How Trump's Own Top Aides Became Convinced Trump "Posed A Danger To The National Security Of The United States" [Also: Trump's Phone Sex With Angela Merkel, Teresa May And Vlad Putin]

New polling across Europe shows that more than 60% of respondents in Germany, France, Spain, Denmark and Portugal said they had lost trust in the United States as a global leader. Negative attitudes of the US were most marked in Denmark (71%) Portugal (70%), France (68%), Germany (65%) and Spain (64%). "Trust in the US is 'broken' as a result of its handling of the health crisis and that support for the transatlantic alliance has been 'hollowed out.' Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, warned in an interview with The Guardian on Friday that the world could no longer take it for granted that America still aspires to be a global leader. The survey suggests that public opinion is already conscious of the shift." Three years of Trump and 200 years of American foreign policy objectives have been flushed down the toilet. If Putin didn't pay Trump for this directly, he was brilliant to figure out what a small investment in his "election" would result in.

I'll file Monday's blockbuster CNN report under the thick and growing file: Worst President In History. Celebrated author and America's most famous investigative journalist, Carl Bernstein, reported that Trump quickly lost the confidence of virtually every serious national security aide he hired-- from his chiefs of staff, secretaries of defense and state right on down the chain. This is how a country turns from a democratic republic to a kakastocracy. Patriots and competent serious advisors cannot last working for Trump... only caca can. One can't read Bernstein's report without coming away with the realization that Trump is entirely unfit to even be in a room where American national security was being discussed. Bernstein wrote that in hundreds of highly classified phone calls with foreign heads of state, "Trump was so consistently unprepared for discussion of serious issues, so often outplayed in his conversations with powerful leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdogan, and so abusive to leaders of America's principal allies, that the calls helped convince some senior US officials-- including his former secretaries of state and defense, two national security advisers and his longest-serving chief of staff-- that the President himself posed a danger to the national security of the United States. The calls caused former top Trump deputies-- including national security advisers H.R. McMaster and John Bolton, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and White House chief of staff John Kelly, as well as intelligence officials-- to conclude that the President was often 'delusional,' as two sources put it, in his dealings with foreign leaders. The sources said there was little evidence that the President became more skillful or competent in his telephone conversations with most heads of state over time. Rather, he continued to believe that he could either charm, jawbone or bully almost any foreign leader into capitulating to his will, and often pursued goals more attuned to his own agenda than what many of his senior advisers considered the national interest."

Trump, he wrote "regularly bullied and demeaned the leaders of America's principal allies, especially two women: telling Prime Minister Theresa May of the United Kingdom she was weak and lacked courage; and telling German Chancellor Angela Merkel that she was 'stupid.' Trump incessantly boasted to his fellow heads of state, including Saudi Arabia's autocratic royal heir Mohammed bin Salman and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, about his own wealth, genius, 'great' accomplishments as President, and the 'idiocy' of his Oval Office predecessors. In his conversations with both Putin and Erdogan, Trump took special delight in trashing former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and suggested that dealing directly with him-- Trump-- would be far more fruitful than during previous administrations. 'They didn't know BS,' he said of Bush and Obama-- one of several derisive tropes the sources said he favored when discussing his predecessors with the Turkish and Russian leaders. [He] seemed to continually conflate his own personal interests-- especially for purposes of re-election and revenge against perceived critics and political enemies-- with the national interest... One person familiar with almost all the conversations with the leaders of Russia, Turkey, Canada, Australia and western Europe described the calls cumulatively as 'abominations' so grievous to US national security interests that if members of Congress heard from witnesses to the actual conversations or read the texts and contemporaneous notes, even many senior Republican members would no longer be able to retain confidence in the President."

The insidious effect of the conversations comes from Trump's tone, his raging outbursts at allies while fawning over authoritarian strongmen, his ignorance of history and lack of preparation as much as it does from the troubling substance, according to the sources. While in office, then- Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats expressed worry to subordinates that Trump's telephone discussions were undermining the coherent conduct of foreign relations and American objectives around the globe, one of CNN's sources said. And in recent weeks, former chief of staff Kelly has mentioned the damaging impact of the President's calls on US national security to several individuals in private.

Two sources compared many of the President's conversations with foreign leaders to Trump's recent press "briefings" on the coronavirus pandemic: free form, fact-deficient stream-of-consciousness ramblings, full of fantasy and off-the-wall pronouncements based on his intuitions, guesswork, the opinions of Fox News TV hosts and social media misinformation.

In addition to Merkel and May, the sources said, Trump regularly bullied and disparaged other leaders of the western alliance during his phone conversations-- including French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison-- in the same hostile and aggressive way he discussed the coronavirus with some of America's governors.

...[H]is most vicious attacks, said the sources, were aimed at women heads of state. In conversations with both May and Merkel, the President demeaned and denigrated them in diatribes described as "near-sadistic" by one of the sources and confirmed by others. "Some of the things he said to Angela Merkel are just unbelievable: he called her 'stupid,' and accused her of being in the pocket of the Russians ... He's toughest [in the phone calls] with those he looks at as weaklings and weakest with the ones he ought to be tough with."

The calls with Putin and Erdogan were particularly egregious in terms of Trump almost never being prepared substantively and thus leaving him susceptible to being taken advantage of in various ways, according to the sources-- in part because those conversations (as with most heads of state), were almost certainly recorded by the security services and other agencies of their countries.

In his phone exchanges with Putin, the sources reported, the President talked mostly about himself, frequently in over-the-top, self-aggrandizing terms: touting his "unprecedented" success in building the US economy; asserting in derisive language how much smarter and "stronger" he is than "the imbeciles" and "weaklings" who came before him in the presidency (especially Obama); reveling in his experience running the Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow, and obsequiously courting Putin's admiration and approval. Putin "just outplays" him, said a high-level administration official-- comparing the Russian leader to a chess grandmaster and Trump to an occasional player of checkers. While Putin "destabilizes the West," said this source, the President of the United States "sits there and thinks he can build himself up enough as a businessman and tough guy that Putin will respect him." (At times, the Putin-Trump conversations sounded like "two guys in a steam bath," a source added.)

