Scott Pruitt – immigrationcourtside.com

DAN RATHER & ELLIOT KIRSHNER: TRUMP’S VERSI0N OF A “WEST WING NUDIST CAMP” — CHECK YOUR DECENCY @ THE DOOR, ENTERING AN “ETHICS FREE ZONE!” — “The naked self-interest was so rampant that Trump’s West Wing could be considered a nudist colony where decency was shed instead of clothing.” 🏴‍☠️

Clothing/Ethics Optional in MAGALAND — Ethics Prohibited Beyond This Point! “The naked self-interest was so rampant that Trump’s West Wing could be considered a nudist colony where decency was shed instead of clothing.” CREATIVE COMMONS.

They Knew. They All Knew.

Cowardice, Cynicism, Contempt, Rationalizations

Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner

6 hr ago

1,403

476

Documents seized from Donald Trump’s Florida home (credit: Department of Justice)

Sometimes we write a lot of words on Steady. Today will be an exception. Because for all that there is to say, for all that needs to be said, for all that an accounting for history requires we say, the general sentiments are quite simple:

They knew. They all knew.

It was clear to anyone who had an ounce of appreciation for what the job of the presidency entails, to anyone who respected the constitutional order of our government, to anyone who worried about the health and safety of this nation, to anyone with a moral compass, to anyone who prizes the common sense of purpose that great leaders can summon, that Donald J. Trump had no business anywhere near the presidency.

Now, as he melts down in the face of a serious criminal investigation, as we see pictures of how he stored classified material and his utter disregard for our nation’s most sensitive secrets, as we are left to wonder what he was up to and what damage was done, we should recognize that we would not be where we are today without his enablers, apologists, and hangers-on.

They heralded his outrageousness in a chorus of sycophancy.
They feted his vileness.
They viciously attacked those who pointed out the obvious, that Trump was mentally, emotionally, intellectually, morally, and constitutionally unfit for his office.

And who are they? They are the Republican politicians, the so-called serious ones who expressed their concerns in private even as they used Trump to achieve their desired tax cuts and judges. They are the members of his administration — senior and junior — who jockeyed to maximize their career benefit at the expense of doing the necessary work for the American people. They are the lawyers who twisted themselves into pretzels to try to legalize his inherent lawlessness. They are the media personalities who saw Trump as a printing press for their accrual of wealth and power. They are the capitalists who put corporate earnings ahead of the well-being of the nation.

While Trump’s voters were primed with a toxic stew of hatred, bigotry, and divisiveness, the small cabal playing the inside game didn’t bother with the MAGA hats. They were too busy trading access for favors. The naked self-interest was so rampant that Trump’s West Wing could be considered a nudist colony where decency was shed instead of clothing.

But make no mistake…

In their cowardice, they knew.
In their cynicism, they knew.
In their contempt, they knew.
In their rationalizations, they knew.
In their acquittals of his conduct, even for impeachment, they knew.

They knew when they could have stopped him — before he became president, and once he was president.

But they didn’t stop him. And with their inaction, they encouraged him.

As the Trump bubble begins to pop, all these people who knew what he was all along will likely scurry like cockroaches when the lights go on. They will make all sorts of excuses for their complicity. They will gaslight, lie, and try to rewrite history. You can already see it in many of their so-called tell-all books. Except what they are telling is only the story they want people to hear. It is not the truth.

The truth is that they don’t dare say what we all know. They knew.

Note: If you are not already a subscriber to our Steady newsletter, please consider doing so. And we always appreciate you sharing our content with others and leaving your thoughts in the comments.

***********************
Throughout history, despots and would-be despots have surrounded themselves with motley crews of sycophants, toadies, and retainers. Trump has excelled at it!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-01-22

START YOUR HOLIDAY 🎄 WEEK OFF RIGHT WITH THE “DUH” ARTICLE OF THE DAY: Bad Things Happen 🤮☠️⚰️ To Nations That Put Criminals, Incompetents, & Toadies (a/k/a “The Kakistocracy”) In Charge — “There is the dereliction of duty in the response to the pandemic, and then there is the original dereliction of duty in placing a dime-store gauleiter like Stephen Miller anywhere close to a center of power.”

https://apple.news/Au2L4FahYQKqPiFqdxmwdaA

Charles P. Pierce in Esquire:

“Spirit! are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more.

“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.”

