve prison time before Trump, Jr. or Sr.

Russia, 2017: Greed, Money And Murder

"They chained him to a bed and 8 riot guards with rubber batons beat him to death... That's what they do in Russia."

Putin, the richest man on earth, is a murderous thug, who has his political opponents killed-- including journalists. So when he turned to the moron who he helped get into the White House and said, pointing menacingly to members of the press, "These are the ones who insulted you?" it shouldn't necessarily be taken as a joke. Trumpanzee, of course loved it.

Nick Kristof this morning: "It’s particularly problematic that Trump is continuing his crusade against the news media while abroad. All presidents think that they are covered unfairly, but Trump is venturing into new territory with his campaign against journalists."

The Richard Engel special about Putin's Russia (above)-- first aired last night on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show. She was right to give up her time-slot (#1 on cable) to Engel... and you'd be smart to watch it. Unless you don't want to understand who Putin is, what Russia is and why they helped install Trump.

In a column for CNBC last night, John Harwood wrote that foreign policy experts had urged the contemptible Trump "to sternly confront Putin over the negative thing that happened last year, when Russia conducted a cyber-attack on Democratic targets to help elect him. But diplomats from both countries made clear afterward that Trump had not."

Trump's history in business and politics suggests the simplest of explanations: Russia helped him. And that reality outweighs more abstract notions about U.S. institutions and security interests that veterans of past administrations fault him for not defending.

Trump has explained his transactional philosophy in both the positive and the negative. If someone hits him, he likes to say, he hits back "10 times harder."

He reciprocates assistance just the same. As he remarked of Putin last year, "If he says great things about me, I'm going to say great things about him."

He praised television executive Jeff Zucker, who gave him a national platform with "The Apprentice," then blasted him as a failure over CNN's coverage. He ripped 2016 primary opponents Ted Cruz, Ben Carson and Marco Rubio in excruciatingly personal terms, then praised them after they endorsed him.

He called Paul Ryan "weak and ineffective" in response to criticism, then likened him to "fine wine" as they embarked on a shared agenda. Desperate for a victory on major legislation, Trump is now pressing for enactment of a health-care bill that would impose hardship on the white working class voters who powered his campaign.

That history foreshadowed the disappointment of those who wanted Trump to challenge Putin with assertions of wrongdoing and potential consequences. "It is not enough to agree to disagree," said Richard Haass, a foreign policy aide in both Bush administrations.

"He does not have grand theories or ideas," explained Danielle Pletka, a foreign policy specialist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. "Insofar as someone is useful to him they are fine. Insofar as they interfere, they are bad."

Whether Trump's stance stems from a deeper source than surface-level back-scratching is the subject of investigations by Congressional committees and special counsel Robert Mueller. They are examining both financial transactions and contacts involving Russians and Trump associates.

But the administration's actions, like Trump's warm words for Putin on Friday, give no reason to expect a shift in tone. The administration has declined to embrace Senate-passed legislation stiffening sanctions on Russia, and is discussing the possibility of returning Russian facilities seized by the Obama administration as punishment for interfering in the election.

"With Trump doing nothing, he's enabling Putin," said Juliette Kayyem, a former Obama administration security official who teaches at Harvard's Kennedy School. "Trump wants Putin's help in 2020. Just say it directly. It's so obvious."

Below is the whole Maddow show which is embedded here not for her superfluous intro but for one of the scariest parts of the report-- the part about Christian right Trumpists in America and their adherence to Russia-- at around the 38 minute mark. These are traitors to the U.S.-- a fifth column-- and should be dealt with appropriately... and quickly. For real.