He bragged to others about his sexual conquests with women. He paid women for sex. He was charged in lawsuits with numerous sexual assaults on women. Jeffrey Epstein? No, Donald Trump. I really wonder what everyone is doing getting their dander up about this disgusting sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein, when we’ve got one in the White House. We’ve known about Trump not for years, but for decades. We’ve known about his sexcapades around New York with women who were not his wife. Hell, he used to call the New York Post’s “Page Six” and brag about himself! And by what magic of moral vacuity has the infamous Access Hollywood tape disappeared down the memory hole? Its words ought to be carved in granite and mounted on a pedestal on the Mall in Washington in full view of the current occupant of the White House.
✔ @LEBassett
In 2016, “Jane Doe” filed a lawsuit against Trump alleging a “savage sexual attack” in 1994, when she was 13, in which he tied her to a bed at Epstein’s house & raped her. She pulled the lawsuit after getting threatened, but why aren’t we talking about it? https://www.gq.com/story/
donald-trump-jeffrey-epstein … Ian Madrigal – The Monopoly Man @iansmadrig
Replying to @iansmadrig
Here Katie recalls her first encounter with Trump when she was 13. Her description matches his known idiosyncrasies and germophobia: He required her to touch him with a glove. “He seemed to take a liking to me because I was so young…he kind of liked things to be his first.” “Donald Trump specifically asked about me because I remind him of his daughter, and she said, ‘Well, she’s 13 as well.'” I *know* we avoid seriously discussing this because it is disturbing beyond comprehension. But we all know what Trump has said about Ivanka. This. Adds. Up.
Could this finally be the crime case Trump can’t weasel out of?: dailykos.com/stories/2019/7/
Maybe Trump wanted to prove he’s a racist to distract away from the news he could be a rapist: dailykos.com/stories/2019/7/
Here are articles about the charges against Epstein, including a very suspicious alias passport with a Saudi Arabian address. Just thinking out loud here, but could the probe end up proving involvement in some sort of illegal scheme like money laundering? And with Trump’s close ties to Epstein, might he also have been in some way involved? We can’t help but wonder how Epstein made his wealth & how Trump got rescued from his bankruptcies. I’m only speculating based on Trump & Kushner always trying to excuse Saudi’s brutal human rights atrocities, while seemingly doing the bidding in Saudi interests as if somehow compromised?
It has been nearly four years since I wrote a column that began: “Let’s not mince words: Donald Trump is a bigot and a racist.” This was controversial at the time, even though we had already seen Trump’s behavior with the Central Park Five and the birther movement, his routine attacks against Muslims and his branding of Mexican immigrants as rapists and killers. But the past four years should have extinguished any doubt about his racism: his defense of “very fine people” at the neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, his attacks against black NFL players, his denunciation of “s—hole countries” in Africa and elsewhere, his claim that Haitian immigrants “all have AIDS,” his mockery of “Pocahontas” and the Trail of Tears. During just the past few weeks, Trump threatened, in defiance of the Supreme Court, to change the census in a way that the administration’s own expert said would disadvantage nonwhite Hispanics; publicly hyped deportation raids; hosted bigoted figures at a White House social media event; and told nonwhite lawmakers to “go back” where they came from. As then-Speaker Paul Ryan said when Trump declared that a Mexican American judge couldn’t be impartial because of his ethnicity, this is “textbook” racism. For the next 16 months, Democrats must remember that their own differences are relatively insignificant. The latest racism is a new low for Trump, but worse will undoubtedly come. For Trump, there will be no bottom — unless and until voters tell him to go back to the place from which he came.
It was said of Mussolini that he made the trains run on time. Now Republicans and others parrot a version of that amoral argument. They deplore Trump’s rhetoric but say he has kept unemployment low, employment high and sent the stock market into the ozone layer. But there is a cost to all this. Trump might fatten some wallets, but he feasts on the country’s soul. With an insolence borne of ignorance, he gives history the finger and traffics in the blood of Civil War dead, civil rights martyrs and the “Strange Fruit” of countless lynchings. The GOP’s silence in the face of all this is not just shameful, it is wrenching.
The poll numbers also tell you something deeply troubling about a Republican electorate that continues to embrace a president who conducts himself as Trump does — whether out of agreement with his ugliest sentiments or appreciation for the good economy hardly matters. Errors of policy can be corrected. Markets and unemployment rates ebb and flow. Even separated parents and children can be reunited. What cannot so readily be restored, however, is the sense of security and mutual trust that flows through a society when a large majority can acknowledge the essential good faith of the person at the top. Trump has managed to normalize, through repetition, a toxic standard of political behavior that may spread as his supporters imitate him — and his opponents consider themselves licensed to respond in kind. Little by little, he is sabotaging our national political culture, and with it the capacity for unity and deliberation we’ll need to face the next economic downturn, or war, when it comes, as it inevitably will.
washingtonpost.com/opinions/
Monday was sentencing day on state charges for the neo-Nazi who rammed his car into a group of counterprotesters in Charlottesville, killing Heather Heyer — a reminder of another low moment in Mr. Trump’s presidency. But his Sunday tweets are among the most despicable comments from any president in recent memory — with the only competition coming from other comments by Mr. Trump . Sadly, the poison by now is no more surprising than the cowardly complicity of the Republican Party.