In numerous calls with Putin that were described to CNN, Trump left top national security aides and his chiefs of staff flabbergasted, less because of specific concessions he made than because of his manner-- inordinately solicitous of Putin's admiration and seemingly seeking his approval-- while usually ignoring substantive policy expertise and important matters on the standing bilateral agenda, including human rights; and an arms control agreement, which never got dealt with in a way that advanced shared Russian and American goals that both Putin and Trump professed to favor, CNN's sources said.

Throughout his presidency, Trump has touted the theme of "America First" as his north star in foreign policy, advancing the view that America's allies and adversaries have taken economic advantage of US goodwill in trade. And that America's closest allies need to increase their share of collective defense spending. He frequently justifies his seeming deference to Putin by arguing that Russia is a major world player and that it is in the United States' interest to have a constructive and friendly relationship-- requiring a reset with Moscow through his personal dialogue with Putin.





In separate interviews, two high-level administration officials familiar with most of the Trump-Putin calls said the President naively elevated Russia-- a second-rate totalitarian state with less than 4% of the world's GDP-- and its authoritarian leader almost to parity with the United States and its President by undermining the tougher, more realistic view of Russia expressed by the US Congress, American intelligence agencies and the long-standing post-war policy consensus of the US and its European allies. "He [Trump] gives away the advantage that was hard won in the Cold War," said one of the officials-- in part by "giving Putin and Russia a legitimacy they never had," the official said. "He's given Russia a lifeline-- because there is no doubt that they're a declining power ... He's playing with something he doesn't understand and he's giving them power that they would use [aggressively]."

Both officials cited Trump's decision to pull US troops out of Syria-- a move that benefited Turkey as well as Russia-- as perhaps the most grievous example. "He gave away the store," one of them said.

The frequency of the calls with Erdogan-- in which the Turkish president continually pressed Trump for policy concessions and other favors-- was especially worrisome to McMaster, Bolton and Kelly, the more so because of the ease with which Erdogan bypassed normal National Security Council protocols and procedures to reach the President, said two of the sources.

...The common, overwhelming dynamic that characterizes Trump's conversations with both authoritarian dictators and leaders of the world's greatest democracies is his consistent assertion of himself as the defining subject and subtext of the calls-- almost never the United States and its historic place and leadership in the world, according to sources intimately familiar with the calls.

In numerous calls with the leaders of the UK, France, Germany, Australia and Canada-- America's closest allies of the past 75 years, the whole postwar era-- Trump typically established a grievance almost as a default or leitmotif of the conversation, whatever the supposed agenda, according to those sources.

"Everything was always personalized, with everybody doing terrible things to rip us off-- which meant ripping 'me'-- Trump-- off. He couldn't-- or wouldn't-- see or focus on the larger picture," said one US official.

The source cited a conspicuously demonstrable instance in which Trump resisted asking Angela Merkel (at the UK's urging) to publicly hold Russia accountable for the so-called 'Salisbury' radioactive poisonings of a former Russian spy and his daughter, in which Putin had denied any Russian involvement despite voluminous evidence to the contrary. "It took a lot of effort" to get Trump to bring up the subject, said one source. Instead of addressing Russia's responsibility for the poisonings and holding it to international account, Trump made the focus of the call-- in personally demeaning terms-- Germany's and Merkel's supposedly deadbeat approach to allied burden-sharing. Eventually, said the sources, as urged by his NSC staff, Trump at last addressed the matter of the poisonings, almost grudgingly.

"With almost every problem, all it takes [in his phone calls] is someone asking him to do something as President on behalf of the United States and he doesn't see it that way; he goes to being ripped off; he's not interested in cooperative issues or working on them together; instead he's deflecting things or pushing real issues off into a corner," said a US official.

"There was no sense of 'Team America' in the conversations," or of the United States as an historic force with certain democratic principles and leadership of the free world, said the official. "The opposite. It was like the United States had disappeared. It was always 'Just me'."

Not a mention of any of the many Trump-Netanyahu discussions. Who's covering that up... and why?

Some Dare Call It Treason

Damage Control by Nancy Ohanian

Friday, as soon as I read the NY Times piece about how Trump failed to react when he was briefed on Russia paying bounties to Afghan rebels and criminals for the deaths of U.S. soldiers, I knew Señor T was cooked. Treason doesn't fly-- not even in Wyoming, the Trumpiest state in the Union. The Washington Post, CNN and even the Wall Street Journal have all confirmed that Trump was briefed on the story (it was in his briefing book), although-- caught like a rat, he's been denying it. Nervous congressional Republicans are either hiding under their beds or issuing tepid statements calling for all the facts. Besides Liz Cheney, peeping up cautiously were French Hill (R-AR), Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), Vern Buchanan (R-FL), Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) and Rodney Davis (R-IL), but Trump knows congressional Republicans are afraid if him and will toe the party line when push comes to shove.

European intelligence agencies have also confirmed that Russia's version of the CIA-- the GRU, which is tightly controlled by Putin-- has been paying rewards for dead American and British soldiers. At first the official stand by the Trumpets Regime was that neither Trump nor Pence were briefed and knew nothing about it. Both Trump, Kayleigh McEnany, the Russian embassy in DC, the Taliban and the joke Trump and McConnell installed Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, claimed the NY Times story had no merit. Yesterday Ellen Nakashima, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter covering intelligence and national security, and John Wagner reported that Trump, who has been waffling on his story, claimed on Sunday night that the CIA didn't find the bounty story credible so never bothered telling Trump about it-- a typically Trumpian bold faced lie.

Last night the Associated Press reported that "Top officials in the White House were aware in early 2019 of classified intelligence indicating Russia was secretly offering bounties to the Taliban for the deaths of Americans [and that] the assessment was included in at least one of President Donald Trump’s written daily intelligence briefings at the time, according to the officials. Then-national security adviser John Bolton also told colleagues he briefed Trump on the intelligence assessment in March 2019." High-level sources at the Pentagon leaked the secret report to the press.

Russian bounties offered to Taliban-linked militants to kill coalition forces in Afghanistan are believed to have resulted in the deaths of several U.S. service members, according to intelligence gleaned from U.S. military interrogations of captured militants in recent months.

