Trump Exemplifies Poor Leadership…Even if conservatives like his policies & even if they give him undeserved credit for the economy, there’s far more important characteristics we should seek in a leader if we truly intend to make America great again. And that also applies if we want to keep America great by preserving democracy both here & around the world, which is a fragile gift easily broken when not handled with care. Trump is a prime example of poor leadership with personal traits the exact opposite of what we need in a real leader. Even looking beyond the lying, bullying & false bravado, we need a president who can see outside themselves & their ego, to rally/unite the country as a whole around a greater vision/purpose. Trump has no vision or purpose other than to aggrandize himself.
And with democracies teetering on the edge & our isolationist posture driving allies into the arms of rising world powers like China, such a realignment of the world order could see democratic systems steadily falling out of favor. Our current president not only displays the obvious leanings of an autocrat, but he’s favoring & enabling other authoritarian regimes around the world. Should we wind up sacrificing our international leadership role as the great protector of free democracies, we may find we’re ultimately sacrificing democracy itself, including here at home. The Trump factor based on his own actions are striving to make illegitimate dictatorships legitimate, with fascism becoming fashionable: trump-is-brutal-authoritarians-best-advocate & also saudi-arabia-jamal-khashoggi-lies-donald-trump-bush-torture. It’s a dangerous path we could soon live to regret, but our reawakening might only come after it’s too late to reverse course.
Those who love democratic freedoms better speak up! There’s still more of us on the sane side than the other side, so if we all work together we can repel this misguided movement of nihilistic demagoguery. We cannot be complacent on how perilous the current situation is or be passive about getting involved! Encourage people to vote, share this blog, let others know what’s at stake & this is no time to take our democracy for granted! Rubin shares these thoughts posted from i-got-a-look-at-what-deterioration-of-the-rule-of-law-looks-like:
Americans have not, in my lifetime, been more vigorously involved in discussions and debate about the rule of law than they have over the past couple of years. Concerns about Congress’s failure to check executive-branch overreach and corruption, the devolution of the Supreme Court into just another partisan body, interference with the apolitical operation of the Justice Department and efforts to delegitimize an independent media have raised concerns that the U.S. constitutional system is at grave risk. Ian Bassin, executive director for the nonpartisan group Protect Democracy, told me over the summer, “The rise of a U.S. president who fashions himself a strongman in the model of autocrats around the world has been a wakeup call that the guardrails of our democracy may not be as strong as we’d assumed.” He stressed that “America has never had a perfect democracy, but our story has been an ongoing process of perfecting it, and if we want that to continue we’re going to have to learn lessons from this moment and reinforce the guardrails to ensure our republic remains healthy for the next generation.”
On July 4, Protect Democracy put out a white paper, “Roadmap for Renewal,” which began from this premise: “With the country divided, a President lashing out at checks and balances, a Congress abdicating its basic legislative and oversight responsibilities, and a government failing to address the country’s pressing public policy challenges, it is all too easy to despair. And yet, America has gone through worse and emerged stronger for it. Our country’s political course can change quickly. We expect it will do so again.” It made more than 20 recommendations — ranging from rules to insulate the Justice Department from political pressure to efforts to expand access to voting. If anyone thought threats to democracy would subside, the actions of President Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress over the past few months (e.g., Trump’s criticism of prosecutors during the Paul Manafort trial and ongoing efforts to delegitimize the Russia probe, the White House’s enlisting a Supreme Court nominee in a venomous partisan campaign, Trump’s running up more than 5,000 lies) demonstrate that, if anything, the president’s assault on the rule of law has intensified.
