Did Melania Get Her “I Really Don’t Care” Jacket From Donald’s Closet?

   It’s beginning to make sense now. Even Donald Trump’s supporters must recognize by now that he really doesn’t care about anything except himself. 

My headline for this week’s column was going to be, “Does Anyone Not See by Now That Trump Is a Self-Obsessed Criminal and Con Man?”  But then I remembered the jacket Melania wore on her visit to the border. As a former model, it was so out of character for her to wear an  ill-fitting jacket, much less one with a scrawled message on it. The only explanation can be that it was really Trump’s jacket, not hers. Of course, he would never wear it, but how could he resist buying it?  Borrowing it for her trip to the border fit Melania’s passive aggressive nature, which has been to give the middle digit to her husband — much like how she adopted the issue of cyber bullying. 

If you Google it, you’ll see that the jacket is for sale by multiple vendors.  I wonder how well it is selling among the MAGA crowd, since there are a lot of things they must not care about to continue supporting a man, much less a president, like Donald Trump.

“The President Is Missing” is a phrase we heard starting in mid-November as it became clear there was nothing on the president’s mind except overturning the election of Joe Biden. There has been no comment by the president about anything else, including the pandemic and, more recently, the Nashville bombing.

When he said before the election that the only way he could lose the election was if it were stolen, I suspect he believed it — and still does. The fact that he can’t produce any evidence must surely be frustrating for him, but he is mentally incapable of not believing that he really won. This is how mentally disturbed the man is. We can only hope that he won’t take his psychosis to its logical conclusion, which would be to declare martial law and then resist eviction from the White House, kicking and screaming like the child his niece, Mary Trump, has described him as.

Her description of the president is summarized as follows in an article by the CBC: “The president of the United States, in her opinion, struggles to control his impulses; tell the truth; learn new facts; apologize for mistakes; and lives in constant terror of having people perceive his flaws.”

This is the description of a profoundly disturbed individual — someone that his die-hard fans would likely ban from their personal circle, but whom they support because, despite such flaws, he expresses racial and other prejudices which they endorse privately — and, for some, way too publicly.

Those of us who see the man for what he truly is are holding our breath, hoping he doesn’t do more damage to the country between now and January 20th, worried that his personality disorder might compel him to do some pretty destructive things. As the jacket says, he really doesn’t care about what his actions do to the country. It’s all about him.

It’s easy to foresee a 2021 in which Donald Trump faces the music regarding the illegalities committed by himself and his enterprises. The Trump Foundation was already shut down for its illegal activities.

We can expect that the former president will continue to hold rallies on the pretext of being a candidate in 2024, but the funds raised will be used to pay the $400 million-plus in debts that the New York Times has already reported are facing him in the next four years. He has already raised half that amount through his fundraising ostensibly to fund his challenge of the 2020 election.

At his rallies he will label any indictments and convictions and bad press as politically motivated fake news, which will fly long enough for him to collect more funds from his remaining supporters. His political support by other Republicans will slowly go away, as it already started to do during December, when he was unable to get members of Congress to sustain his veto of the National Defense Authorization Act and to change the Covid-19 relief payments to $2,000 per adult.

The defense bill contained one provision that has really bad ramifications for Trump and his family. It contains the provisions of the Corporate Transparency Act which bans shell corporations from hiding their owners, thus laundering money. Trump himself used a shell corporation created for him by Michael Cohen to disguise the hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, and he has used shell corporations in his businesses too. The technique is also used by foreign actors to launder money.

Please see my blog post from this past Monday at www.JimSmithBlog.com for a longer explanation about this law, excerpted from Heather Cox Richardson’s email newsletter.

    Above I mentioned the Nashville bombing. You probably heard on the news that a girlfriend of the bomber had warned police in 2019 that he was making bombs in his RV. The police went to his house but were refused permission to inspect his home and RV. Because he had no history of criminality, they were also unable to obtain (or perhaps didn’t seek) a warrant to do so.

    This story reflects something that has always bothered me in the discussion about background checks for gun purchases. So often, the people who commit heinous crimes such as in Nashville, or the bombing in Oklahoma City, or the killing of school children in Newtown, Connecticut, are people with no prior criminal record. 

Of the 300 million firearms in civilian hands in America, between 5 and 10 million are AR-15s, the kind used to kill the children at Sandy Hook elementary school. Presumably those owners passed background checks, but let’s say that a mere 1% of them are mentally unstable and could be triggered (excuse the word) by some personal or other event to commiet a heinous mass casualty event with their firearm. That computes to between 50,000 and 100,000 AR-15s in the hands of future mass murderers.

Too extreme a thought? Okay, let’s say that one-tenth of 1% of those AR15s are in the hands of potential domestic terrorists or mass murderers. That’s still 5 to 10 thousand AR15s that someday will make their owner “famous.”

 

The Trump Era Is Summed up by the phrase "Enemy of the People"

I have to share these opening paragraphs from tonight's "Reliable Sources" email newsletter. (Subscribe here.) 

