Robert Reich says that Americans usually look to their Presidents with an expectation that he is a model worthy of emulation. But the Mueller Report makes one thing clear: Trump’s vile character.
https://prospect.org/article/most-devastating-all-muellers-indictment-trumps-character
”Even though Mueller apparently doesn’t believe a sitting president can be indicted, he provides a devastating indictment of Trump’s character.
“Trump is revealed as a chronic liar. He claimed he never asked for loyalty from FBI director James Comey. Mueller finds he did. Trump claimed he never asked Comey to let the “Michael Flynn matter go”. Mueller finds he did. Trump claimed he never pushed the White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller. Mueller finds he did. Trump even lied about inviting Comey to dinner, claiming falsely, in public, that Comey requested it.
“Trump treats his subordinates horribly. He hides things from them. He lies to them. He yells at them. He instructs them to lie. He orders them to carry out illegal acts.
“He’s a thug. He regrets his lawyers are not as good at protecting him as was his early mentor Roy Cohn—a mob lawyer. When reports surface about the now infamous Trump Tower meeting of June 2016, Trump directs the cover-up.
“Trump is unprincipled. The few people in the White House and the cabinet who stand up to him, according to Mueller—threatening to resign rather than carry out his illegal orders – are now gone. They resigned or were fired.”
He is an unethical and amoral thug.
He proves it day after day with his tweets. Threatening, boasting, bleating, berating, humiliating others. Disgusting.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Trump excels at proving he is worthless.
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U.N. Caves to Trump Administration Threat and Cuts ‘Reproductive Health’ From Anti-Rape Resolution
The Trump administration was reportedly concerned the language implies support for abortion rights
…She added, “Forcing women and girls who become pregnant as a result of rape [to carry the pregnancy] is despicable.”
Diplomats from the U.K., Belgium and South Africa all spoke out against removing the reference during the Security Council debate. Afterwards, both Nobel Peace Prize laureates who spoke at the meeting also condemned the decision to water down the resolution.
“There is simply no excuse for continuing to fail those who have already been victimized—as well as those who continue to be at risk of—devastating levels of sexual violence in conflict,” Dr. Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad said in a joint statement…
https://www.thedailybeast.com/united-nations-security-council-caves-to-trump-administration-threat-and-cuts-reproductive-health-from-anti-rape-resolution?source=email&via=desktop
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What I find disgusting is that people are emulating that dump.
Suggestion: ALL FEMALES need to take a self-defense course where they are taught to “go for the kill.”
Take care of yourself. Mothers….please take heed. Your daughters are at risk.
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Trump is unfit to run a sidewalk lemonade stand, let alone any nation, but especially a nation with so much power and influence.
Failure to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him from office demonstrates the failure of the U.S. government. The violent, imperialist oligarchy which is the United States is a danger to the planet and must be ended, and replaced by a government serving ALL the people, not only the top 1% and their greedy, war-profiteering, climate-heating corporations.
Because the 2020 elections will certainly NOT accomplish that necessary systemic change, what are we to do, as the twin existential threats of climate catastrophe and nuclear war are increased by the ruling sociopaths?
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You needed Mueller to tell you that?
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???
Wouldn’t anyone who was aware that Trump was an amoral thug with a vile character know that HRC was a better choice to make lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court and federal judiciary? I am positive no one who knew Trump was a vile thug who was completely amoral would want him to leave a legacy that would give the far right corporate agenda power that would last decades.
Apparently many people needed Mueller to tell them that, as well as tell them that Trump illegally obstructed justice to try to cover up some of the vile and amoral things his campaign did before and after the election.
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I am not a fan of the theories espoused by the Clayton Christensen Institute, notably the theory of Disruptive Innovation and a spin-off recently used to explain away the attempted purchase of a college slot by parents who thought they were entitled to cheat on behalf of their children. The Institute has migrated a theory about the business of change in business to almost every nook and cranny where it can be stretched.