—A Christmas Carol, Stave III

The Ghost of Grifters Not Yet Past was everywhere over the weekend. In the New York Times, we read about how the Ghost had arranged for a meeting of the political Chronic Ward in the White House. In the Washington Post, we read about how the Ghost had visited his feral children, Ignorance and Want, upon the land by giving them national political leaders who couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were on the heel, and, worse, had no desire to learn how, even in the midst of the greatest public health crisis in a century.

While the Times’ account of the Mad Hatter’s seditious tea party is the flashier story, it is the Post’s deep spelunking into the administration*’s brutal (and quite deliberate) mishandling of the pandemic that is more likely to resound in historical memory as the most criminal dereliction of duty in the history of the American presidency. By comparison, Herbert Hoover at the onset of the Great Depression and James Buchanan as the nation slid toward the Civil War were positive pikers in their disregard for the office they held and the country they were chosen to lead.

. . . .

And then there’s the Dauphin Prince, who apparently had some power and almost no respect, possibly because he was marginally less of a fck-up than everyone else was.
. . . .

***************

Read Charlie’s complete article at the link.

The Moron-in-Chief, the Party of Putin, and their rabidly anti-American followers and fellow travelers must have exceeded Vladimir’s wildest expectations.

And, at what a bargain price: no need for huge investments in the military, expensive weapons of mass destruction, complicated spy networks, or even major payment of bribes. Just find enough greedy, selfish, delusional, resentful, racist, dim-witted folks willing to betray our nation. Then, invest modest amounts in misinformation, flattery, fanning White Supremacy, and cyber espionage, and “puff” you’re inside the U.S. security, intelligence, and essential infrastructure system with your traitors and dupes installed throughout government and society. Heck, you own a major political party and didn’t even have to contribute billions to do it!

30 days and counting till the end of the kakistocracy and the return of hope, sanity, and competence to our national government. Let’s just hope that it’s not too late for those of us who still believe in America and for our world that is hurting for rational, far-sighted, values-based leadership!

PWS

12-21-20

🏴‍☠️🤮👎🏻BILLY THE BIGOT GOES “FULL MAFIA” ON YOUR NICKEL! — “Don The Con’s” Idea Of Pro Bono Legal Services — YOU Pay For His Crimes! — By Pat Bagley @ Salt Lake Tribune

Bill Barr Consigliere Artist: Par Begley Salt Lake Tribune Reproduced under license, Large — Bill Barr Consigliere
Artist: Pat Bagley
Salt Lake Tribune
Reproduced under license

*******************

Says it all about Billy the Bigot. His “downward sprint to the finish” has rocketed him past “John the Con” Mitchell and Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions as the most corrupt AG in modern American history.

That’s, of course, not to minimize or trivialize the crimes committed by either of the other contenders. I suspect we’ll still be unpacking the full extent of Gonzo’s “crimes against humanity” decades from now, as the uglier and uglier truth about this “21st Century Jim Crow” dribbles out a bit at a time

Gee, even the “Afternoon Neighborhood Dog Walking Club” — comprised of neither lawyers nor hard core liberals, can’t understand why Barr, this walking, talking ethics cesspool is 1) still in office; 2) not in jail; and 3) still licensed to practice the law. Here’s hoping that all three of these unfathomable mysteries are resolved favorably to the public interest in the near future! In the meantime, Billy serves as a stark reminder of what’s wrong with legal ethics and our justice system at present.

With all the hard-working, talented, pro bono lawyers out there working overtime to save lives and our democracy, it’s simply a national disgrace and a travesty that unqualified, corrupt, unethical creeps like Billy and Gonzo have been “rewarded” with the an office that is supposed to function as “The People’s Lawyer.”

The Don’s felons and fellow conspirators against America get free passes; meanwhile, Americans of color can’t catch a break from a system loaded against them. Go figure!

Due Process Forever! Billy the Bigot, Never!

PWS

09-12-20

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: CLYDE W. FORD @ LA TIMES: “Opinion: The immigration crisis and the racism driving it have roots in Hitler’s ‘bible’”

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-01-07/great-race-passing-trump

Ford writes:

OPINION

Opinion: The immigration crisis and the racism driving it have roots in Hitler’s ‘bible’

By CLYDE W. FORD

JAN. 7, 2020

3:01 AM

The images horrify.