Enemy of the people

 

If someone managed to sleep through the Trump years, and asked me what they'd missed, I'd start with "enemy of the people." Why? Because Trump's demonization of the media explains almost everything. He convinced his fans that the people covering him were lying. He advised them to trust certain Fox shows and ignore practically everything else. He said he was in a "running war with the media" on his very first weekend in office, and never stopped.

 

Many times, in many influential corners of the mainstream media, there was an impulse to ignore Trump's attacks. To deprive him of oxygen. But here's the counter-argument: Americans are drinking from a poisoned well of information. It's what caused some of the fractures in America and exacerbated so many of the others. And the poison is advertised as an antidote! Whataboutism, cherry-picked controversies, cover-ups of Trump's corruption – all of it flows 24/7 from a parallel universe of news, a universe that is largely predicated on criticism of legacy news outlets. All of it relates back to Trump's endless campaign against the people who report the news. The people he labeled as the "enemy."

 

Trump said it more and more every year, between 2017 and 2020, according to Factba.se data. And his base believed it. Disdain for the media glued his base together. That's why, in my view, "enemy of the people" is the No. 1 thing to understand about the past four years. It needs to be factored into every story about governmental action and inaction, every analysis of American politics, even after President-elect Biden is sworn in...

 

 

A "cult president"

 

David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, wrote this about Suffolk and USA Today's newest poll: "What does it mean to be a 'cult president' — one whose supporters will believe and trust him no matter what any other government officials, academics, journalists, politicians, and 'professional' experts say? Donald Trump could at the very least be characterized as one of the few presidents with a cult of personality and a cult-like following."

 

"A whopping 78 percent of Republicans do NOT believe that Joe Biden was legitimately elected president," Paleologos wrote. In the poll, he wrote, "we ask a question about which television and news sources are trusted the most. Among those who trust Fox News, 16% said that Biden was elected legitimately and 83% said he was not. If you combine the next seven news sources including PBS, NPR, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS and NBC, 93% said Biden was legitimately elected and 6% said he was not."

 

Biden was elected legitimately. The widespread belief that he was not – that a vast conspiracy rigged the election against Trump – is evidence of radicalization among the Fox-GOP base. Conservative columnist and CNN contributor Matt Lewis tweeted on Monday, "As a lifelong conservative, I am still surprised by how many people I thought were like me have revealed themselves to be right-wing AUTHORITARIANS."

Vetoed Defense Authorization Bill Contained Ban on Shell Companies Used for Money Laundering, Including by Trump and Russians

Thank you, Heather Cox Richardson, for pointing this out in last night's "Letters from an American"  (Subscribe here.)  Here's what she wrote: 

The National Defense Authorization Act this year does something else, though, that seems to me of far more importance to the president than the naming of military bases.

It includes a measure known as the Corporate Transparency Act, which undercuts shell companies and money laundering in America. The act requires the owners of any company that is not otherwise overseen by the federal government (by filing taxes, for example, or through close regulation) to file a report that identifies each person associated with the company who either owns 25% or more of it or exercises substantial control over it. That report, including name, birthdate, address, and an identifying number, goes to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). The measure also increases penalties for money laundering and streamlines cooperation between banks and foreign law enforcement authorities.

America is currently the easiest place in the world for criminals to form an anonymous shell company which enables them to launder money, evade taxes, and engage in illegal payoff schemes. The measure will pull the rug out from both domestic and international criminals that take advantage of shell companies to hide from investigators. When the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists dug into leaked documents from FinCEN this fall, they discovered shell companies moving money for criminals operating out of Russia, China, Iran, and Syria.

Shell companies also mean that our political system is awash in secrecy. Social media giants like Facebook cannot determine who is buying political advertising. And, as Representative Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) noted, shell companies allow “foreign bad actors” to corrupt our system even more directly. “[I]t’s illegal for foreigners to contribute to our campaigns,” he reminded Congress in a speech for the bill, “but if you launder your money through a front company with anonymous ownership there is very little we can do to stop you.”

We know the Trump family uses shell companies: Trump’s fixer Michael Cohen used a shell company to pay off Stormy Daniels, and just this month we learned that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner approved a shell company that spent more than $600 million in campaign funds.

The new requirements in the NDAA apply not just to future entities, but also to existing ones.

Cute video worth watching: "The 12 Stains of Trump's Mess"

 https://youtu.be/G6h8pJCNhzE

It’s Time to Stop Calling Democrats ‘Socialists, Communists and Leftists’

   I make a practice of watching Fox News to see how that network’s news division portrays the day’s events. (I consider the network’s evening opinion shows — Carlson, Hannity and Ingraham — a waste of time.)

The Fox shows I watch the most are America’s Newsroom in the morning, Special Report in the late afternoon, and Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace on Sunday.

These shows make an effort to be “fair and balanced,” but they do include interviews with right-wing commentators who are prone to making outrageous statements that are rarely challenged as they should be by the anchors -- except for Chris Wallace.

I remember in particular listening to one of those weekday programs prior to Nov. 3rd on which a guest referred to “the communist wing of the Democratic Party.” What, pray tell, constitutes the communist wing of the Democratic Party?  Did the anchor not ask because “everyone knows”?  Is it simply an accepted fact that there is a communist, not just a socialist or leftist, wing of the Democratic Party?  Is it “the Squad”?

