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Trump the Con Man: A True Story

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2023 //
16

The latest blow to Trump’s reputation came in a court in New York, when the judge ruled that Trump fraudulently overvalued his properties in order to get bank loans. Of course, his base won’t care.

I have a personal story that supports the judgement. Last fall, I drove with my partner to Saratoga Springs, New York, to visit a kayak maker. As we were driving up the Taconic State Parkway, we passed a sign that said “Donald J. Trump State Park.” I had never heard of such a park, so I googled and found a Wikipedia entry that explained.

Trump purchased the property in 1998 with plans to build a $10 million private golf course. Totalling $2.5 million, it was purchased in two sections: Indian Hill for $1.75 million and French Hill for $750,000.[1]The land contained significant wetlands and development faced strict environmental restrictions and permitting requirements.[2]He donated it in 2006[3][4] after he was unable to gain town approvals to develop the property.[2] At that time Trump claimed the parcel was worth $100 million.[1] He used the donation as a tax write-off.[5] The donation was praised by governor George Pataki. Trump said, “I hope that these 436 acres of property will turn into one of the most beautiful parks anywhere in the world.”[1]

The park is now abandoned. Trump paid $2.5 million for the land, which was not suitable for development. He claimed the land was worth $100 million and used that amount to reduce his taxes. Nice increase in value on land that that could not be developed.

Categories Accountability, Elections, Fraud, Trump

John Kelly Confirms Worst Trump Comments Defaming Military

By dianeravitch
October 3, 2023 //
29

CNN asked for and received a statement from John Kelly, retired general and Trump’s former chief of staff. Kelly confirmed Trump’s worst comments about veterans.

“What can I add that has not already been said?” Kelly said, when asked if he wanted to weigh in on his former boss in light of recent comments made by other former Trump officials. “A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’ A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family – for all Gold Star families – on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.

“A person who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women,” Kelly continued. “A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason – in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.

“There is nothing more to be said,” said Kelly. “God help us.”

Categories Trump

New York Appeals Court Rejects Trump’s Request to Delay Trial

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2023 //
9

Donald Trump’s lawyers appealed for a delay in the trial over how much money he should pay as a penalty for overvaluing his properties. The appeals court rejected his request. So the Republicans continue to have a candidate far ahead of the field who is under the cloud of multiple indictments. None of the other candidates are even close to Trump. Media reports are circulating that big-donor Republicans are begging Virginia Governor Youngkin to enter the race.

The New York Times reported:

Donald J. Trump’s civil fraud trial over accusations that he inflated the value of his properties by billions of dollars could begin as soon as Monday after a New York appeals court rejected the former president’s attempt to delay it.

The appeals court, in a terse two-page order Thursday, effectively turned aside for now a lawsuit Mr. Trump filed against the trial judge, Arthur F. Engoron. The lawsuit had sought to delay the trial, and ultimately throw out many of the accusations against the former president.

Thursday’s ruling came two days after Justice Engoron issued an order that struck a major blow to Mr. Trump, finding him liable for having committed fraud by persistently overvaluing his assets and stripping him of control over his New York properties.

Justice Engoron sided with the New York attorney general, Letitia James, who last year sued Mr. Trump, accusing him of inflating his net worth to obtain favorable loan terms from banks.

Mr. Trump is not entirely out of options in blocking the trial from moving forward. He can still appeal Justice Engoron’s Tuesday order, but it is unclear whether the appeals court would consider that.

A trial, the result of which would be decided by Justice Engoron, not a jury, would resolve other aspects of the case, most notably whether Mr. Trump and his company will face other punishments, including a financial penalty. Ms. James is seeking to recover $250 million in ill-gotten gains.

Categories Ethics, Failure, Fraud, Trump

Thank You, General Mark Milley, for Saving the Constitution from Trump!

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2023 //
11

Jeffrey Goldberg wrote in The Atlantic about how General Mark Milley saved the country and the Constitution from the ignorance of former President Donald Trump. I’m a subscriber to The Atlantic, and I can attest that it’s a great magazine, with articles like this one. It is titled “The Patriot.” I have followed the discussion of this article on Twitter. Trump supporters say that Milley was obliged to follow the orders of the President; Trump critics say that Milley took an oath to defend the country and the Constitution “from all enemies, foreign and domestic.” And he upheld his oath of office.

The missiles that comprise the land component of America’s nuclear triad are scattered across thousands of square miles of prairie and farmland, mainly in North Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming. About 150 of the roughly 400 Minuteman III inter­continental ballistic missiles currently on alert are dispersed in a wide circle around Minot Air Force Base, in the upper reaches of North Dakota. From Minot, it would take an ICBM about 25 minutes to reach Moscow.

