SPYGATE vs. LIEGATE

23 May 2018 Dwight

“Guarantee His Safety”

I have been writing about Donald Trump for the last 15 months. I wouldn’t have cared about him had he not been elected President of the United States. Since the election, however, I feel compelled to keep a running diary of my thoughts about this man and what he is doing to the country I love. With more than 150,000 words about our pudgy president, I hope only that some read these thoughts.

Many of my friends are Republicans and they, at least, want Donald Trump to be successful. That is how we all start out with a new President, but very early on we realized that Donald Trump is not the president for all Americans. He is the leader only for those whom agree with and support him. He doesn’t care at all about what the other half of the country thinks and believes.

Over a drink one night, one of my most consistent critics said to me with all certainly, “Well, at least Trump pushed the Clintons and Bushes out of the way.” This might bring some comfort to those who wanted to shake things up in Washington, but at what cost? This question remains, was Donald Trump a good choice? Or, more importantly, is Donald Trump good for America? I have never believed that he is.

With the President of South Korea at his side yesterday, Trump made some very disturbing remarks that were certainly his way of softening the blow of both John Bolton’s and VP Mike Pence’s comments about applying the Libya model to North Korea. You might recall, that under pressure from the U.S. and its partners, Muammar Gaddafi denuclearized his country and, three years later, was pulled out of a sewage pipe and murdered by his citizens. These comments disturbed Kim Jong-Un and he made noise that he wasn’t happy. Words do matter.

Trump said about Kim, “I will guarantee his safety. He will be safe, he will be happy, his country will be rich, his country will be hard working and very prosperous.”

After all the saber rattling this President has done in the past, for him to be walking back the notion that the deal to denuclearize Kim’s country is a trick to overthrow the dictator seems a bit too obvious. While the Donald plans to make the people of North Korea rich, what will he tell the people at the Carrier plant in the State of Indiana who lost their jobs after Trump promised they wouldn’t? What will he tell the people of America who will see large increases in their healthcare bills due to his neglect of reforms? Most importantly, what will be tell the parents of Otto Warmbier, who was sent home from North Korea dying in a coma?

More than 70% of the people in this great country think that Trump’s tweets are his weakest activity, intended to keep pushing his obnoxious brand of fake news and lies. Now that our Great Orange Leader has applied the title SPYGATE to the investigation into whether Russia was trying to infiltrate his campaign, we know that he truly believes everyone, from the press, to Democrats, to the FBI, the CIA and other loyal Americans are out to get him. He can’t simply admit that the Russians wanted him elected, and he will never realize that, if need be, they will be the ones bringing him down when they become tired of his inability to give them what they want. Will he appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate the Russians after he is thrown out of office?

This is no longer a game of thinking, “Well, we’ve got to give him a chance.” This is a man with such a poor grasp of the English language that most translators from other countries simply state that he doesn’t sound very educated.

When Trump was at the CIA the other day for Gina Haspel’s swearing in, he got lots of applause to his lines, except for one. When he proudly claimed that America is finally respected again around the world, no one clapped. Go back and watch the video if you don’t believe me. Does the CIA rank and file know something the President doesn’t? They usually do. And be sure to note the overzealous hug of Ms. Haspel at the end, where Trump pushed his chest into her chest. Creepy.

Trump tweeted today (5-23-2018), “Look how things have turned around on the Criminal Deep State. They go after Phony Collusion with Russia, a made up Scam, and end up getting caught in a major SPY scandal the likes of which this country may never have seen before! What goes around, comes around! Follow the money! The spy was there early in the campaign and yet never reported Collusion with Russia, because there was no Collusion. He was only there to spy for political reasons and to help Crooked Hillary win – just like they did to Bernie Sanders, who got duped!”

Here are the key phrases, “Criminal Deep State,” “Phony Collusion,” “SPY scandal,” and the term, “Follow the money!” which is a Watergate reference. The Donald used the word “Collusion” three times in those tweets and he continually says the same thing over and over, like a drooling homeless man living in a box under a highway overpass. When Trump feels people are attacking him, he creates diversions and lies. He is exactly what Bernie Sanders said he is, “a pathological liar.”

Pathological lying (also called pseudologia fantastica and mythomania) is habitual or compulsive deceit. Trump’s compulsive bending of the truth and documented lies make his entire presidency LIEGATE.

I must ask if Trump is guaranteeing our safety. The only way we can assure our safety from his misdeeds and regulatory rollbacks is to vote people into office who will challenge him and keep him under control. We’ve already lost the Supreme Court. Once again, they showed how they are on the side of U.S. corporations, not the people of America, when they decreed against class action lawsuits. Donald Trump will only get more dangerous the longer he is permitted to rule.

When the Russian investigation wraps up, we will learn that we are only as strong as our institutions. We shouldn’t assume that our Courts and Congress can keep America safe from a tyrant. Our free press reveals the lies and the loose lines that Trump presents every day, but there is very little critical review of this man that doesn’t get pushed aside from his henchmen in the conservative wing of the Congress and a complicit West Wing of the White House. Trump must be stopped, one way or the other.

The First 200 Days Of Trump – ONLY ONE MILLION LEFT

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21May

TEMPER TANTRUM TRUMP

21 May 2018 Dwight

The Flaws of the President’s Personality

Just look at who we elected America. There are people on the right and people on the left. Some people are right, and others are wrong. The question of whether we hired a normal person as the leader of the free world was answered long ago. Donald Trump shows his weaknesses and flaws every day. He wanted to be the big act in the big tent and the opening act of this crazy circus, but is this painted elephant truly good for America?