On the banks of the Rio Grande, a child floats lifelessly, her arm around her father, both drowned while trying to cross from Mexico into the United States. Refugees crossing the Mediterranean from Africa into Europe regularly drown. A Honduran mother dragging children flees from tear gas at the U.S. border. Children in cages.

The policies terrify. A border wall. Family separation. The purgatory of waiting for asylum in a third country.

In December, the Washington Post reported that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement wants to use migrant children in detention as bait. Adults who show up to claim them would be targeted for arrest and deportation.

The words incite fear. “Bad hombres.” “Rapists.” “Criminals.” “Shithole countries.” When uttered by a U.S. president, they carry even greater weight.

Britain, Poland, Italy, the United States. Around the world, countries once proud of welcoming immigrants seem determined to find ever more devious ways to keep them out. Are these signs of a newly ascendant nationalism? Or the last gasps of existential fear?

The worldwide immigration crisis — and the racism apparently driving it — can trace its roots in part to a century-old book, Madison Grant’s “The Passing of the Great Race.”

In publishing a centenary edition of the 1916 work, white nationalist Ostara Press praised the book as a “call to American whites to counter the dangers both from non-white and non-north Western European immigration.” Grant proposed a “Nordic race,” loosely centered in Scandinavia, as principally responsible for human social and cultural development. He feared immigration and intermarriage would dilute this race, dooming it to extinction.

Grant’s fears of his “great race” passing are very much alive today.

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s ongoing study of emails sent by Stephen Miller to Breitbart News in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election document his affinity for white nationalism. Miller, an architect of the Trump administration’s immigration policies, lauds former President Calvin Coolidge for signing the Immigration Act of 1924, which hardened non-white immigration and eased white immigration from Western Europe. It also established the U.S. Border Patrol, the predecessor of Customs and Border Protection and ICE.

Grant’s writing is credited as part of the inspiration for the creation and passage of that 1924 Act. Hitler called Grant’s book, “my bible.” Grant’s ideas defined apartheid. His book fueled the U.S. eugenics movement.

Eugenics is a pseudoscience of race that seeks to breed and maintain a “Nordic stock” of human beings, while culling undesirables — blacks, Jews, Asians, South Americans, homosexuals, the physically and mentally ill, and others — through measures ranging from forced sterilization to death.

In Grant’s day, eugenics attracted the rich and famous — Carnegies, Rockefellers, and the Kelloggs of Corn Flakes fame. Eugenicist Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, saw birth control work as eliminating “human weeds” and Alexander Graham Bell presided over the scientific directors of the Eugenics Records Office, a research institute in Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.

Eugenics is very much in vogue among white nationalists and far-right groups worldwide, though refashioned now into broader conspiracies like “replacement theory,” which originated in France with the writings of Renaud Camus and proposes that U.S. and European whites are being intentionally “replaced” through low birth rates and liberal immigration policies.

“We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies,” tweeted U.S. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) in 2017. A gunman in Norway who murdered 80 people in 2011 portrayed the act as a defense of the Nordic race from the scourge of Islamic immigration. Similar “replacement theory” fears influenced mass shooters in Christchurch, Pittsburgh, El Paso and Charleston.

Surprisingly, Grant was as an early conservationist who saw in the fate of endangered species — the moose, the buffalo, the redwood tree — a similar fate awaiting his “Nordics.” He helped establish the U.S. National Park system. Modern-day environmental and climate movements have roots in Grant’s work, leading to a convoluted, bizarre specter:

The U.S. and European countries that Grant lauded manufacture the “greenhouse gases” threatening the environment that Grant sought to protect. Meanwhile, the climate crisis produces refugees from countries that Grant abhorred, seeking shelter in countries with draconian immigration policies that Grant helped to create.

Yet Grant was right. His “great race” is passing. Studies cite 2050 as the tipping point, when U.S. whites will become a statistical minority, and most Americans will be people of color. Whether crafted in overtly racist language or couched in covertly racist immigration policies, fear of the “great race” passing is used to win elections, cling to power, manipulate public opinion and grow organizational membership.

Immigrants built America. This new wave is no different. They are the face of the future, deserving new lives in a country that helps them succeed.

Yes, the “great race” is passing. Good riddance. And we should turn to finding ways to help everyone accept this inevitability — and thrive from it.

Clyde W. Ford is the author of “Think Black,” a memoir about his father, the first black software engineer in America.