These nuclear weapons are under the control of the 91st Missile Wing of the Air Force Global Strike Command, and it was to the 91st—the “Rough Riders”—that General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, paid a visit in March 2021. I accompanied him on the trip. A little more than two months had passed since the January 6 attack on the Capitol, and America’s nuclear arsenal was on Milley’s mind.

In normal times, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the principal military adviser to the president, is supposed to focus his attention on America’s national-security challenges, and on the readiness and lethality of its armed forces. But the first 16 months of Milley’s term, a period that ended when Joe Biden succeeded Donald Trump as president, were not normal, because Trump was exceptionally unfit to serve. “For more than 200 years, the assumption in this country was that we would have a stable person as president,” one of Milley’s mentors, the retired three-star general James Dubik, told me. That this assumption did not hold true during the Trump administration presented a “unique challenge” for Milley, Dubik said.

Milley was careful to refrain from commenting publicly on Trump’s cognitive unfitness and moral derangement. In interviews, he would say that it is not the place of the nation’s flag officers to discuss the performance of the nation’s civilian leaders.

But his views emerged in a number of books published after Trump left office, written by authors who had spoken with Milley, and many other civilian and military officials, on background. In The Divider, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser write that Milley believed that Trump was “shameful,” and “complicit” in the January 6 attack. They also reported that Milley feared that Trump’s “ ‘Hitler-like’ embrace of the big lie about the election would prompt the president to seek out a ‘Reichstag moment.’ ”

These views of Trump align with those of many officials who served in his administration. Trump’s first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, considered Trump to be a “fucking moron.” John Kelly, the retired Marine general who served as Trump’s chief of staff in 2017 and 2018, has said that Trump is the “most flawed person” he’s ever met. James Mattis, who is also a retired Marine general and served as Trump’s first secretary of defense, has told friends and colleagues that the 45th president was “more dangerous than anyone could ever imagine.” It is widely known that Trump’s second secretary of defense, Mark Esper, believed that the president didn’t understand his own duties, much less the oath that officers swear to the Constitution, or military ethics, or the history of America.

Twenty men have served as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs since the position was created after World War II. Until Milley, none had been forced to confront the possibility that a president would try to foment or provoke a coup in order to illegally remain in office. A plain reading of the record shows that in the chaotic period before and after the 2020 election, Milley did as much as, or more than, any other American to defend the constitutional order, to prevent the military from being deployed against the American people, and to forestall the eruption of wars with America’s nuclear-armed adversaries. Along the way, Milley deflected Trump’s exhortations to have the U.S. military ignore, and even on occasion commit, war crimes. Milley and other military officers deserve praise for protecting democracy, but their actions should also cause deep unease. In the American system, it is the voters, the courts, and Congress that are meant to serve as checks on a president’s behavior, not the generals. Civilians provide direction, funding, and oversight; the military then follows lawful orders.

For the actions he took in the last months of the Trump presidency, Milley, whose four-year term as chairman, and 43-year career as an Army officer, will conclude at the end of September, has been condemned by elements of the far right. Kash Patel, whom Trump installed in a senior Pentagon role in the final days of his administration, refers to Milley as “the Kraken of the swamp.” Trump himself has accused Milley of treason. Sebastian Gorka, a former Trump White House official, has said that Milley deserves to be placed in “shackles and leg irons.” If a second Trump administration were to attempt this, however, the Trumpist faction would be opposed by the large group of ex-Trump-administration officials who believe that the former president continues to pose a unique threat to American democracy, and who believe that Milley is a hero for what he did to protect the country and the Constitution.

“Mark Milley had to contain the impulses of people who wanted to use the United States military in very dangerous ways,” Kelly told me. “Mark had a very, very difficult reality to deal with in his first two years as chairman, and he served honorably and well. The president couldn’t fathom people who served their nation honorably.” Kelly, along with other former administration officials, has argued that Trump has a contemptuous view of the military, and that this contempt made it extraordinarily difficult to explain to Trump such concepts as honor, sacrifice, and duty….

Joseph Dunford, the Marine general who preceded Milley as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, had also faced onerous and unusual challenges. But during the first two years of the Trump presidency, Dunford had been supported by officials such as Kelly, Mattis, Tillerson, and McMaster. These men attempted, with intermittent success, to keep the president’s most dangerous impulses in check. (According to the Associated Press, Kelly and Mattis made a pact with each other that one of them would remain in the country at all times, so the president would never be left unmonitored.) By the time Milley assumed the chairman’s role, all of those officials were gone—driven out or fired.