I’d like to see Fox News Channel define these terms instead of just throwing them around, leaving the interpretation to whatever the audience chooses.

What’s ironic about this is that the same party which, under the influence of Donald Trump, no longer treats the communist former Soviet Union as an enemy, applies the communist label to the Democratic Party.

Donald Trump’s singular accomplishment as president has been his fulfillment of Vladimir Putin’s desire to make Russia great again. How? By diminishing America’s role and prestige around the world.  One can identify several ways in which Trump has served the interests and goals of Vladimir Putin.

First and foremost, Trump has weakened the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization by (1) supporting Brexit, and (2) failing to express support, when asked, of Article 5 of the NATO treaty which says that an attack against one member is to be treated as an attack against all members.

That article has only been invoked once — in response to the 9/11 attack on the United States. It was because of Article 5 that NATO members joined the United States in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Trump’s failure to criticize Putin or Russia, first by calling Russia’s interference in the 2016 election a “hoax,” has been reinforced more recently by his failure to acknowledge or criticize Russia’s payment of bounties to Taliban fighters who kill American soldiers in Afghanistan and Russia’s current cyber attack on American government and industry computer systems.

Making Russia great again depends largely on making America less great, and that is accomplished by creating dissension and chaos on an unprecedented scale within America. Trump has demonstrated his expertise in that task, dividing America as it has never been divided before.

What has made Trump’s work in this regard so effective is that the side he has chosen to take is that of the well-armed alt-right racists and white supremacists, who are themselves experts at creating violent encounters with counter protestors, creating a vicious cycle of extreme divisiveness. Death threats are their stock in trade when they aren’t actually killing those who dare to oppose their Supreme Leader. Think, for example, of the Georgia Secretary of State and poll workers in several states who have received death threats for doing their jobs and telling the truth. Think also of Eric Coomer, the security chief at Dominion Voting Systems, who is living in hiding because of threats against his life for allegedly masterminding a feature of his company’s voting machines to change Trump votes to Biden votes.

Back now to the claim that leaders of the Democratic Party are communists, socialists and leftists. What is the evidence? Medicare for all? In that case, Canada, the UK, Scandinavia and most European countries are communist, or at least socialist. Are those countries not democratic? Do they lack freedom and liberty?

What those countries have is a more equitable and socially stable country, where taxes are higher but so is the quality of life for the middle class. As for “lower classes” and homeless, those are less of a problem in those countries, where it exists at all. What they don’t have are 530,000 families declaring bankruptcy every year due to medical bills they can’t pay.

My sister Janet lives with her Swedish husband Staffan north of Stockholm.  Last month, Staffan underwent a 5-hour surgery for a defective heart valve. It was a surgery which has been performed several times in America, but it was the first time it had been performed in Sweden. The hospital flew in a cardiologist from Atlanta and experts from other countries to participate in the surgery. The bill to Staffan and Janet was 500 Swedish krona, equal to 60 American dollars.

In America, someone with that condition might have chosen to live with the symptoms and die earlier rather than face financial ruin for his family. That, unfortunately, is the American way.

And what about the Green New Deal? It is portrayed as socialist, but it is a job-creating program to address the global threat of climate change, which is already resulting in stronger hurricanes and other severe weather, flooding and droughts, record forest fires and rising sea level. (Did you hear about the Antarctic ice shelf the size of Delaware which broke off this year?)

Before the 2016 election, we heard about the issue of “low information voters” who are easily manipulated by politicians. Compound that with organized disinformation of the kind perfected by Russia and magnified by today’s social media and right-wing “news” sources such as One America News and Newsmax, as well as by QAnon.

The fact that the majority of Trump voters believe the election was stolen by Joe Biden testifies to the power of disinformation on the part of a trusted leader. The only reason there is a low level of trust in our electoral system is that Donald Trump has not accepted defeat. If he had conceded, that level of mistrust simply wouldn’t exist.

Putting aside what that says about the mental state of our current president, consider what it says about our fellow citizens. As a whole, we seem to be a pretty ignorant and easily conned bunch, don’t we?

A final thought:  It has been reported that White House staffers are concerned about the president's mental health, given his recent actions and his questionable pardons.  If Trump gets demonstrably crazier, perhaps his cabinet will get together and invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him from the presidency before he can do more damage.

 

Some Say to “Move On” and Stop Talking About Trump. Here’s Why I Disagree.

  We’ve heard it said by Winston Churchill and others, reportedly paraphrasing George Santayana, that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. I agree, and we certainly don’t want to repeat the past four years.

We need to keep studying how Donald Trump came to power and, just as important, how he created and maintained the grip he continues to have on 30% or more of the American electorate.

Yes, we’re glad to put the Trump administration behind us, but I for one will continue to study the man, his techniques, and his followers. Like Germany, which suffered even worse from their own misguided leader in the 1930s and 1940s, we need to fully understand what just happened.

