NYT: Trump was enraged Melania's Air Force One TV was tuned to CNN, issued Fox-only directive

 

Jen Hayden  

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Wednesday July 25, 2018 · 7:55 AM PDT

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Donald Trump apparently flipped his lid during a recent overseas flight on Air Force One when he spotted Melania’s television tuned into CNN, and went off on his staff. From the New York Times:

He raged at his staff for violating a rule that the White House entourage should begin each trip tuned to Fox — his preferred network over what he considers the “fake news” CNN — and caused “a bit of a stir” aboard Air Force One, according to an email obtained by The New York Times. [...]
At the end of the email chain, officials confirmed that tuning the TVs to Fox would be standard operating procedure going forward.

The NYT also dropped in this nugget:

The email, an internal exchange between officials in the White House Military Office and the White House Communications Agency last Thursday, also called for the ordering of two additional televisions to support Beam, a TiVo-like streaming device, to make sure the president and first lady could both watch TV in their separate hotel rooms when they travel. [emphasis added]

There is so much going on here.

First of all, how insane is it that an American president is demanding he and his staff only watch news on the one network bending over backward to prop up his presidency? What a fragile ego. It is really frightening how far we are getting from reasoned governance and how close Fox is getting to becoming state television.

Second, Melania should be able to watch whatever damn network she wants to watch. This type of control is a trait of abusers. Power and control are at the center of all abusers. 

via GIPHY 

To that point, even before this post could be completed and published, Melania Trump’s spokeswoman is out with statement saying she’ll watch any damn network she wants. From CNN:

First lady Melania Trump will watch "any channel she wants," according to her spokeswoman in an apparent rebuke to the report President Donald Trump was upset to find her Air Force One television tuned into CNN.

Without the Russians, Trump Wouldn't Have Won

Russian president Vladimir Putin. (photo: Reuters)

By Max Boot, The Washington Post

25 July 18
readersupportednews.org

 
resident Trump is willing, under duress, to briefly and begrudgingly admit that Russian “meddling” took place in 2016 before reverting to calling it a “big hoax.” But he always maintains that the plot against America had no impact; he describes it as a “Democrat excuse for losing the ’16 Election.” Faithfully echoing the president, other Republicans, such as House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), say it’s “clear” that the Russian interference “didn’t have a material effect on our elections.” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders even claims that the U.S. intelligence community reached that conclusion.

Not quite. Here is the intelligence community’s assessment, partially declassified in January 2017: “We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election. The US Intelligence Community is charged with monitoring and assessing the intentions, capabilities, and actions of foreign actors; it does not analyze US political processes or US public opinion.” When then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo claimed last fall that “the intelligence community's assessment is that the Russian meddling that took place did not affect the outcome of the election,” his own agency rebuked him.

While the intelligence agencies are silent on the impact of Russia’s attack, outside experts who have examined the Kremlin campaign — which included stealing and sharing Democratic Party emails, spreading propaganda online and hacking state voter rolls — have concluded that it did affect an extremely close election decided by fewer than 80,000 votes in three states. Clint Watts, a former FBI agent, writes in his recent book, “Messing with the Enemy,” that “Russia absolutely influenced the U.S. presidential election,” especially in Michigan and Wisconsin, where Trump’s winning margin was less than 1 percent in each state.

We still don’t know the full extent of the Russian interference, but we know its propaganda reached 126 million people via Facebook alone. A BuzzFeed analysis found that fake news stories on Facebook generated more social engagement in the last three months of the campaign than did legitimate articles: The “20 top-performing false election stories from hoax sites and hyperpartisan blogs generated 8,711,000 shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook.” Almost all of this “fake news” was either started or spread by Russian bots, including claims that the pope had endorsed Trump and that Hillary Clinton had sold weapons to the Islamic State.

