Big News Breaking on Trump Scandal

A look at the latest in the ongoing Trump scandal media coverage

Obstruction of Justice case now looks solid

Even before tonight’s breaking Trump scandal news, there was very strong evidence of obstruction.  From writing a cover-up letter for the Trump Tower meeting to pressuring FBI Director Comey & then firing Comey over the Russia investigation, the new news tonight fits that same pattern.  See the first articles below where Trump called some key Senators during the summer pressuring them to wrap up their Russian investigation.  His target, in particular, was Sen. Burr, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.  And his intent couldn’t just be chalked up to mere rookie mistakes, since after the Comey debacle he had become well aware by this past summer of the legal jeopardy involved with interfering in the investigations.

With a weird week when even more than usual the newsfeeds provided us with the most absurd & preposterous headlines, I’ll mainly let the articles themselves do the commentary.  Trump went absolutely crazy this week with a litany of lies & conspiracies, indicating more than ever he might actually be crazy.  The top links in the related articles always begin with Russia, where we see Mueller’s team has been talking with Flynn & Kushner, whose testimonies might be ratting out each other.  Then as Mueller compares notes & connects the dots, except that the trail will eventually lead to the top.  Another major story today involves Jeff Sessions, as it seems he has some real explaining to do.  He refused to answer when asked if Trump asked him to hinder the Russian probe, which it’s also true his memory seems to keep getting worse.  He obviously is hiding something.  There’s also Donny Jr. pondering what to do with those weird WikiLeaks tweets he got before the election plus more reports on Roger Stone‘s communications with WikiLeaks.  So we continue to watch as this Trump scandal keeps taking on a higher level of risk for the prez.

Also see a Vox article offering a Trump-Russia Timeline, giving a clear summary of the events that evolved into this major scandal.  It’s also interesting Trump is required to turn over records on his various businesses.  It’s becoming more & more clear with each passing week something was going on with the Russians.  A little further along in the Russian links, there’s a video to Olbermann’s final GQ commentary entitled, “Trump is finished,” where he lays out these 7 scenarios that any one or combination will force Trump from office:

The NY Times link titled, “Odds Are, Russia Owns Trump,” is an op-ed about how likely it is that Russia holds Trump’s cards.  And a Newsweek article echoes those thoughts.  From there we move on down to the North Korean articles.  The hawkish side of me says we must do something.  If negotiations & sanctions don’t work, the last option is military strikes.  That’s only a viable option if there’s a high likelihood we could right away incapacitate their nuclear capabilities.  Failing to do so would put millions immediately at risk of annihilation.  But doing nothing & letting North Korea complete their nuclear program, it would put 300 million Americans & 7 billion around the world perpetually at risk.  It’s an extremely difficult predicament.

Trump in being so impulsive, temperamental, mentally unstable & perhaps not long for the office from illegal activities, it’s hard to imagine a leader more dangerous than how he’s likely to react to North Korea’s provocations with their ballistic missile tests.  Trump seems mentally unhinged to begin with, so it’s tough to trust him to use his best judgment.  It’s critical we have ongoing diplomacy in the region, particularly with China, but our skeleton crew of a State Dept. only undermines our best intentions.  It’s also time to bone up on our missile defense systems & backup systems guarding against an EMP attack.

In the links that get into the Matt Lauer sexual abuse allegations & firing, that delves right into Trump’s own similar infidelities, although Trump has yet to be fired.  But Trump sees the feeding frenzy of new accusations & high-powered executives losing their jobs, so he was even throwing out the trial balloon that it wasn’t really him on the Access Hollywood bus video.  As women are empowered to speak out, it could help clean up this despicable culture of powerful men committing sexual abuse knowing there could be real consequences.  I also believe there are degrees of sexual abuse, which based on the evidence we know so far, it doesn’t appear the Franken actions are as severe as the others.  So in my opinion Franken should be reprimanded, whereas Conyers, Moore & Trump should step aside.  If they refuse, we have other avenues to ensure their removal.  In an article, “Two new reports suggest Trump has come unhinged, the truth is worse“, in highlighting Trump’s relentless penchant for lying, we see this somber warning:

But such incredulity misses the deeper significance of this stuff. The brazenness of it is the whole point — his utter shamelessness itself is meant to achieve his goal. In any given case, Trump is not trying to persuade anyone of anything as much as he is trying to render reality irrelevant, and reduce the pursuit of agreement on it to just another part of the circus. He’s asserting a species of power — the power to evade constraints normally imposed by empirically verifiable facts, by expectations of consistency, and even by what reasoned inquiry deems merely credible. The more brazen or shameless, the more potent is the assertion of power.