The tweet from Sunday (5-20-2018) shows this man’s inability to work behind the scenes on any aspect of governance, “I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes – and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!”

With ten grieving families in Texas, we have a president who changes the subject. He wants to force reporters away from asking about North Korea. He’s angry that people on TV are making fun of him about his pitch for a Nobel Peace prize. As we know, the Donald cannot contain himself when he feels like he is being attacked or that people are questioning his every opinion. Some of his ideas are outright insane.

By trying to use the Justice Department as a spear against his “enemies,” the Donald has crossed the line of how a president should conduct business in the White House. But his followers don’t care, they are just watching a bad TV show. The funniest part of the President’s tweet was this part “…and will do so officially tomorrow…” as if what he tweets is some out-of-body experience that has nothing to do with his “official” position as President of the United States. He doesn’t comprehend that when he tweets, he is making policy. It’s funny, in a frightening way.

In the end, will we find out that Donald J. Trump was so defensive through this investigation of Russian interference in our election because he knew that he had some involvement? Maybe he thought he was pulling off some great scam, like he always did in business. What he inherited, however, were the pressures and power of the presidential office, not some deal he can walk away from. It surely doesn’t seem like he is he ready to do this job.

It’s kings who invoke the phrase, “I hereby demand,” only they use the word decree,” and this is the beginning of the end. There are many from the opposing party who are attempting to nudge this guy out of office. Then there are people from the far right and far left who cannot ponder any thought without their filters blocking any logical sunlight. America wasn’t built to have presidents impeached. We can slap their hands, we can take a ceremonial vote, but no president has ever been impeached. That would be the final act in this circus and would surely bring down the house.

The real question is what would be left as we fold up the tent and put away the beams and chairs? Would the nation get back to normal with someone like Mike Pence as President? What about the North Korean deal? Would Kim Jong-Un want to meet with the second-string player? Would Mike Pence just pardon Trump and his family?

We hear that President Trump is a “transactional” president. I used to think that was a good term, until I dug into the meaning. Now I see it as a flaw. Transactional means relating to the conducting of business, especially buying or selling. Can a president be an affective executive thinking that every action and decision is based on buying and selling? That would mean that deal making supersedes diplomacy and that winning a deal is more important than governing. The con that was played on the American people was that government would be better with a successful businessperson running things. How did that work out, America?

Trump is using his role as president to benefit himself. He attacks Amazon because its founder, Jeff Bezos, owns the Washington Post which is critical of the administration. He ordered the Post Office to increase Amazon’s postal rate to get back at Bezos. Now he is clearly using the Justice Department to interfere with the investigation into his campaign and Russian interference in the election. He has rolled back regulations at the Environmental Protection Agency to get back at Obama. He exited the Paris Accord and the Iran Nuclear deals because they were not his inventions. He has never read most of the agreements he walked away from.

His attempts to destroy Obamacare are another example of getting rid of anything that was created by his predecessor. It’s a not a conflict of ideals or ideas, but rather a war against Obama and Hillary Clinton. When does it become his presidency?

Trump played president right after the Parkland shootings in Florida with a White House photo/video op. He said he is going to do something. Then he had dinner with the NRA and did nothing he claimed he would do. He LIED TO THE SURVIVORS and insulted the families of the fallen by going to the NRA convention with a pledge to protect the Second Amendment, thereby showing he had no true empathy. Now he has another school shooting to ignore.

His rants, raves and insanely inappropriate, maybe even illegal, tweets continue. The Great Orange Leader’s goal is to trash the Justice Department. If this scandal ends up in the courts, Trump will discredit the Judicial branch. And when the army comes to extract him from the Oval Office, he will tell us that the U.S. Army is an arm of the deep-state. He’s a paranoid, unstable lunatic. The sooner we get rid of him the better. He’s bad for America.

The First 200 Days Of Trump – ONLY ONE MILLION LEFT

New Book about Terrorism

One of the most eye-opening stories about terrorism. The famous cable TV talk show host, Jonas Bronck, leaves New York on his quest to find truth. He finds himself in the middle of terror and personal torment in the name of journalism. He once again asks, If God Could Cry, would he be crying for us, or with us?

Now available on Amazon.

18May

BIGGER THAN WATERGATE

18 May 2018 Dwight

Weddings & Funerals – Absentee Trump

Do you ever wonder why we don’t see the President of the United States at major events like royal weddings and state funerals? It’s the lack of leadership linked to our great disruptor, Donald Trump. All the ballyhoo candidate Trump fabricated about how America would be more respected if he was President, turned out to be fake news.

A national treasure’s and hero’s dying wish that Trump NOT attend his funeral is real news. And it was not a shock to anyone who knows Barbara Bush when the Donald didn’t attend her funeral service in Houston. The Bush family has little regard for the 45^th President.

You will not see Donald and Melania Trump at Windsor Castle for the Royal Wedding this weekend. Our Great Orange Leader is not welcome there. What happened to all this winning that America was about to do? Donald Trump, like in business and life, is a fraud. The world knows it.

Now, Trump is using his child-toy, Twitter, to proclaim his latest paranoia, “Apparently the DOJ put a Spy in the Trump Campaign. This has never been done before and by any means necessary, they are out to frame Donald Trump for crimes he didn’t commit.”

NOTE: the constant referencing of himself in the third person may be a sign of mental illness.

Donald has decided that this “whole Trump-Russian thing” is bigger than Watergate. WOW, what a terrible communications mistake. The headline in my local newspaper has a picture of Trump and the headline: BIGGER THAN WATERGATE! I use the term “implication of the opposite,” it’s my marketing-advertising theory about a company that goes out of its way to cast a shadow on the competitor. People hear the opposite of what they are being told, or worse, perceive a cloud cast over the whole product line.