Elsewhere on social media, tens of thousands of Russian bots spread pro-Trump messages on Twitter, which has already notified about 1.4 million users that they interacted with Russian accounts. The Russian disinformation, propagating hashtags such as #Hillary4Prison and #MAGA, reflected what the Trump campaign was saying. The Russian bots even claimed after every presidential debate that Trump had won, whereas objective viewers gave each one to Clinton.

Russia also hacked voting systems in at least 39 states, and while there is no evidence that vote tallies were changed, Russians may have used the stolen data to target their social media or shared the results with the Trump campaign. The Senate Intelligence Committee found that “in a small number of states” the Russians may have been able to “alter or delete voter registration data,” potentially disenfranchising Clinton voters.

And then there was the crucial impact of the Russian hacks of Democratic documents disseminated primarily by WikiLeaks. The first tranche of stolen documents — more than 19,000 emails and 8,000 attachments — was strategically released on July 22, 2016, three days before the Democratic convention. The resulting news coverage disrupted the Clinton campaign’s plans by creating the impression that the Democratic National Committee was biased against Bernie Sanders and forcing DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to resign.

The second tranche of stolen documents was released on Oct. 7, just 29 minutes after The Post reported on the “Access Hollywood” videotape in which Trump is heard boasting about grabbing women by the genitals. These emails, stolen from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, distracted voter attention by revealing the transcripts of lucrative speeches Clinton had given to Goldman Sachs, a populist boogeyman.

A third release of stolen emails, on Oct. 11, revealed that Democratic operative Donna Brazile, while working at CNN, had provided debate questions to Clinton during the primaries and that senior Democratic operatives, who were themselves Catholics, had exchanged emails disparaging Republicans who cherry-picked their faith for political gain. This fueled Trump’s narrative that the election was “rigged” and that the “Clinton team” was, as he said, “viciously attacking Catholics and Evangelicals.”

The latter charge, unfair as it was, proved especially important in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — swing states with lots of Catholic voters.

Little wonder that Trump said “I love WikiLeaks” and mentioned its revelations 164 times in the last month of the campaign. “This WikiLeaks stuff is unbelievable,” Trump said on Oct. 12. Eight days later, he marveled, “Boy, that WikiLeaks has done a job on her, hasn’t it?”

Now, by contrast, Trump and his apologists pretend that the Russian intervention — including the WikiLeaks revelations — was no big deal. That beggars belief. Even if the Russians had failed, they still attacked our democracy. Yet they didn’t fail: Trump won. Russian disinformation wasn’t the only factor in the outcome and was probably less important in the end than FBI Director James B. Comey’s announcement 11 days before the election that he was reopening the Clinton email investigation. But Watts concludes: “Without the Russian influence effort, I believe Trump would not have even been within striking distance of Clinton on Election Day.” That is the inconvenient truth the Putin Republicans won’t admit.

This Should Go Viral - a Canadian Looks at the US and Tells It Like It Is

THREE-HEADED SATAN: Mitch McConnell, stealer of Supreme Court Seats, Bret Kavanaugh, another Pro-Corporate nominee, Mike Pence, Christ-o-Fascist VP

xaxnar  

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Monday July 23, 2018 · 6:01 AM PDT

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The NY Times editorial board observes Brett Kavanaugh Will Fit Right in at the Pro-Corporate Roberts Court. Here’s how it starts:

Under Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. the court has given big business a leg up on workers, unions, consumers and the environment — and will do so even more aggressively if the Senate confirms Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s choice to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Corporations won the power to spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns in the 2010 Citizens United decision. The owners of businesses have earned the right to cite their personal religious beliefs to deprive workers of reproductive health care. At the same time, the justices have made it harder for employees and customers to sue big businesses by allowing corporations to require mandatory arbitration clauses in contracts people are forced to sign if they want jobs or want to buy goods and services. The court has also made it easier for polluters to get away with poisoning the air and water.