At the top of the list of worries for these officials was the manage­ment of America’s nuclear arsenal. Early in Trump’s term, when Milley was serving as chief of staff of the Army, Trump entered a cycle of rhetorical warfare with the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. At certain points, Trump raised the possibility of attacking North Korea with nuclear weapons, according to the New York Times reporter Michael S. Schmidt’s book, Donald Trump v. The United States. Kelly, Dunford, and others tried to convince Trump that his rhetoric—publicly mocking Kim as “Little Rocket Man,” for instance—could trigger nuclear war. “If you keep pushing this clown, he could do something with nuclear weapons,” Kelly told him, explaining that Kim, though a dictator, could be pressured by his own military elites to attack American interests in response to Trump’s provocations. When that argument failed to work, Kelly spelled out for the president that a nuclear exchange could cost the lives of millions of Koreans and Japanese, as well as those of Americans throughout the Pacific. Guam, Kelly told him, falls within range of North Korean missiles. “Guam isn’t America,” Trump responded…

Shortly after the assault on the Capitol on January 6, Pelosi, who was then the speaker of the House, called Milley to ask if the nation’s nuclear weapons were secure. “He’s crazy,” she said of Trump. “You know he’s crazy. He’s been crazy for a long time. So don’t say you don’t know what his state of mind is.” According to Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, who recounted this conversation in their book, Peril, Milley replied, “Madam Speaker, I agree with you on everything.” He then said, according to the authors, “I want you to know this in your heart of hearts, I can guarantee you 110 percent that the military, use of military power, whether it’s nuclear or a strike in a foreign country of any kind, we’re not going to do anything illegal or crazy….”

At his welcome ceremony at Joint Base Myer–Henderson Hall, across the Potomac River from the capital, Milley gained an early, and disturbing, insight into Trump’s attitude toward soldiers. Milley had chosen a severely wounded Army captain, Luis Avila, to sing “God Bless America.” Avila, who had completed five combat tours, had lost a leg in an IED attack in Afghanistan, and had suffered two heart attacks, two strokes, and brain damage as a result of his injuries. To Milley, and to four-star generals across the Army, Avila and his wife, Claudia, represented the heroism, sacrifice, and dignity of wounded soldiers.

It had rained that day, and the ground was soft; at one point Avila’s wheelchair threatened to topple over. Milley’s wife, Holly­anne, ran to help Avila, as did Vice President Mike Pence. After Avila’s performance, Trump walked over to congratulate him, but then said to Milley, within earshot of several witnesses, “Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded.” Never let Avila appear in public again, Trump told Milley. (Recently, Milley invited Avila to sing at his retirement ceremony.)

There is much more in the story about the lengths that top military brass went to protect the nation from a seriously ignorant and mentally unstable president.

I suggest that you read it in full. You won’t be sorry, but you will be very grateful that the top ranks of the military put the Constitution above their obedience to an unqualified President.

Categories Accountability, Courage, Democracy, Evil, Freedom, Stupid, Trump

Greg Olear on “President Rapist”

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2023 //
16

Greg Olear introduces us to an essay written shortly after the 2016 election. The essay is prescient in describing the rise of the sexual predators to high positions our nation. Some—like Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein—were exposed and ruined. Others continue to hold prestigious roles. Open the link to read the provocative essay by Jana Martin, analyzing a photograph of Melania and Michelle.

He writes:

Sages and predators. That’s what’s on my mind this week.

I keep thinking about what my friend Ronlyn Domingue, a novelist, said on the podcast about the future of fiction writing: “Well, assuming A.I. doesn’t write every fucking book that people read in the next five years, you know, we are the sages. Think about all the books that have given people hope or inspiration or ideas of what the future could be—in good ways or bad. . . . We’re kind of giving voice to what’s coming in the next few years or decades.”

And then I recall what Thomas Pynchon, also a novelist, wrote in his 2003 introduction to the centennial edition of Nineteen Eighty-four: “Prophecy and prediction are not quite the same, and it would ill serve writer and reader alike to confuse them in Orwell’s case.” He went on:

Specific predictions are only details, after all. What is perhaps more important, indeed necessary, to a working prophet, is to be able to see deeper than most of us into the human soul. Orwell in 1948 understood that despite the Axis defeat, the will to fascism had not gone away, that far from having seen its day it had perhaps not yet even come into its own—the corruption of the spirit, the irresistible human addiction to power, were already in place, all well-known aspects of the third Reich and Stalin’s USSR, even the British Labour party—like first drafts of a terrible future. What could prevent the same thing from happening to Britain and the United States? Moral superiority? Good intentions? Clean living?