*************************************

Like those who were behind or “went along to go along” with horrible parts of our history like Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, the Chinese Exclusion Laws, or Jim Crow, Trump’s supporters and enablers eventually will have much to answer for in the “court of history.”

“Fake news.” “alternative facts,” false narratives, and internet myths might be gospel to Breitbart, Fox News, GOP sycophants, and Trump voters, but eventually, particularly in an age of information and documentation, “truth will out.” And, it won’t be pretty for the “Modern Day Jim Crows” any more than it was for the segregationists and other racists who preceded them.

PWS

01-10-20

FRANK RICH @ NY MAGGIE: TRUMP TOADIES WILL FACE A RECKONING — “With time, the ultimate fates of those brutalized immigrant and refugee families will emerge in full. And Trump’s collaborators, our Vichy Republicans, will own all of it . . . .”

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/01/what-will-happen-to-trumps-republican-collaborators.html

What Will Happen to The Trump Toadies? Look to Nixon’s defenders, and the Vichy collaborators, for clues.

By Frank Rich

@frankrichny

Photo: Getty Images

This article was featured in One Great Story, New York’s reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly.

Irony, declared dead after 9/11, is alive and kicking in Trump’s America. It’s the concepts of truth and shame that are on life support. The definition of “facts” has been so thoroughly vandalized that Americans can no longer agree on what one is, and our president has barreled through so many crimes and misdemeanors with so few consequences that it’s impossible to gainsay his claim that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. Donald Trump proves daily that there is no longer any penalty for doing wrong as long as you deny everything, never say you’re sorry, and have co-conspirators stashed in powerful places to put the fix in.

No wonder so many fear that Trump will escape his current predicament scot-free, with a foregone acquittal at his impeachment trial in the GOP-controlled Senate and a pull-from-behind victory in November, buoyed by a booming economy, fractious Democrats, and a stacked Electoral College. The enablers and apologists who have facilitated his triumph over the rule of law happily agree. John Kennedy, the Louisiana senator who parrots Vladimir Putin’s talking points in his supine defense of Trump, acts as if there will never be a reckoning. While he has no relation to the president whose name he incongruously bears, his every craven statement bespeaks a confidence that history will count him among the knights of the buffet table in the gilded Mar-a-Lago renovation of Camelot. He is far from alone.

If we can extricate ourselves even briefly from our fatalistic fog, however, we might give some credence to a wider view. For all the damage inflicted since Inauguration Day 2017, America is still standing, a majority of Americans disapprove of Trump, and the laws of gravity, if not those of the nation, remain in full force. Moral gravity may well reassert its pull, too, with time. Rather than being the end of American history as we know it, the Trump presidency may prove merely a notorious chapter in that history. Heedless lapdogs like Kennedy, Devin Nunes, and Lindsey Graham are acting now as if there is no tomorrow, but tomorrow will come eventually, whatever happens in the near future, and Judgment Day could arrive sooner than they think. That judgment will be rendered by an ever-more demographically diverse America unlikely to be magnanimous toward cynical politicians who prioritized pandering to Trump’s dwindling all-white base over the common good.

All cults come to an end, often abruptly, and Trump’s Republican Party is nothing if not a cult. While cult leaders are generally incapable of remorse — whether they be totalitarian rulers, sexual Svengalis, or the self-declared messiahs of crackpot religions — their followers almost always pay a human and reputational price once the leader is toppled. We don’t know how and when Donald Trump will exit, but under any scenario it won’t be later than January 20, 2025. Even were he to be gone tomorrow, the legacy of his most powerful and servile collaborators is already indelibly bound to his.

Whether these enablers joined his administration in earnest, or aided and abetted it from elite perches in politics, Congress, the media, or the private sector, they will be remembered for cheering on a leader whose record in government (thus far) includes splitting up immigrant families and incarcerating their children in cages; encouraging a spike in racist, xenophobic, and anti-Semitic vigilantes; leveraging American power to promote ethnic cleansing abroad and punish political opponents at home; actively inciting climate change and environmental wreckage; and surrendering America’s national security to an international rogue’s gallery of despots.

That selective short list doesn’t take into account any new White House felonies still to come, any future repercussions here and abroad of Trump’s actions to date, or any previous foul deeds that have so far eluded public exposure. For all the technological quickening of the media pulse in this century, Trump’s collaborators will one day be viewed through the long lens of history like Nixon’s collaborators before them and the various fools, opportunists, and cowards who tried to appease Hitler in America, England, and France before that. Once Trump has vacated the Oval Office, and possibly for decades thereafter, his government, like any other deposed strongman’s, will be subjected to a forensic colonoscopy to root out buried crimes, whether against humanity or the rule of law or both. With time, everything will come out — it always does. With time, the ultimate fates of those brutalized immigrant and refugee families will emerge in full. And Trump’s collaborators, our Vichy Republicans, will own all of it — whether they were active participants in the wrongdoing like Jared Kushner, Stephen Miller, Kirstjen Nielsen, Mike Pompeo, and William Barr, or the so-called adults in the room who stood idly by rather than sound public alarms for the good of the Republic (e.g., Gary Cohn, John Kelly, Rex Tillerson), or those elite allies beyond the White House gates who pretended not to notice administration criminality and moral atrocities in exchange for favors like tax cuts and judicial appointments (from Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan to Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell Jr.).

. . . .

************************

Read the rest of Rich’s article at the link.

“Tomorrow will come, eventually.” Yup!

Just yesterday, the usually reliable “Trump Toadies” Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rand Paul (R-KY) were whining and sputtering upon learning what toadyism really means after being “treated like Democrats” during an insulting and clownish “after the fact briefing” on Iran. https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/09/politics/impeachment-watch-january-8/index.html .

But, that moment of lucidity and outrage will pass quickly, and they will undoubtedly rejoin their colleagues like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Sen. Teddy Cruz (R-TX), Sen. John “Vladimir” Kennedy (R-LA), Lindsey “Braindead” Graham (R-SC), and the rest of the “Party of Putin” in groveling before their Clown-in-Chief.

I would include the Article III judges who tanked in the face of tyranny and failed to protect the legal and human rights of the most vulnerable in the list of those whose misdeeds, spinelessness, and complicity in the face of tyranny eventually will be “outed.”

PWS

01-09-20

WASHPOST: ANY WAY YOU SAW IT, THIS DUDE’S A HACK – Trumpism Continues To Demean & Destroy Our Most Precious Democratic Institutions!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/there-is-no-way-this-man-should-be-running-the-justice-department/2018/11/09/f4a2ee60-e45e-11e8-8f5f-a55347f48762_story.html

The Post Editorial Board writes:

IS MATTHEW G. WHITAKER the legitimate acting attorney general? From approximately the second President Trump ousted Attorney General Jeff Sessions and tapped Mr. Whitaker to temporarily exercise the office’s vast authority, legal experts have sparred over whether Mr. Trump can unilaterally elevate someone from a role that does not require Senate confirmation to one that does. But regardless of whether the promotion is legal, it is very clear that it is unwise. Mr. Whitaker is unfit for the job.

Several prominent legal scholars point out that the Constitution demands that “principal officers” of the United States must undergo Senate confirmation. A 19th-century Supreme Court case suggeststhere may be limited room for temporary fill-ins, but Mr. Whitaker’s appointment is hardly so temporary; he could serve for most of the rest of Mr. Trump’s first term. Even if Mr. Whitaker’s promotion is constitutional, Congress passed a law governing Justice Department succession that also seems to prohibit Mr. Whitaker’s ascent. The department has a capable, Senate-confirmed deputy attorney general in Rod J. Rosenstein; he should be running the department in the absence of a permanent replacement.

The Senate above all should be offended by the president’s end run around its authority. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) should demand hearings and consider filing a lawsuit. Instead, he is helping to establish a troubling precedent, saying only that he expects Mr. Whitaker to be a “very interim AG.” Yet no random official should be endowed with all the powers of an office as powerful as attorney general, meant for a Senate-vetted individual, even for a relatively short time.

And Mr. Whitaker is worse than random. It took less than 24 hours for material to emerge suggesting he could not survive even a rudimentary vetting.

First, there are Mr. Whitaker’s statements criticizing the Russia probe of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. At the least, they require him to consult Justice Department ethics counsel about whether he can oversee the inquiry with a plausible appearance of evenhandedness. He will do immediate and lasting harm to the Justice Department’s reputation, and to the nation, if he assumes the role of president’s personal henchman and impedes the Mueller probe.