In the comments on the editorial, one struck me in particular. I’m am posting it here because it is a look at the US from the outside, and it possesses a clarity that America seems to have lost. I’m putting it in large type, the better for it to be seen.  Memphrie et Moi, writing from Betwixt Gog and Magog, has this to say:

It has been thirty two years since the anti-American Antonin Scalia was given a seat on the court.

I am a 70 year Canadian who knew the USA when it was committed to the values and ethics of the founders. I have read Jefferson when he warned about the corporate take over of your country.

Back in 1980 if you had told me that in 38 years the average Canadian would be wealthier, healthier, better educated, happier and more secure than the average American I would ask you what you were smoking.

The conservatives were right about one thing neoliberalism would provide maximum economic growth. Low taxes and small government would make the richest most powerful country in the world richer and more powerful. The conservatives never told you that for most Americans conservative economics would do exactly the same thing it did in the 19th century. Most Americans would see less opportunity, stagnant income and a dramatic drop in their personal security.

Nafta saw your GDP grow at twice the rate as ours but as we invested in the health, education of our citizens  your citizens became consumers and those that could afford to consume the most became the new aristocracy.

The Canadian historian, writer and philosopher John Ralston Saul says America is the most European country on the planet. Saul is an historian and he means 18th and 19th century Europe like the Europe that saw three million Irish starve to death or deported from a land where food was plentiful except for potatoes.

‘Nuff said? Let’s make this go viral.

Republicans Can Not Govern Honorably

Respect for people, human rights, freedom, truth and equality is honorable. Misusing respect for the flag is dishonorable.

greenandblue  

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Thursday July 19, 2018 · 8:00 AM PDT

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Who was the last honorable Republican president? Was it Bush Sr? Eisenhower?

We are well aware that the current occupant of the White House regularly partakes in receiving emoluments, attacking federal agencies, denigrating opponents, disparaging allies, coddling dictators, and colluding with Russia. Donald Trump also has personal issues that are widely considered immoral or unethical, such as laundering money for criminals, as well as, infidelity to wives and business contracts alike.

But, is Trump an aberration or a symptom of increasing malignancy?

How far back do we have to go to find a Republican president who fulfilled his duties with honor? Nixon set the precedent for criminal behavior in the modern Republican party with the break in and theft of DNC materials. The criminal cover-up of those crimes led to his resignation, thanks to pressure from Republicans with a modicum of shame and honor. Reagan followed up a half decade later by negotiating for Iran to keep our hostages until he became president. Then, during his term, he either ignored or approved the illegal selling of arms to Iran and using the proceeds to illegally fund Contra rebels in Nicaragua. Now, Reagan is practically considered a saint, while members of his administration who carried out the crimes are revered among Republicans. George HW Bush might have been the most honorable of the modern lot, but he was caught up in Iran-Contra too, and later invaded Panama on dubious pretenses before starting the decades long military intervention in Iraq.

George W Bush, under false pretenses, eventually invaded Iraq, which killed and hurt millions of people, and which has been a significant contributor to instability in the region to this day. Let’s also not forget the previously unacceptable torture that Bush Jr approved.

Perhaps we have to go back to Eisenhower to find honor in a Republican president. Or, maybe George HW Bush was the only honorable modern Republican president. At best, he was forced to bloody his hands as all presidents must do in this imperfect world. Still, Iran-Contra, Panama and Iraq hang over him. Yet, that is not what kept him from a second term. That happened because he committed a sin that was unforgiveable to proponents of supply-side economics; he broke a promise of no new taxes.

This hints at why modern Republicans cannot govern with honor. Their philosophy prevents it.

Modern Republicans govern in compliance with Reagan’s famous quote.

The nine most terrifying words in the English Language are, I’m from the government and I’m here to help.

They have demonized the government. They can’t admit that government can be helpful and even necessary. So, they discredit and destroy government whenever it suits their purposes.

This anti-government fervor dovetails with adoration of the market. Private enterprise and markets are the solution to all of our economic needs. Taxes are believed to distribute from the efficient market to the inefficient government. Wealth is idolized. Poverty is considered a choice. Increasing inequality is ignored.