What novelist but Orwell is quoted, referenced, alluded to as often in the popular culture—by all sides of the political spectrum?

And with the flood of news about sex crimes—in the literal and not the Orwellian sense of the term—I think of predators: rapists, sexual assailants, sexual abusers, sexual harassers. FPOTUS is a predator and his now-ex attorney is a predator (who preyed on women during the Insurrection!), and the skeevy British “comic” was outed as a serial predator and defended by other predators a week after an actor who is a predator was sent to prison for decades for his crimes. One predator on the Supreme Court makes news every week with the length and breadth of his sweeping corruption, and another predator on the Supreme Court wants to dismantle voting protections, and both of those predators held with the majority to overturn Roe, thus enabling predators across the country, but in the red states particularly, to lean into their predation. Predators enabling predators. Media trustwashing predators. Predators seizing and abusing power to protect themselves from prosecution, to allow themselves more leeway for their recidivism: Epstein, Weinstein, Trump.

The battle lines are drawn, as far as that goes. But they were drawn long ago. We are at an inflection point now. We will either slide completely into a fascist form of government—the “illiberal democracy” of Orbán—or we will root out the predators in our politics, our justice system, our media, our public life. With fascism comes sexual predation, and with sexual predation comes fascism. The two are inextricable, obverse and reverse of the same corroded coin.

Societies should be judged based on how they treat their most vulnerable. Ours allowed a predator on the Supreme Court—in the Year of Our Lord 2018!—because, when confronted with the odiousness of his behavior, he publicly and performatively choked up. Time and again, the fake tears of the predator trump the true blood of the victim.

Somehow, it’s been almost seven full years since the 2016 election. Those of a more eschatological bent may regard this period as the Great Tribulation. Not all of us survived it. As we emerge from the collective fugue state brought on by the traumatizing and toxic combination of Trump, the pandemic, and the rise of American fascism, it is instructive, I think, to look back at what we thought at that time, when we knew we were on a collision course with something unspeakably, unknowably horrible: when the Cassandras were screaming.

Back then, we were winding down our online arts and culture magazine, called The Weeklings. My friend Jana Martin, a terrific writer and a contributor to that site, posted this piece on December 3, 2016—after the election, before the inauguration.

Here, Dear Reader, is a sage writing about a predator. As Pynchon has it, what’s important is not the specific details she does or doesn’t get right—although she got almost everything right—but her ability to see deeper than most of us into the human soul.

Please open the link to read the essay by Jana Martin.

Categories Accountability, Character, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Gender, Trump

Judge Hits Trump Hard with “Fraud” Ruling

By dianeravitch
September 27, 2023 //
20

New York State Attorney General Letitia James sued Donald Trump, asserting that he overvalued his assets in order to get favorable terms. The judge ruled against him before the trial, in a major setback for Trump. He will appeal.

The New York Times reported:

A New York State Supreme Court judge issued a ruling on Tuesday that, if it stands, would have major consequences for Donald J. Trump.

The ruling came as part of the New York attorney general’s civil case against Mr. Trump. The attorney general, Letitia James, has accused the former president of fraudulently overstating the value of his assets on annual financial statements by as much as $2.2 billion a year in order to receive favorable terms on loans and benefits.

In the ruling, the judge, Arthur F. Engoron, agreed that Mr. Trump committed fraud when he sent those statements to banks and insurance firms. A trial in the case could start as soon as Monday; if Mr. Trump does not successfully have the ruling reversed before then, the proceeding will largely focus on the size of the penalty against him. Ms. James is seeking a fine of $250 million.

The financial statements are deceptive, Justice Engoron wrote, and he punctuated his order with harsh criticisms of the legal strategies deployed by Mr. Trump’s lawyers, whom he fined $7,500 each for using arguments that he had already rejected.

Mr. Trump, a Republican, has denied all wrongdoing and accused Ms. James, a Democrat, of political persecution. He noted Tuesday in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, that Justice Engoron was also a Democrat…

Mr. Trump’s lawyers were preparing to challenge Ms. James’s accusation that he had fraudulently inflated his net worth by billions of dollars, but Justice Engoron has short-circuited that aspect of the trial. In effect, Justice Engoron ruled that no trial was necessary to determine that Mr. Trump’s financial statements were fraudulent.