It’s primarily a psychological and mental health study, and I’m so grateful for all the primary sources, such as Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, his long-time fixer, Michael Cohen, and his longest-serving National Security Advisor, John Bolton, for the first-hand information and insights they have provided through their books about Donald Trump. There are more books to come, and, as a student of history, I welcome them.

I have said from the beginning that “history will not be kind to Donald Trump and those who have fallen under his spell.” The question remains as to how much damage, including violence by far-right, gun-toting extremists, might be done in the meantime.

We all recognize that Trump’s racist dog whistles have emboldened countless “deplorables” — a term coined by Hillary Clinton but also adopted with affection, we're told, by Trump himself — to come out of the shadows, as they did in the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, resulting too often in violence and death. By echoing conspiracy theories concocted by others, such as Q-Anon, he gave them legitimacy leading to yet more activism and violence.

    An early expression of that was “Pizzagate,” a conspiracy theory that the Clintons and other “Washington elites” were conducting a pedophile ring out of the basement of a Washington, DC, pizza parlor (which doesn’t even have a basement). One man, infected by that conspiracy theory, showed up with his AR-15 to save the children he believed were being trafficked for sex. Fortunately he was arrested with no shots fired.

And just this Tuesday, the following event unfolded, as described by my favorite newsletter writer, Heather Cox Richardson:

In Houston, Texas, today [Dec. 15], police arrested a former police department captain for running a man off the road and pointing a gun at his head in a misguided attempt to foil a massive voter fraud scheme. Sixty-three-year-old Mark Anthony Aguirre claimed to be part of a citizens’ group investigating voter fraud. Believing his victim was hiding 750,000 fraudulent ballots in his truck, Aguirre rammed the truck with his SUV and held the driver first at gunpoint and then with his knee in the man’s back until police came. Upon inspection, it turned out the truck was full of air conditioning parts. The district attorney, Kim Ogg, said “His alleged investigation was backward from the start — first alleging a crime had occurred and then trying to prove it happened…. [W]e are lucky no one was killed.”

We can’t pretend that once Trump leaves and sanity returns to the White House that these kooks will stop believing everything Trump has told them and will tell them in the future, including that the landslide election of Joe Biden was fraudulent. These people are deeply patriotic in their own minds and would go to war for this country. I cringe to think how that war will play out on American soil. Remember, there were death threats made against fellow citizens counting ballots and to the Secretaries of State for whom they worked.

Sen. Mitch McConnell is now being attacked and probably threatened by the same people for acknowledging that “the electoral college has spoken” and Joe Biden is president-elect.

This whole episode of our history is an embarrassment for our country, but it is also a serious threat. In light of this, the worst thing we could do, in my mind, is to “move on” and not address this threat directly — and I don’t mean by meeting violence with violence.

Fortunately, brave prosecutors will press their cases against the Trump organization and Donald Trump after he leaves the safe haven provided by the White House. I still believe that after he has preemptively pardoned everyone he wants to pardon, including his children, that he will step down, saying he wants to “honor” Mike Pence by giving him the opportunity to be president, whereupon President Pence will preemptively pardon Donald Trump to “put the baseless charges against him behind us.”

But pardoning Trump from federal crimes doesn’t lessen the many crimes he can be charged with by DAs such as New York’s Cyrus Vance, who this week won another victory in court to obtain financial records from the Trump Organization.

It has already been reported by the New York Times that our ex-president has $400 million in personal debts coming due in the next four years. We now know how he’s planning to pay some or most of those debts — by continuing to raise funds promoting conspiracy theories that he himself probably doesn’t believe but his gullible supporters do believe because he is voicing them. As I wrote in my Nov. 26 column, his actions in doing so make it clearer than ever that he puts his own interest ahead of the country’s — that it was always “Trump First,” not “American First.”

It’s really a sad and pathetic unraveling of his presidency, and I believe the unraveling needs to be documented and that Americans need to pay attention to it.  If Germany could do it, so can the United States. Let’s learn from this history so we never repeat it.

 

As Trump's Path to Election Success Vaporizes, His More Extreme Supporters Get More Desparate and Violent

The following three paragraphs from Heather Cox's Richardson's overnight newsletter hint and the desparation and violence we can expect between now and January 20th:

The lies about the election spread by Trump and his loyalists are radicalizing Republican true believers, according to security officials and terrorism researchers. They worry that fringe conspiracy theories are going mainstream. Polls suggest that 77% of Trump supporters believe that Biden stole the election—although there is no evidence of fraud—and officials worry those true believers are turning to violence. 

Elizabeth Neumann, who resigned from her job as Assistant Secretary for Threat Prevention and Security Policy at the Department of Homeland Security in April out of concerns that Trump was exacerbating right-wing violence, noted that “the conservative infotainment sector makes money off… outrage.” Kori Schake, director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, who was a senior adviser in the State Department, Defense Department, and the National Security Council, agreed with others that Trump is promoting radicalism by spreading conspiracies and disinformation. "Leadership matters," she said. "It really matters that the president of the United States is an arsonist of radicalization. And it will really help when that is no longer the case."