But when we say that someone is lying, we presume that they know they’re lying. That’s what distinguishes the “lie” from the “falsehood” or the “untruth.” You can unwittingly tell a falsehood, but if you lie it means you knew what you were doing. Or to quote the philosopher George Costanza, “It’s not a lie if you believe it.”

(To his aides)….what matters isn’t whether Trump is lying to you, it’s whether he sent the message he wanted to send.  And that gets to the heart of the problem. It isn’t just that no one around the president can stand up to him and call him out on his more lunatic beliefs, it’s that they actively enable him. They encourage him not to care what’s true and what isn’t, because he knows they’ll defend him. The apparatus he has built around himself serves to reinforce his most horrifying tendencies.​

The next article by Rubin plays on the same theme of constant lying, which here she comments that the lying might be just a moral abomination, or otherwise with his mental & emotional incapacitation it might be necessary to invoke the 25th Amendment:

Now, it may be that Trump knows full well he is lying. He may take delight in horrifying aides and lawmakers, like a child relishing the shock on adults’ faces when he uses foul language. If so, that makes him a moral abomination unworthy of his office, but not bonkers. If, however, he actually believes that former president Barack Obama wasn’t born in America, that Obama wiretapped him, that he (not Hillary Clinton) won the popular vote and the women’s vote and that it’s not his voice on the “Access Hollywood” tape, then he’s something far more problematic than a liar. In such circumstances, he would be mentally and emotionally incapable of performing his duties (which require one to grasp and process reality) and it would be long past time for him to go.

These next 3 paragraphs are out of The Atlantic article where Trump threw out a trial balloon gaslighting us on the Access Hollywood tape:

In the Bill Press article specifically using Jerry Falwell Jr. as an example among many religious leaders bending over backwards to excuse the multiple accusations of sexual abuse by Trump & Moore, Press concludes with this thought:

With members of the clergy refusing for political purposes to condemn blatantly immoral behavior, how can anybody take organized religion seriously anymore? If religious leaders won’t stand up and condemn both Donald Trump and Roy Moore, religion is nothing but a joke. America has lost its soul.  In the next Right Turn article, Rubin provides this gem: President Trump is most every woman’s nightmare — the obnoxious know-it-all who will lie to her face, deny reality, insult her and change the subject rather than be held accountable for his actions. Trump boasts that he never has to apologize because he cannot recall being wrong.

Also look for the links where Trump once again uses that ethnic slur “Pocahontas,” this time in front of Native American veteran heroes.  He does have a knack for the occasion.

In Rubin’s Right Turn article on “The pathetic neediness of Trump,” she sums up accurately in these two paragraphs about Trump’s mental incapacity & incompetence as President:

Michelle Obama likes to say, “Being president doesn’t change who you are, it reveals who you are.” In the cauldron of the presidency when surrounded by sycophants to one side and brutal critics to the other, and faced with constitutional and practical limitations on executive power, Trump’s already weak temperament, intellect and psyche are stressed. Before becoming president he lied and boasted to assuage his ego; he now lies constantly and more outrageously to deny failure in the Oval Office. He was naturally suspicious and untrusting; now he’s vexed by unhinged paranoia, making him a patsy for conspiracy theories in office. He never bothered to concentrate on intellectual pursuits and learn from others before; now he’s a know-nothing who relies on aides to clean up his gaffes and deploys the excuse of “Fake news!” to conceal his jaw-dropping ignorance. Unfortunately, Trump has virtually no redeeming qualities to counterbalance his inadequacies.

 

That the weight of the office has already “gotten” to Trump and discombobulated him so after only a year post-election is evidence of his weak character and intellect, a sign of his abject unfitness for the job. Maybe special counsel Robert S. Mueller III will get the goods on him, compelling Congress to impeach and remove him. Perhaps he can be persuaded to return to his New York home permanently, where accountability and transparency are absent, where he is free to luxuriate in the fantasy world in which he’s the most successful real estate mogul on the planet. If not, and if he remains through the end of his term, one shudders to think how unhinged he will become if he never gets Person of the Year again, a Nobel Prize or an approval rating above 50 percent. And worse, imagine how much destruction he’ll do to the country, our democracy and the Western alliance of democracies along the way.

Indeed, we should always respect the office of the presidency.

Unfortunately, the current occupant is a chronic liar, con man, temperamental thin-skinned bully, narcissistic megalomaniac, moral degenerate & likely dangerous sociopath, so it’s a disgrace this despicable person now holds the office.  See part two for more of his outlandish lies & conspiracy theories just this week.

And finally, in the final links from late-night TV, I see where Seth Meyers agrees with my prediction Trump may not last the year, while in the last link we get in the holiday spirit with a Trump Christmas carol.  Mired so deep in this Trump scandal, I’m confident this will be his lone Christmas as President (assuming he even lasts through December 25th).