The intelligence was passed up from the U.S. Special Operations forces based in Afghanistan and led to a restricted high-level White House meeting in late March, the people said.

Traitor by Chip Proser

Trump tried distracting Republicans with one of his childish bait-and-switch tweets Sunday at 4:30 AM: "Nobody’s been tougher on Russia than the Trump Administration. With Corrupt Joe Biden & Obama, Russia had a field day, taking over important parts of Ukraine - Where’s Hunter? Probably just another phony Times hit job, just like their failed Russia Hoax. Who is their 'source'?"

Biden didn't cut Trump any slack at his virtual town hall over the weekend. Trump's response was to call Biden names and claim he didn't write his remarks himself.





Monday, The Guardian ran a Lisa O'Kelly interview with Russian-American author and journalist, Masha Gessen. She asked him, "who's worse, Putin or Trump?" He responded that "In a way, I think Trump is worse. I never thought I would hear myself say that. They share a lot of characteristics although they are temperamentally extremely different men. They both have this contempt for excellence, they both have a hatred of government, and they both have this way of campaigning against government as such, even as presidents of their respective countries. I think in the end, Putin is somewhat less cynical. He has an idea-- it is self-aggrandising and absurd on the face of it--that if he stepped away Russia would fall apart and so he has to carry this burden. And for his labours he deserves to have the yachts and the palaces and all that. But he is doing it for his country. Trump doesn’t even have that delusion. It’s all power and money in their purest form. And you could dig as deep as you want, you would never find a shred of responsibility."

She also asked "What is the most important rule for surviving autocracy?"

For the state of one’s soul, for the state of one’s mind, I think it is absolutely essential to protest and show outrage. Does that have political consequences? Not immediately and not on its own. But I think what we’re seeing in America right now is several steps on from outrage. It’s outrage, plus organising, plus sustained political activity. The big question is how sustained will it be? If it is sustained in some manner, then I think we are in a revolutionary moment. In the book I talk about how in order to actually survive Trump’s attempt at autocracy we have to give up the idea of some imaginary pre-Trumpian normalcy and commit to reinvention. And that is really what these protests are about.

I don’t think there is anyone who is involved who would say: “Oh, we just have to get rid of Trump.” These protests are about the fatal flaw at the root of this democracy and that’s a really upsetting idea for a lot of somewhat conservative commentators. But culturally and politically Americans have a story of being born of protest. These protests are calling for an American reinvention. They are protesting for a more perfect union.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Putin put contracts out on American soldiers. Once again, Trump has given Putin carte blanche. And once again, the bought and paid for (in Russian Mob/Oligarch Rubles) Republican $enators who voted not to impeach their fellow traitor have circled around Dear Leader Trump. They have embraced the stench of their fellow traitor. In fact, they obviously don't consider it a stench. To Republicans, Trump is the nicest, freshest spring day of the year and they inhale deeply. The White House staff now ludicrously claims that Trump didn't know. Really? You're on his staff and you didn't tell him about such a heinous move? Even when you knew for over 3 months? Yeah, right! Take everyone who works for Trump at the White House and put them all on trial for treason or just give them new offices at GITMO.

The Democrats? They offer some proper withering words and that is all. If Obama nodded and winked like Trump and let Putin do this, Republicans would have called a special session of Congress and Obama would have been impeached, removed from office, and executed for treason within 48 hours of the revelation. They would have dragged him down to Alabama and hung him from a tree regardless of their being on Putin's payroll. In fact, Putin would have loved it and arranged for some more cash for Moscow Mitch's coffers, with the understanding that the bounties would continue, of course.

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.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

And on the morning after Halloween, Putin removed his costume, saying "I am the soul of the American president, but you duraki already knew that."

Impeaching Trump-- Alexander Hamilton vs Vladimir Putin

When I studied the revolutionary period in high school, the teacher, Mr. Feinstein, a relatively conservative guy, loved Alexander Hamilton, who seemed pretty conservative to me. I preferred the more populist Thomas Jefferson, who I associated with the left. Hamilton hated the "common people," and democracy and wanted a king instead of a president and a House of Lords instead of a Senate. Last week, Ron Chernow, an historian who wrote, among many books, a classic biography of Alexander Hamilton (2004)-- the source material for Miranda's Broadway show.

Last week, Chernow's op-ed for the Washington Post, Hamilton Pushed For Impeachment Powers. Trump Is What He Had In Mind, made it clear that Hamilton would be backing Pelosi's impeachment inquiry against Trump. "Trump," he wrote, "has described the impeachment proceedings as a 'coup,' and his White House counsel has termed them 'unconstitutional.' This would come as a surprise to Alexander Hamilton, who wrote not only the 11 essays in The Federalist outlining and defending the powers of the presidency, but also the two essays devoted to impeachment. There seems little doubt, given his writings on the presidency, that Hamilton would have been aghast at Trump’s behavior and appalled by his invitation to foreign actors to meddle in our elections. As a result, he would most certainly have endorsed the current impeachment inquiry. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Trump embodies Hamilton’s worst fears about the kind of person who might someday head the government."

Want to know more about Hamilton? This is long... and fantastic. If you have 3 hours, you're be richer for watching it:





You know who is completely against the impeachment inquiry? Trump's patron and benefactor, Vladimir Putin. Tatiana Stanovaya, scholar at the Carnegie Moscow Center, looked at why for Politico Sunday. "As impeachment proceedings loom over President Donald Trump," wrote Stanovaya, "some observers have speculated that Russia, actively enjoying sowing chaos in the United States, is delighted by the dysfunction tearing apart the U.S. government. Nineteen Republican members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee signed a joint letter to the Wall Street Journal that was published on the paper’s op-ed page last month with the headline, 'Impeachment Is What Vladimir Putin Wants.' The GOP members of Congress wrote, 'His goal, now and before the 2016 election, has been to pit Americans against one another and erode confidence in our democratic process.' That might be true up to a point. But the impeachment investigation might be a bit too chaotic, even for Russian President Vladimir Putin."