In Houston, Texas, today [Tuesday, Dec. 15], police arrested a former police department captain for running a man off the road and pointing a gun at his head in a misguided attempt to foil a massive voter fraud scheme. Sixty-three-year-old Mark Anthony Aguirre claimed to be part of a citizens’ group investigating voter fraud. Believing his victim was hiding 750,000 fraudulent ballots in his truck, Aguirre rammed the truck with his SUV and held the driver first at gunpoint and then with his knee in the man’s back until police came. Upon inspection, it turned out the truck was full of air conditioning parts. The district attorney, Kim Ogg, said “His alleged investigation was backward from the start—first alleging a crime had occurred and then trying to prove it happened…. [W]e are lucky no one was killed.”

Michael Cohen’s Book Tells the Story of How Trump Won Over the Evangelicals

  Of all the books written by former confidants, friends and family about Donald Trump, only Michael Cohen’s book Disloyal addresses the biggest mystery of Trump’s ascendancy — his popularity among Christian evangelicals.

Even the evangelicals admit that Trump is not a model Christian. Heck, he doesn’t even attend church. So how did this man gain the undying support of evangelicals? Michael Cohen describes with some pride and in convincing detail how he, not Trump, made it happen.

As he recounts in an early chapter, it all began with, of all people, Justin Bieber. Cohen learned that Jerry Falwell Jr.’s daughter Caroline was infatuated with Bieber, and when there was a Bieber concert in town, he offered to get a VIP pass for her. With his connections, Cohen made the arrangement, even offering the possibility of a meet and greet for Caroline.

Falwell was so blown away by this favor that he said he’d do anything in return. That return favor ended up being to arrange for himself and a number of other evangelical leaders to meet with Donald Trump in Trump Tower.

This was in 2011 when Cohen was urging Trump to run for president and it was being considered. At the get together, Michael Cohen, who is Jewish, watched with astonishment as Falwell orchestrated a laying on of hands by all those evangelical and Pentacostal leaders on Trump, a germaphobe, who pretended it was all very real for him. After the clerics had left, according to Cohen, Trump said, “Can you believe that bullshit? Can you believe people believe that bullshit?”

During that same meeting, there was a discussion of Trump running for president in 2012, and Falwell said the timing wasn’t right. As Cohen describes it, Trump agreed for two reasons. First, he couldn’t see himself being successful up against Barack Obama, but secondly, there was money still to be made on his reality show.

By 2015, the money engine was beginning to slow down, and Cohen again pressed Trump to run. About this time, Falwell came to Cohen, the friend and fixer, with a serious problem. A photographer had convinced Falwell’s wife, Becki, to pose draped over the front of a farm tractor, like you might see on certain calendars. As the shoot proceeded, clothing started coming off and finally there Becki was, reclining topless on the tractor.

The photographer was ready to publish those pictures, and Falwell sought Cohen’s help in preventing that from happening. Cohen swung into action and was successful primarily through threats of legal action against the photographer. Falwell was delighted and, although there was no quid-pro-quo about it, Cohen subsequently got Falwell to endorse Trump as a “repentant Christian” just prior to the Iowa caucuses. The rest of the evangelical leadership, many of whom had participated in the 2011 laying on of hands at Trump Tower, fell in line, and their congregations followed suit, convinced by their leaders that Donald Trump was one of them and shared their values despite his worldly (and abundant) flaws.

Now it all makes sense. And now we know that it was Michael Cohen who orchestrated Trump’s evangelical following, without whose considerable support he could not have won the presidency in 2016.

Previously, it was John Bolton who gave me the up-close portrait of the president which made so much sense, and Mary Trump’s explanation of family dynamics along with her psychological insights were so convincing, but this book by Michael Cohen, which I haven’t yet finished, is the final touch. Please read it.

How long it will take for his followers to become disillusioned about Trump we don’t yet know, but there is enough in print already to do the job.

 

Job #1 (of many) Should Be Restoring Trust in Professional Journalism

  President-elect Joe Biden has a lot of Trump-generated damage to undo, but one of the most important is to help the nation recover from the “fake news” and “enemy of the people” tropes promoted by Donald Trump.

From the beginning, news was labeled “fake” by him, not because it wasn’t true but because it was all too true and perceived as anti-Trump. But members of “Cult-45” took the label to heart, believing that straight news organizations like CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post were anti-Trump and were fabricating stories that were negative to the President. Shamefully, the conservative talk radio shows and evening Fox News opinion programs — Carlson, Hannity and Ingraham — gave undeserved credence to the actual lies, which were coming from Trump.

Often, the lies were created by the TV hosts and then tweeted and otherwise echoed by the president.  It truly fit the definition of an echo chamber.

How can our incoming president neutralize and reverse this toxic situation? First and most importantly, Biden can do what he already did in his Nov. 7 victory speech and his Thanksgiving address to the nation: namely to be presidential. The contrast to President Trump will be as obvious as it will be refreshing.

 Second, Joe Biden’s press secretary can hold daily briefings, and he can hold frequent press conferences. He could learn from Pete Buttigieg’s example and make himself available for interviews and town halls on Fox News.  Mayor Pete (who will hopefully have a high position in the Biden administration) was well received by Fox News’ moderators and audience, and being on Fox News is the only way to reach that audience.