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/
2019/07/racism-campaign- strategy If you’re surprised today that Donald Trump is a racist, you haven’t been paying attention. Since he entered politics, he has proved it repeatedly. In fact, as I reported with several colleagues in The Atlantic recently, bigotry has been a part of Trump’s public persona since he’s had a public persona. Yet Trump’s racist Twitter attacks on Democratic congresswomen over the weekend still managed to shock, even in this benumbed age, because of his willingness and eagerness to place racism at the center of his political platform in a run for reelection to the presidency. It is not simply the employment of racist ideas for political advantage—that has been a staple of campaigns in both parties for some time. It is the invitation to a racial conflict that pits citizen against citizen, under the calculation that racism itself is a winning strategy, that astonishes.
nytimes.com/2019/07/14/
opinion/trump-twitter-racism. html The central framing of this kind of thinking is that this is a white country, founded and built by white men, and destined to be maintained as a white country. For anyone to be accepted as truly American they must assimilate and acquiesce to that narrative, to bow to that heritage and bend to those customs. It sees a country from which black and brown people come as deficient — “a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world” — because, at its base, it sees black and brown people as deficient. It is a form of white identitarianism, which opposes multiculturalism, but refuses to deem that opposition racist. And so, it chafes when these black and brown women from exotic-sounding places with exotic-sounding names would dare to challenge the white patriarchy in this country. Why do they not know their place? Why do they not genuflect to the gentry? Why do they not recognize — and honor — the white man’s superiority?
Start here: because the entire white supremacist ideology and ethos is a lie. America expanded much of its territory through the shedding of blood and breaking of treaties with Native Americans. It established much of its wealth through 250 years of exploiting black bodies for free labor. And, for the entire history of this country, some degree of anti-blackness has existed. Now, there is an intensifying anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant xenophobia. America was born with a congenital illness and it has been in need of active rehabilitation ever since, although it has often rejected the curative treatments and regressed. Challenging America to own its sins and live up to its ideals isn’t a vicious attack, it’s an act of patriotism. As James Baldwin once put it, “I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” And, who better to lead the charge than four women who represent the future face of America. But, Trump — and many of his supporters and defenders — spew their racism and tell themselves that it is perfectly acceptable when it is read back to them, in much the same way that a dog will eat its own vomit.
There is no parallel. There can be no more discussion or debate about whether or not Trump is a racist. He is. There can be no more rhetorical juggling about not knowing what’s in his heart. We see what flows out of it. White people and whiteness are the center of the Trump presidency. His primary concern is to defend, protect and promote it. All that threatens it must be attacked and assaulted. Trump is bringing the force of the American presidency to the rescue of white supremacy. And, self-identified Republicans absolutely love him for it. We are watching a very dark chapter in this nation’s history unfold in real time. We are watching as a president returns naked racism to the White House. And we are watching as fellow citizens — possibly a third of them — reveal to us their open animus for us through their continued support of him.
nytimes.com/2019/07/15/
As everyone knows, on Sunday Donald Trump attacked four progressive members of Congress, saying that they should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” As it happens, three of the four were born in the U.S., and the fourth is a duly naturalized citizen. All are, however, women of color. Sorry, there’s no way to both sides this, or claim that Trump didn’t say what he said. This is racism, plain and simple — nothing abstract about it. And Trump obviously isn’t worried that it will backfire. This should be a moment of truth for anyone who describes Trump as a “populist” or asserts that his support is based on “economic anxiety.” He’s not a populist, he’s a white supremacist. His support rests not on economic anxiety, but on racism.
The GOP Gutless Wonders
Correctly condemning racist comments today but with only 4 GOP reps (plus Amash) having the courage to vote their conscience. I guess the rest of them are just hunky dory aligning with Trump the racist, their indisputable leader:
thehill.com/homenews/house/
thedailybeast.com/house-votes-
Journalist and Trump critic Jed Shugerman takes a different approach in an in-depth piece published in the Daily Beast this week: rather than attacking Republicans and Trump supporters for not bothering to read the report, Shugerman argues that Mueller’s report isn’t as damning of the president and his allies as it should have been — and that Mueller is downplaying the importance of some key events. “The bottom line is that the Mueller Report is a failure not because of Congress or because of public apathy, but because it failed to get the law, the facts or even the basics of writing right,” Shugerman asserts. “When Mueller testifies before Congress on July 17, he should be pressed on all of this.”
In his report, Mueller concluded that the 2016 Trump campaign’s interactions with Russians, although questionable, didn’t rise to the level of a full-fledged criminal conspiracy. But Shugerman views Mueller’s analysis as flawed. “It seems Mueller did not hire any legal experts with experience in campaign finance regulation,” Shugerman complains. “Given that this investigation was about campaign crimes, this appears to a revealing oversight with serious consequences.” Shugerman goes on to say that Mueller’s “errors meant that, first, he failed to conclude that the Trump campaign criminally coordinated with Russia.” And the Daily Beast writer adds that Mueller “failed to indict campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, for felony campaign coordination.”
In 2018, Manafort was vigorously prosecuted in federal court for a long list of financial crimes thanks to Mueller’s investigation — and Gates became the prosecution’s star witness. But neither of them was accused of “felony campaign coordination,” Shugerman writes. Shugerman, in his article, goes on to list and describe, in detail, interactions between Trump’s campaign and Russians in 2016 — and those interactions, he believes, are more damning than Mueller concludes in his report. For example, Shugerman asserts, “Mueller should have concluded that both Manafort and Gates engaged in felony campaign coordination, and he should have indicted Manafort for it. Manafort is a lawyer with decades of experience working for presidential campaigns: it would be less difficult to establish knowing and willful violations. And Manafort’s extraordinary record of lying to prosecutors — and coordinating his lies with Trump’s lawyers — would help prove the case as an inference of consciousness of guilt.”
Former Justice Passes
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