There are many ways in which the Ukraine affair is terrifying the Kremlin, because it threatens to unwind what little progress Russia has made in recent years and undercuts its wider goals. Putin’s long-term goal is pretty clear: He wants the United States to conclude a “big deal” that would revise the outcome of the Cold War and limit the strategic threat that he believes the West poses to Russia through its military expansion, double standards in foreign affairs and liberal values.

...This is not the scandal the Kremlin wants for three reasons. First, the Russians were interested in an improvement in Russia-U.S. relations during the Trump presidency. Just after Trump’s election Moscow began preparing proposals aimed at finding ground for the kind of “big deal” the new American president had talked about during his campaign.

But the initial euphoria has faded. U.S.-Russia relations turned out to be worse than ever, following revelations of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Even so, Trump remains the one political actor the Kremlin has been relying on to revive bilateral relations.

...And now-- poof. A new cycle of chaos and madness has begun, which may lead to more negative repercussions for Russia. A new wave of anti-Russian sentiment is being unleashed in U.S. politics that could trigger new congressional sanctions. No less an authoritative figure than Nancy Pelosi has suggested that Russia was directly involved in the Trump-Ukraine mess. The call between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky is often interpreted as an extension of Russia’s 2016 interference. All the discussions about Ukraine in the United States almost always lead to Russia and become a reason to talk about Ukraine as its victim in need of protection. Altogether, any mention of Ukraine in the current anti-Russia news media further damages Russia’s international image, which, of course, is already considerably underwater.

The second reason for the Kremlin’s worry is that the Ukraine scandal undermines Trump’s capacity to conduct his own Russia policy, in opposition to the rest of the U.S. political establishment. As far as the Kremlin is concerned, Trump functions, in Putin’s eyes, as a buffer between Russia and the traditional U.S. national security establishment, which the Kremlin sees as implacably hostile. Trump has thrown overboard all of the established U.S. foreign policy approaches to Russia. He doesn’t preach and he doesn’t stand in Russia’s way. Trump is a businessman, not an ideological warrior, and he is not impeded by annoying democratic values.

Russia is ready to pay a price to maintain the Trump buffer, including enduring further rounds of Western economic sanctions. The rest of the U.S. political class, both Democratic and Republican, represents a long-term strategic threat to Russia and its geopolitical interests. Thus, regardless of whatever headaches Trump may create for the Kremlin, he will always seem like the lesser evil. Not surprisingly, whatever happens to Trump, Putin publicly supports him. But now, there is more scrutiny than ever on Trump’s foreign policy conduct, and he will likely not be able to operate in secret.

The third and final reason for the Kremlin to be worried comes from the growing fear that a private presidential conversation with Trump could be published without Russia’s permission. After the release of a transcript of the July 25 conversation between Trump and Zelensky, the Kremlin said that Washington would need Russian consent before publishing any transcripts of conversations between Putin and Trump.

Putin is probably not worried the transcripts can hurt his standings at home-- in domestic affairs he remains politically untouchable. Rather, there are two other problems Putin is likely concerned about if such a transcript is published. First, Putin surely sees the transcript as a potential tool that could be used by Trump’s rivals to undermine and weaken Trump, which is not good for Moscow. We know from news accounts that Trump has said some very embarrassing things to Russian officials, such as dismissing the significance of Russian interference in the 2016 election and endorsing the idea of a joint U.S.-Russian cyber unit to somehow prevent this from ever happening again. Second, the risk itself that the talk can be published is psychologically uncomfortable for the Russian president, as he likes to have intimate heart-to-heart conversations with his counterparts-- something that apparently worked during the Trump-Putin 2017 Helsinki summit. This is his style of dealing with his counterparts-- to try to find some special chemistry with other world leaders. It’s harder to establish that kind of rapport while thinking that all you say might go public tomorrow.

It’s possible that Putin wants to sow chaos in the United States. He certainly enjoyed Trump’s presidential campaign victory and its corrosive effect on American political life. But the Ukraine scandal and the impeachment investigation might be moving a bit too fast, even for the chaos mastermind. For Putin, it would have been better if the Ukraine scandal had never happened. Trump is better than a traditional American president, who would continue the traditional policy of treating Russia as a Cold war loser.

Deep State by Nancy Ohanian

Republicans for the Rule of Law, the Never Trump group, is running this new ad on Fox & Friends, tomorrow I believe. I sincerely doubt it will do much good, considering who watches that show. You may enjoy it though:

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

He did it for Putin. Most of what Individual #1 does he does for Putin. The fact that doing so satisfies Individual # 1's psychopathy is something Individual #1 considers a bonus, a perk of being the Manchurian President. In stabbing the Kurds in the back, Individual #1 has done more than that. He has done it in our names. He has stabbed Americans and American ideals in the back.

What we don't know and what we may never know is what Putin has on Individual #1. Whatever it is, it's big, very big. That much is painfully obvious. He has handed Russia the Middle East foothold it has wanted for years. His capitulation is not the naivete of a fellow conservative like Neville Chamberlain. It's way beyond that, way more, deliberately treacherous. How far does the Russian influence and infiltration go? It's more than just Rudy's crew and Republican senators being bought and paid for with Russian rubles; rubles that make them sellout their country and look the other way.

We all know that if Trump had been in FDR's shoes, he would have shut down the very idea of Social Security, brutally closed the soup kitchens and joined Prescott Bush and Henry Ford in helping Hitler. He would have stabbed our British allies in the back and the island of Great Britain would have been Iwo Jima. He would have even had a Senate Majority Leader named Munich Mitch to help him subvert our way of life. That is Trump's sick Republican dream.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

It's the first official summer weekend, so why not use this satire of the vintage classic Coppertone ad that shows us what we already knew: Trump is Putin's bitch.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

"Getting along with Putin and Russia is a good thing. It is for me anyway. Me. Me. Maybe if I do a tremendous bigly job shining Mr. Putin's shoes with the American flag, he'll hack right into the voting machines this time. Doesn't look like anyone's going to stop him, or me. And Mitch and Lindsey and all my supporters will love me even more. Ivanka, too!"