All of which complements the racism Republicans foster. Government destroying welfare queens, who happen to be black or brown, are created whole cloth to vilify all social programs and convince racists that cutting their own benefits is the best way to prevent the demise of the republic.

Not that they will publicly admit to any such duplicity, racist or otherwise. They don’t have to. They can lie about their true intents. The ends justify the means. They can withhold forthright discussions to private settings.

Fundamentalist Christians are particularly prone to concealing their true intentions. They fervently believe that they must do god’s will, which they believe is opposed at every turn by evil beings, including nonbelieving humans. Therefore, in order to assist in reestablishing god’s dominion over earth, they are free to use the weapons of deception and cheating in the ongoing spiritual war. In fact, they are not entirely good Christian soldiers if they fail to incorporate these tools into their arsenal.

When truth is optional, facts may be the enemy. Only facts that confirm their worldview are acceptable. Therefore, rational and critical thinking are discouraged.

Education is not necessary in their “real world”, so, it is thusly scorned.

With a dearth of facts and reality supporting their stances, the entire Republican movement has shifted to a cult of mythology and personality. Democrats and liberals are ugly creatures inhabiting dimly lit television commercials. Republicans are heroes simply for opposing heinous Democrats. Above all is the mythology that shall not be questioned. Republicans are for law and order. They support our troops. They are fiscally responsible. They are better for the economy. Facts be damned.

One by one, facts and reality disprove the Republican myths. But, they are too invested to heed the facts. They risk annihilation and eternal damnation should they change course. They must maintain control and not give in to alternative explanations. Ostensibly dishonorable acts are simply misinterpreted as such by loathsome nonbelievers and liberals, according to Republican mythology.

They have to act as they do. To them, it’s a holy war. They believe that it’s an us or them world. If blacks or immigrants gain, white people must lose. Never mind the stagnant wages and growing inequality. We must give to the rich. Supply-side is king, and the rich will save us. It’s part of the mythology.

But, it’s wrong, or, at best, incomplete. Republicans will not regain their honor until they acknowledge and act on this.

It doesn’t have to be a zero sum game. Everybody can be provided support and opportunity. We don’t have to blame anybody. There can still be rich people, and there is enough to go around to take care of each person. We just have to spread the riches more equitably. To do so, Republicans will have to reassess some of their core tenets. To this end, here are some relevant points.

Government can work for people

Government does good things

Democrats have good ideas and policies

Liberals are worthy of respect

Supply side economics has failed for most people

What’s best for the country is not always best for the wealthy

Money should not be more influential than people

---

If they can’t change their views, then the dishonorable actions will continue.

Both sides are not equally culpable in this. Democrats make mistakes, but are willing to admit mistakes and adapt to changing conditions. The few tenets that Democrats insist on include the notion that human rights are universal and that all people deserve respect. Even in opposition, Democrats have engaged Republicans in respectful debate. A notable example of this is the health care insurance debate in which Democrats engaged in exhaustive discussions and offered multiple compromises when they controlled the debate, which Republicans unjustly called ramming down their throat, while Republicans held far fewer hearings and only included Democrats to the minimum extent required by existing legislative standards when Republicans controlled the debate.

When warranted, Democrats have demonstrated time and again a willingness to admit mistakes and to adapt. Republicans lie and cheat to avoid changing course, and, therefore, act with dishonor. It sullies not just their name. It threatens the survival of our constitutional republic, as well as, with climate change accelerating, everything up to and including modern civilization.

Until and unless they are able to step away from the corner they have backed into, Republicans will continue to push towards a dark precipice. If we cross that threshold, it will not be good for any of us. The winners will have to rebuild from the ruins, with no guarantee that they can even get back to where we are now.

Republicans can adhere to their myths and personalities, or they can act with honor and give all of humanity a chance to advance.