Let me put this in context. Watergate was an event in which Richard Nixon, the President of the United States, got caught in lies and a cover-up and was forced by his own party to resign. Is that what is going to happen here? Is Trump predicting the future? We can only hope. Or is this some kind of diversion away from the shuddering North Korean summit?

Trump, always the martyr, complains about being misinterpreted in this tweet: “Fake News Media had me calling Immigrants, or Illegal Immigrants, “Animals.” Wrong! They were begrudgingly forced to withdraw their stories. I referred to MS 13 Gang Members as “Animals,” a big difference – and so true. Fake News got it purposely wrong, as usual!”

REALLY DONALD? He could have just let it go, but he’s overly sensitive about anything that has been written about him. It’s another unforced error complicating his messaging.

Trump believes that the government put a “spy” in his campaign allowing the “deep state” to get dirt on him. You know, finding out things like members of his team and family meetings with Russians. This is a joke, right?

He denied that any campaign person had contact with the Russians, but then we find out how many meetings with Russians took place. Trump statements about the Russian investigation have zero credibility.

Maybe in the end we will learn that Trump is not as controlling as he makes himself out to be, or perhaps we will learn that he was involved in every move his son and campaign comrades made. But the pushback from Trump and his talking heads is overwhelming and smells fishy. It’s like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar saying, “Oh, I wasn’t stealing them. I was counting them.” Yeah, right.

As more REAL FACTS come out, Trump will be less welcome on the world stage. The idea of a U.S President paying a porn star hush money doesn’t play well in the royal courts and respectable governments of the world. This is most likely why Trump gravitates toward tough dictator-types rather than strong, esteemed leaders.

Trump is playing a game about whether he will sit for Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel team to answer questions about the investigation. While the President’s ugly lap dog, Rudy Giuliani, foams at the mouth and warns his new client that any testimony is a trap, I have a question. Is Donald Trump a child? He’s the President of the United States. If he cannot sit down and tell the truth about such a serious charge, then he’s not qualified to be president. Honesty is not a word that can be used to describe Trump, but he should at least try to avoid a Constitutional crisis.

The actions and words of Donald Trump show he is a suspicious person, afraid of the dark shadows of his own mind. He fears losing power and no longer being captain America. It’s time for Trump to man up and clear up this mess.

He probably doesn’t want to go to weddings and funerals because those events aren’t about him. The more he feeds his own ego, the bigger it gets. As the saying goes, “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.” With his massive frame, the fall will be recorded by history as the greatest failure of any president.

The First 200 Days Of Trump – ONLY ONE MILLION LEFT

New Book about Terrorism

Now available on Amazon.

16May

RUCKUS REVOLT IN NOKO

16 May 2018 Dwight

Trump played by the Rocket Man?

Everyone wanted it to be true. Trump was actually looking for a mantel to become the home of his Noble Peace prize. It all seemed so sudden and more unpredictable than even Trump himself. After sixty-five years, the dream of peace on the Korean peninsula is still a possibility. The two players in this matter will, well, play. After releasing three American detainees, Kim Jong-Un may have felt he’s standing on some moral plateau.

According the Associated Press, “North Korea on Wednesday (5-15-2018) canceled a high-level meeting with South Korea and threatened to scrap a historic summit next month between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un over military exercises between Seoul and Washington that Pyongyang has long claimed are invasion rehearsals.”

The White House was caught off-guard by this recent disposition from the Supreme Leader in North Korea. In many ways, Kim Jong-Un is just as much of an amateur with worldwide diplomatic relations as Trump. Our President always warned that this could happen. Much to his credit, he kept saying, “We’ll see what happens” which is what he says when he doesn’t have a clue about what will come next. Not having an answer to any question is rather amazing for such a blatant blowhard like Trump.

As this story is hitting, the Senate Judiciary Panel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 Election has released a two-thousand-page transcript of interviews they conducted with key players from the Trump campaign and family. The interview with Donald Trump, Jr. was revealing and dodgy, at best. Don Jr. answered either, “Don’t recall,” “Don’t know,” or “Don’t remember,” sixty-seven times in his testimony. The word, “father,” appears more than 77 times in the transcript.

The big question of whether Trump Jr.’s dad, now the President of the United States, was involved with the writing of the first public statement about the meeting with Russians in Trump Tower remains cloudy. Trump Jr. says he didn’t tell his father, but he thinks he told Hope Hicks, the former White House Communications Director. One must assume that Donald’s trusted confidant would have informed the candidate of this big meeting.

The real question that we’ve been asking here in America, is whether Kim Jong-Un can be trusted. North Korea is trying to assess the credibility of our Great Orange Leader. Kim can go into the Trump summit with his trusting eyes wide open, or he can pour enough piss and vinegar to force Trump to pull out. If that happens, Trump will have two hot spots in the world, the Middle East, for being played by Netanyahu, and the Korean peninsula, after being played by the little Rocket Man.

There will be no great happiness or follow-up if the big meeting is canceled. Trump isn’t a leader who thinks ahead. There is never a Plan B for anything. He is so concentrated on his own optics and publicity that he never contemplates “what if.” In diplomacy, that “what if” is the rocket fuel that starts a peace plan or starts a war. Trump doesn’t grasp the bigger picture and the historical implications of what is happening.

The White House press secretary is saying that we “fully expected” what has transpired with North Korea. Really? What part of “face saving” do they not understand in the big white lie house.