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Hmmm, I wonder what Putin is whispering to his fluffer. Could it be:

A) Don't worry about McConnell. I've got him covered.

B) Thanks for making those tariff moves on your farmers I wanted. I was able to make a sweet deal with the Chinese for Russian soybeans.

C) Don't forget, I have a pee tape, all the records of the cash we've given your family, and a copy of the notes to our meetings.

D) Got anymore top secret Israeli intelligence you can pass my way?

E) Pissing off Mexico is working great for both of us. They've stopped buying U.S. corn and get it from Brazil now. Thanks again!

F) Thanks for pulling out of Syria and giving me a clear path. My friends in Iran thank you too!

G) Don't forget, you need to destroy NATO so I can grow my influence in Europe. Plenty of rubles and Russian girlies in it for you!

H) Keep attacking the European Union! The more destabilized it gets the better!

I) Your help in destabilizing your own country for me will always be appreciated in Mother Russia.

J) Good thing you sided with me instead of your own intelligence agencies. Get my drift?

K) Your shutdown is going great! It's the answer to my prayers!

L) How's our friend Paul Manafort doing?

M) I know your son Eric said you have all the money you need from us, but there's more waiting for you in a briefcase back in your hotel room.

N) Don't worry Little Donnie, you'll always be my #1 Asset, my favorite spy! You've been a friend of Russia for a long time. You've been a great investment!

O) All of the above and more.

Rachel Maddow's Dogged Russia-Gate Narratives Will Be Part Of American History

Rachel: "Calling Montenegro and Montenegrins a threat is not part of American foreign policy. It's not part of conservative American foreign policy, liberal foreign policy, the Moon-Is-Made-Of-Green-Cheese American foreign policy. The president is not reading that in his briefing books no matter who is writing them. He's not hearing that from anybody in the American Congress. His advisors are not whispering in his ear about the aggressive Montenegrins and the threat of World War III. The only place on earth that has been pushing any sort of line like that-- that Montenegro is unusually aggressive and will start World War III if they're allowed to join NATO-- the only place on earth articulating that is the Kremlin under Vladimir Putin. Where did he get that from? Who planted that in his ear? Poland's going to invade Belarus? No they're not. Putin made that up. Montenegrins are unusually aggressive and they;'ll going to start World War III if they're allowed to join NATO? No they're not; Putin made that up. Where's he hearing this stuff?"

She decided to discuss the role Putin's United Russia Party-- and it's decision to rewrite some old Soviet history in Central Asia-- is playing inside Trump's sad, mushy mind-- or what Chris Hayes calls "the president's broken brain"-- with former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFall. No collusion, folks-- maybe something far, far worse? A puppet's worse than a colluder, right? You've got to watch this:

Does Jackie Speier Think She's Found The Smocking Gun?

The first I ever heard of Russian oligarch and Putin crony Dmitry Rybolovlev-- the "king of fertilizer"-- was on Rachel Maddow's show. She talked about him quite a bit last year, as you can watch her doing above in a clip from March 2017. She kept going back to him not just because he's a billionaire who bought a Greek Island, a French soccer team and the most expensive apartment in Manhattan, but because in 2008 he bought a rather dilapidated Palm Beach mansion from shady businessman and already notorious money launderer Donald J. Trump. It was the most expensive home sale in the United States-- and was about two-and-a-half times more than what Trump had paid for it just a couple of years earlier. Now that's some flip-- especially considering that Trump hadn't done anything to increase the value.

Over the weekend, the San Francisco Chronicle published a smocking gun OpEd, Strange real estate deal raises specter of Putin buying Trump, by local Congresswoman Jackie Speier, a senior member of the House Intelligence Committee, who probably got her information about Rybolovlev from sources other than MSNBC. She wrote that "In July 2008, Donald Trump undertook one of his most infamous transactions. He sold a mansion in Palm Beach for $95 million to Dmitry Rybolovlev, Russian oligarch and billionaire. Trump had purchased it four years earlier for $41.35 million. The sale price was nearly $54 million more than Trump had paid for the property, even though he had made only modest improvements in it. Trump boasts about his dealmaking skills in this transaction, but the details suggest something more sinister."

July 2008 was the middle of the recession. The real estate market had tanked, especially in Florida. Despite the recession, not only was the price 230 percent of what Trump paid, but it was also $13 million above the highest price previously paid for a Palm Beach mansion, according to the Palm Beach Post. Rybolovlev did not conduct an inspection. He did not obtain an appraisal. He did not order any professional review or undertake any other form of due diligence before purchasing the property.

Five years after the sale, when the economy had made a significant recovery, Palm Beach County appraised the house for just $59.8 million. In other words, despite an actual recorded sale of $95 million and despite the economic recovery, the county determined that it was worth $35 million less than what Rybolovlev had paid five years earlier.

As of March 2017, Rybolovlev had never even lived in the house.

Why did Rybolovlev make this deal? There was publicity about a messy divorce and speculation that Rybolovlev was hiding assets from his wife (the divorce was not filed until five months after the purchase). Alternatively, he may have made the purchase as an investment.

Either way, the whole point would be to get his money back at some point. Overpaying for the property makes no sense. Nor does his complete failure to conduct even the most rudimentary due diligence.

There must have been another reason-- a reason to give Trump tens of millions of dollars with no expectation of a financial return. One possibility is that Russian leader Vladimir Putin saw an opportunity to exploit Trump’s financial problems to obtain his loyalty and indebtedness.

The recession had seriously depressed sales at the not-yet-complete Trump International Hotel & Tower Chicago. He was unable to make payments on a Deutsche Bank loan for $640 million. He had personally guaranteed $40 million of that debt.

And that was not all. Trump Entertainment Resorts, which owned the Trump Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City, was also failing. The Taj was losing business to other Trump casinos in Atlantic City and to newer competitors. Trump Entertainment was facing a $53 million payment to bondholders. The company was plummeting toward its third bankruptcy.

Trump had no apparent source of funds to meet these crises. His father had died, and the estate had been distributed. Wall Street banks were shunning Trump.