In his ruling, Justice Engoron wrote that the statements that Mr. Trump had submitted to banks and insurance companies “clearly contain fraudulent valuations that defendants used in business…”

Ms. James had sought to bar Mr. Trump from doing business in New York, in part by canceling certificates that allow his properties to operate there. Justice Engoron granted that punishment, which could have enormous repercussions for the Trump Organization.

For example, Mr. Trump could lose control of several properties, including Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan and a flagship commercial building at 40 Wall Street. His grip over his Westchester County golf club is also threatened. At one point in his order, Justice Engoron referred to the limited liability companies that he had shut down as “the canceled LLCs.”

Categories Accountability, Ethics, Fraud, Trump

Charlie Sykes: Biden Is Old, But Trump Is Crazy (and Dangerous)

By dianeravitch
September 27, 2023 //
18

I love reading The Bulwark, a site founded by Republicans who can’t bear Trump and his demagoguery. Conservative commentator Charlie Sykes posts there along with other never-Trumpers. He wrote this article, “Biden is Old But Trump is Crazy (and Dangerous).”

Many readers on this blog wish that Biden would take a victory lap, then step aside for a new generation. Undoubtedly there are Republicans who feel the same way about Trump.

But if there is to be a rematch of 2020, Sykes gives us much to think about.

He writes:

In the last few days, the leading GOP candidate for president — the twice impeached, defeated former president, who is facing four criminal indictments — suggested the execution of General Mark Milley; demanded a federal shutdown unless the prosecutions against him are defunded; called on all Senate Democrats to resign; and threatened to use the powers of the federal government to retaliate against news outlets like NBC that had criticized him.

This is the same former president who has called for terminating provisions of the Constitution; orchestrated a coup to overturn the last presidential election; and absconded with military secrets. Lest you have forgotten, he has also been found liable for rape; and faces more than 90 felony counts for (among other things) paying off a porn star, conspiracy, obstruction, and defrauding the federal government.

Since Sykes summarized Trump’s recent antics, a judge in New York concluded that the Trump Organization committed fraud by repeatedly overstating its assets.

The problem is not Trump, but the millions of Americans who don’t care about Trump’s behavior or his danger to the future of our democracy.

Categories Biden, Trump

Robert Hubbell on Trump’s Hysteria and Rage

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2023 //
41

Robert Hubbell thinks that there must be a line that divides reasonable commentary from unhinged ranting, and Trump long ago crossed it. He has no filter that requires him to think before he posts a comment. He becomes increasingly deranged, and the media accepts it as normal. Of course it is normal from him.

Hubbell writes:

Several stories collided within the bounds of Trump’s unhinged posts on his vanity social media platform on Monday. As Speaker Kevin McCarthy goes through the motions of passing a spending bill over the objections of the extremist elements of his extremist caucus, Trump weighed into the fight:

The Republicans lost big on Debt Ceiling, got NOTHING, and now are worried that they will be BLAMED for the Budget Shutdown. Wrong!!! Whoever is President will be blamed. UNLESS YOU GET EVERYTHING, SHUT IT DOWN! Close the Border, stop the Weaponization of ‘Justice,’ and End Election Interference.

          [Note to Readers: I will not be linking to Trump’s posts on Truth Social. You can run a word search on the text if you want to view the source posts.]

          For a nation hoping to avoid the pain of a shutdown on tens of millions of Americans, the post was not welcome news. Although Trump dresses his post in language that seems to focus on negotiating tactics, the real reason for the post is contained in the phrase “stop the Weaponization of “Justice” and End Election Interference.”

          That’s right, Trump is asking Republicans to shut down the government to help him evade accountability for his crimes. Surely, no member of Congress would place the personal interests of Donald Trump over the interests of tens of millions of Americans who will be hurt in a shutdown, right? Don’t hold your breath!

          The last time anyone heard from Kevin McCarthy, he was promising a third vote on the defense bill (and a few others?) on Tuesday. Don’t hold your breath!

          All of this means that the prospect of a government shutdown is increasing with each passing hour. See NYtimes, A Shutdown Is Looming. What Comes Next? (This article is accessible to all.)

          Per the Times, “Medicare and Social Security also continue uninterrupted because they are authorized by Congress in separate laws that do not need to be renewed every year. Medical care of veterans also goes on unaffected.”

          The GOP House caucus was dysfunctional before Trump injected himself into the budget fight. Trump just made that process more unmanageable. But perhaps he has hastened the moment when some Republicans concede that there is no path forward except for a bipartisan effort with Democrats. For all our sakes, let’s hope that moment arrives sooner rather than later.

Trump threatens retribution against the liberal media if he is elected.

