Trump = Treason... And "Later Can't Mean Never"

Rick Wilson is a GOP strategist and consultant who ran George W. Bush's campaign in Florida and moved to NYC to run Giuliani's mayoral campaign. He's probably best known now as an inveterate Trump-hater on cable TV. He's also author of the best-selling Everything Trump Touches Dies. Yesterday the Daily Beast published a piece by Wilson, Every Member of Team Trump Is Now Enabling Treason. "When," wrote Wilson, "Donald Trump was asked Wednesday by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos if he’d accept intelligence and campaign help from a foreign power, he blew up Washington and gave us a sharp insight into the true Trump. This was no fifth-dimensional chess move; it was the commander in chief saying the quiet, treasonous part out loud. Set aside that accepting such help is illegal—after all, the laws are for the little people in Trump’s Great America-- it was Peak Trump."

Talking about Large Adult Son Don Jr. testifying before the Senate again about his infamous Trump Tower meeting with a Russian emissary promising dirt on Hillary Clinton (“If it’s what you say, I love it!”), Trump replied:

“I think I’d take it.”

In Trump speak, that was, “Please send Biden oppo to Donnie@StableGenius.com asap!!” Rest assured, Don’s not calling the FBI, so bring it on!

Mr. “No Collusion” on Wednesday welcomed collusion with and aid from any and all hostile foreign powers to ensure his re-election in 2020. Trump invited all comers to fuck America, good and hard, if it means he gets the goods-- again, I may point out-- on his Democratic opponent.

Trump proved Wednesday exactly what we’ve known about him for quite some time-- he combines treachery, stupidity, and villainy in equal measure. After his disgusting performance in the Oval Office on Wednesday, I’d call Trump a political whore for foreign powers, but that would give whores a bad name.

This is nothing new. Let’s not forget, Trump requested this kind of help in 2016. It wasn’t a joke. It wasn’t “Trump being Trump.” It was Trump on live television soliciting Russian intelligence service help in defeating Hillary. He received that help through the GRU’s subsidiary WikiLeaks within hours of his ask.

All Vladimir Putin has received in return is an American president who lets the Russian leader run wild, who sides with a former KGB officer over American intelligence services at every turn, and who displays utter obeisance to the Russian leader. Kak skazat’, “Return on investment?”

We live in a world of counterfactuals, hypotheticals, and more tu quoque scenarios than a reasonable person can process. That said, I have to beg my Republican friends to imagine-- just for a moment-- what you’d be doing if Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama said they would accept the help of a foreign power in a campaign and not report it to the FBI.

I’ll tell you what you’d do: You’d lose your fucking shit.

You’d spurt blood from your goddamn eyes.

You’d corner the market on guillotine, tumbrel, and pitchfork stocks. A gibbet would appear in Lafayette Park.

Fox News producers and on-air talent would grind out weeks of videos until they collapsed, as sick and exhausted as they keep saying Trump’s opponents must be. They’d work like galley slaves, a nearly naked Lou Dobbs beating a massive kettle drum to keep them producing screeching agitporn.

Entire forests would be leveled and pulped to write the condemnatory articles and books. The lights would dim on the Eastern Seaboard, and nuclear power plants would be brought online to support the massive surge of electricity needed to power a hundred thousand new servers hosting the hundred million articles and videos you’d make condemning this outrageous act.

You’d demand not only impeachment, but also drawing, quartering, and the wholesale razing of the villages of everyone involved. You’d call anyone else doing this a traitor, a villain, and the worst person ever to hold the office of president.

But we all know what’s going to happen to Trump, don’t we? It’s already happening:

Not a goddamned thing.

A few Republicans in the Senate will-- ever so briefly-- furrow their brows. Some will issue anodyne comments that if you squint and look really closely could be vaguely suggestive of something in the general vicinity of an elliptical criticism of Trump’s invitation to foreign governments to fuck us.