If you want to understand how perilous this situation might become, spend some time, as I had the opportunity to do on Thursday, talking about threats to the rule of law with those who have seen the dire consequences that ensue when the legal profession and courts are not independent, when the press is harassed and when tribal loyalty is put ahead of institutional responsibility. Participating on a panel on the rule of law at the annual meeting of the International Bar Association (Disclosure: The IBA paid for my travel and accommodations) with Metin Feyzioglu, president of the Union of Turkish Bar Associations; Justice Rimvydas Norkus of the Lithuanian supreme court; and Sternford Moyo, a prominent reformer and lawyer from Zimbabwe, I got an earful about the methods by which authoritarian leaders lay siege to the rule of law, a primary check on their accumulation of power. Each panelist vividly described the consequences that flow from incremental steps to undermine the rule of law. These anti-democratic efforts share a common pattern — assaults on the courts and press, identification of opponents as threats to national security, a steady diet of disinformation and contempt for the messy business of democratic rule and free expression.
Democratic institutions — whether in the United States, or Poland, or Hungary, or Turkey — do not protect themselves. Extreme polarization creates dysfunction, providing a pretext for strongmen to accumulate power. (“I alone can fix it,” Trump once told us.) Efforts to impede the independence of the courts, to control and discredit the media, to characterize critics as enemies of the state and to consolidate power in the executive are all signs that democracy is at risk. A U.S. president who is dismissive of democratic norms can influence leaders around the world who contemplate anti-democratic actions. If they effectively get a “free pass” from the U.S. president, as many illiberal regimes around the world have, authoritarian-minded leaders are that much more likely to attack the rule of law. And sadly, we’ve seen over the past two years that the United States is not immune to the same trends that ravage democracies around the world. The upcoming midterms — in large part a referendum on the administration and the all-too-willing Republican enablers who tolerate his corruption and assault on democratic norms — will tell us how seriously Americans take threats to our constitutional system and if, at the very least, they want Congress to check the president’s lawlessness. We would do well to contemplate the consequences of passivity in the face of a leader who seeks to weaken the rule of law.
A despicable leader in so many ways
And from that poor leadership America’s future will suffer. Please be aware the Trump cult has become as powerful as it is dangerous. A high percentage of the nation is even willing to look the other way, as signs of our president operating an ongoing criminal enterprise are dismissed or ignored by Americans who should know better. If millions of our fellow citizens no longer care about protecting the rule of law, they may not blink when the presidency is converted over into more of a dictatorship right before our eyes. Our president goes beyond poor leadership, he’s actually a serious threat to our country! See further warnings of that threat before us in excerpts from andrew-sullivan-the-danger-of-trumps-accomplishments:
Then there’s simply what hasn’t happened. Last week, the New York Times published an exhaustive, magnificent, detailed evisceration of Donald Trump’s long and outrageous business career. It revealed extraordinary levels of tax avoidance and outright fraud; and it demolished the central argument of Trump’s own career and candidacy — that he is a brilliant, self-made man. The populist striver, the tribune of the little guy, this marvel of American meritocracy, was earning $200,000 a year as a 3-year-old. More to the point, his entire business was propped up by daddy for as long as daddy was alive. We knew some of this already. But this was the definitive demolition of a myth that had made Trump’s presidency possible. And nothing happened. No one cared. The polls budged not an inch — and in fact, showed a small boost for Trump. Yes, the news cycle was dominated by Ford-Kavanaugh, but still. This kind of takedown should take over any news cycle. And yet it is now as distant a memory as that once world-stopping op-ed by an anonymous senior Trump official in the New York Times. It makes you wonder whether the possible eventual publication of Trump’s tax returns — even if they are riddled with corruption and impropriety and illegality — would make any difference either. In a liberal democracy, the press is supposed to be a key player in holding the powers-that-be to account. And here you had the best newspaper in the world, dismantling the central myth of a presidency in a Pulitzer-worthy investigation … and it made not the slightest difference.