          Last week, Trump called for the death penalty for General Milley, the retiring Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The media yawned. On Sunday, Trump accused the liberal media of treason and threatened retribution if he is elected. He wrote:

They are almost all dishonest and corrupt, but Comcast, with its one-side and vicious coverage by NBC NEWS, and in particular MSNBC, often and correctly referred to as MSDNC (Democrat National Committee!), should be investigated for its “Country Threatening Treason.”

Why should NBC, or any other of the corrupt & dishonest media companies, be entitled to use the very valuable Airwaves of the USA, FREE? They are a true threat to Democracy and are, in fact, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE! The Fake News Media should pay a big price for what they have done to our once great Country!

          Picking through Trump’s word salad with a fork, we see that he combines the concepts of “treason” and “paying a big price” in reference to NBC, MSNBC, and the “Fake News Media.” Threatening the media with treason and shuttering presses is the favorite tactic of fascist dictators everywhere. Criticism by the press is not permitted by fascists—and Trump has put the media on notice about his intentions if re-elected.

          What did the media do in response to this broadside threat? Yawned. Oh, rather, it ran another story about voters worried about Joe Biden’s age and the price of gas.

          The media has an important role in protecting democracy. If it can’t rouse itself to condemn threats against freedom of the press, it will deserve what happens if Trump is elected.

Trump demands that all Democratic Senators resign.

          Before you roll your eyes at a third story about Trump’s unhinged posting on Truth Social, stick with me. I have a point. See Concluding Thoughts.

          Democratic Senator Robert Menendez refused to resign while he defends himself against bribery charges. That decision put Trump in a bind: Trump claims he can run for president, win, and serve from a jail cell, so he can’t call for Menendez to resign. The next best thing (in Trump’s view) is for all Democratic Senators to resign—which is what he did:

Why doesn’t the FBI raid Senate Democrat’s homes like they illegally raided Mar-a-Lago, where nothing was done wrong based on the Presidential Records Act. Menendez is a ‘piker’ compared to some of those Election Stealing THUGS.

Menendez is one of many, a small timer at that. EVERY DEMOCRAT SHOULD RESIGN FROM THE SENATE!

          Trump is confused about the facts surrounding the search of Menendez’s house. No matter. The point is that Trump does not call on Menendez to resign because they are brothers in arms when it comes to placing personal interest ahead of that of their constituents. Why that means that all Democratic Senators should resign requires logical fallacies served with a dollop of lies.

          Menendez should resign because his continued service provides cover for Trump’s corrupt campaign for the presidency. As Dennis Aftergut explains in Why Menendez must resign | The Hill, a resignation by Menendez would

·      Honor the public trust that holding elected office embodies.

·      Show the public that no one should hold or seek office while under a serious indictment.

·      Distinguish Democrats from Donald Trump, Rep. George Santos, and MAGA Republicans who defend individuals holding or running for office while indicted.

The last point is the most important: By refusing to resign, Menendez legitimizes the notion that politicians under indictment should fight those indictments while serving in (or seeking) positions of honor and trust. It is hard to imagine that Menendez could make matters better for Trump or worse for Biden….

So, here’s my point about Trump: Any rational observer of any other elected official in America who made the same posts would conclude that the official is having an emotional break. Over the last four days, Trump has called for the death penalty for the former Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the resignation of all Democratic Senators, and for prosecuting the press for treason for writing unfavorable stories about him.

That’s a lot. But I have quoted only snippets of Trump’s lengthy and rambling statements on his vanity social media platform. In context, they are reminiscent of the ramblings of Ted Kaczynski—the Unabomber. 

My point is not (merely) to engage in Trump-bashing. It is that standing alone, Trump’s statements raise serious questions about his mental stability, even as compared to his steady-state level of chaos and confusion. I do not follow Trump directly on Truth Social. Those who do say that his most recent postings are reaching a different pitch of madness. And yet, they are largely being ignored by the media. 

Trump apparently believes there are no boundaries that constrain his social media postings. He is wrong; there is a line that cannot be crossed—and Trump will find it. When he does, it should be a bigger story than “Biden is older than Trump.” 

Some of you will undoubtedly disagree. Your position is not unreasonable given the sorry history of the media’s coverage of Trump up to this point. But I have an ember of hope that there is enough integrity and professionalism remaining in the media to hold Trump to account for his deranged postings. 

Categories Elections, Insane, Trump

Houston Chronicle Editorial: Three Theocratic Billionaires Threaten U.S. Democracy

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2023 //
2

The Houston Chronicle published a blistering editorial about the power of three billionaires who control Republican politics in Texas and threaten American democracy—not only in Texas. The three are adherents of Christian nationalism and dedicated funders of school vouchers. Their dream is to abolish public schools and enroll every student in a Christian school or home-schooled. They funded State Attorney General KennPaxton’s impeachment defense, and they are now funding Governor Greg Abbott’s campaign for vouchers.

The editorial board wrote:

Since its founding in the early 1880s, the little town of Cisco, 45 miles east of Abilene, has been in the news twice. In 1919, Conrad Hilton paid $40,000 for the Mobley Hotel in downtown Cisco, which eventually gained fame as the first in a worldwide chain of Hilton hotels. Eight years later, two days before Christmas 1927, Santa Claus and three of his helpers robbed the First National Bank of Cisco.

National notoriety will again fall on Cisco if Texas voters — Republican, Democrat and independent — don’t get engaged with their democracy sometime soon. The little town is home to the Wilks brothers, Dan and Farris, oil and fracking billionaires who, by playing Santa Claus to Republican officeholders receptive to far-right extremists, are on a mission to transform Texas into a Christian nationalist state. Their efforts, in conjunction with an even more influential West Texas oil billionaire, Tim Dunn of Midland, was on insidious display during the recent impeachment trial of the most corrupt state attorney general in America.

Ken Paxton skated, not necessarily because he was innocent of the charges that 121 House members, including 60 Republicans, brought against him. He’s back on the job and baying for RINO blood because most Republicans in the Texas Senate are either in thrall to the West Texas triumvirate or they tremble in terror at the prospect of being “primaried” by a Wilks-and-Dunn-anointed challenger. All 19 Republican senators and at least half of the Republican House members have taken money from the West Texas billionaires or their affiliated PACs and organizations.

The biggest recipient by far in this state is none other than Paxton himself. It’s likely that the Wilks and Dunn trio paid for his $4 million impeachment defense, which included the time and effort of very expensive Houston lawyers, Tony Buzbee and Dan Cogdell.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the judge during the impeachment trial, also is beholden to the West Texans. Their Defend Texas Liberty PAC donated $1 million to the lite guv, while loaning him another $2 million. The PAC largesse came shortly before Patrick began presiding over Paxton’s trial, a trial that ended with a fiery Patrick speech denouncing the impeachment process.

In addition to being fossil-fuel billionaires, both Dunn and Farris Wilks are Christian nationalist evangelists — Dunn as a lay preacher for the Midland Bible Church, Wilks as a preacher for a Cisco congregation founded by his father called the Assembly of Yahweh Seventh Day Church. Dan Wilks and his wife oversee the Heavenly Fathers Foundation, a group funded with a portion of the $3.2 billion the brothers made when they sold the majority stake of their Cisco-based oil field trucking company, Frac Tech Services.

From the pulpit to the campaign pockets of politicians, the West Texans are on what they see as a God-imbued mission to transform Texas and beyond. Over the past 20 years, they’ve contributed nearly $100 million to think tanks, nonprofits, fundraising committees, websites and Texas candidates who support their crusade.

In their preaching and practice, climate change is merely God’s will; homosexuality is an evil on par with incest, bestiality and pedophilia; abortion is murder, unlawful with no exceptions; gun owners enjoy a God-given right to carry their weapons in public without permits or training; only Christians have the God-given right to hold leadership positions in government (which, as Texas Monthly reported, left former House Speaker Joe Strauss, who is Jewish, beyond the pale). Also, oil and gas is a gift from God to be used with gratitude. (They don’t mention God’s gift of sunlight and wind.)

Kel Seliger, a longtime GOP state senator from Amarillo, ran afoul of the triumvirate in recent years. Reasonable, affable and conservative, Seliger is no longer in the Legislature. “It’s a Russian-style oligarchy, pure and simple,” he told CNN last year. “Really, really wealthy people who are willing to spend a lot of money to get policy made the way they want it — and they get it.”

What those “really, really wealthy people” want these days is to destroy Texas public education, a hotbed, as they tell it, of critical race theory and other elements of what one Dunn-and-Wilks-backed group calls “Marxist and sexual indoctrination,” all funded by “far-Left elites for decades.” (That would be the Texas taxpayer.) [Bold-face added by DR, here and below.]

Their strategy, as Brandon Rottinghaus, a University of Houston political science professor, told Chron.com, is to recruit a generation of Wilks and Dunn-funded mouthpieces in state and local positions to push the narrative that public schools are harmful to students and their parents. Once public education is weakened beyond repair, they offer private religious schools as “a better way.”

With an insidious, well-funded effort, our home-grown theocrats will make sure that Gov. Greg Abbott has all the financial ammunition he needs in the next few weeks for his last-ditch, special-session effort to persuade lawmakers to use taxpayer money in the form of vouchers for private, often Christian-based schooling. Abbott calls it “school choice.” Rural lawmakers, who’ve fought the plan for years, know it’s school suicide.

The West Texans “want to destroy the public school system as we know it and, in its place, see more home-schooling and more private Christian schools,” former state Sen. Bob Deuell, a northeast Texas Republican, told CNN. Deuell, a physician, got crossways with the West Texans when he supported a bill that updated the state’s end-of-life procedures. Dan Wilks, falsely claiming that the legislation would “strengthen Texas’s death panels,” backed tea party activist Bob Hall, who defeated Deuell in 2014. Hall was one of Paxton’s most outspoken supporters during the impeachment trial.

Texas is a big state, but the West Texans have Christian nationalist ambitions beyond our borders. They are reliable supporters of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and, of course, former President Donald Trump, who decried Paxton’s “shameful impeachment.” In an expansive, post-impeachment mood these days, Paxton seems to be pondering a larger field of dreams for himself. He told Tucker Carlson last week he may challenge U.S. Sen. John Cornyn. “His time is done,” Paxton told a radio talk-show host.

If Trump wins the presidential election next year, the disgraced Texas AG would be a prime candidate to head the U.S. Justice Department. (His paramour, the woman he brought from San Antonio to Austin, could be installed in a Georgetown townhouse, only a short Uber ride away from Justice.) He (they) would be right at home in a Trumpian Washington, where, as U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney said to The Atlantic writer McKay Coppins, “A very large portion of my party really doesn’t believe in the Constitution.”

The party’s presidential nominee in 2012 has said he worries about the survival of America’s democratic experiment.

Whether it survives depends in large part on what happens here in Texas, where the national far right comes for funding and ideas. Decades of one-party rule have contributed to voter apathy and made our state a fertile testing ground for extreme policies. It’s telling, for example, that the AG was reelected last year with the support of about 13 percent of the populace (4 million votes out of a population of nearly 30 million). Paxton and other Dunn and Wilks dependents only have to listen to their West Texan Santa Claus trio, not to the people of Texas.

On a Friday morning in Cisco nearly a century ago, a little girl was among the first to notice that the Santa who stepped out of a stolen Buick and into the lobby of the First National Bank was a fake (and a dangerous one, at that). In Texas these days, maybe we’ve grown jaded. Perhaps it will be young voters of all political persuasions who will take the lead in calling out — and rejecting — the dangerous extremists in our midst. Perhaps taking heart from the brave Republicans who dared impeach an errant AG, they’ll elect representatives of the people, not altar boys and girls on call for Christian nationalists.

Categories Bigotry, Billionaires, Censorship, Dark Money, Democracy, Freedom, Funding, Home Schooling, Religion, Republicans, Texas, Trump

Frank Bruni: Trump Is Old and Incoherent

By dianeravitch
September 24, 2023 //
188

Frank Bruni, columnist for the New York Times, points out that Trump is almost as old as Biden, yet the media obsesses about Biden’s age and seldom mentions Trump’s.

Worse, Trump is incoherent. The same cannot be said of Biden, who usually speaks in complete sentences and makes sense.

Trump speaks in word salad, following his train of thought.

Bruni wrote:

To our intensifying discussion about whether President Biden has grown mentally fuzzy and too old for a second term, I’d like to add this question: How would we even notice Donald Trump’s lapse into incoherence, when derangement is essentially his brand?

Pretty much any interview he gives is a babble bonanza, and his recent lovefest with Tucker Carlson was no exception. He went on wacky tangents, including one about the wages of building the Panama Canal: “We lost 35,000 people to the mosquito. Malaria. We lost 35,000 people. We lost 35,000 people because of the mosquito. Vicious. They had to build under nets. It was one of the true great wonders of the world.”

“One of the nine wonders,” he added, then corrected himself. “No, no, it was one of the seven.” Seven, nine – he seemed unable to decide, unwilling to commit. “You could make nine wonders,” he ventured. I guess that’s some limit. Once you hit 10, they’re just curiosities. Wonder-ettes.

But was there a bevy of headlines about a brain ravaged by time? Were there notations that Trump, at 77, was already as old as Ronald Reagan at the end of his presidency, and that after another four years in the White House, Trump would be a touch older than Biden at the end of his first term and thus the oldest president ever?

Categories Biden, Trump
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