Then there is Mr. Whitaker’s connection to a defunct patent promotion company the Federal Trade Commission called “an invention-promotion scam that has bilked thousands of consumers out of millions of dollars.” Mr. Whitaker served on its board and once threatened a complaining customer, lending the weight of his former position as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Iowa to the company’s scheme.

Finally, and fundamentally most damning, is Mr. Whitaker’s expressed hostility to Marbury v. Madison, a central case — thecentral case — in the American constitutional system. It established an indispensable principle: The courts decide what is and is not constitutional. Without Marbury, there would be no effective judicial check on the political branches, no matter how egregious their actions.

If the Senate were consulted, it is impossible to imagine Mr. Whitaker getting close to the attorney general’s office. He should not be there now.

****************************************

There’s no doubt whatsoever that Whitaker is spectacularly unqualified for the job. But so was Sessions. And so were Pruitt and Price. And, so are Carson, DeVos, Nielsen, Zinke, and a host of Senate-confirmed underlings like L. Francis Cissna at USCIS.

Sadly, the point is that the GOP Senate lacks the integrity, backbone, and decency to perform their “advise and consent” function in a credible manner. So, I think the Post might be unduly optimistic in assuming that the GOP-controlled Senate would reject Whitaker merely because he is totally unqualified. Doesn’t seem to have bothered them before; no reason to believe that it will in the future. That’s one reason why our nation is “on the rocks.”

PWS

11-09-18

NYT EDITORIAL: “DON’S CONS” — TRUMP TAKES CORRUPTION TO A NEW LEVEL!

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/21/opinion/manafort-cohen-guilty.html?em_pos=large&emc=edit_ty_20180822&nl=opinion-today&nlid=79213886edit_ty_20180822&ref=headline&te=1

All the President’s Crooks

One of them, Mr. Trump’s own lawyer, has now implicated him in a crime.

By The Editorial Board

The editorial board represents the opinions of the board, its editor and the publisher. It is separate from the newsroom and the Op-Ed section.

Aug. 21, 2018

Image
Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort.CreditLeft, Jeenah Moon for The New York Times; right, Zach Gibson/Bloomberg, via Getty Images

From the start of the Russia investigation, President Trump has been working to discredit the work and the integrity of the special counsel, Robert Mueller; praising men who are blatant grifters, cons and crooks; insisting that he’s personally done nothing wrong; and reminding us that he hires only the best people.

On Tuesday afternoon, the American public was treated to an astonishing split-screen moment involving two of those people, as Mr. Trump’s former campaign chief was convicted by a federal jury in Virginia of multiple crimes carrying years in prison at the same time that his longtime personal lawyer pleaded guilty in federal court in New York to his own lengthy trail of criminality, and confessed that he had committed at least some of the crimes “at the direction of” Mr. Trump himself.

Let that sink in: Mr. Trump’s own lawyer has now accused him, under oath, of committing a felony.

Only a complete fantasist — that is, only President Trump and his cult — could continue to claim that this investigation of foreign subversion of an American election, which has already yielded dozens of other indictments and several guilty pleas, is a “hoax” or “scam” or “rigged witch hunt.”

Related in Opinion

Opinion | Noah Bookbinder, Barry Berke and Norman L. Eisen

What the Manafort Verdict Means

Aug. 21, 2018

Opinion | Ken White

Can Michael Cohen Bring Down Trump?

Aug. 22, 2018

The conviction of Paul Manafort, who ran the Trump campaign for three months in 2016, was a win for prosecutors even though jurors were unable to reach a verdict on 10 of the 18 counts against him. On the other eight, which included bank fraud, tax fraud and a failure to report a foreign bank account, the jury agreed unanimously that Mr. Manafort was guilty. He is scheduled to go on trial in a separate case next month in Washington, D.C., on charges including money laundering, witness tampering, lying to authorities and failing to register as a foreign agent. Mr. Manafort faces many decades behind bars, although he will probably serve less than that under federal sentencing guidelines.

A few hundred miles to the north, in New York City, Michael “I’m going to mess your life up” Cohen stood before a federal judge and pleaded guilty to multiple counts of bank and tax fraud as well as federal campaign-finance violations involving hush-money payments he made to women who said they’d had sex with Mr. Trump. Mr. Cohen, who spent years as Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer and “fix-it guy” (his own words), was under investigation by federal prosecutors in Manhattan, to whom Mr. Mueller referred his case. In April, F.B.I. agents raided Mr. Cohen’s office, home and hotel room looking for evidence of criminality on a number of fronts. Apparently they found it.