In the House, the Clown Caucus will run around with their dicks out, as per normal, and bleat about Jim Comey or Chris Steele or Bruce Ohr or Peter Strzok or whatever imaginary Deep State conspiracy they’re trying to froth into existence today. They’ll race to Fox shows like Bonfire of the Hannity to bellow about witch hunts and reap millions from the boob donors on their email lists: Help me fight the Deep State and protect President Trump from Soros-Clinton-Hussein Obama Witch Hunt Sharia Lesbianism.

Bill Barr’s Trump Family Legal Defense and Obstruction Center will do exactly fuck-all. Nothing, exactly nothing will be said or done about this outrage. A real attorney general would demand a private meeting in the Oval Office and would give President Fuckwit both barrels. A real attorney general would nut-punch a president who so obviously invites foreign intelligence services to compromise the so-called leader of the free world. Bill Barr is not a real attorney general. He is a family retainer for Trump Inc., a small man in a big job without the moral compass or legal sensibility God gave the common rat.

Trump also threw Christopher Wray under the bus Wednesday, spitting “The FBI director is wrong” for saying a person should call the FBI if a foreign government offers them information intended to sway our elections. But Wray won’t quit. Neither will Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats or CIA Director Gina Haspel. No one will.

They tell themselves a pretty lie that their replacements will be worse and that they’re the last ones standing between Trump, compromise, and chaos.

They’re wrong. Every one of them is now an enabler at best or a co-conspirator at worst. These are fearful, honorless men and women serving the most honorless man ever to besmirch the office of the president.

What is even more mind-boggling is that Trump uttered this line of utterly treasonous bile while sitting behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.

Trump solicited foreign help while he sat behind the desk where Obama was briefed on the raid that would capture and kill Osama bin Laden. The desk where George W. Bush spoke to the nation in the hours after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.

It was the desk where George Herbert Walker Bush helped end the Cold War without firing a shot and where Reagan plotted the end of Soviet communism.

It was where JFK faced down Castro and Khrushchev as they tried to install nuclear weapons 90 miles south of Miami.

Trump’s ichor, his slimy amorality, his reek of greed and treason is an insult to the work, legacy, and memory of the men of both political parties who put America before their own egos, their own political fortunes. The sense of anger, outrage, and disgust on the part of Americans with the slightest sense of conscience is palpable and justified. That is directed not only at Trump but all those who serve and enable him, and dare call that public service.

Trump took an oath-- the most sacred oath in our nation. You know it: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

On Wednesday, Trump confirmed for the world that the oath of office is like every other oath he’s ever sworn, every wedding vow and promise he’s made, and every contract he’s ever signed. Trump views it-- and us-- as purely contingent, solely about his personal (and now) political benefit.

It holds up only so long as he’s getting laid or getting paid.

John Oliver was never a Republican strategist or consultant. The night before last he explained on his show why he thinks impeachment is now the inevitable way to go. I hope Pelosi and Hoyer watched that HBO show-- or that someone suggests to them, what I'm suggesting to you: Watch:

At The Nexus Of America's Worst Culture Of Corruption: Trumpy-the-Clown And His Family

Earlier today we saw how vulnerable the U.S. is to China because of the culture of corruption that is at the center of the Trump Regime's DNA-- and that especially includes his family. Not just includes, features! This morning Eric Lipton at the NY Times reported on the double-edged sword of Trumpy-the-Clown family members Ivanka and Kushner-in-law working at the White House. "[T]he financial disclosure report released late Friday for Mr. Kushner," wrote Lipton, "which shows that he and his wife still benefit financially from a real estate and investment empire worth as much as $740 million, makes clear that this most powerful Washington couple is walking on perilous legal and ethical ground, according to several prominent experts on the subject."

Unlike Mr. Trump, who is exempt from conflict of interest laws, both Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump-- who took a formal White House position this past week-- are forbidden under federal criminal and civil law to take any action that might benefit their particular financial holdings.

“Donald Trump can evade legal responsibility even if the conflicts of interest remain,” said Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal nonprofit group. “His daughter and son-in-law don’t have that escape hatch.”