There are two easily debunked lies by Donald Trump — three, if you include that he won the election. The first lie is that we were “turning the corner” on Covid-19 in October.  The second, however, is that Joe Biden was senile, incoherent, living in a senior home and incapable of serving as president. Trump supporters need to be reminded of such statements to help in their deprogramming.

Remember, it’s called “Cult-45” for a reason. Deprogramming is the appropriate technology to employ in helping that portion of the electorate recover their senses.

Biden’s appointment of John Kerry as a cabinet-level “climate envoy” was a welcome move. Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, has suggested the appointment of a “Special Presidential Envoy for Press Freedom,” whose job  would be “to represent the administration at a high level wherever journalists are under threat.” Although the focus of his proposal is on threats to journalists and press freedom in other countries where authoritarian leaders have been inspired by Donald Trump’s attack on the press, I’d like to see a White House counterpart to the Washington Post’s Fact-Checker team when appropriate. Lies will no doubt be forthcoming about White House initiatives, and they shouldn’t be allowed to fester unchallenged.

I like the motto of the Washington Post which appears on its front page: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” It was popularized by Bob Woodward of Watergate fame in a 2007 piece criticizing government secrecy and was adopted as the Post’s motto a month after Trump’s inauguration.

Sonni Efron, a RAND Corporation analyst, coined the term “Truth Decay,” leading to a 2018 book by that name with the subtitle, “An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life.”  It’s on my reading list.

Trump reportedly intends to stay in the public eye, announcing his candidacy for 2024 on Biden’s inauguration day. His ongoing spouting of lies calls for a diligent response.

 

Trump's Legacy, by the Numbers (by WaPo columnist Catherine Rampell)

Here is a compendium of more memorable metrics that should forever be linked with the Trump legacy:

261,000 (and growing): If anything is “sacred,” it is human life. This number is the minimum tally of U.S. lives lost to the novel coronavirus as of Wednesday night. By the time Trump leaves office it will be higher. Even by Thanksgiving morning, it will be higher.

$750: The amount Trump reportedly paid in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency. He paid the same amount his first year in the White House, too.

14.7 percent: The unemployment rate in April 2020. Also the highest unemployment rate on record since modern statistics on joblessness began in 1948 and likely the highest rate since the Great Depression.

$421 million: The amount of loans and other debts for which Trump is personally responsible, with most of it reportedly coming due within four years — that is, a period when Trump had hoped to serve his second presidential term.

100.1 percent: Federal debt held by the public as a share of gross domestic product, in the fiscal year that recently ended, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The last time this measure exceeded 100 percent was just after World War II.

$1.9 trillion: The 10-year cost of Trump’s 2017 tax cut. (This is “dynamic” cost — that is, it accounts for the effects of economic growth.) This contributes to the debt number above.

$130,000: The amount Trump paid an adult-film actress with whom he had an affair; this bought her silence ahead of the 2016 election.

26: The number of women who have publicly accused Trump of sexual misconduct.

26 million: The number of American adults who reported that their household didn’t have enough to eat just ahead of Election Day.

Eight: The number of Trump associates to date charged with or convicted of criminal offenses. The former aides and advisers are: onetime 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort; 2016 deputy campaign chair Rick Gates; former national security adviser Michael Flynn, whom Trump pardoned Wednesday; foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos; informal Trump foreign policy adviser George Nader; political adviser Roger Stone; personal attorney Michael Cohen; and strategist Stephen K. Bannon.

666: The number of separated migrant children whose parents still have not been found, because the Trump administration didn’t keep sufficient records.

23,035: The number of false or misleading claims Trump had made as of mid-September, according to the Washington Post Fact Checker team. Presumably that number will continue to grow during Trump’s final weeks in office.

$3: The amount that Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club charged taxpayers for a glass of water served to Trump.

289: The number of times Trump visited a golf course while president. So far.

15: The number of times that people have to flush their toilet, according to Trump. (Why he made this claim on the campaign trail I do not know.)

One: The number of viewers Trump officials sought to reach during their TV appearances (the infamous “audience of one”).

49 percent: The peak share of Americans who said they approved of Trump’s performance as president, according to Gallup.

306: The number of electoral college votes Trump won in 2016, which he called a “landslide.”

306: The number of electoral college votes Joe Biden won in 2020.

Youth Vote Was Unprecedented -- and Decisive in 2020

Reader Ralph Taylor sent an email to me this week with the following statistics and information, which is worth sharing widely.  Thanks, Ralph!

Among Colorado voters ages 18-34, 70% of those registered voted. They made up 27% of the total vote in the state and broke two to one for the Joe Biden & Kamala Harris ticket. 

• Think about that for a second. The youngest possible voters went overwhelmingly for the oldest candidate ever to run for President. What "generation gap"? 

According to the report, these voters are not driven by party affiliations or candidates; they vote by issues. Maybe, some of Biden's success came from moving toward the same issues as Bernie Sanders: income disparity, health care, racial justice, gender equity, college costs, etc. 