We’ve also seen the rather successful reframing of the Mueller probe. Trump’s absurd counter-narrative — the real collusion was between the Clintons and Russia! — has given the right some way to handle the reality of an otherwise disastrous scandal. Missteps by McCabe and Strzok and now Rosenstein have been exploited mercilessly. The shock, moreover, for the rest of us, has worn off, and the accumulating details and countless subplots have blurred the picture. Mueller will likely give us nothing before the midterms, and Trump has already signaled that he will try to get a new attorney general thereafter, when the probe could get downsized, or simply withstood — or even leveraged for political gain in the 2020 campaign. The Republican senators likely to be elected this fall will, if anything, be even more pro-Trump than their predecessors. Corker, Flake, McCain: all gone. The House GOP will have been transformed more thoroughly into Trump’s own personal party, as the primary campaigns revealed only too brutally. And if by some twist of fate, a constitutional battle between Congress and president breaks out over impeachment proceedings, Justice Kavanaugh will be there to make sure the president gets his way. All of this is far, far more power for Trump than any of us would have predicted, say, three years ago.
There’s a new essay in the New York Review of Books, called “The Suffocation of Democracy.” It deals at some length with the parallels between the disintegration of the Weimar democracy and ours. No, it’s not a Hitler analogy, but it is an insight into how liberal democracies fail, from a historian of the Nazi era, Christopher Browning. What Browning understands is the critical role that traditional conservatism has historically played in the construction of authoritarianism and fascism. Because the old-school GOP agenda — massive tax cuts for the wealthy and ending affordable health insurance for millions — cannot get support on its own, they have hitched their wagon to someone who commands the masses through rank populism. But the risk — as occurred in 1930s Germany — is that the pawn can become the master. This is the Erdogan model; the Orban example; it could well be the Bolsonaro formula in Brazil. It retains the trappings of a liberal democratic system, while gutting its core principles in favor of a strongman. It is entrenching itself more deeply here. And it is no laughing matter.
Which side fuels the angry mobs?
For a president always willing to give his angry white supremacist & militia group supporters a pass, while inciting violence through his own vitriolic words, it takes some nerve to call left-wing protesters an angry mob. Here’s the real reason the Trumpian echo even brought up the term angry mob: republicans-are-terrified-of-the-left-wing-mob-what-really-scares-them-is-losing. The deranged psycho-mentality & threat of violence actually comes more from the far-right, as described in excerpts from calling-democrats-the-angry-mob-is-trumps-biggest-lie-yet:
In fact, the chant, which began in the campaign, prefigured Trump’s deadly serious ambition to turn the Department of Justice into a weapon of personal control, that would harass Trump’s enemies while simultaneously quashing any wrongdoing by him and his allies. Trump has articulated this goal consistently, in public as well as in private. To the extent he has yet to succeed, it is only because the senate has prevented him from installing a sufficiently pliant attorney general — a restraint that may well disappear if the elections renew the Republican majority, which will no longer be laden with the most independent figures (John McCain, Jeff Flake, Bob Corker). What’s more, defining “lock her up” as the Republican offense erases from the equation the entire authoritarian spirit that has infused Trump’s political style. He offered to pay legal bills to supporters who beat up protesters at his rallies. This is a president who has repeatedly attacked the news media as “the enemy of the people,” an epithet used by communist dictators, and has at least gestured at using his power to punish them. (Trump has mused about challenging licenses for television stations that report independently, and instructed the post office to raise rates on Amazon as retribution for critical coverage in the Washington Post.)
Republican member of Congress Greg Gianforte physically assaulted a reporter for asking about his health care plan; his party stood behind him, and Trump recently praised Gianforte for doing it. (“This man has fought, in more ways than one, for your state. He has fought for your state. Greg Gianforte. He is a fighter and a winner.”) It seems clear that Gianforte has come away from the incident with his reputation enhanced. Susan Glasser, a seasoned and politically centrist reporter, observed six recent Trump rallies. She notes the cult of personality theme at the events, which feature “the kinds of tributes I have heard in places like Uzbekistan, but never before in America.” And while she allows that Trump is hardly new in making hyperbolic charges that his center-left opponents will usher in socialism, the fear of chaos he marshalls behind such warnings is novel: “Where Trump differs starkly is in his insistence — made at an increasingly high pitch as the week went on — that Democrats not only want to legislate their way to socialism but that they are an actual clear and present danger to Americans.”