Rybolovlev had gotten control of Uralkali, a state-owned potash-mining company, at the age of 29. Uralkali supplied about 30 percent of the global demand for potash, a fertilizer ingredient. Rybolovlev had once served time in jail for murder before being cleared. His wife alleged that he partied on his private yacht with other oligarchs and prostitutes.

In 2008, Forbes estimated his net worth at $13 billion.

Rybolovlev, however, was also in financial trouble. In 2006, a portion of the potash mine had collapsed. No one was killed, but there was enormous damage. Rybolovlev was facing tremendous losses.

Diana Pilipenko describes the relationship between Putin and the oligarchs in her Center for American Progress report “Cracking the Shell”:

“When President Vladimir Putin consolidated power after the fall of the Soviet Union, he established a social contract of sorts, sanctioning the unbridled self-enrichment of Russia’s new class of wealthy business tycoons-- known as oligarchs-- in return for their unwavering loyalty to his administration. Among other things, this loyalty to Putin meant the oligarchs would not attempt to challenge him politically or otherwise act counter to the Kremlin’s strategic interests. It also meant the oligarchy would act on behalf of the state, thus erasing the boundary between the two.”

As Trump’s financial empire was crumbling, Putin certainly had reason to believe that Trump might be susceptible.

In 1987, the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations, Yuri Dubinin, arranged for Trump and his then-wife, Ivana, to enjoy an all-expense-paid trip to Moscow to consider possible business prospects.

Only seven weeks after his trip, Trump ran full-page ads in the Boston Globe, the New York Times and the Washington Post calling for, in effect, the dismantling of the postwar Western foreign policy alliance.

He had another tour of Moscow in 1996.

Russian mobsters frequented and enjoyed the Trump casinos. Russians were heavy purchasers of units in the Trump Tower. So many Russians bought Trump apartments at his developments in Florida that the area became known as Little Moscow. The developers of two of his hotels were Russians with significant links to the Russian mob. The late leader of that mob in the United States, Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, was living at the Trump Towers. In various real estate deals, Trump, at the very least, had turned a blind eye to apparent Russian money laundering.

Though Trump had previously contemplated running for president, Putin had no idea whether that would come to pass. It was enough that Trump was a prominent figure and television star already sympathetic to Russia.

Rybolovlev’s purchase of the Florida mansion put about $74 million in Trump’s pocket. Trump suddenly had oxygen.

What had Trump done to earn such a favor? It may seem surprising, but the answer could be nothing. At least not then.

Trump was being enrolled in the Russian system of kompromat, of which Putin is a master. Grant a favor, ask for nothing. Both parties understand that someday something may be expected in return.

And Rybolovlev? Only four months after Rybolovlev bought Trump’s Florida mansion, the Russian government ruled that his mine had not caused the damage, blaming the collapse on long-dead Stalin-era planners. The stock price of Rybolovlev’s company soared. It was up long enough for Rybolovlev to recover his losses on the Palm Beach purchase, plus, presumably, an ample commission for his service.

This decision was made by officials who have been identified as key figures in Putin’s circle. Kompromat is the only explanation of these events that fits all the facts as we now know them.

Looking at Trump’s circumstances in 2008, Putin laid out bait in the form of an absurdly high purchase price for a piece of real estate. Trump took the bait. The snare snapped shut.

One deal was closed. Could there have been others?

Keith Darden, an international relations professor at American University who has studied kompromat, says about Trump: “He’s never said a bad word about Putin. He’s exercised a degree of self-control with respect to Russia that he doesn’t with anything else. ... He knows there are limits, there are bounds on what he can say and do with respect to Russia.”

Michael McFaul, a professor at Stanford University and a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, observed, “The disconnect between President Trump and the Trump administration on Russia policy is unlike anything in U.S. foreign policy history. While the Trump administration had continued, and at times increased, the Obama’s administration confrontation of Putin’s malicious international behavior, Trump himself has never criticized Putin. On the contrary, President Trump consistently praises Putin. Why is that? Why is President Trump so eager to appease Putin?”

Benedict Trump? Individual 1

What's crazier-- Trump's furious twitter stream howling at the moon about his legal jeopardy (above)-- much of which was certainly written by his current lawyer-- or the very timely Trump Code of Dishonor (below). Yesterday, tacitly admitting he directed Michael Cohen to pay off the hookers Trump feared would derail his presidential bid, Individual 1 claimed he did not direct Cohen to break the law while making the payoffs. Trumpanzee tweet: "I never directed Michael Cohen to break the law. He was a lawyer and he is supposed to know the law." At his sentencing session, Cohen attributed his offenses to his "duty to cover up [Trump's] dirty deeds."

Salon published an essay by Lucian Truscott, Maria Butina’s plea is the worst news ever for Trump and Trump is yet to make up what cockamamie story he wants his moron, primarily lo-education white evangelical followers to repeat to each other. The Russian spy plead guilty to engaging in a conspiracy against the U.S. The conspiracy, she admitted, was acting as an illegal foreign agent. Spies gotta spy.

She admitted to acting under the direction of Putin crony Alexander Torshin (who seems to have disappeared a couple of days ago). And here's the bad news for Trump and the Republican Party and the now bankrupt NRA: "She agreed to turn over any evidence of crimes she is aware of, submit a full accounting of her financial assets, sit for interviews with law enforcement (and waive right to counsel during those interviews) and testify before grand juries or in trials in Washington or elsewhere." Presumably she will have the goods on how the Russians laundered tens of millions of dollars into the Trump campaign through the NRA.



Back to Truscott who makes the point that this is the worst news Señor Trumpanzee has faced in months. Before she appeared and 'fessed up Thursday morning, Truscott wrote that she would "admit to conspiring with a Russian official believed to be Alexander Torshin 'to establish unofficial lines of communication with Americans having power and influence over U.S. politics . . . for the benefit of the Russian Federation' (Torshin recently retired from being a deputy director of the Russian central bank). She will also admit to attempting to influence the National Rifle Association and 'Political Party 1,' believed to be the Republican Party. Butina will admit to setting up a meeting between senior officials of the NRA and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in December 2015, in the early months of the Trump campaign. She later reported to Torshin, 'We should let them express their gratitude now, we will put pressure on them quietly later.'