• Of course, it helped Biden that Trump dismissed as a hoax and made so many obviously false promises about the pandemic that has so disrupted young people's lives. Perhaps, being out of work and out  of school kept bringing it home.  

Also, according to the report, the strongest indicator of future voting is past voting. It becomes a habit; we can expect high youth turnouts to come. . 

With this age group becoming an ever-larger fraction of the electorate -- and now VOTING -- this development has obvious implication for future politics. The party who captures youth issues will grow in power and a party who fights against them will lose power. 

It is, I think, a bad sign for Trumpism. His brand of racism and scapegoating seems doomed. And maybe for the Evangelical Right, with its emphasis on gender norms that youths abhor. 

Click here for an article from theguardian.com which covers this topic in greater detail.

It Couldn’t Be Clearer Now: It Was Always ‘Trump First,’ not ‘America First’

  Since this is Thanksgiving week, I have to say two things — first, that I am thankful that Joe Biden is our President-Elect; and second, that “Talking Turkey” is not related to the Butterball Turkey hotline. You’re on your own, friends!

On a personal note, I am thankful for those readers who pushed my GoFundMe campaign to $11,931. That is less than the $17,000+ I paid to print this column in the Denver Post each week starting in March, but I would have gladly spent the entire amount myself if I had to, and I’m happy if this column somehow contributed to Joe Biden’s landslide win in Colorado and gave some comfort to my fellow progressives that they were not outnumbered by members of Cult 45.

Now, as Joe Biden said in his Thanksgiving address, we need to turn our attention to healing the partisan divide. But how do we do that when the president himself is sowing disbelief in our American electoral system? How will his supporters, egged on as they are by Trump, the Fox News opinionistas, OAN, Newsmax and QAnon, ever accept President Biden and Vice President Harris as legitimately elected leaders?

   In 2009, the Republican leadership in Congress committed themselves to being the “Party of No” and making President Obama a one-term president. With only 2 years of Democratic control in both the House and Senate, it’s impressive that the 44th President accomplished as much as he did.

I have donated to the Democratic Senatorial campaigns in Georgia in hopes that Joe Biden will have the same advantage for at least his first two years as president.

As Chris Christie put it on Sunday, Trump’s fight to overturn the election, led so appropriately by Rudy Giuliani, is a “national embarrassment,” but more to the point, it demonstrates even to his supporters who claim to love America and the constitution, that Donald Trump has never put our country first. As John Bolton expressed in his best-selling book, every decision and every action that this president took was predicated on what was best for Donald Trump, not for the country. Click here to read psychiatrist Vincent Greenwood’s treatise demonstrating how Donald Trump exceeds the criteria of a narcissist and meets the criteria of a psychopath. Read it and weep — but weep tears of joy that he will be put out of pasture in January, ready to face $400 million in debts and countless criminal charges, especially in the Southern District of New York.

As I predicted in the past, once the man reaches the end of his “I won” rope, I believe that he will resign for two reasons. First, he can then be pardoned by Pres. Mike Pence, protecting him from federal prosecution, and, second, his fragile ego will not permit him to attend the inauguration of President Biden. He’s such an insecure child — but we already knew that, didn’t we?

From the picture of Donald Trump painted by Mary Trump, John Bolton, Anonymous and so many others, it’s so in character for Donald Trump to be acting the way he is. His supporters haven’t grasped that picture yet, but maybe this current behavior, once it has run its course, will enlighten even them.

At a closed door meeting  on April 16, 2016, Trump told Republican leaders, in effect, that the “act” he was putting on during his campaign would change once he became president. The same day, at a Pennsylvania rally, he told the crowd, “I’m going to be so presidential that you people will be so bored.”

“Promises made, promises kept”? Not that one! And the reason is simple. Immediately after his inauguration, he announced his re-election campaign and continued his “act” at rallies throughout his time in office.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

unpresidential term. .

 

Like Jimmy Kimmel, It’s Hard for Me to Understand Trump’s Larger Following

  Last Friday, Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show on ABC was a re-run of his Nov. 4th show, providing his first monologue after election day, and it resonated with me for the following section, which I had to transcribe for you (emphasis added):

I’m shocked that it was this close… It is unimaginable to me that close to half of American voters saw what this man has done to this country over the last four years, how he kowtowed to Vladimir Putin, he cozied up to Kim Jung Un, he alienated us from our allies, he put children in cages, he villainized the free press, he hid his tax returns, he tear gassed peaceful protestors, he pardoned all his criminal buddies, he extorted Ukraine, he misled us about Covid, he dismantled the pandemic response team, he dismantled health care, he called neo-Nazis “very fine people,” he hired a never-ending parade of imbeciles, he lied, he lied, he lied, and then he lied some more. He’s a liar and a cheat who wants them to stop counting thousands of legitimate votes – and almost half of us are apparently okay with that.  Half of us want to keep it going for four more years. Which, listen, I don’t care what you think of Joe Biden. If Joe Biden stopped by my house every morning to key my car and pee in my pool, still there’d be no question which one of them I would vote for. None! I mean, what more would Donald Trump have to do to show us he’s insane and not fit to lead this country?  I feel like I overestimated the American people, and I underestimated the village people…

   Here’s the bottom line: Donald Trump is going to serve another term.  We just don’t know whether it will be in Washington or in prison yet.