Mr. Kushner did resign from more than 200 positions in the partnerships and limited liability companies that make up the family-run multibillion-dollar real estate business. But the financial disclosure report shows that Mr. Kushner will remain a beneficiary of most of those same entities.

...[R]eal estate projects like the Kushner Companies’ deals have become a magnet for opaque foreign money — often from parts of the world that present thorny policy questions, such as China, where Mr. Kushner’s company has actively sought investors, as well as the Middle East and Russia. As part of his exceptionally broad portfolio in the White House, Mr. Kushner has been a crucial figure in arranging the visit of the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, on Thursday in Florida.

The mystery behind many real estate investments involving foreigners prompted the Treasury Department last year to push for additional disclosures as a way to combat money laundering.

While Mr. Kushner may face a potential ethical minefield, the disclosure form makes it difficult to determine exactly where those mines might be situated. The form, which runs 54 pages and lists hundreds of entities, reveals few details about the underlying investments that make up the Kushner empire, such as the addresses of buildings, sources of financing and names of partners.

John Pudner, a conservative who has helped elect Tea Party candidates to Congress and now runs a nonprofit group called Take Back Our Republic, said that Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump, if they wanted to serve in the White House, would have been better off if they had taken the difficult step of liquidating their holdings.

“A win-win for the president’s family and everyone else is if there were no question anytime a decision is made that it’s being done for the good of the country,” he said.

...The federal ethics regulations formally prohibit federal employees from being involved in any “particular matter that will have a direct effect on a financial interest, if there is a close causal link between any decision or action to be taken in the matter and any expected effect of the matter on the financial interest.”

But Mr. Painter said that most administrations had interpreted the law more broadly, so that officials who own stakes in individual industries do not participate in even broad policy decisions affecting that sector, unless they seek a formal ethics waiver, as certain officials did during the first George Bush administration, given that they owned energy industry stocks and were participating in the decision to enter the war against Iraq over its invasion of Kuwait.

Federal employees, under ethics rules that Mr. Trump imposed, are also prohibited, for at least two years after they arrive in the government, from working on particular matters that involve former employers or clients, even if these actions do not directly financially benefit the federal employee.

The disclosures by Mr. Kushner and other White House officials released on Friday demonstrate just how complicated it is going to be to police these rules, given the vast and extremely complex financial assets not only within the Trump family but also among dozens of aides they have selected.

Random Musings on 2010 (5)

And some people said they couldn't ever replace Larry King! Say hello to Piers Morgan (see no. 2).

by Noah

1. Back in September, Fox’s Monica Crowley, former Nixon PR flak, subbing for Bill O’Lie-ley, interviewed Scooter Libby and called the investigation of his role in exposing Valerie Plame an outrageous “ordeal” and went on to say that Libby deserved a pardon and -- get this -- called him a class act! Hell, all he did was out a CIA agent and her network, many of whom are probably missing by now, at the least. Had Libby done what he did during World War II, he would have ended up swinging from a gallows in a penitentiary yard. Funny how it’s conservatives who yap about the degradation of our country’s “moral fiber” and things like that. I guess at Fox treason in the service of greed and politics is no vice.

2. CNN has announced, without a trace of shame, that British tabloid veteran and America’s Got Talent panelist Piers Morgan is the replacement for Bush Crime Family groupie Larry King, thus answering the question “Can it get any worse?” If they wanted to go the lowbrow, vulgar TMZ-paparazzi route, why didn’t they just get Jerry Springer? Personally, I’d rather see Simon Cowell interview today’s politicians and celebs. Or me. I’d make sure to always have a hatchet at the ready.

CNN might do better if it just ran Larry King’s reruns. In reality, watching CNN is like watching a spycam and waiting for something to happen. I gave up in 2004.

3. Would you like eggs with that? Prince Charles, “The Man Who Would Be Tampon” ("I want to be reincarnated as your tampon," he's been quoted as saying to his better half), and his Mrs. Prince went out for a night on the town in the Queen’s Jubilee Rolls. Here, take the keys! The Roller got splattered with paint and eggs. Some of the windows were broken, and Mrs. Prince got poked with a stick, while at least one rioter repeatedly yelled, “Off with their heads.” Didn’t Mummy warn them not to go downtown?

Naturally, the old folks and the upper crust got all in a tizzy about the incident. As a measure of how genteel and polite British youth are, there was a time in England when the Prince would have met a far worse fate.

I bet his dad didn’t even make him wash the car when he got home. Spoiled, I tell you! Spoiled brat!

4. The French government, under rightist Nicolas Sarkozy, wants to raise the retirement age in France two years. In France, you've been able to retire as early as age 60, with a real pension and real health care, if you earn enough work credits over, say, 40 years. Now it would be 62. This would also increase the number of people in the workforce. More people would be competing for what is only a finite number of jobs, which would, it almost goes without saying, lower individual wages. All part of the plan, lower wages and fewer pensions monies disbursed.

Next, due to wages being driven down, tax revenues coming into the French treasury go down. The result? Social services and benefits go out the window. You work all those years, and you’re left holding a bag that has a great big hole in it. You can almost hear the laughter. These government clowns and pranksters! “You’re old. Die now!” Not even a "please."

See if this all sounds familiar when President Obama, his Alan Simpson-led Catfood Commission, and the entire Republican Party talk about raising the retirement age in our country by not two but five years! Nice folks we have in Washington, eh? As I said, you can almost hear the laughter.

In France, they have general strikes. In England, students riot and throw eggs. Here in the U.S., everyone is too busy watching crap “reality shows” and things like American Idol while eating junk food and getting too damn obese to get up off the couch and out into the streets to throw some eggs, for starters.

5. Tiger Woods: The media always offers up as an excuse for the lack of investigative journalism that they don’t have the staff and money to look into what far more serious chicanery politicians and corporate types and bankers are up to, but when it comes to sports figures and celebrities, and their sex lives, the checkbook is wide open and we get assaulted with things like months of Tiger’s idiocy. If the media spent a third as much on uncovering and informing the public on what real ne’er-do-wells like those in Congress, Wall Street, and our corporate boardrooms are up to, we’d all be better off -- and many of them would be in prison for life.

6. Imagine Glenn Beck as a nutbag scoutmaster leading his troupers deeper and deeper into the dark woods, so deep that they’ll never be able to find their way out.

7. Republicans like to consider government services socialism. Their followers belch on about how they don’t want their taxpayer dollars benefiting anyone else. It’s all about the greed and selfishness. But they have no problem saying, “Hands off my Medicare," and they have no problem collecting Social Security. They also have no problem driving on interstate highways or calling the police or local fire department, all of which are funded by taxes somewhere along the line. So what happens when tax revenues go down so much that your local town asks you to pay a fee if you want fire department service? You have to pay the money one way or the other if you want the local FD to put out a fire in your house.


Recently in Tennessee a family and their local fire department watched their home burn to the ground because the additional charge had not been paid. This family lost their four pets and everything else in their house.

What happens when a whole block or town burns to the ground due to Republican greed and wealth redistribution? Where does the money go? Not for local education, that’s for sure. New York tried it this way back in the 1700s, a time the Repugs would like to take us back to. What happened then? The whole city burned and burned and burned. Such a policy may go into effect in your town, but it won’t be changed until that local mansion on the hill complete with its stolen art collection and all the Republican master’s closet full of high heels are reduced to ashes.

8. One of my favorite quotes of the year came from Stephanie Miller:

“Rich people pay Fox people to get middle class people to blame poor people.”