This North Korean confrontation on the joint military actions (training missions) comes days after Trump said that Kim Jong-Un treated the detainees very excellently. One needs not only a shovel with this guy, but hip-boots as well. If someone arrests you, puts you in jail for three years and makes you do hard labor, in which part of all that is excellence?

Donald Trump, Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort met with five Russians in the Trump Tower on June 9, 2016. In case you are not aware, this meeting has its own Wikipedia page. Don Jr. answered an email saying he was looking forward to the meeting, He believed it would produce Clinton emails that could help the Trump campaign. Isn’t it illegal to conspire with a foreign country to affect an America election?

Trump ripped up a nuclear agreement with Iran that was co-signed by the U.S., the U.K., France, China, Russia, Germany and the E.U. And what did he expect when he moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem? What does Trump think Kim Jong-Un is going to say when the elder leaders of his party keep warning him about Trump? It’s clear that the investigations into the Trump campaign by Robert Mueller’s team at the Special Counsel’s office are far from over. I believe they have more on the current administration than anyone knows, including Trump.

The old slogans, “What goes around comes around” and “as you sow, so shall you reap” now come sharply into focus. The bad karma Trump has created for himself by what he has said and done will finally come back to smack him in his little pie-hole. The end will produce a clearer image of this man who refuses to apologize and who is never wrong. Trump is a perfect fool living on his hill. The Beatles said it best, “His head in a cloud, the man with a foolish grin is talking perfectly loud. But nobody wants to hear him, they can see that he’s just a fool.”

The First 200 Days Of Trump – ONLY ONE MILLION LEFT

New Book about Terrorism

Now available on Amazon.

14May

LEAKS & LIES & LOOSE LIPS

14 May 2018 Dwight

Trump Wants to Help Chinese Workers?

We have seen it all now. Our Great Orange Leader has no problem putting people down or saying horrible things about them and that modus operandi has dripped into others in the Swamp House at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. What these immature Trump lackies don’t understand is that anything and everything said on the reality TV show known as the Trump administration will be revealed. Who is doing this?

High polarity in a workplace naturally brings high drama. Some people think they are being funny because they are under the illusion that Trump himself is pleased by sarcasm and humor. Full disclosure here; I have never laughed at anything Donald J. Trump has said. His humor is the worst kind of Dad humor, not funny and, at its best, teetering only on corny.

Yesterday (5-14-2018), the Donald tweeted out what appears to be a joke, “President Xi of China, and I, are working together to give massive Chinese phone company, ZTE, a way to get back into business, fast. Too many jobs in China lost. Commerce Department has been instructed to get it done!”

Now had this been a hack, I could understand it. But what our President is now saying our country is supposed to help a Chinese company, ZTE, because China has lost too many jobs. After telling us that China has raped us, has taken advantage of America and has even been a currency manipulator, Trump now wants to put China First on this issue. This is freaking outrageous.

It appears to be okay for a staff member of the White House to malign an American hero as he walks the last mile of his life. There was already a pattern established by Trump saying that John McCain’s P.O.W status did not make him a hero. Now we can just spit on a dying man and walk away with a clear conscience? Who are these people? They are more concerned about leaking co-workers than the pain they dish out.

The reason people leak conversations after meetings and confabs is because Trump himself leaks every night during his reassuring phone calls with rich people. The Donald doesn’t even realize that “leaking” is a sport in D.C. which the cunning use to step over people and speak truth to power. Unfortunately, with the Trump administration very little truth comes out, so speaking honestly is the duty of the free press, as it should be.

Through the “genius” of Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, we learned over the weekend that Trump himself ordered the Justice Department to stop the Time Warner – AT&T merger. Then, quickly, we got a correction. Trump had nothing to do with DOJ suit against the merger. The flip-flops and self-inflicted wounds of this President result from the lack of discussion and thought that normally goes into presidential speech.

With so many lies blasting out of this White House, it’s hard to know if even the leaks are based on facts. The many loose lips in that swampland guarantee that the only consistent reality of this show will be employee turnover. People will constantly be fired and sent away because those government employees’ only power is to be wined and dined by the press. It’s like taking candy from a baby. They are either disgruntled, or simply amused, at seeing their words under the cloak of an unnamed source.

It will be interesting to hear the justification Team Trump will bring out of the oven on this save- a-Chinese-company decree from President Goofball. We have workers here in the U.S.A. who desperately need jobs, so would someone please tell me why are we going to savage a tech giant in China? Does the Chinese President Xi have a vested interest in this company? We will never know. There is little transparency in a “communist” country.

If Donald Trump really believes anyone is going to buy this radical move, he’s crazy. If the people in his base let him give jobs to China before getting our unemployment down to zero percent, he’s abandoning one of his basic campaign promises about why he would be a good president. Do his followers even understand what he is attempting to pull off? He’s reneging on a PROMISE.

Trump is susceptible to doing things which he thinks will please his friends, rather working for the benefit of all Americans. This could be the true test of whether Russia has a grip on Trump and whether he’s a little afraid. China could financially crush us by calling in all the loans. Maybe in his personal business circle our President is afraid of Russia demanding repayments of the loans to Eric, Don, Jr. and the Trump Enterprises?

If I was all powerful, the leakers, the liars and all the loose lips would be expelled from the White House. That would include the main leaker.

The First 200 Days Of Trump – ONLY ONE MILLION LEFT

New Book about Terrorism

Now available on Amazon.