Yes, ten million more people voted for Donald Trump in 2020 than did in 2016.  Joe Biden only won because of a historic voter turnout by right-thinking Americans, but it’s still amazing that so many other Americans like this man.

As I’ve written in previous columns, many or even most of his supporters agree the man is a poor excuse for a human, but they like his policies — some because they are wealthy and it has made them wealthier, but others because he speaks to the nascent racism in them which they can’t always express outwardly, but which they can silently express with their votes. As many Trump supporters have said, “He speaks what I’m thinking.” 

I have to admit that I have lived a sheltered life. I was raised in New England by parents who instilled in me that lying and cheating is not acceptable behavior. This was reinforced by the private schools I attended (on scholarship, since we were poor) for 7th grade through 12th grade, where lying or cheating could get you expelled. That is still true, I’m sure.

Having been an employer rather than an employee all my adult life, I have encountered lying and cheating, and every time it was a firing offense.

You probably have the same mentality about it. Namely, if someone lies to you once or twice, or cheats you even once, that is not forgivable. It’s a red flag reflective likely of future behavior which is simply unacceptable.

Willful lying is so offensive, even in political life, that it took a year or longer for the media to use the word. They used softer phrases like “misstated” or “was not truthful,” but hesitated to say, “the president lied.”  That’s how big a deal it was to use the word, yet now it is easily stated multiple times per day by every news organization that isn’t partisan by its charter. And even the supporters of the president must recognize some of his lies, such as when he said in October that we are “rounding the corner on the pandemic,” and that “they won’t talk about it after the election.” Here’s the corner that we were rounding as he spoke:

Joe Biden Is Wrong: Trump’s Refusal to Concede Befits His Legacy

   We all remember 2016, when Donald Trump said he would only accept the election results if he won. So it is no surprise that he won’t accept the election results now that he has lost.

Never mind that it defies the constitution and threatens national security. Trump has provided adequate evidence that he doesn’t care about either.  He only cares about himself and his fragile ego.

My July 2nd “Talking Turkey” reported on Dr. Vincent Greenwood’s psychiatric analysis of the president as meeting most of the 20 criteria of a psychopath. Refusal to accept loss is not one of them, but it is certainly consistent with them. Reviewing those 20 criteria now makes them ring truer than ever. Only two or three don’t apply:

1. Glibness/superficial charm

2. Egocentricity/grandiose sense of self-worth

3. Proneness to boredom/low frustration tolerance

4. Pathological lying and deception/gaslighting

5. Conning/lack of sincerity

6. Lack of remorse or guilt

7. Shallow affect

8. Callous/lack of empathy

9. Parasitic lifestyle

10. Poor behavioral controls

11. Promiscuous sexual behavior

12. Early behavioral problems

13. Lack of realistic long-term goals

14. Impulsivity

15. Irresponsibility

16. Failure to accept responsibility for own actions

17. Many short-term marital relationships

18. Juvenile delinquency

19. Revocation of conditional release

20. Criminal versatility

News Flash: Trump’s a Loser

Yes, Donald Trump is now a loser, whether he accepts it or not. He is even on record saying that he’s a bad loser.

A Nov. 7 Fast Company column by Joe Berkowitz has the simple headline, “Donald Trump is a Loser,” In it, he wrote that Trump has in fact been a loser in many ways (e.g. getting Mexico to pay for his wall) and lists 14 things we will lose with his departure:

1)  The “fascist cruelty of Stephen Miller.”

2)  Acceptance of white supremacy, “making racists feel happy, comfortable and validated.”

3)  Loss of international esteem.

4)  Denial of climate change.

5)  Conversations about building “the wall.”

6)  The “top-down politicization of the pandemic.”

7)  A Trump-dominated news cycle.

8)  Distrust of White House announcements, which typically focus on Trump’s inherent greatness.

9)  Spite “as the prevalent motivating force,” aimed at “making liberals cry again.”

10)  Loyalty to the president as the primary employment qualification.

11)  The concept of “alternative facts”

12)  The idea that the media is the opposition party and “enemy of the people.”

13)  The president as a negative role model for children.

14)  The president’s sense of infallibility, that he can do no wrong.

But this is such a limited list, isn’t it? I can think of several more things I look forward to losing.

1)  “Shooting from the hip” without thinking and without consultation with advisors. Example: Middle-of-the-night tweeting in general, but specifically announcing troop withdrawal from Syria, abandoning our Kurdish allies.

2)  The president thinking he knows it all — more than the generals, more than epidemiologists, more than climate scientists or scientists in general.

3)  The president making policy decisions based solely on the desire to reverse the policy of his predecessor, regardless of whether the policy was a good one.

4)  A president who is a psychopath, unable to express compassion, such as upon the death of Sen. John McCain, calling him a “loser.”