It's Time for a General Strike, Because Trump Treason Demands a Brave Response

Anti-Trump protesters at the Trump International Hotel in downtown Washington, D.C. (photo: Andrew Stefan/RSN)

By Will Bunch, The Philadelphia Inquirer

21 July 18

readersupportednews.org

 

t can’t happen here.

That’s more than just the title of a suddenly highly relevant Sinclair Lewis novel about the rise of an American dictator, written in 1935 — another era when despots were on people’s minds, for some weird reason. No, “it can’t happen here” long been the national motto of a United States of America that has long thought itself immune to the slings and arrows of everyone else’s world history. 

An authoritarian president with nothing but contempt for 242 years of democratic norms, a free press, and a judicial system untainted by political interference? It can’t happen here, the American exceptionalists all told us. An unqualified narcissist gaining the Oval Office with the help of crimes committed by a foreign adversary? Of course it can’t happen here!

And there’s a flip side to all of this denial. The notion that the will of the people can regain control of the plot narrative — that also could never happen here, not in America. Remember what just happened in South Korea in late 2016 and early 2017 (coincidentally, the same months that America was electing and inaugurating Donald Trump) — the so-called Candlelight Revolution in which as many as two million people, fed up with their corrupt president, Park Geun-Hye, took to the streets of Seoul? Those protests continued until Park was impeached and removed from office and a new president (who’s conducted a Nobel Prize-worthy campaign for peace on the Korean Peninsula, by the way) replaced him.

That could never happen here, right?

Why the hell not?

In many ways, July 16, 2018, will be another day that will live in infamy in American history. So much has been written and said about President Trump’s performance in Helsinki as he stood next to Russia’s Vladimir Putin, a ruthless autocrat who makes a mockery out of elections and murders investigative reporters and political opponents with impunity, which apparently makes him a role model for America’s 45th president.

Before the two rulers had even walked away from their podiums, CNN’s Anderson Cooper said, “You have been watching perhaps one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president at a summit in front of a Russian leader certainly that I’ve ever seen.”

Harsh but right on the money. The Donald Trump who on Monday said he believed Putin more than he believed either American intelligence agencies or the prosecutors who’ve indicted more than two dozen Russian operatives working to tip the 2016 election to Trump with illegal hacking, “fake news” and even infiltrating the NRA, and who responded to this assault on U.S. democracy by spouting insane Fox-fried scandals about finding “servers” and Hillary Clinton’s emails, was — to paraphrase the famous words of Minnesota Vikings coach Dennis Green — exactly who we thought he was.

Narcissistic.

Caring more about saving himself than about saving the integrity of the United States.

Weak, impotent and obsequious in front of a savvy and amoral adversary.

More willing to believe either a Russian dictator or the half-baked conspiracies of a quasi-state-TV-network called Fox News than to believe the powerful government that he is supposed to lead.

Seemingly deep in debt — for reasons speculated upon but as yet not fully known — to the foreign power that worked to install him as leader of 320 million Americans, an adversary that is now reaping the benefits of inevitable chaos.

A man who is uniquely and totally unfit to serve as president of the United States.

Of course, as has been so often the case during Trump’s 18 months in the White House, his Helsinki performance managed to be both shocking and — in the spirit of a man who prefers golf to presidenting — completely par for the course. There have been many other times when Trump has proved his unfitness. His “both-sides-ing” of lethal neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville. Calling African nations “shithole countries.” Calling journalists “enemies of the American people” — even after five were massacred in an Annapolis newsroom. Conducting a “family separation” campaign on the southern border that has all but permanently tarnished the idea of America as a human-rights beacon. 

So what are we going to do about this? 

The unfortunate events of July 16, 2018, had the feeling of both a major turning point but also no turning point at all. The handful of Republicans who’d been mildly critical of Trump in the past offered much harsher words — Sen. John McCain, suffering from terminal brain cancer at home in Arizona, accused the president of “naiveté, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats” — while those who’ve been loathe to utter a bad word about their fellow Republican now at least expressed their vague disappointment.