11May

CORPORATE CORUPTION

11 May 2018 Dwight

Trump Says the Stupidest Things

Many politicians create catch-phrases and slogans that seem like good ideas at the time but, in retrospect, are more like a giant slab of pie in their faces. We all remember, “Read my lips,” which was supposed to be a pledge not to raise taxes. Some have used them in defensive posture, “I am not a crook” or the now famous, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” They all seem funny now in the light of day.

I guess Trump’s big talking point, “Drain the swamp,” was just another piece of raw meat thrown to the mob. His fired-up base could repeat it endlessly, while the rest of us saw that a more accurate phrase would be, “Here comes the new boss, just like the old boss.” The draining of the swamp was merely a bullshit campaign slogan. As one Trump voter said in West Virginia recently, “He’s just another politician.”

We are learning now that Donald J. Trump and his “personal lawyer” were involved in a business-as-usual, pay-for-play scheme with several large corporations. Not only did Michael Cohen’s LLC shell company pay a porn star for her silence, it became his in-box for millions of dollars. Before and right after Trump’s election, Cohen was using his proximity to the Donald to sell access to people who wanted to influence the new administration.

Corporate payments to do commerce in certain countries is simply thought to be the cost of doing business. In my experience, $40,000 in India could speed up the start time and circumvent the red-tape of creating a new company there. In China, a payment to a local official can get you into the country when you are a multi-national. The rate card varies.

AT&T, which according to CNBC, gave Cohen “up to $600,000 for ‘insights into understanding the new administration.’ At the time it engaged Cohen, AT&T was seeking tax and regulatory relief, as well as a favorable outlook on its proposed merger with Time Warner.” Ironically, Trump tweeted against the merger. Was that just a coverup of the bribe?

Drug maker Novartis delivered $1.2 million to the Cohen slush fund, saying they wanted health care expertise. Just for the record, Michael Cohen has no experience in this field. And a firm attempting to land a multibillion dollar contract from the Pentagon for military training jets, Korea Aerospace paid Michael Cohen $150,000 for his “accounting expertise.” Seems like his accounting sloppiness has landed him in a huge mess.

Unbelievably, our legal system permits these kinds of left-handed bribes. If a company is a registered lobbyist, they can legally contact, pitch and attempt to affect legislation on Capitol Hill. But Michael Cohen is not a legally registered lobbyist. He used his alleged personal lawyer “fixer” status to bring in the cash. This is perhaps a Federal Election Commission violation. After all, Trump did file for reelection right after the inauguration.

Trump was already a shady character before he was elected. He never played fair in business. For someone who is always decrying things as “unfair,” like the little child not understanding what is right or wrong, the Donald’s ability to use the bankruptcy laws stops just short of defrauding investors out of money. They paid and he left the scene of the crime with all his money intact. What is fair about that?

Michael Cohen is a bottom feeder, but one must put some blame on these douche bag corporate scoundrels for getting sucked into such ridiculous shakedowns. Why would AT&T think that paying this broke-dick lawyer would help them navigate a tricky merger? If I was an AT&T investor, I would be at the next stockholder meeting demanding to be heard. The question is simple. Why would AT&T engage in this kind of activity?

This whole caper should not come as a surprise. Trump is a corporate whore who worships only the holy dollar. Everything he does is designed to help his cronies and capitalists on Wall Street. All the claims that Bernie Sanders and Trump himself made about Hillary Clinton are the total embodiment of who Trump is. Remember, they both said that Hillary and the Clinton foundation were in the pocket of Wall Street and large corporations. Under Trump, the corporations got the big tax cuts, not the average person here in America. The deregulations and disregard for monetary safeguards are aimed at big business, not the health and welfare of the middle class and the long-term stability of our economy.

What we have learned is that Washington continues to run on corruption. Trump claims he will lower drug prices, but he is not in control of the game. Big pharm multinationals like Novartis are in the driver’s seat. Our insurance companies do secret deals with pharmacies and providers so that their drugs are dispensed first at the price they demand. Money paid to Michael Cohen was intended to make sure Trump didn’t mess up their schemes and the business-as-usual attitude of bilking billions from sick people would continue.

And finally, if Trump’s whole deal is “America First,” why would Cohen take money from Korea Aerospace when they are up for a billion-dollar contract with the Pentagon? Why would the president’s personal attorney help a company from Korea? Why shouldn’t that contract go to an American firm? Through his actions, Michael Cohen has urinated on both “America First” and “Drain the Swamp.” Trump is already distancing himself from Cohen and, in the end, will probably pardon him. Nothing to see here folks; just go back to sleep and ignore all this chicanery.

Trump lies many times a day. He may create a war in the Middle East or he may get lucky and denuclearize the Korean peninsula, but no matter what happens he will NEVER help the middle class. He doesn’t care about the little guy. He just wants them to shout and mimic his tag lines. Trump is a clown in orange makeup, embarrassing the United States of America with his act.

Donald J. Trump and all his millionaire and billionaire friends will get rich and the corporate corruption will continue. Sad but true. The only aspect of American life that is more soulless than corporations is the government. Trump is just another politician.

The First 200 Days Of Trump – ONLY ONE MILLION LEFT

New Book about Terrorism

Now available on Amazon.

9May

NO COUNTRY IS A MAN

9 May 2018 Dwight

Is Trump Really Just a Dictator with a Long Tie?

What are we missing here? The fear of Obama brought together millions of gun buyers, who bought weapons. In case you don’t remember, that paranoia about our first African-American President coming to get your guns never happened.

The word spread quickly through the evangelical communities of our great land that the only party that would protect their religious rights has an elephant mascot. That myth drove their involvement in shaping the political landscape by making a move to the far right. There should be a separation of church and state, but evangelicals don’t believe this Jeffersonian creed.