Butina has been indicted by the U.S. Attorney of the District of Columbia, whose investigation was separate from that of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, so you would think that would come as good news to Trump. But Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was also charged by the D.C. U.S. attorney and the U.S.attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia as well, and it is known that Mueller has been cooperating with the U.S. attorneys for D.C., Eastern Virginia, and the Southern District of New York as well. So the fact that Butina is pleading guilty and agreeing to cooperate means that Mueller will be a beneficiary of what she knows about Russian influence in the election of 2016. But even that isn’t the worst news Trump got this week.

No, what Trump should really be worrying about is what Butina’s guilty plea says about his friend Vladimir Putin in Russia. Butina was obviously operating as an intelligence agent of the Russian state, and she wouldn’t be agreeing to plead guilty and cooperate with investigators for Mueller or anyone else if she hadn’t been given the go-ahead by her bosses back in Moscow. Butina faces a sentence of zero to six months under the federal statute she was charged with, and even if she ends up serving time, she will be deported immediately upon her release from prison.

Marina Butina wouldn’t have anyplace to go in Russia if her handlers at the Kremlin hadn’t told her it was okay to tell U.S. prosecutors everything she knows about how her attempt to influence American politics worked from 2015 through 2016. If Putin has decided to cut Butina loose, he’s cutting Trump loose as well.

...With all of the guilty pleas and sentencings in court this week, speculation has been flying that Special Counsel Mueller is reaching the end of his investigation. Don’t believe it. The Washington Post reported this week that 14 Trump friends, associates, and campaign and transition officials had contacts with Russians during the 18 months of his campaign.

Note: Congressman Lieu, a former Air Force JAG officer, serves on the House Judiciary Committee

Every single one of them lied about Russia. They started out by flatly denying they had any contacts at all with any Russians. Then they admitted they had a few, but the contacts were innocuous. When numerous meetings with Russians came to light, they said the contacts didn’t amount to anything. When it turned out the contacts were serious, they began denying there had been any “collusion” with the Russians. Trump made it a refrain, that there had been “no collusion” with Russians during the many times he now had to admit his people had met with them.

Robert Mueller, who has indicted and/or taken guilty pleas from 33 individuals and at least three companies, is turning from indictments of Russians to indictments of their American counterparts. He is focusing his investigation not on “collusion,” but on conspiracy to defraud the United States of America. That’s what he indicted 13 Russians who worked for the Russian troll factory, the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg: conspiracy “to defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of the government through fraud and deceit for the purpose of interfering with the U.S. political and electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016.”

Mueller indicted 12 Russian military intelligence agents for “Conspiracy to Commit an Offense against the United States” by hacking into Democratic Party emails and to “stage releases of the stolen documents to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.” He accused the Russians of using false identities and making false statements to hide their connections to “Russia and the Russian government.”

Mueller has been after a conspiracy between Trump and the Trump campaign and the Russian government all along. And he’s using fraud and conspiracy statutes under the U.S. Code to do it.

Mueller is going to connect Donald Trump and his campaign directly to the government of Vladimir Putin. This week, with the guilty plea of his agent Maria Butina, Putin appears ready to help him.

Robert Mueller has never cared about “collusion.” All he has cared about is breaking the law, which Donald Trump has done plenty of. Trump can tweet all he wants, but he can’t stop the big truck coming straight at him driven by Robert Mueller.

GOP Has Declared War-- On Democracy

Liberty Revisited by Nancy Ohanian

Last month, North Carolina Democrats didn't come close to winning with chamber of the state legislature but they did accomplished something very important in both chambers-- they broke the Republican supermajority in each. In the state Senate, the 34-15 Republican veto-proof majority is now a simple 29-21 majority, strong, but not strong enough top override a veto from the Democratic governor, Roy Cooper. Same thing happened in the state House, where the 75-45 GOP supermajority is now 66-54 (6 fewer than what they need to override). So... how is the GOP responding? By rushing through a bunch of anti-democracy bills they know will provoke votes from Cooper before the new legislature is seated when his vetos will stick.

Yesterday, the North Carolina Republican Party decided to try to sweep the stolen congressional election in the 9th district under the rug while passing another voter ID law aimed at making it more difficult for poor people, students and racial minorities to vote. (The first voter ID bill they passed was declared unconstitutional when a federal appeals court found that it was passed with the intent to discriminate against minority voters.

On Wednesday another North Carolina court struck down more legislation passed by the rogue Republican legislature in their lame-duck session to erode the legitimate powers of a Democratic governor-- the same kind of crap Wisconsin and Michigan Republicans are doing now. Yesterday, writing for Vox, Zack Beauchamp reported that the Wisconsin power grab is part of a bigger Republican attack on democracy and that the Republican Party turn against democracy may be a greater threat than Trump is. Only problem with that line of thought is that Trump is very much a part of the Republican Party turn against democracy. "The Wisconsin Republican Party," wrote Beauchamp, "is nullifying the results of the 2018 election. On Wednesday morning, the Republican-controlled state legislature passed a bill that would seize key powers from incoming Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who defeated incumbent Gov. Scott Walker in November. Walker is expected to sign it in the coming days. The bill blocks Evers’s ability to change state welfare policy and withdraw from a lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act-- two things he campaigned on. It limits the state’s early voting period, a move that would make it harder for Democrats to win future elections. And this is all happening during the lame-duck session before Evers takes power, rushed through quickly in an explicit effort to weaken Democrats and prevent the new governor from doing what he was elected to do. In essence, Wisconsin Republicans are telling the state’s voters that their preferences will be ignored." Republicans in Michigan and North Carolina are doing the same thing.

These power grabs highlight one of the most disturbing facts about American politics today: The Republican Party has become institutionally indifferent to the health of democracy. It prioritizes power over principle to such an extreme degree that it undermines the most basic functioning of democracy.


...The specifics of the power-stripping efforts vary from state to state... but share a fundamentally similar structure. Each one curtails the governor’s ability to make changes to Republican-backed policies like welfare work requirements, and political rules like campaign finance regulation. Republican-controlled legislatures are given enhanced powers to block governors’ moves through measures such as handing them control over state bureaucracies. And these bills all happen during lame-duck sessions, specifically subverting the results of elections that just happened.