The Institute should be proud to claim our President is the master of Disruptive Innovation, with his transgressions the rule of law taken as if no more than a branch of the Clayton Christensen theory known as the Job to be Done. The Institute engages in theoretical games that are assumed to have no consequences when enacted. Wrong. https://www.christenseninstitute.org/blog/why-the-rich-and-famous-broke-the-law-to-get-their-kids-into-college/
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Now as the democrats ramp up the volume, the question of what sort of candidate will defeat Trump in 2020. Reich can complain all he wants, but Trump supporters who came out for him in 2016 will be out in force, pointing out the failings of whatever democrat opposes him. There has not been a positive campaign for president since Carter defeated Ford, and that one had its moments. Obama, like him or not for Arne Duncan, won because the only negative his opponents could pin on him did not keep his supporters at home the way HRC’s stayed at home in 2016.
The next election will be won or lost due to the number of voters who oppose Trump enough to get out and vote him out. There must be issues that get the young vote, the urban vote, and the disaffected worker vote out. Trump’s votes will come out, the 34 percent who will not desert him even if he committed some outrage on the lawn of the White House in camera view. The democrats need a candidate who will separate them from their opponents and get the vote out.
This could be accomplished with a focus on local races, after all, all politics is local. Local races that feature new candidates do as much to excite a base as a strong presidential candadite can do.
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Trump’s deplorable behavior has also revealed that millions of Americans don’t care how horrible he is making them just as bad if not worse.
Trump is a walking, taking crime and anyone that supports him is supporting his crimes making them just as guilty.
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I love how people keep saying that the Mueller report “exonerates” Trump on collusion with the Russians. That’s like saying that the first two trials of John Gotti exonerated him of any involvement with an “imaginary” crime family. And, of course, while the report does not contain the smoking gun piece that documents a quid pro quo conspiracy with the Russians, it makes quite clear that the Trump campaign TRIED to conspire with the Russians, taking meeting after meeting and not contacting authorities about the Russian overtures.
But the collusion stuff is well documented in the report, and the evidence is both clear and overwhelming. Conspiracy is hard to prove. The feds got Capone on tax evasion.
It’s shocking to me that the Democrats have not moved to impeach in the House. Their inaction is shameful. Have we really come to such a point where such behavior as Trump’s will be simply accepted? If the Dems won’t stand for the legitimacy of our democratic processes, what exactly will they stand for? Are they really going to give him a break out of a cynical political calculus? If so, they are not better than the Repugnicans who are participating in the Trump limbo party–how low, how low, how low can you go? And if that’s so, then a plague on both their houses.
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Every time I hear Trump’s apologists these days, they sound just like John Gotti’s lawyers. They have no proof. This is all made up. He was completely exonerated.
No, no, and no.
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cx: But the obstruction stuff is well documented in the report, and the evidence there is both clear and overwhelming. Conspiracy is hard to prove.
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“It’s shocking to me that the Democrats have not moved to impeach in the House. Their inaction is shameful.”
If the Democrats impeach, I suspect it will be in 2020 closer to the election so the House will still be holding hearings on it when the election takes place and before the impeachment moves to the Senate. I also think they want to get hold of his tax records before they make that move if they make it. Trump’s tax records might provide more fule for the impeachment flames.
Timing is everything in a country with a population known for its very short attention span.
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I remember being a little kid–I must have been VERY young, maybe four or five–and being fascinated by those machines in which you could put in a coin and operate a crane arm and a claw to pick up a toy. And after a couple times doing this, it was clear that
a. The claw wasn’t powerful enough to grasp and hold most of the toys, and
b. many of the toys either didn’t fit into the claw opening or were designed with smooth, narrowing bodies that the claw would slide off of as it rose up
And here’s what I remember thinking: How could the adults who made this thing live with themselves, with being such cheap, lowlife crooks? Why weren’t they ashamed? They were stealing from children. Surely they could design a game in which sometimes, with skill and persistence, a person could win, one that was somewhat fair. They would still earn–maybe not quite as much, but these would be legitimate earnings. And I remember thinking that what had been done with those machines ought to be illegal. My parents had taught me that stealing was wrong, and especially stealing from the defenseless, from people like little kids.
Well, Don the Con sold American workers a line of bs. He presented himself as an incredibly successful businessman who started with a “small loan” from his father and turned it into billions, as someone smart enough and iconoclastic enough to figure out how to “Make American Great Again” so that the country would give forgotten working men and women a fair break. He promised enormous investments in new infrastructure projects to put working people in the the former industrial heartland, in Appalachia, and in other places that time had passed by a chance again.
Well, it turns out that the small loan from his father was three quarters of a billion dollars. If he had simply invested that in a stock market index fund, he would be worth far more than he is today. And those infrastructure projects? He did nothing to create them. ZIP. What he did do is pass a huge tax cut for the wealth and for corporations, after which he went to Mar-a-lago and sat at dinner and told his wealthy pals that he had just given them a big Christmas present. And he gutted consumer and workplace and environmental and other protections for ordinary people. For example, he rescinded an Obama-era regulation that required employers to post accounts of on-the-job accidents so that other workers could avoid hurting themselves in the same ways. Too bad, so sad, working man or woman, if your hand gets cut off in that machine. Not Don’s problem. And, of course, he instigated trade wars that have devastated American farmers. And his former staffers describe him as enable to pay any attention to briefings and unwilling or unable to read and as a bully and as someone with “the understanding of a sixth grader.”
Because he’s none of what he presented himself to be. He’s a con man. Don the Con. Spoiled, rich kid grifter guy, the one who gave you Trump University and stiffed the contractors on his jobs. The guy who claims to be a patriot and to care about working people.
A cynical user. A lowlife.
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He’s iconoclastic, certainly. Emphasis on the CON.
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Poor Trump. He can’t take comedy roasting. Huckabee-Sanders got what she deserved and now she can’t stand the thought of being roasted again. Boo-hoo. However, the bully in chief is ordering people not to attend. Nothing like being ORDERED to boycott. Trump has to have another ego rally to boost himself.
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White House ordered Trump administration officials to boycott WHCA Dinner
(CNN)The White House has ordered Trump administration officials to boycott the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, according to a senior administration official.
The order was issued Tuesday morning by White House Cabinet Secretary Bill McGinley, who announced that all Trump administration officials are being ordered to boycott the dinner, scheduled for Saturday night.
An administration official adds that the order came from Trump personally, though staffers have been trying to talk him out of it.
The move marks yet another deterioration in relations between the White House press office and the press corps, though President Donald Trump had announced earlier this month that he would be skipping the annual dinner for the third year in a row. The President will instead hold a campaign rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, the same evening.
“The dinner is so boring and so negative that we’re going to hold a very positive rally,” Trump told reporters at the time.
The usual tensions between reporters and government representatives have escalated to extreme levels in the Trump age, due largely to the President’s near-daily attacks against the media. His portrayal of the people who cover him as his “enemy” and the “enemy of the people” has been denounced by historians, press freedom advocates and politicians in both parties.
Olivier Knox, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, responded to the boycott saying: “We’re looking forward to an enjoyable evening of celebrating the First Amendment and great journalists past, present and future.”
In previous administrations, both the President and vice president traditionally attended the gala event which promotes the First Amendment. The last president to skip the dinner was Ronald Reagan in 1981, who declined because he was recovering from an assassination attempt.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders also previously told CNN she would not be attending the dinner, instead traveling to the Trump rally with the President.
Sanders had attended the two previous dinners under the Trump administration. Last year, she was infamously roasted by comedian Michelle Wolf while sitting at the head table on stage.
Afterward, while commentators debated whether the performance was too mean-spirited, Trump said Wolf “bombed” and set her up as a symbol of Hollywood elitism, someone for his base to oppose.
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Watching Fox on TV, golfing and now Trump is compiling about deletions from his Twitter account? Does this looney ever work? His small/non-existent brain’s focus is totally on how fantastic he is.
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Analysis | Trump is mad about the size of his crowd on Twitter from The Washington Post
He’d begun the day with a series of tweets complaining about a series of things including Twitter which, he said, “[didn’t] treat me well as a Republican.” The service was “very discriminatory” and it was “hard for people to sign on,” with Twitter “[c]onstantly taking people off list,” which is a little hazy as a critique.
But — snap — there was Twitter chief Jack Dorsey in the White House. And in short order we learned about Trump’s primary complaint.
“A significant portion of the meeting focused on Trump’s concerns that Twitter quietly, and deliberately, had removed some of his followers, according to a person with direct knowledge of the conversation who requested anonymity because it was private,” reports The Washington Post’s Tony Romm. “Trump said he had heard from fellow conservatives who had lost followers as well.”…
“I have so many followers,” he said. “You know, I have five different platforms; you add it all up and it’s like over 150 million people. That’s a tremendous amount of people. You get the word out. You can really protect yourself from the lies and all of the things that are being said.”
Trump — also perhaps unsurprisingly — tends to inflate that statistic. Back in 2017 when he was bragging about having 110 million total followers, we tallied his accounts and found that the figure was really more like 93 million…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/23/trump-is-mad-about-size-his-crowd-twitter/?tid=ss_mail&utm_term=.d2c702e9d345
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If you see Trump’s daily schedule, he works about an hour a day. If he has an event on his schedule, it is usually lunch with Pence or some other lackey.
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CNN just reported:
“Consider that over the past 24 hours, Trump has tweeted (and retweeted) 52 things. In a 30-minute span on Monday night, he retweeted 24 items — about nine different topics and from 15 people.”
He thinks that tweeting is his job.
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Tweeting and holding rallies.
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“Tweeting and holding rallies.” That’s what a President does. Nothing more.
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Twitter enables the twit.
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Today, Trump tweeted, again, a charge that members of the press (in this case, Paul Krugman and the New York Times) were “enemies of the people.”
The phrase ennemi du people (enemy of the people) was used by Robespierre, leader of the terror, which claimed 300,000 lives, that followed the French Revolution.
From 1928 until 1956 (shortly after the death of Stalin in 1953), the term was widely used by the ruling Communist Party in the Soviet Union to describe persons subject to state terror campaigns resulting in the imprisonment, expulsion, starvation, and execution of tens of millions of people. Nikita Khrushchev called for the end of the use of the term in 1956 because of its use to justify “physically annihilating” persons who disagreed with Stalin or stood in the way of one of his programs.
The Nazi publication Der Sturmer used the phrase to describe Jews.
In his 1882 play An Enemy of the People, Henrik Ibsen used the term (En folkefiende) as the term of opprobrium leveled at a physician who threatens to expose the fact that a spa a town depends on for its revenues is contaminated with bacteria that can sicken and kill people.
Now Trump uses it to describe the press. Of course, Trump is a profoundly uneducated man, and he might be using the term in complete ignorance of the horrifying uses to which it has been put over the centuries. But then again, Trump has demonstrated a fondness for dictators, so perhaps using Stalin’s phrase appeals to him for that reason.
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Thank you, Wikipedia!
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God, this really needed to be said. Thanks, Bob.
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cx: the French phrase is ennemi du peuple
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Tell Jeanine Pirro’s advertisers to stop funding Islamophobia
“Think about it: Omar wears a hijab…is her adherence to this Islamic doctrine indicative of her adherence to Sharia law, which in itself is antithetical to the United States Constitution?”
To keep Pirro’s show on Fox News at all after such blatant Islamophobia is a moral calamity. For sponsors to pay Fox News to air her show after the Christchurch Mosque shootings? Simply unconscionable.
Join me and add your name? https://act.mpowerchange.org/sign/drop-pirro?sp_ref=487597934.387.195854.e.630921.2&source=email
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Literally speaking, Catholic nuns wear hajibs.
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Trump is getting really worried and is keeping people from testifying. What a louse. He is working to keep the House from learning just how corrupt he is. What will happen? This is a constitutional crisis and AG Barr is in on it.
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House Democrats grapple with how to respond to Trump’s refusal to cooperate with investigations
April 24 at 7:00 PM
…Trump’s comments came a day after the Treasury Department ignored a House Ways and Means Committee deadline for Trump’s tax returns, and the White House moved to prevent an administration official from showing up for subpoenaed testimony on security clearances. Trump officials also announced that they would bar former White House counsel Donald McGahn, a central witness on potential obstruction by Trump, from testifying before the House Judiciary Committee about the president’s demand that he move to fire special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.
Separately, Trump’s private sector attorneys have filed a lawsuit against the Oversight Committee and Trump’s own accounting firm after the panel subpoenaed his financial records. And the Justice Department announced Wednesday that Attorney General William P. Barr instructed one of its top officials to ignore a subpoenaed deposition.
Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), a member of the Oversight Committee, said Trump’s moves are “triggering a constitutional crisis” and argued that the White House posture shouldn’t just concern Democrats but Republicans as well. The House, he said, should revisit the idea of instructing the sergeant at arms to find and jail those who defy subpoenas until they relent, a step Congress hasn’t taken since the 1870s.
“If [Trump] were to prevail in this fight, then you will permanently debase the role of the legislative branch of government and fundamentally alter the constitutional framework,” Connolly said. “We cannot let that happen. . . . The consequences would radically alter the balance of power in our government.”…
https://wapo.st/2GvesLQ?tid=ss_mail&utm_term=.747a8d86e948
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Biden is looking for corporate funding since he is entering the race late. I do not believe he would be the progressive candidate who will push for things like Medicare for All. I like his attacks on the Orange IDIOT.
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Biden 2020: ‘We Are in a Battle for the Soul of This Nation’
Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden launched a full-on attack of President Donald Trump in a video announcing his campaign for the White House, calling Trump’s term in office “an abhorrent moment in time.” In the video, Biden speaks over footage of the deadly 2017 neo-Nazi marches in Charlottesville, Virginia, describing those involved as having “crazed faces, illuminated by torches.” “And that’s when we heard the words of the president of the United States. He said there were quote ‘some very fine people on both sides.’” Biden slowly repeats the words “very fine people.” He then said that, with those words, “the president of the United States assigned a moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it. And in that moment, I knew the threat to this nation was unlike any I’d seen in my lifetime.” Biden continues, “I believe history will look back on this back on four years of this president and all he embraces as an abhorrent moment in time.” “If we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation,” Biden then says. “Who we are. And I cannot stand by and watch that happen.”
View this cheat in a browser to see this video.
Read it at The Daily Beast
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Deutsche Bank has begun producing financial records subpoenaed last month by the New York Attorney General related to an investigation into several Trump Organization projects, according to CNN.
Deutsche Bank has begun producing financial records subpoenaed last month by the New York attorney general related to an investigation into several Trump Organization projects, according to CNN. Attorney General Letitia James initiated a civil probe into financing related Donald Trump’s family business following testimony from his former lawyer Michael Cohen that Trump manipulated the value of his assets when trying to obtain loans from various financial institutions. Deutsche Bank has the distinction of being one of the only financial institutions that has continued lending hundreds of millions of dollars to Trump, even after he was exposed as a serial defaulter.
Now the lender is actively turning over both emails and loan documents related to four Trump Organization projects, in particular: Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC; Trump National Doral Miami; Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago; and Trump’s failed attempt to buy the NFL’s Buffalo Bills franchise.
In addition to the New York AG inquiry, the House Intelligence and Financial Services committees are also scrutinizing the bank for its role in potential money laundering schemes related to Trump’s businesses.
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