The other group of people who voted and made Trump the 45^th President of the United States of America has been frustrated for decades because of a lack of protection for their jobs and livelihood here at home. We get this and, yes, we probably need to repair this problem in the boardrooms of America.

We now have a leader who truly believes that he, and he alone, can fix all the problems which have ever been created by the past administrations. According to our Great Orange Leader, everything that has ever happened in another era was wrong and helped “destroy” America. Thus, the need for this one man to “make America great again.”

The positive, long-term results of some of Trump’s accomplishments are overshadowed by his obsessive need to attack and tweet. His narcissistic personality sets the media agenda and gets in the way of his smattering of leadership achievements. While most people focus on the firestorms and eruptions from this self-centered demigod, he has brought about major policy changes that will affect America in deeply negative ways.

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room: immigration. America has always had a strange relationship with the rest of the world. The first fact is that many people love America around the world. They watch our movies and TV shows and they want to come here. They visit for vacation and sometimes they just stay. Our border to the south is a minor player in what the administration calls illegal immigration and drug problems. There are millions of people who have come to America on airliners from other countries. Trump uses the building of a wall on the Mexican border as a visual to demonstrate his desires. Let’s not forget that the American drug epidemic starts not at the Mexican border but in our local pharmacies with bad doctors over-prescribing.

The big headline in the Washington Post this morning (5-9-2018) said, “U.S. embassy cables warned against expelling 300,000 immigrants. Trump officials did it anyway.” The burden that will be placed on the home countries of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) people in the USA could be a diplomatic nightmare. Once again, Trump is using these executive orders to “clean up the neighborhood” without any understanding about how these moves could destabilize certain countries. War costs more than diplomacy and aid. That is what the Marshall Plan was all about.

Our Attorney General announced that families coming through Mexico because of the violence and unrest in their Central American countries will be divided and children will be taken away from their mothers and fathers. We seem to have lost our morality.

Trump is promoting an isolationist foreign policy. This President, without an end game plan, terminated DACA, walked away from the TPP (an agreement to reel in trade with China) pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord (an agreement to really clean up the world we live in) and now has ended the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the agreement between Iran and the United States, United Kingdom, Russia, France, China, Germany and the European Union. This was a campaign promise that Trump made and kept, without any long-range strategy other than his little round mouth saying he wants a better deal. Trump even used old data presented by the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, as proof that Iran is in violation of the agreement. This was the Donald’s “WMD” moment.

Trump has gotten rid of more people in the first year of his administration than any other president. He has slowly weeded out common sense thinkers and replaced them with people who agree with him. The real question is whether his actions make America safer or is the world more likely to blow up into proxy and real wars? Sanctions returned to Iran will only weaken European and Asian nations relationships. If you drink the Trump Kool-Aid, you probably believe his huffing and puffing rhetoric will keep our house safe. However, history shows that most of what the U.S. has done in the Middle East has failed.

Speaking on the Daily Show, historian Jon Meacham was rather positive about the power of the Constitution and how even a dipshit like Trump will be controlled sufficiently by time and the rule of law. I am a skeptic, believing Trump will move forward with renewed vigor after getting the three detainees released from North Korea and seeing slight improvements in his approval scores due to an upcoming meeting with Kim Jung-Un.

And what is the meaning of Russian oligarchs and mega-companies depositing large sums of money into the Michael Cohen-Trump slush fund LLC right after the election? It signifies that Trump was either using his lawyer to collect “pay-for-play” fees from companies wanting something, or Michael Cohen was using his proximity to Trump to create a business. The fact that the same account paid hush money to a porn star was Cohen’s big mistake. If a quid-pro-quo can be proven, those payments are bribes.

We must keep our eyes on the prize here. The reward will be a strong democracy not tainted by the aggressive actions of an unchecked President. Trump will probably not be impeached without strong evidence that he was involved in a conspiracy with Russia, but the people must check his bullshit and lies with clear minds when they go to the ballot box. The government that runs the greatest country in the world is in the hands of an amateur who thinks he can do anything. We must not let him ruin what centuries have built.

With all the possible successes of a strong economy and movement in the world toward a more peaceful climate, maybe we can get back to protecting the actual planet. Or am I dreaming?

The First 200 Days Of Trump – ONLY ONE MILLION LEFT

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8May

THE RAGE OF RUDY

8 May 2018 Dwight

Trump Gets His Roy Cohn

There is something very McCarthy-like about all this recent Trump stuff. Joseph McCarthy was the U.S. Senator from Wisconsin between 1947 and 1957. McCarthy investigated what he called un-American activities. which he and his cronies claimed were driven by communist convictions. McCarthy’s attorney was a man named Roy Cohn, who later became a mentor and fixer for a young Donald Trump.

Trump is frustrated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recusal from the Russian Interference investigation. Trump was quoted by several sources to have complained, “Where is my Roy Cohn?” The Donald thinks that he should have the same kind of “protection” President Kennedy had with his brother, Robert, being the Attorney General. It’s as if our Great Orange Leader views the Attorney General as the President’s personal lawyer, rather than the head of the Department of Justice.

The susceptibility of this president to blackmail is alarming. He paid women for their silence about relationships, however far they went. He and his fixer, Michael Cohen, felt a need for six figure payoffs to women to, as they put it, not talk about things that didn’t happen.

And Donald Trump has such thin skin, that any negative comment on TV or in the press determines how he will act. He will even reverse course when the Fox News pundits and talking heads suggest he is wrong. He is totally controlled by media coverage. He is his own press agent with his Twitter account at the ready with no legal or logical filter on his output.