...Democracy is premised on the idea that political power is only legitimate when exercised with the consent of the governed. But in reality, people disagree about fundamental political and moral issues; no elected government will ever have 100 percent support of the population, or anything close to it. The purpose of a democratic political system is to bridge that gap: to create a system for resolving these disagreements that everyone thinks is fair. That way, everyone will accept the outcome of the election as basically legitimate even when their side loses.

The post-election power grabs amount to Republicans declaring that they no longer accept that fundamental bargain. They do not believe it’s legitimate when they lose, or that they are obligated to hand over power to Democrats because that’s what’s required in a fair system. Political power, to the state legislators in question, matters more than the core bargain of democracy...[L]iterally stripping powers from officials of the opposing party after they win elections [is] nothing less than a rejection of the idea that the people should get to decide who rules them, a point that many political scientists were quick to highlight after the Wisconsin bill passed.

“By undermining the results of the midterms, the GOP makes a mockery of the notion that elections matter,” Jaime Dominguez, a political scientist at Northwestern University, told me via email. The Wisconsin law is “a breathtaking assault on the most basic democratic norm: the willingness of the loser of an election to let the winner rule,” Yascha Mounk, a fellow at Harvard scholar who studies democratic breakdown, tweeted.

There’s also a broader context. Republicans have, for years now, engaged in a systematic and nationally coordinated effort to rewrite the rules of the political game in their favor. What’s happening in Wisconsin and Michigan is only the latest manifestation of a broader anti-democratic trend, which in the past decade or so has become part of the party’s identity.

The spread of extreme partisan gerrymandering and voter ID laws, tools used by Republicans to marginalize minorities and other Democratic-leaning constituencies, are the most obvious examples.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) wrote draft legislation that Republican state legislatures around the country quickly and easily adapted into their own voter ID laws. Another effort, Project REDMAP, an initiative of the Republican State Leadership Committee, was a national coordinating committee helping Republicans at the state level put together extreme partisan gerrymanders in the wake of their sweeping 2010 victories.

In both cases, Republican or GOP-aligned organizations at the national level spearheaded a campaign to systematically undermine the fairness of the electoral system. It’s the flip side of the Wisconsin-Michigan-North Carolina laws: Instead of trying to nullify Democratic victories after they happen, they’re trying to change the system so Democrats can’t win in the first place. At times, they’re even honest about it.

“I think electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats. So I drew this map in a way to help foster what I think is better for the country,” North Carolina state Rep. David Lewis, chair of the legislature’s redistricting effort, once said in defense of his gerrymander. And there is simply no parallel on the other side. While state Democrats have certainly gerrymandered-- Maryland being a particularly egregious case-- it’s not nearly as nationally systematic as it has been on the Republican side. And Democrats certainly have not engaged in large-scale efforts to suppress Republican voters or strip powers from Republican officials after they win office. Republican officials don’t seem to feel constrained by the basic, principled norms of democracy the way that Democrats are.

“There’s really an assault on electoral fairness, I would say, in Republican-governed states,” Daniel Ziblatt, a Harvard professor and author of How Democracies Die, tells me. “It’s really only in Republican-governed states where this has taken place.”

Republican indifference to democracy is a threat to the system

For most of American history, elections have not been free or fair. Vast swaths of the country were not permitted to vote based solely on their race or gender. Even after voting rights were inscribed in the Constitution, Jim Crow laws and campaigns of racist terrorism prevented African Americans from exercising the right to vote. It’s only recently, really since the 1965 Voting Rights Act, that the United States even approximated a fully egalitarian democracy.

And that’s what makes these Republican moves so alarming. It’s not that Republicans are anti-democratic, in the sense of wanting to tear down American democracy and replace it with an authoritarian alternative. It’s that they’re democracy-indifferent, unconcerned with the fact that their pursuit of power echoes some of the undemocratic practices we’ve seen in both American history and failing democracies abroad.

...“Once partisan goals trump democratic commitments, everything is on the table,” writes Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at the University of Michigan. “Scholars of democratic erosion know how dangerous this situation can be.”

It’s not clear what the bottom is-- when more responsible Republicans will start to see that they’re walking down the same road as authoritarian political parties like Fidesz. Is the Republican Party too far gone, too willing to countenance anti-democratic behavior, to be able to reform itself?

If that’s the case, then American democracy is in serious trouble.

As for "worse than Trump," rather than part and parcel with Trumpism is all about, I hope everyone read Mike Spies' piece in Mother Jones yesterday on illegal campaign coordination between Trump and the NRA. That also undermines democracy, as so much of what Trump does from week to week, as though he is being directed by... oh, I don't know... Vladimir Putin, perhaps? "The National Rifle Association spent $30 million to help elect Donald Trump-- more than any other independent conservative group," wrote Spies, something we've all already read about. "Most of that sum went toward television advertising, but a political message loses its power if it fails to reach the right audience at the right time. For the complex and consequential task of placing ads in key markets across the nation in 2016, the NRA turned to a media strategy firm called Red Eagle Media." There's plenty of strong evidence of coordination-- illegal-- between Red Eagle and the Trump campaign. "[T]he NRA and the Trump campaign employed the same operation-- at times, the exact same people-- to craft and execute their advertising strategies for the 2016 presidential election. The investigation, which involved a review of more than 1,000 pages of Federal Communications Commission and Federal Election Commission documents, found multiple instances in which National Media, through its affiliates Red Eagle and AMAG, executed ad buys for Trump and the NRA that seemed coordinated to enhance each other."

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a situation where illegal coordination seems more obvious,” said Ann Ravel, a former chair of the Federal Election Commission, who reviewed the records. “It is so blatant that it doesn’t even seem sloppy. Everyone involved probably just thinks there aren’t going to be any consequences.”

Has everyone forgotten where the NRA got all that money for all this Trump campaigning in 2016? Hint: starts with something that sounds like "Poo" and ends with "tin." And now, some good, solid, positive news: