Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

"Combed my hair in a thousand ways, but I came out lookin' just the same."

Even if we didn't know all the other stuff, including the totally expected revelations about Russia's latest attack on America that came out last week and the things that will come out in the future, this picture of Donald Trump with his Campaign Manager and top speech writer is damning. It shows us the truth of the Trump-Putin relationship just like Trump's obsequious performance during the infamous Helsinki puppet show did. It's all in the body language, the facial expression, and the look in our Manchurian President's eyes. Trump looks so obedient that his master doesn't even need a leash and a collar, and his master knows it. So many bought and paid for republican $enators, from Moscow Mitch on down, look the same. And yet, the only sound we can hear in response is the sound of America gently snoring.

Are Trump And The GOP Leaving The U.S. Defenseless?

In late October-- and again last week-- Trump had Senate Republicans kill 3 election security bills by Mark Warner (to require campaign officials to report contacts with foreign nationals who are trying to make donations or coordinate with the campaign to the FEC and FBI), Amy Klobuchar (to require campaigns to report "illicit offers" of election assistance from foreign governments or individuals to both the FBI and the FEC and to take steps to ensure that political ads on social media are subject to the same rules as ads on TV and radio) and Ron Wyden (to authorize more funding for the Election Assistance Commission, including language that would ban voting machines from being connected to the internet and being produced in foreign countries). Crackpot Trumpist from a single-party state, Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) blocked each one for McConnell and Trump.

Why would Blackburn and the Senate Republicans insist of keeping the back door to our elections open for our country's enemies? Good question but I think Trump extremists like Blackburn are more about protecting Trump than protecting our country, let alone a concept that is so alien to them like democracy. Trump is gutting the intel capacity of the country-- a big bonus for the support Putin has given, and is still giving, him electorally. And the GOP seems to be revealing in it-- all of them (not just the clinically insane ones like Blackburn).

Utah Congressman Chris Stewart (R) would have been a standard choice for director of national intelligence and Trump was leaning in that direction. But someone showed Trump a video of Stewart calling Trump a fascist and stating flatly that he is our Mussolini. He told a group of students at the Hinckley Institute of Politics that "The world is standing on the edge of a knife and it is a very dangerous time... If some of you are Donald Trump supporters, we see the world differently, because I can't imagine what someone is thinking... Donald Trump does not represent Republican ideals, he is our Mussolini. Donald Trump's approach is-- I am just going to do it."

Trump felt blindsided when he learned belatedly that intelligence officials briefed House lawmakers that Russia is continuing to interfere in U.S. elections-- and that Democrats elicited their view that the Russians favor Trump’s re-election, according to people familiar with the situation.

Trump blamed Joseph Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, for the episode and the failure to inform him. On Wednesday, the president announced that he was replacing Maguire, a veteran intelligence official, with Ric Grenell, the U.S. ambassador to Germany and a staunch Trump supporter.

The chain of events underscores the continued tensions between Trump and intelligence officials that he and his supporters often depict as part of a “deep state” undermining his presidency.

The classified briefing on Feb. 13 was delivered by Shelby Pierson, the intelligence official charged with monitoring issues related to election security. Among those attending were Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who led the House Democrats who impeached Trump, and the panel’s top Republican, Representative Devin Nunes of California.

In response to questions from Democrats, lawmakers were told that Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, prefer Trump over his Democratic challengers and is still actively interfering in this year’s election, according to the people. But little information has emerged on any specific or ongoing interference by Russia detailed in the briefing last week.

...Schiff tweeted that “we count on the intelligence community to inform Congress of any threat of foreign interference in our elections.” At the same time, Schiff seemed to hedge on what information, exactly, had been provided to him and other House members. “If reports are true and the President is interfering with that, he is again jeopardizing our efforts to stop foreign meddling,” Schiff said.

Democrats have blasted Trump for replacing Maguire with Grenell, who has little experience in intelligence-gathering or analysis, and several key Republicans have remained silent on the decision.

“By firing Acting DNI Maguire because his staff provided the candid conclusions of the Intelligence Community to Congress regarding Russian meddling in the 2020 Presidential election, the President is not only refusing to defend against foreign interference, he’s inviting it,” House Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi complained in a statement.

On Friday, Maguire’s deputy Andrew Hallman said he was stepping down as the DNI’s principal executive, offering praise for his former boss, who he called a “lifelong patriot and public servant.”

A phrase like "lifelong patriot and public servant" is to Republican of the Trumpist stripe like waving a red flag in front of a bull. John Parkinson reported for ABC News that Trump is trying to reshape the intelligence community-- long the target of his ire-- [but that] his search for a permanent director of national intelligence is proving to be a formidable challenge-- even as he claimed Friday he had 'four great candidates' and called reports Russia is helping his reelection a Democratic 'misinformation campaign.' Although Trump made a point of telling reporters on Air Force One Thursday that he was considering Rep. Doug Collins, one of the president’s leading defenders during the House impeachment inquiry, the Georgia Republican quickly declared Friday that he’s not interested in the nomination. 'This is not a job that’s of interest to me, and it’s not one that I’d accept,' Collins, who is running in a competitive primary for U.S. Senate, said on Fox Business. Trump has had substantial difficulty identifying a confirmable nominee since former DNI Dan Coats resigned Aug. 15, settling instead on two acting directors who did not require Senate confirmation, avoiding tough questions."

People are starting to worry he may add the position to Jared Kushner-in-law's portfolio of 57 positions. Grenell, who has done a miserable job as Ambassador to Germany-- and who is keeping that job as well-- has no experience whatsoever working in Intelligence.

Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden expressed doubt that Grenell meets the DNI’s basic job requirements for expertise in intelligence-- even if he’s only on the job in an “acting” capacity.

“If there was any doubt that Donald Trump values unquestioning obedience over the safety of the American people, this appointment settles the question,” Wyden said. “Senators who take their oath of office seriously must oppose Trump's practice of dodging Senate confirmation practices to place unqualified individuals into highly sensitive national security posts.”

CNN: "It's happening again. America is blundering into a new Russia election-meddling hall of mirrors that's already doing Moscow's work: tearing fresh political divides and threatening to again tarnish democracy's most sacred moment, a national election. Revelations Thursday about intelligence assessments that Russia has launched a new interference effort to help reelect Donald Trump-- and the President's furious reaction-- mark the return of a recurring nightmare for the country just nine months before the presidential election. Trump was informed that the House Intelligence Committee was told of the Russian intelligence operation last week by Rep. Devin Nunes, his Republican ally from California and was frustrated that Democrats would be able to use the information against him, a source told CNN. A more conventional reaction by the commander-in-chief given his institutional responsibilities might be anger that again a foreign power was trying to manipulate US politics-- however it might affect his own fortunes."

Yesterday, Wired published a piece by Garrett Graff, How Trump Hollowed Out U.S. National Security. "By the end of the day," he began, "almost all of the roles created after 9/11 literally to prevent the next 9/11 will be either vacant or lack permanent appointees. While vacancies and acting officials have become commonplace in this administration, the moves by President Donald Trump this week represent a troubling and potentially profound new danger to the country. There will soon be no Senate-confirmed director of the National Counterterrorism Center, director of national intelligence, principal deputy director of national intelligence, homeland security secretary, deputy homeland security secretary, nor leaders of any of the three main border security and immigration agencies. Across the government, nearly 100,000 federal law enforcement agents, officers, and personnel are working today without permanent agency leaders, from Customs and Border Protection and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement to the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. All the posts, and many more top security jobs, are unfilled or staffed with leaders who have not been confirmed by the Senate. Trump has done an end-around, installing loyalists without subjecting them to legally mandated vetting and approval by Congress."

And the Intelligence agencies are far from the only government departments dealing with national security that Trump has managed to screw up and leave in shambles. Other departments without personnel in crucial positions include the Justice Department, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon. Worst president ever? Oh yeah. I don't even want to think about the consequences of a full-blown coronavirus outbreak here, with Trump and his incompetent greed-driven crime family in charge!

In a NY Times report early this morning, Michael Crowley and David Sanger outlined a new role for the NSC-- not advising the president, but defending the illegitimate and insane "president." The head guy, Robert O'Brien, could just as well be a janitor, a job he's probably better suited for anyway. When he "convenes meetings with top National Security Council officials at the White House, he sometimes opens by distributing printouts of Mr. Trump’s latest tweets on the subject at hand. The gesture amounts to an implicit challenge for those present. Their job is to find ways of justifying, enacting or explaining Mr. Trump’s policy, not to advise the president on what it should be. That is the reverse of what the National Security Council was created to do at the Cold War’s dawn-- to inform and advise the president on national security decisions. But under Mr. O’Brien, the White House’s hostage negotiator when Mr. Trump chose him to succeed John R. Bolton in September, that dynamic has often been turned on its head... [D]eveloping policy is not really Mr. O’Brien’s mission. In the fourth year of his presidency and in his fourth national security adviser, Mr. Trump has finally gotten what he wants-- a loyalist who enables his ideas instead of challenging them."

As Mr. O’Brien has whittled down the council he manages, declaring it was all about efficiency, the president has made little effort to disguise his appetite for purging his own government. “DRAIN THE SWAMP!” he tweeted last week, adding: “We want bad people out of our government.”

The same day, Mr. Trump said in a radio interview that he may drastically limit how many national security officials can listen in on his calls with foreign leaders, breaking from decades of White House procedure. “I may end the practice entirely,” he said.

Such commentary “creates the clear impression that this is about retribution, not reform,” said Senator Christopher S. Murphy, a Democratic member of the Foreign Relations Committee.

But Mr. Murphy questioned how much the National Security Council’s structure really matters under a president who often rejects professional advice in making impulsive policy decisions. “It’s not terribly clear what the N.S.C. has been doing for the last three years,” he said. “The N.S.C.’s function now seems to be war-gaming for potential presidential tweets instead of developing policy recommendations for presidential decision-making.”

Mr. Trump is unlikely to mind that. After more than three years in office, he feels more confident than ever in his management of national security, aides say, especially after some of his major decisions-- including the killing of the Iranian commander Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani-- failed to elicit the disastrous consequences many experts predicted.

Mr. O’Brien’s willingness to trim the National Security Council, Mr. Gans said, “says something about Trump’s Washington.”

“The national security adviser should have the strongest staff possible,” he continued. “But it seems like Robert O’Brien is focused more on that audience of one-- and making sure that Donald Trump is happy.”

In a Washington Post OpEd today, Admiral William McRaven (retired)-- U.S. special forces commander from 2011 to 2014 (think 2011 SEAL raid that killed bin Laden)--wrote that "As Americans, we should be frightened-- deeply afraid for the future of the nation. When good men and women can’t speak the truth, when facts are inconvenient, when integrity and character no longer matter, when presidential ego and self-preservation are more important than national security-- then there is nothing left to stop the triumph of evil. He was referring to the swampy, proto-fascist Trumpist regime, of course. "Over the course of the past three years, I have watched good men and women, friends of mine, come and go in the Trump administration-- all trying to do something-- all trying to do their best... But, of course, in this administration, good men and women don't last long."

How Much Of The GOP Is Going Along With The Trump-McConnell Plan To Leave U.S. Elections Unprotected From Foreign Interference?

A couple of weeks ago we looked at what the group Republicans for the Rule of Law is and how they are targeting the pro-Putin agenda of #MoscowMitch. Tomorrow they will start running 30-second spots on Fox & Friends-- as well as on Fox News SundayM, on Meet the Press and in Kentucky, Oklahoma, Florida, Missouri and South Carolina. The ads target McConnell and 4 of his Senate allies: Marco Rubio (R-FL), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and James Lankford (R-OK).

The goal in airing ads nationally and in the home states of the 5 Republican senators is to increase pressure on Moscow Mitch to stop blocking election security legislation and allow votes in the Senate. Now, if only the budget were $4 million instead of $400,000, they might even persuade some of these senators to do something! The ad up top is the one that will run in Florida and this is the South Carolina ad:

The board of Republicans for the Rule of Law includes William Kristol, which is why they usually sound exactly like the Bullwark website he edits, Mona Charen, Linda Chavez, former New Jersey Gov. Christy Todd Whitman, former Congressman Bob Inglis (R-SC), Jennifer Horn (former chair of the New Hampshire Republican Party), Sarah Longwell (past national chair of the Long Cabin Republicans), prominent dermatologist Andy Zwick, and Chris Gagin, former chair of the Belmont County (Ohio) Republican Party chair, who resigned over Trump's assessing incident with Putin in Helsinki.

These two are the original spots the group put together to turn up the heat on Moscow Mitch-- the only one of the targeted Republicans facing a live or die election challenge next year, and widely considered the main culprit in keeping the backdoor to the American election system open to the Russians:

There Is No Doubt The Russians Are At It Again-- And There Is No Doubt Trump Is Mentally Incapable Of Dealing With That

Julian Barnes and Adam Goldman, reporting for the NY Times Friday-- FBI Warns of Russian Interference in 2020 Race and Boosts Counterintelligence Operations-- wrote that FBI director Wray warned about Russia’s continued meddling in American elections, calling it a 'significant counterintelligence threat.' The bureau has shifted additional agents and analysts to shore up defenses against foreign interference, according to a senior F.B.I. official." Trump might not be concerned but there are at least some in his administration who have "come to see that Russia’s influence operations have morphed into a persistent threat. The F.B.I., the intelligence agencies and the Department of Homeland Security have made permanent the task forces they created to confront 2018 midterm election interference, senior American national security officials said." Didn't anyone watch all those seasons of The Americans? That warning about how many foreign operatives are living in America today before The Enemy Within?

“We recognize that our adversaries are going to keep adapting and upping their game,” Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, said Friday in a speech in Washington, citing the presence of Russian intelligence officers in the United States and the Kremlin’s record of malign influence operations.

“So we are very much viewing 2018 as just kind of a dress rehearsal for the big show in 2020,” he said.

Mr. Wray’s warnings came after the report by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, laid out in hundreds of pages of detail the interference and influence campaign carried out by Russian operatives in the 2016 election.

While American officials have promised to continue to try to counter, block and weaken the Russian intelligence operations, they have complained of a lack of high-level coordination. President Trump has little interest or patience for hearing about such warnings, officials have said.

Mr. Trump views any discussion of future Russian interference as effectively questioning the legitimacy of his 2016 victory, prompting senior officials to head off discussions with him. Earlier this year, the White House chief of staff told Kirstjen Nielsen, then the homeland security secretary, not to raise the threat of new forms of Russian interference with Mr. Trump, current and former senior administration officials have said.

But outside of meetings with Mr. Trump, intelligence officials have continued to raise alarms. Officials including both Mr. Wray and Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, have said Russia has aimed its influence campaigns at undermining faith in American democracy.

“What has pretty much continued unabated is the use of social media, fake news, propaganda, false personas, etc. to spin us up, pit us against each other, to sow divisiveness and discord, to undermine America’s faith in democracy,” Mr. Wray said on Friday. “That is not just an election-cycle threat. It is pretty much a 365-day-a-year threat.”

In response to growing threats from Russia and other adversaries, the F.B.I. recently moved nearly 40 agents and analysts to the counterintelligence division, the senior bureau official said in an interview earlier this month. Many of the agents will work on the Foreign Influence Task Force, a group of cyber, counterintelligence and criminal experts. Initially formed on a temporary basis before the midterm elections, officials have made the task force permanent.

The Department of Homeland Security made its midterm election task forces permanent, folding them into an election security initiative at their National Risk Management Center. The National Security Agency and the United States Cyber Command have also expanded and made permanent their joint task force aimed at identifying, and stopping, Russian malign influence, officials said.

Intelligence officials have said Russia has kept up its interference operations since the 2016 election, continuing through the midterms and most likely to intensify during the next presidential campaign-- albeit with new tactics.

Some intelligence officials believe Russia intends to raise questions in the aftermath of future elections about irregularities or purported fraud to undermine faith in the result. During the midterm elections, Cyber Command conducted an operation to temporarily take offline the most prominent Russian troll farm to keep its operatives from mounting a disinformation operation during voting or vote counting.

Mr. Trump’s continued hostility toward discussing Moscow’s malign influence campaigns, as well as his broader attitude toward Mr. Putin and Russia, puzzles many national security experts.

“The way Trump spoke about U.S. foreign policy, with a particular focus on Russia, NATO and some other cardinal aspects of U.S. foreign policy views were out of kilter with traditional, mainstream foreign policy thinking,” said Andrew S. Weiss, a Russia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

...The aftermath of the 2016 election and Russia’s attempts to try to influence the American government illustrates the dangers of a loose, ad hoc approach to foreign policy that Mr. Trump embraced during the transition, and still favors to a degree former national security officials said.

“If you can be led by the nose by foreign governments, that is the simplest definition of what a successful influence operation looks like,” Mr. Weiss said. “All sorts of leaders figure out there are ways to work with the Trump team that stressed informal channels, flattery and a freewheeling approach.”

Campaign officials with little security background looking to make impromptu deals are particularly vulnerable to Russian intelligence operations, said James M. Olson, a former chief of C.I.A.’s counterintelligence unit and author of To Catch A Spy.

“They are dilettantes, no question about it. They have no intelligence or national security background and they shouldn’t be playing in a game they don’t understand the rules of,” Mr. Olson said. “These people are jumping into deep water and they don’t even know how to swim.”

What Russia has gained from its influence campaign remains subject to debate. The strong sanctions against Russia remain in place, toughened by congressional action. Funding for American military presence in Europe increased under the Trump administration. The United States has kept up its support for the Ukrainian government and has made no official move to recognize Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

But Mr. Trump’s skepticism of the value of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and his occasional wavering over the mutual defense pact have strengthened Mr. Putin’s hand in Eastern Europe.

Former officials and other experts agree with Mr. Wray’s assessment that Russian intelligence has also contributed in sowing chaos in political systems, undermining faith in democratic voting systems and potentially further polarizing already divided electorates.

“My hunch is Putin feels pretty good about how it’s going for him,” Mr. Olson said.

Pete Williams, reporting for NBC News, noted that Russian efforts to influence American public opinion are not confined only to periods around elections and that Wray said "It's pretty much a 365-days-a-year threat. And that has absolutely continued" and that it consists of constant use of social media, with "fake news, propaganda, false personas, et cetera, to spin us up, pit us against each other, sow divisiveness and discord, and undermine Americans' faith in democracy."

So why no interest in any of this from Trump-- other than to deride it? Mental health professions issued their own report on the Mueller report that should help us answer questions like that. "While the information in the Special Counsel’s report has been deemed insufficient for criminal determination," declares the report, "it provides, even in redacted form, a wealth of relevant information regarding the President’s mental capacity. Not having the mental capacity to make sound decisions and to refrain from violence, whether by encouraging, recommending, or inciting it on the part of his followers, whether or not he meets the criteria for being diagnosed as mentally ill, is dangerous as long as he remains President and constitutes a medical emergency that health professionals are obligated to respond to.. [T]he office of president requires, at the very least, the ability to make sound, rational decisions based on reality and the ability not to place the nation in grave danger. The final determination of 'competency' is a judicial decision usually made by the courts, while capacity is a medical assessment that psychiatrists, and especially forensic psychiatrists or other appropriately trained forensic mental health professionals, contribute to courts as expert witnesses to aid them in making their legal decisions. Similarly, presidential fitness is a political decision, but just as the courts routinely rely on physicians’ and other experts’ assessments for competence, disability, and fitness for duty, political bodies should not be denied access to the same medical and professional information and expertise that the judicial system benefits from. We therefore offer our analysis as potentially valuable data, as a part of our professional obligation to protect public safety and wellbeing." One conclusion is that Trump is a clear and present danger to America because of his mental incapacity demonstrated in "patterns" on behavior.

[T]he Report outlines how the Russians systematically and sweepingly attacked America before and during the 2016 election. There were dozens of connections, meetings, reaching out, visits, and phone calls between Russians and the President’s circle. While the Special Counsel was not able to find the final legal proof of an actual agreement between Russians and the President, the Report indicates that some witnesses destroyed evidence, gave false testimony, pleaded the Fifth Amendment, lied, claimed false privilege, or used encryption applications or programs that did not preserve long-term records. The Report also makes clear that the President knew about, expected, and received benefit from Russian actions (Vol. I, pp. 4-10). Given the President’s continued refusal to acknowledge the severity of these attacks, we can see that his comprehension and ability to absorb important information from his own intelligence agencies, whatever the reason, is impaired. If he cannot protect the nation against a hostile force that has attacked us, it also points to dangerousness. While a criminal act (actus reus) could not be established beyond reasonable doubt, a criminal intent (mens rea) is extensively well documented in the discussion of the intentions behind many of the President’s actions in Volume II. This, combined with the evidence of mental incapacity, heightens dangerousness.

The mental health professionals believe the Mueller report indicates that Trump is "predisposed to rash, short-sighted, and dangerous acts, without consideration of consequences, motivated by self-protection to the degree that he does not appear capable of considering national vulnerability; and surrounded only by the most informal and personal resistance around him to curtail those acts, until the pressure of his predisposition pushes out the advisors. It is clear that the course of events could have gone either way if those surrounding the President had yielded to the pressures to fire Mueller, or if they had spoken directly to Attorney General Jeff Sessions about limiting the scope of the Special Counsel instead of Sessions’ Chief of Staff Rick Dearborn pocketing the message. The President’s investment in a certain “reality” (that the Russian attack was insignificant) and his refusal to accept critical information or advice hence augment the dangers that our nation faces.

...After refusing for more than a year to be interviewed by the Special Counsel (p. C-1), the President finally agreed to respond to questions only in written form. Even with the help of his lawyers, however, his responses were not able to bring up substantial details that would be useful for the investigation but mostly state that he “on more than 30 occasions ... does not ‘recall’ or ‘remember’ or have an ‘independent recollection’” (p. C-1). By contrast, he rarely lacks certainty in his public statements, even with highly questionable content, and touts himself as having “the world’s greatest memory” or “one of the great memories of all time.” Making oneself impossible to indict by failure or refusal to recall does not prove innocence or guilt but can be valuable data: overall, in his remarkably brief answers (often the questions are longer than the answers), there is not a single question or part of a question that he answers without some variation of “I do not recall” or “I do not remember” (pp. C-11 to C-23) — to the point that his testimony merely demonstrated “inadequacy of the written format” (p. C-1).

Again, the patterns are more informative than individual instances, and the form of his testimony is significant in terms of: (a) the near absence of content, which indicates an extreme reluctance or inability to offer information; (b) a written language so starkly removed from the president’s ordinary manner of parlance, that it reads like “legalese” (or a lawyer’s language, which is a client’s legal right, but in mental health is a possible indication of high levels of contrivance and therefore likely unreliability); and (c) with his failure to “recall” substantial information (regarding Donald Trump Jr.’s Trump Tower meeting, Russian hacking that includes WikiLeaks, the Trump organization’s Moscow project, and Russian contacts during the campaign and the transition), there are only two possibilities: either he truly does not remember, or is making a total fabrication—and either is pathological and highly worrisome with respect to a president’s capacity to serve, warranting an evaluation.

Avoiding interviews or answers that would make oneself indictable is comparable to a mentally impaired person avoiding doctors and hospitals at all cost so as not to be diagnosable. Whereas in criminal justice it is a legal right, in mental health it is valuable information regarding one’s mental state. A lack of genuine effort with respect to an issue of national security, when the country was unequivocally and effectively attacked by an enemy nation, is alone a sign of severe incapacity to fulfill the duties of the presidency.

...Tendencies that place oneself or others in danger are also core components that indicate a lack of capacity to serve. We know of numerous reports of the President placing the nation and the world in danger, with empirical studies documenting an unprecedented rise in hate crimes, schoolyard bullying, white supremacist killings, assaults directly implicating the President, and the extraordinary pipe bomber who sent sixteen explosives to the President’s most prominent critics, and most recently the mosque shootings in New Zealand citing “common purpose” with the President. In addition, the emotional characteristics noted above, including impulsivity, recklessness, and an inability to consider consequences of his actions, created a particularly dangerous situation in the nuclear age, where thousands of thermonuclear weapons are under his sole command without an adequate set of formal checks or balances. Apart from these, and apart from the minimization of Russia’s attack on the United States’ 2016 elections, including siding with the enemy nation’s leader over his own intelligence agencies and the attempt to block investigations into Russia’s attack, there is evidence from the Report that indicate general evidence of danger.

We know, from the first months of the Trump administration, in response to concerns about his potential for rash and dangerous acts, there was much talk about the protection provided by key associates such as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Reince Priebus’ replacement as White House Chief of Staff, John Kelley, and Michael Flynn’s replacement as National Security Advisor, H. R. McMaster. The Report corroborates these claims and further confirms that the country has been protected against directions to the Assistant Attorney General to fire the Special Counsel or directions to the Attorney General to announce that the Special Counsel limit his investigation to future elections, not by forceful assertion of national interest, but by the passive resistance of those around the President, often in an attempt to protect the President from himself. Still, the President has ousted these moderating forces rather than listen to them. Former President Ronald Reagan, who some have suspected of having suffered from the early stages of dementia while still in office, at least surrounded himself with capable personnel. The current President seems unable to do this; rather, only a few capable staff remain in spite of the President. With the President’s apparent symptoms worsening in plain public view, such as his “tweeting” angry messages over fifty times over the course of twenty-four hours a few days ago, a departure from his already escalating pattern of “tweets,” the likelihood of grave danger to national and international security can no longer be overlooked.

We know, from the first months of the Trump administration, in response to concerns about his potential for rash and dangerous acts, there was much talk about the protection provided by key associates such as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Reince Priebus’ replacement as White House Chief of Staff, John Kelley, and Michael Flynn’s replacement as National Security Advisor, H. R. McMaster. Without the limitations on the President’s rash, impulsive and sometimes downright dangerous decision-making that the Report attributes to these individuals, generally regarded as distinguished and formidable, the national interests of the United States and, indeed, the world, would have been placed at much greater risk by the mental functioning of the current President.

Mental capacity does not relate simply to a person’s specific psychiatric diagnosis; in other words, the presence of a mental disorder does not render a person incapable of making rational and realistic decisions. This is the most dangerous kind of leadership possible. Given the clear documentation we have summarized in the Special Counsel’s report of the President’s impaired capacity to make responsible decisions free of impulsivity, recklessness, manipulation of advisors, a degree of suspiciousness that leads him to believe that he needs to defend himself against betrayal or persecution, an absorption in self-interest that precludes attention to the national interest, inability to consider consequences before taking action, detachment from reality, paranoid reactions, creation of dangerous conditions, and cognitive and memory difficulties, there is compelling medical evidence that he is lacks the capacity to serve as president. We would still recommend a proper, in-person evaluation, which the President should be able to agree to, if he believes he is fit to serve. Otherwise, we find the information in the Report to point overwhelmingly toward incapacity.