But missing from this new conversation so far is any serious talk of action. None of the Republicans who control Congress seems willing to go beyond mere words — to even introduce a morally powerful if non-binding resolution of censure, let alone begin the process of impeachment and removing Trump from office as a clear and present danger to American democracy.

This is nothing new. Remember Newtown … and then Las Vegas … and finally Parkland?

Doing nothing of any substance is the default position for a democracy that barely functions. But after Newtown, there was some progress toward making assault weapons harder to get, and in making it harder for those under 21 to purchase weapons. That pressure came not from voters, but from consumers. Companies like Dick’s Sporting Goods, Walmart and Kroger supermarkets stopped selling high-powered weapons not because the government told them to, but because their customers demanded it, and would vote with their wallets if the corporations didn’t listen. That’s where we’re at in America in 2018; Corporations are only afraid of consumers — and politicians are only afraid of corporations.

There is a way to take back the real America from the impostor presidency of Donald Trump, but the road doesn’t go through our failed democratic institutions — not directly, anyway. Americans are going to have to hit the oligarchy in the only place it really hurts them: Its bankbooks. What’s more, everyday people can’t expect the reward of a Trump-free America without taking some risk.

Since congressional Republicans won’t take serious moves to restrain Trump, it’s time to boycott the large corporations that the GOP needs need to finance its fall campaigns, not to mention the handful of big companies that actively support the short-fingered vulgarian living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Do you buy a lot of stuff at Home Depot, the nation’s largest home-repair store chain? Well … don’t. That’s because the Home Depot’s co-founder, Bernard Marcus, not only gave $7 million to aid Trump in 2016, but is spending nearly $5 million more, so far, to keep the House and Senate in GOP hands and even gave $300,000 to the Super-PAC of Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton. Until Marcus tells his clients in Congress to remove Trump, there’s a Lowe’s just down the street the sells the same stuff — or you can patronize your friendly local hardware store.

Do you have Dixie Cups or Brawny paper towels at home? Replace them with a different brand, because those products are manufactured by Georgia-Pacific, which is owned by the most powerful GOP donors of all, David and Charles Koch, who plan to spend up to $400 million (!!) on the midterms and who could thus get rid of Trump with one phone call.

You can stop buying your gasoline from Chevron or Valero, which are also spending millions to keep in power those Republicans who are keeping Trump in the White House, and for God’s sake don’t answer the door when Amway — founded by the Republican-financing family of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos — comes ringing. Unless they successfully convince their wholly owned members of Congress to move on Trump. That is when the boycott ends.

But that’s not all. Helsinki showed the rising danger posed by Trump means that the American people are going to have kick things up a notch, in a hurry. It’s time to begin the planning for a general strike — perhaps right after Labor Day, when school is back in session and vacation season is over — that would show our ability to shut down the American economy while this unfit and arguably treasonous president insists on clinging to power.

That means that millions of workers — on the docks, in the classrooms, on factory floors, in sweltering warehouses and manning the checkout line and, yes, in newsrooms — walk off their jobs . Maybe for a day, maybe for longer, and maybe more than once depending on the political fallout — but until the comatose American system wakes up. The general strike is a recognition that while massive weekend protest marches since Trump’s inauguration have been a thing of beauty, they don’t strike fear into a corrupt system, either. A general strike is much more potent.

And it’s not particularly unusual. They’ve happened everywhere else in the world, from the UK to Italy to Spain to nations in South America or Africa. It can’t happen here, you say? It did — right here where I sit, in Philadelphia, where workers who walked off the job across the city in 1835 and won a 10-hour workday and higher wages. This year, a wave of unauthorized teacher strikes from West Virginia to Oklahoma won remarkable gains. That’s because the strike is perhaps the most effective tool that everyday people have. There’s no reason why it can’t be used to end this Trumpian nightmare.