Donald J. Trump is open to strong pitches by people he likes or who are from New York. He relates to Rudy Giuliani because, in a lot of ways, Rudy is like Trump. The fastball con job Rudy has presented shows he is not the great prosecutor he once was. His arrival has only added more disruption to the White House. It’s obvious that Rudy and Trump are not coordinating with the other attorneys on the team. Why would a spokesperson for the President in such delicate legal matters make things worse?

When Rudy disfigures his face and pops out his eyeballs before he speaks, he looks like a demonic character in a horror movie. When one of your legal counselors says, “I’m ‘focused on the law more than the facts right now” every law professor and judge in the nation is throwing up with these comments. Any law scholar will tell you that the only aspects of law that mean anything are the facts.

Roy Cohn, Trump’s mentor, was a dirty player. Cohn was disbarred by the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court in 1986 for unethical conduct and died less than two months later. This means either there is a God, or there is some justice in the Department of Justice. Trump probably thinks that Rudy is his Roy Cohn, not even close.

When calmer, more reasonable thinkers, like Trump’s current lawyers, tell him to stop tweeting or talking about legal matters, Trump’s skin itches to punch back. He wants a return of the good old days when Roy Cohn went after the enemies and used ANY METHOD to get a win. Trump is McCarthy.

Trump’s mentality about everything he says and does harkens back to a day when white people were on top, money and fame were true American successes and power was something there for the taking. Trump’s attempt to take us back has only one warrior against it, the law.

Trump is being played by Rudy and he doesn’t care because the end justifies the means. Rudy wants Trump to fire Jeff Sessions so he can become Attorney General. Giuliani must have pitched Trump with the idea that he alone can end this “witch hunt.”

Rudy has convinced Trump that he can sit down and with “Bobby Mueller” to negotiate a peace treaty. In Rudy’s defense of Trump, he sprinkles just enough truth to get Donald into trouble. Giuliani is clearly out of his league and, in the end, will prove to be simply another of the terrible mistakes Trump has made. Rudy will be gone shortly.

What if the Russians did penetrate the center of Trump’s campaign? What if Russian banks funneled money into the National Rifle Association, which then spent $30 million on ads for Trump? What if it we learn that more than two women were payed hush money after having affairs with Trump? Hey, Donald was just trying to “Be Best.” What if it comes to pass that Trump’s grand plan on tariffs and treaties sends the world into a financial slump? I’m sure we can all afford $3.75 a gallon for gas.

Will taking Trump out of office and replacing him with Mr. Milquetoast, Mike Pence, make America great again? Probably not, but somewhere in this passion play we will learn what we are made of and who we want to be.

Rudy’s rage is fake. Trump is fake. They are bad actors playing parts they think the base wants. But you cannot jerk around the system for too long before those West Virginia coal miners realize their jobs are not coming back. The stay-at-home mom in Milwaukee will eventually comprehend that the “glorious, beautiful” tax cut didn’t offset the increases in healthcare costs and she must seek employment.

Giuliani is the problem with politics today. He is attempting to promote himself while making things worse for his client. In the end, we will learn that Rudy was just a pacifier in the mouth of our baby president to make him feel good. Trump has no logic. After he checks off his list of campaign promises, he can sit back and watch America pay for his big changes. It’s just like all his business failures. Someone else will pay.

The First 200 Days Of Trump – ONLY ONE MILLION LEFT

New Book about Terrorism

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3May

WHEN A LAWYER NEEDS A GOOD LAWYER

3 May 2018 Dwight

Trump Reimburses His Fixer and Rudy Screws Up

Once again, Donald J. Trump has been caught in a lie. His newest, used-to-be highly talented, unhinged and senile attorney, Rudy Giuliani, just threw his client under the bus. Rudy admitted on last night’s Sean Hannity show (5-2-2018) that Trump reimbursed Michael Cohen for his hush-money payment to the porn-star Stormy Daniels.

It is reported that after the campaign was over, Trump set up a reimbursement payment schedule of $35,000 per month out of what has been defined as Trump’s personal family account. Giuliani admitted on TV that Cohen’s payments totaled between $460,000 to $470,000, which included “incidental expenses.”

Giuliani’s performance unleashed an all-nighter at the White House to create a tweet blast. The writing of the tweet is covered with the fingerprints of attorneys. The language is far too elegant and precise to have come from our writing-challenged president. It’s clear that the tweets attempt to legally cover the damage that Rudy brought on the President with his loose, quivering lips and maniacally bulging eyeballs.

So, here’s the “morning after” tweet we got from Trump’s lawyer’s: “Mr. Cohen, an attorney, received a monthly retainer, not from the campaign and having nothing to do with the campaign, from which he entered into, through reimbursement, a private contract between two parties, known as a non-disclosure agreement, or NDA. These agreements are very common among celebrities and people of wealth. In this case it is in full force and effect and will be used in Arbitration for damages against Ms. Clifford (Daniels). The agreement was used to stop the false and extortionist accusations made by her about an affair despite already having signed a detailed letter admitting that there was no affair. Prior to its violation by Ms. Clifford and her attorney, this was a private agreement. Money from the campaign, or campaign contributions, played no roll in this transaction.”

What the President and his attorneys don’t seem to realize is that campaign finance laws are clear about payments or contributions that give a candidate an advantage in an election. Remember the case against John Edwards who was running for the same office who used money from his campaign to hide an affair he was having with a photojournalist? Keeping Stormy Daniels quiet mere days before the American people went to the polls helped candidate Donald Trump.

To double-down on the backfiring truck, Rudy, “America’s mayor” (said in sarcasm) attempted damage control. Today on Fox and Friends, this crippled counsel tried to explain what he meant the night before by pitching yet a different story, saying that Trump didn’t know the purpose of the reimbursement money and attempting to reinforce that no law was broken. This new song sings that Michael Cohen paid Stormy Daniels without Trump’s knowledge. An attorney cannot ethically enter into an agreement under his or her client’s name without disclosing said agreement to the client. Rudy is trying to shovel a notion that Cohen was just being a good lawyer. Huh?

Here we have the latest chapter in the book which could be titled, IDIOT PRESIDENT. John Kelly had it right. As this legal matter unfurls, we see that the flag they wave keeps changing. They bring in extenuating circumstances, lies and hate speech to cloud the facts. They attack the Justice Department for simply doing its job. When Raving Rudy calls the FBI team that gathered evidence from Michael Cohen’s office and home “stormtroopers” he used a word that disturbs many people who suffered in another time.

During World War I, special forces of soldiers were known as Sturmmann (“storm man”, usually translated as “stormtrooper”). That doesn’t nearly match what the Federal Bureau of Investigation does when they execute a search warrant signed by a judge. I could call Rudy Giuliani “Trump’s Joseph Goebbels,” Hitler’s propaganda minister, but that would be rude. While Mr. Giuliani retrofits his answers to what the president says he did or didn’t do, the squirming and backtracking shows a profound lack of discipline and focus on the part of the president’s defense team. Why would Rudy be talking so much before Emmet Flood IV has gotten situated in the team?

Trump will probably fire Rudy G. for his bungling, senseless comments. If this is a calculated legal strategy, they are on thin-ice. The heat of this investigation, and the pending defamation litigations, will drop them into a legal abyss not even a peace treaty with North Korea could correct. Trump is a liar.

The First 200 Days Of Trump – ONLY ONE MILLION LEFT

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2May

GRAND JURY JUGERNAUT

2 May 2018 Dwight

Will Trump Do the Right Thing?

No man is above the law. Those who know history will recollect that it was Teddy Roosevelt who made that sentiment famous. “No man is above the law and no man is below it: nor do we ask any man’s permission when we ask him to obey it.” Theodore Roosevelt’s face is on Mt. Rushmore. People who know Donald Trump personally, claim that one of the Donald’s fantasies is to have his face on the mountain along with Teddy, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. May God pull the hammers from any men or women who would attempt to place Trump’s mug on that sacred edifice.

Things are getting interesting in Washington, DC. The Trump legal team has used their old tactic of releasing information they thought would help their client. Jay Sekulow, one of Trump’s many attorneys, took notes during the discussions with the Special Counsel’s team and constructed 49 questions, all in a row, that would likely be posed to the President by the Special Counsel. It was all the President’s men who released these inquiries, not some dark, mysterious, deep-state operative out to get the sitting president.

Supreme Court of the United States of America

This is a pattern. It’s like using the Republicans on the House Committee to release a bogus version of the investigation with a conclusion of no collusion by the Trump election campaign. And then, prompted by the inner circle at the White House, the Republicans pushed to get the James Comey memos which he put on file after each meeting with Trump. Within five minutes, those memos were leaked to the press. Trump felt the memos were proof that he did nothing wrong, but they brought the Comey matter to the front page, again. The memos helped the former Director of the FBI sell books but they did absolutely nothing for Trump’s case.

Trump thinks telling the truth is a trap. He even posted this on Twitter today (5-2-2018), “There was no Collusion (it is a Hoax) and there is no Obstruction of Justice (that is a setup & trap). What there is is Negotiations going on with North Korea over Nuclear War, Negotiations going on with China over Trade Deficits, Negotiations on NAFTA, and much more. Witch Hunt!” (We always copy and paste Mr. Trump’s tweets. Sorry about the mistakes.)

Yes, Mr. President, it is a set-up and a trap where people will ask you a few questions about what you knew and when you knew it. Trump was eager to bring his presidential opponent before a court of law and lock her up. He stated that he thinks reporters should be put in jail to force reveal of their sources. And now he is faced with a potential subpoena to appear before a grand jury. What will he do?

If he “pleads the fifth,” it will be tantamount to admitting he did something wrong. We know what Trump has said about those who use their Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate themselves. Trump is on video at an Iowa campaign rally saying, “The mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?”

Donald Trump may get two accolades before he leaves office, worst president and worst legal client, ever. And his legal team must consider this. If Donald Trump appears before a grand jury, he will have no lawyers sitting next to him. And that’s when this “no man is above the law” thing would kick in. And we are sure that if this happens, as it did in the Clinton scandals, the Supreme Court will be asked to decide whether the President of the United States is above the law. This would be a perfect “Constitutional Crisis” which is generally not good for the democratic process.

If the Justices were to decide that a sitting President didn’t have to answer for anything they’ve done before being elected, during their campaign or while in office, it would send a violent bolt through the foundation of our law. The shift would codify the thinking that the President of this country is different and immune to the laws of the land. Isn’t that what we fought against in the Revolutionary War? Do we really want a king in the White House? To borrow a term that Trump likes to use, it would be disgraceful if the Supreme Court said that a president doesn’t have to testify in court. No man is above the law.

Donald Trump is not a man of law. He is a shallow person of whim and self-interest, the most corrupt president in the history of the United States. We will all learn the truth soon, but will we as Americans be able to deal with it?

The First 200 Days Of Trump – ONLY ONE MILLION LEFT

New Book about Terrorism

Now available on Amazon.