9. You can’t make this stuff up, but Fox does. The L.A. jetpacks for cops story was a case in point. Sourcing the Weekly World News supermarket tabloid, Fox ran all the way with a story about the city of Los Angeles buying $1 billion worth of jetpacks for its police, fire department, and emergency services people. Nothing seemed odd about this story to the brainectomy patients at Fox & Friends. Only when a couple of callers called in to tell them the story was a joke did they correct themselves. One has to wonder who hired these morons. Could they have even filled out applications?

It all reminds me of Delaware’s Christine O’Donnell’s (a Fox favorite) claim that the government was making mice with “fully functioning human brains.” Apparently, though, someone is doing the opposite and making humans with fully functioning mouse brains, then giving them jobs at Fox.

Then there was the “Obama Is Cracking Up” story. This was a great example of the inmates in the asylum accusing the sane people of insanity. In this case, Fox didn’t make it up; they just borrowed someone else's made-up news because they thought it nicely fit their wackoid agenda. Fox Nation was running with a story from The Onion, the satirical paper-website, about President Obama cracking up and sending out a rambling 75,000-word e-mail to the entire nation. The article even included a bit about the e-mail being so large, at 27 megabytes, that it couldn’t fit in the mailboxes of millions of Americans. No matter to Fox. If you want to believe something, just believe it. And we wonder where Teabaggers learned their approach to life in these times.

Let’s not forget Fox’s annual “War on Christmas” insanity. This year even the NBA was an evildoing anti-Christmas enemy to those who live in Foxworld. Why? It seems the NBA had six games scheduled on Christmas Day. Never mind that they've had games on Christmas Day since the 1950s.

Are firefighters in Foxworld supposed to stay home too, or just say, “Call back tomorrow”? I didn’t see Fox go off the air on Christmas, so does that make them anti-Christmas too? Does all of this indicate that right-wing loons will soon start consuming themselves? Sooner or later your hate has to run out of targets, when you’ve gone after everybody and everything under the sun, doesn’t it? What’s left when you only have yourselves to hate?

I’m thinking of starting a “Guns for Fox” day. My organization will collect guns and deliver them to Fox so that they can be ready when they start accusing each other of being part of the “War on Christmas.” Hey, I’m just being compassionate.

10. What’s in a campaign promise? During the 2010 campaign, Repugs pledged to ban earmarks. In a prime case of Washington follow-through, the new compromise tax bill contains $8 billion in them. Check the link to see some of the fabulous earmarks. Hey, what’s $8 billion? Also, five of the ten points in the latest Republican “Pledge to America” are violated by provisions in the tax compromise bill.

11. Finally, there’s this thought on President Obama. He might as well join the Republican Party at this point. He clearly wants to do in Net Neutrality and Social Security, and it might be nice to see the Republicans so conflicted about having to do a 180 on their 24-hour hate speech, run a black dude for prez, etc. That’s why it would never happen, of course, but the idea of seeing assclowns like Limbaugh and Hannity et al. simply explode would warm my heart.

NOAH'S YEAR 2010 IN REVIEW

10 Random Musings (1)
2010, Looking Back: To Republicans, It Was So Much More Than Just a Speech to Kids
Random Musings on 2010 (2)
Random Musings on 2010 (3)
Random Musings on 2010 (4)

Republicans in Their Own Words --

Quotations of a Party on Crack, 2010 Version
Part 1, The Unemployed
Part 2, When Cousins Marry

And don't forget 2009's 12 Days of Christmas Scorn.

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WHY ARE AMERICANS SO WELL INFORMED?

The Larry King Show is one of the most widely watched programs on cable TV. Here's an example of Larry doing his best to make sure Americans have lots of information about the world's biggest democracy:

Larry King: "We only have 30 seconds. What was India like?"
Judge Judy: "India was poor, depressing to see the amount of poverty..."
King: "Thank you, doll"

If you want to watch the show and learn all about Judge Judy's opinions on Dog the Bounty Hunter, Britney Spears, Internet freaks and nuts, the horrors of texting, the fact that neither she nor Larry has ever turned on a hated computer, teachers having sex with students, Kanye West's mother and the Screen Writers strike, here you go.