The method on display is familiar if you study any historical episode of democratic backsliding. One party, either from the far left or the far right, sets out to attack and weaken democratic norms. The small-d democrats resist, trying to maintain democratic norms. But they’re fighting at a disadvantage against a ruthless foe that does not observe their limits, and at least some of the opposition undertakes a more drastic action. Any offense becomes a pretext for the authoritarians, who exaggerate the threat of violence and chaos by their enemies to justify the antidemocratic measures they were planning all along. The threat Trump poses does not excuse the left from upholding democratic standards. (I have made this case repeatedly, in fact.) That said, Trump’s illiberalism only works because respectable conservatives cooperate with his fiction that he is more victim than aggressor.
So it’s the far-right that is guilty
Click onbellingcat-report-far-how-right-activists-were-radicalized to see a picture of what really constitutes an angry mob. The article goes onto explain how right-wing extremists are being radicalized through social media. It’s the same tools being used by radical Islamic terrorist groups to recruit unstable/susceptible minds into the fold, which is difficult to monitor or stop when recruits are enticed remotely into evil causes anywhere in the world through such powerful platforms. The angry mobs to really worry about are those willing to commit to violence, such as these thugs: proud-boys-new-york-assault-gavin-mcinnes.
Attacks on media/journalists having tragic consequences
And some of the most outlandish/irresponsible/vitriolic/demonic messages are repeated by Trump or those close to him, an example being seen inside trump-jr-boosts-smear-tying-missing-journalist-jamal-khashoggi-to-islamic-terrorism & also donald-trump-jr-jamal-khashoggi-tweet_us. My hope is Mueller can soon indict sonny-boy jr, so his evil tirades can be tamped down. The Saudi consulate murder itself was hideous, but compounding that with sonny-boy’s comments, smearing the reputation of this respected/well-intentioned journalist who sought moderate reforms in Saudi Arabia, is nothing short of deranged & reprehensible!!!: my-fiancé-jamal-khashoggi-was-a-lonely-patriot. When we read these excerpts from inside jamal-khashoggi-and-bloody-bill-trumps-anti-press-rhetoric, it’s apparent Trump’s constant biting attacks on the free press are setting the tone for these types of atrocities:
In July, President Donald Trump hosted A.G. Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times, the outlet which is perhaps the biggest target of the president’s years-long effort to delegitimize the U.S. press. In a statement memorializing the White House meeting, Sulzberger said he had gone to the White House with a stark warning for the president: His vicious criticisms of the press, particularly the Stalinist description of journalists as the “enemy of the people,” could reap deadly results for reporters. “I repeatedly stressed that this is particularly true abroad, where the president’s rhetoric is being used by some regimes to justify sweeping crackdowns on journalists,” he wrote of their exchange. “I warned that it was putting lives at risk, that it was undermining the democratic ideals of our nation, and that it was eroding one of our country’s greatest exports: a commitment to free speech and a free press.” Three months later, Sulzberger’s warning has proved horrifically prescient. A journalist who lives in the U.S. and writes for a major American newspaper has vanished, with reports indicating he may have been brutally murdered by an authoritarian U.S. ally. And Trump’s apathetic response sends a message to other nations that they can repress journalists with impunity, without fear of U.S. reprisals. Jamal Khashoggi is a journalist, a critic of his native Saudi Arabia’s oppressive regime who had been living in self-imposed exile in Virginia, London, and Istanbul, Turkey. He has written for The Washington Post’s Global Opinions section since last year, using that platform to lament Saudi Arabia’s repressive atmosphere under its new de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. That outspoken dissent, coming at a time when the prince was conducting a U.S. charm offensive, reportedly earned Khashoggi his wrath. Ten days ago, Khashoggi walked into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul to obtain a document for his upcoming wedding. He has yet to emerge.
But Trump’s vision of U.S. foreign policy is fundamentally transactional, looking with favor on despots like Crown Prince Mohammed who cater to his whims and sign hefty contracts for U.S. arms, while scorning our democratic allies for not paying “their fair share of common defense costs.” His response to Khashoggi’s disappearance is in line with a general disregard for human rights: Trump has issued mealy-mouthed statements of concern while thus far rejecting the possibility of concrete action. He has warned that blocking U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia in retaliation would “not be acceptable,” and demurred when asked whether the situation would jeopardize U.S. relations with the country. Others in his administration have followed this policy of going through the motions, requesting information from the Saudis while steering clear of anything that resembles a consequence; while media outlets have begun withdrawing from a Saudi investment conference scheduled for later this month, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said this morning that he still plans to attend, calling Saudi Arabia “a very good partner.” Even the president’s loyal propagandists at Fox & Friends have said that the administration needs to do more, arguing that Khashoggi’s disappearance is “way over the line” and must be met with sanctions that “really hurt” the Saudi regime. Khashoggi is not the only victim of the U.S. abandoning even the pretense of standing for liberal values: Oppressive nations have responded with gusto to the changing world order. And just as Sulzberger warned, journalists have been a particular target; the last month alone has seen reporters arrested in Myanmar, imprisoned in Turkey, and murdered in Bulgaria. But Khashoggi’s disappearance seems to be the clearest link yet from Trump’s anti-press demagoguery to state repression. Trump’s “rhetoric against journalists probably encouraged the Saudis to do it,” a close friend of Khashoggi’s said this week, convincing the regime that “Trump hates journalists and he would not react if we kill one journalist.” Unless Trump and his administration change course and make it clear that this behavior is unacceptable, this won’t be the last time.
What did the prez know?
There are reasonable suspicions the prez may have been alerted to the threats on the WaPo reporter in advance, & possibly even about that specific plot on the ambush inside the Saudi consulate. So an important question is was Trump warned & did nothing with that info? And the way Trump seems willing to excuse the Saudi prince, much in the same way he always exempts Putin & the Russians from any wrongdoing, it appears the Saudis might also have Trump compromised somehow. This is the article seen inside expert-says-trump-likely-knew-of-saudi-plot-to-kill-washington-post-journalist:
The famous Watergate era question — ‘what did the president known and when did he know it?’ — is once again a central inquiry in a presidential scandal, according to a panel on MSNBC’s “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell.” The Thursday evening discussion focused on the latest developments in the disappearance of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, suspected of being murdered and dismembered with a bone saw inside Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Turkey. MSNBC intelligence analyst Malcolm Nance revealed how quickly President Donald Trump would have been alerted if the reporting on U.S. intelligence’s knowledge of the plot is true. “The chain of information that we’ve seen reported from The Post about the U.S. intelligence knowing — having information about the Saudi’s participation in this or issuing orders on this — we have a system setup so that the President of the United States is informed of [important developments] like that within five minutes,” Nance explained. “Which means the president would have had to have known about the outlines of this plot and the murder almost instantaneously,” he said.
“What do you think of the available avenues for you to be pursuing on this story as its developing?” O’Donnell asked Shane Harris, an intelligence and national security reporter for The Washington Post. “Well, I think there’s a big question still here about — to use the old phrase — ‘What did the president know and when did he know it?’ Our previous reporting in the paper this week showed that there were intercepts they had of Saudi officials discussing separate efforts to lure Jamal Khashoggi back to Saudi Arabia, where he would be detained,” Harris replied. “So if there was information about potential threats to Jamal Khashoggi before he ever went into that consulate, the question then becomes, ‘Who knew about that in the government?’” he said. “And was that ever presented to president?” “As Malcolm said, there are mechanism to elevate intelligence from the bottom up to the president when people feel he needs to know it, and those are questions we would like to try to answer,” he concluded.