A couple of points and caveats. The general strike needs to be about Trump, and it needs to be about more than Trump, to include the other existential threats that far too many people are feeling in Trump’s America. The powerful student movement against gun violence. Black Lives Matter. Immigrant activists fighting for entire neighborhoods where people are afraid to leave their homes. A general strike must include these powerful movements and their demands. And the nation’s labor unions will have to get on board to make it work. 

Why now? 

And then there are those who say, why now? Why not wait and focus 100 percent of our efforts on November’s midterm elections? Why fight so loudly for American values, when that might scare off the elusive moderate voters? Personally, I understand these arguments — and yet I am not convinced. Some of them are the same folks who told us not to go overboard with Trump alarmism in the fall of the 2016, who insisted that Hillary’s got this. How’d that work out? I think back on Martin Luther King and his 1963 Letter from a Birmingham Jail, in which he condemns the moderate “who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.'”

The “more convenient season” for ousting Donald Trump from the White House is right now — not to wait until he unilaterally decides that an invasion of Venezuela would be a nice diversion, or when he realizes he’s been double-crossed by Kim Jong-Un and reaches for the nuclear football, or when he hands over the Baltic States to Putin, or when he opens up massive internment camps for Central American refugees.

And yes, a general strike or even massive protests are well outside of the normal comfort zone for a majority of Americans. But the question we need to ask ourselves is this: After Helsinki, how comfortable are we with Donald Trump spending even one more night in the White House?

Is Trump a Traitor?

 

By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog

21 July 18

 

rump’s meeting with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki was a betrayal of the nation he has a sworn duty to protect.

Under Article III Section 3 of the Constitution, the crime of treason is defined as “giving aid and comfort” to enemies of the United States. Trump has betrayed the American people in 5 ways we already know of:

1. He ignores attacks on our democracy. According to American intelligence, there’s no doubt about Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. And no doubt they’re continuing to attack, and planning further attacks, on our democratic institutions and even our energy infrastructure. Yet Trump casts doubt about the conclusions of the intelligence community, blames past presidents, and turns a blind eye to safeguarding America from current and future attacks.
   
   
2. He publicly undermines U.S. intelligence officials – taking the side of Putin, a former KGB officer, when Putin claims Russia didn’t interfere in the election. And Trump accuses his own government officials of being part of a so-called “deep-state” conspiracy out to get him.
   
   
3. He attacks our closest allies, weakening America’s standing in the world and playing into Putin’s hands. During his trip to Europe, Trump insulted German Chancellor Angela Merkel, mocked British Prime Minister Theresa May, and was rebuked by the French President. His unreasonable demands on NATO – that members increase their military expenditures to 4 percent of their GDPs – have frayed our most important security alliance.
   
   
4. His campaign knowingly sought help from a Russian agent. In June, 2016, senior members of Trump’s campaign, including Don Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort, met with a Russian lawyer who, before they met, had promised them damaging information on Clinton.
   
   
5. Then in July 2016 Trump publicly encouraged Russia to meddle in our election, asking Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s email server and release the emails to the public. That same day Russian operatives initiated their cyberattack, and weeks later released the emails.

Never before has a President of the United States so brazenly sided with a ruthless dictator intent on destroying American democracy.

If this is not treason, what is it?

God, guns, and gays: Russia's road map to conquering the Republican Party

Donald Trump at the National Prayer Breakfast

Mark Sumner  

Daily Kos Staff

Wednesday July 18, 2018 · 8:28 AM PDT

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Events from the last week have surfaced at a moment that seems almost too perfect. As reported in the New York Times …

According to the complaint unsealed on Monday, Ms. Butina’s promotional activities for Russian political interests included attending the National Prayer Breakfast twice.

Why was Butina, a covert agent of the Russian government posing as a representative of a pro-gun group connected to the NRA, there at the National Prayer Breakfast? Because that’s where the Republicans were. That’s where the Right was. Because: God, guns, and gays.

The phrase “God, guns, and gays” is often falsely attributed to President Obama, or Nancy Pelosi, or Hillary Clinton. But that’s not where it originated. It came out of the 1994 campaign of Republican Senator Jim Inhofe—he of the snowball in the Senate, climate change-denying fame. The phrase “God, guns, and gays” wasn’t coined by Inhofe’s team as an insult. It was intended to focus Oklahoma voters on social issues, so they would ignore Republican economic and environmental policies that were ruining their towns and lives. It was a strategy. For Russians looking a way to upend American politics, it was a road map.

For decades, the Republican Party had made taking a strong stand against Russia part of its core identity. After all, it was hard to position the GOP as the party of patriotism and defense, if it didn’t make a show of standing up to America’s greatest international opponent. But just as Gods, guns, and gays was a way to make a “shotgun wedding” of a supposedly charitable religion and an anything-but political party, Russia saw that it also offered a path to not just reconciling Republicans with Moscow, but making them as thoroughly owned by the Kremlin as the Religious Right is by the GOP.

Maria Butina, though only a 22-year-old student, saw this clearly at least as early as 2011. So did her boss, Russian oligarch Alexander Torshin. In that year, Butina formed the faux pro-gun group “Right to Bear Arms,” not to actually champion the cause of gun rights in Russia, but as a way to reach out to the NRA and the right wing in the United States. Bolstered by money and praise from Torshin, the non-existent “group” became an almost overnight power on the American right. As the Washington Post documents, it took only months for Butina to secure connections within the NRA. Less than two years after she began, former Russia hawk John Bolton was recording what amounted to a commercial for her group. By 2014, both Torshin and Butina were at the NRA convention, where they were treated as celebrities.

Butina and Torshin made sure that Russians were connected to the right by guns. And of course, they already had Republicans on the other two “G’s”—hating gays and running a brutally patriarchal society that demeans the position and rights of women. Those views had already locked Russia into favored nation status with the so-called Christian Right. 

As Politico reported in 2017, Pat Buchanan, who had spent decades chewing every inch of scenery over the possibility that a Russian spy might be hiding behind the White House drapes, had already so reversed himself that in 2014 he said Putin was “entering a claim that Moscow is the Godly City of today.” It didn’t matter that Putin was routinely assassinating his opponents, killing and imprisoning journalists, and stealing everything that was and wasn’t nailed down. He was crushing the rights of gays. For Buchanan, that meant everything. 

Pat Buchanan: In the culture war for the future of mankind, Putin is planting Russia’s flag firmly on the side of traditional Christianity.

Buchanan made the claim that God was on Putin’s side, even as Putin was invading Ukraine and the United States and Europe were scrambling to find a response to the clearest act of territorial aggression since World War II might seem shocking … but it was already settling in as accepted wisdom on the right. Putin was strong. Putin was manly. Putin was brutally cruel to gays. For the religious right—a group that’s always searching for a David to rule them as they want, even if that rule comes with moral failings up to murdering a friend, or sleeping with a porn star—learning that Putin hated gays was enough to make him the anointed one of God. No matter how many dozens, or hundreds, or thousands he had killed.

Bonding over this “godliness” established connections between organizations on the religious right that were both social and monetary. They see Putin as not just one of them, not just as a friend on whom they can rely. He’s a role model.

American fundamentalists bent on unwinding minority protections in the U.S. have increasingly leaned on Russia for support—and for a model they’d bring to bear back home, from targeting LGBT communities to undoing abortion rights throughout the country.

Maria Butina and Alexander Torshin making an appearance at the National Prayer Breakfast isn’t a coincidence. It’s not even regarded as odd—Torshin has been a regular for several years.

But it’s a photographic reminder of why no one should start expecting outrage on the right that Donald Trump is selling out America to Russia. Their core audience—their God, guns, and gays audience—went there years ago.