Trump making excuses for them
The Saudis were more than happy to play along with Trump’s “rogue killers” theory, so they could deflect the blame. When that didn’t fly, the Saudis are now willing to say Khashoggi was killed in a botched interrogation. Yea, right. And it seems Trump is trying to provide cover for the Saudi dictator. More on this overall unholy alliance between the White House & Saudis are seen in this conclusion to for-the-saudis-the-appalling-khashoggi-business-is-business-as-usual:
The sad fact is that the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen’s civil war couldn’t have taken out markets, weddings and a school bus carrying kids without the help of U.S.-made bombs. The Saudis aren’t worried about a cutoff of U.S. aid. The 33-year-old crown prince and his 82-year-old pop, King Salman, play Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, like drums. Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia helped do the trick. The royal court recognizes that Trump is an emotionally needy narcissist. So it blared the trumpets, boomed the cannons and flew fighter jets trailed by red, white and blue over Trump’s head after he disembarked onto Saudi soil. The Saudis couldn’t remain where they are on the world stage, however, without rhetorical cover from the Trump administration.
I reread the July speech of Vice President Pence, the Trump administration’s point man on religious freedom, before the Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom conference in Washington. Positioning America as a “nation of faith” that stands for religious freedom, Pence called out by name North Korea, Russia, Iran and the Islamic State as depraved persecutors of religion. Pence, however, uttered not a word about Saudi Arabia. Pence knows that Saudi-financed religious schools operate freely in the United States. He also knows there is not one church or synagogue in the kingdom, and that criticizing Islam or the royal family there may be the last thing you do. Ah, but Pence and Trump avert their gaze. For big bucks, they will kiss Saudi backsides. “What good does that do us?” Trump said Thursday, when asked if he would consider blocking billions in U.S. arms sales to the Saudis over Khashoggi’s disappearance. “That would not be acceptable to me.” Jamal Khashoggi is to be publicly weeped and wailed about. But in the Saudi-Trump grand view, our courageous colleague is just an annoying and complicating blip on the screen.
Other articles to look up
Saudi Arabia is not our friend. For many decades we put up with them from their status of being the world’s largest oil producer. The kingdom is a dictatorship & repressive violator of human rights. Their madrassa schools bring up their children on a very strict version of the Sunni Muslim religion adhering to Sharia Law, which taken to its extreme helps fuel the radical Islamic mindset empowering terrorists. Osama bin Laden was originally a Saudi. The 9-11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia. Now we hear of this brutal murder of a WaPo journalist. The new crown prince who Trump & Kushner are good buddies with looks to be a very bad apple. Here at TheVORACS we need to limit the number of outbound links, but here are more news articles about the Khashoggi murder case you could search for:
thehill/trump-says-rogue-killers-could-be-to-blame-for-saudi-journalist
huffingtonpost/trump-says-rogue-killers-are-behind-jamal-khashoggis-disappearance
motherjones/trumps-rogue-killers-theory-shows-a-president-once-again-eager-to-defend-authoritarians
businessinsider/trumps-response-to-khashoggis-assassination-is-about-weapons
businessinsider/lindsey-graham-mohammed-bin-salman-khashoggi
businessinsider/who-is-jamal-khashoggi-turkey-accuses-saudi-arabia-of-murdering-reporter
businessinsider/turkeys-erdogan-says-saudi-consulate-freshly-painted-after-khashoggi-case-trump-pompeo
usatoday/report-saudis-admit-journalist-killed-detention-gone-wrong
usatoday/can-donald-trump-handle-truth-jamal-khashoggis-fate-editorials
newsmax/lindsey-graham-james-khashoggi-king-salman
nytimes/trump-saudi-king-journalist-khashoggi
washingtonpost/trumps-ugly-dishonest-cbs-interview-reveals-gops-predicament-in-midterms
washingtonpost/trumps-rogue-killers-line-is-reminder-his-consistent-bad-faith-demanding-proof
washingtonpost/prince-jareds-prince-charming-turns-out-to-be-a-beast
washingtonpost/saudi-arabia-is-putting-money-in-trumps-pocket-is-that-shaping-u-s-policy
washingtonpost/whether-trump-has-financial-interests-saudi-arabia-he-has-plenty-with-country
washingtonpost/trumps-pro-saudi-policy-on-the-middle-east-is-a-mess
washingtonpost/this-is-just-one-stop-on-a-tour-of-global-horrors
washingtonpost/who-needs-saudi-arabia
Trump Spreads Disease
With all the serious health conditions people might face, from heart disease to cancer to Alzheimer’s to opioids addiction, we can now add TAD to that dreaded list: donald-trump-anxiety-disorder-pscyhologists. A lot of us suffer from that one! Another psychological condition is the social crisis arising out of people lacking human connections & a sense of community, seen inside we-have-an-epidemic-of-loneliness-how-can-we-fix-it.
Fox Lies
The vast majority of the GOP base are following along with the echo-spin & have lost track of the truth. The typical Fox viewer likely has no idea the extent they’re being lied to. Most Fox shows don’t report on the real news since they’re too committed to concocting their crazy spin, plus they’re actively engaged in running the White House. That moronic alliance is disastrous for America: fox-news-contributor-there-is-no-separation-between-fox-news-and-the-trump. Because Trump & Fox are joined at the hip, he won’t listen to his expert advisers, far preferring to rely on his TV network just as clueless as he is. That makes for very poor leadership, resulting in terrible policy decisions & nonsensical/delusional talking points.
That patented Tucker stare
He always looks so perplexed. Carlson’s blank stare over frivolous arguments is enough to make us collectively puke. He also tends to ambush his guests while making contrived bigoted & sexist points of view. How can any logically-minded American watch this garbage? For a picture of that well-rehearsed, repulsive, feigned blank look, click on FOX-News-Exorcist-Tucker-Carlson-Exposes-the-Witches-of-the-Democratic-Party-and-HE-S-SERIOUS. See others discussing & trying to imitate those exaggerated facial expressions in watch-don-lemon-and-chris-cuomo-exchange-hilarious-impressions-of-tucker-carlson.
Other Echo Nonsense
Beware of another toxic echo-element, invading various local stations & the minds of unsuspecting Americans: the-growth-of-sinclairs-conservative-media-empire. The echo overall is indeed toxic & their lies coordinated, as seen from Until-Democrats-and-the-Left-stop-ignoring-talk-radio-the-GOP-decides-who-the-mob-is.
Watch These
There are some excellent videos here. Please take the time to stay informed:
How did we get stuck with a leader such as this?
Lie after lie after lie after lie! We can’t trust a thing he says. And don’t believe the Trumpeter deflection that every president or politician lies (even if it’s true). Because with Trump, the magnitude of the lying is at a level practically incomprehensible. It’s woven into almost every sentence. Great leaders have credibility, whereas Trump’s poor leadership stems to a large extent from a lack of trust. Such a liar can’t possibly serve as an effective president, seen in excerpts from trump-subverts-our-democracy-with-his-lies:
President Trump’s constant, relentless, remorseless lying is a central feature of his presidency, an unprecedented threat to our democracy and — in my view — an impeachable offense. I realize it does not qualify as news that Trump lies all the time. I also realize it is not always possible to draw a bright line between untruths Trump knows are untrue and conspiratorial nonsense he might foolishly believe. But never before have we had a leader who so pollutes the national discourse with garbage that he at least ought to know is false — and I fear the consequences will be with us long after Trump is gone. At his inauguration, Trump swore to “faithfully execute the office of president.” He violates that oath when he speaks to the nation in bad faith. Other presidents have lied — Lyndon B. Johnson about Vietnam, Richard M. Nixon about Watergate, Bill Clinton about Monica Lewinsky. But never have we had a president who lies about everything , who invents his own fake facts, who continues to trumpet patent falsehoods even when confronted with the actual facts. And yes, undisputed facts do exist and can be ascertained. I am not talking about subtle matters of interpretation; I’m taking about knowing falsehoods, commonly known as lies. When Trump insists on his own invented “facts,” he makes reality-based political dialogue impossible. His utter disregard for truth is a subversion of our democracy and a dereliction of his duty as president. The founders considered themselves men of honor whose word was their bond. They left us the vague, encompassing phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors” for just such an emergency.
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