Mr. Cohen didn’t agree at Tuesday’s hearing to cooperate with prosecutors, but if he eventually chooses to, that could spell even bigger trouble for Mr. Trump. Mr. Cohen has been involved in many of Mr. Trump’s dealings with Russia, including his aborted effort to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, and could shed light on connections between the Trump presidential campaign and Russian officials involved in the 2016 election interference.

But back to Tuesday’s news. Mr. Manafort was not an original target of the inquiry by Mr. Mueller, who was appointed in May of last year to look into possible ties between the Trump campaign and efforts by Russian government officials to interfere in the election. But Mr. Mueller’s mandate authorized him to investigate any other crimes that arose in the course of his work. It didn’t take long. As soon as he and his lawyers started sniffing around, the stench of Mr. Manafort’s illegality was overpowering.

As a longtime lobbyist and political consultant who worked for multiple Republican candidates and presidents, Mr. Manafort had a habit of lying to banks to get multimillion-dollar loans and hiding his cash in offshore accounts when tax time rolled round. In at least one case, he falsely characterized $1.5 million as a loan to avoid paying taxes on it, then later told banks that the loan had been “forgiven” so he could get another loan.

He also enriched himself by working for some of the world’s most notorious thugs and autocrats, including Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, Jonas Savimbi in Angola and Mobutu Sese Seko of the Democratic Republic of Congo. He helped elect the pro-Kremlin Viktor Yanukovych as president of Ukraine, a job that earned him millions until Mr. Yanukovych was ousted from power in 2014.

Despite this mercenary history — or perhaps, more disturbingly, because of it — Donald Trump, while running on promises to clean up Washington, hired Mr. Manafort to run his presidential campaign, a job he may well have kept but for news reports that he was receiving and hiding millions of dollars from his work on behalf of Mr. Yanukovych.

What does it tell you about Mr. Trump that he would choose to lead his campaign someone like Mr. Manafort, whom even on Tuesday he called a “good man”? It tells you that Mr. Trump is consistent, and consistently contemptuous of honesty and ethics, because he has surrounded himself with people of weak, if not criminal, character throughout his career.

RELATED

More on Mr. Cohen and Mr. Manafort

Trump Praises Manafort for Refusing to ‘Break,’ Unlike Cohen, His Former Fixer

Aug. 22, 2018

Cohen and Manafort Are in Deeper Legal Trouble. Mueller Could Benefit.

Aug. 22, 2018

Michael Cohen Says He Arranged Payments to Women at Trump’s Direction

Aug. 21, 2018

Paul Manafort, Trump’s Former Campaign Chairman, Guilty of 8 Counts

Aug. 21, 2018

A One-Two Punch Puts Trump Back on His Heels

Aug. 21, 2018

While the president has so far dodged questions about whether he will pardon Mr. Manafort, he’s already shown a willingness to make a mockery of the justice system with his pardons of unrepentant lawbreakers like Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Dinesh D’Souza. Last year, the president’s lawyer dangled the prospect of a pardon to lawyers for Mr. Manafort and Michael Flynn, Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser. If Mr. Trump were to follow through and grant clemency to Mr. Manafort, it would make his pardon of Mr. Arpaio look like the signing of the Civil Rights Act.

You’re forgiven if you’ve lost track of all the criminality, either charged or admitted, that has burst forth from Mr. Trump’s circles in the last couple years even as Mr. Trump has continued to claim that the investigation is a hoax, a pointless waste of taxpayer dollars. So here’s a brief refresher:

In addition to the prosecution of Mr. Manafort, the special counsel’s office has secured guilty pleas from multiple people, including Mr. Flynn and George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser on the Trump campaign, both of whom lied to federal investigators about their communications with Russian officials.

Others have pleaded guilty to identity fraud and making false statements. Mr. Manafort’s longtime associate Rick Gates also pleaded guilty and testified against his former boss.

Meanwhile, Mr. Mueller has charged more than a dozen Russian individuals and companies for their roles in a coordinated and deceptive social-media campaign aimed at hurting Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and helping Mr. Trump’s. Some Trump campaign officials were unwittingly in contact with some of these defendants.

Mr. Mueller has also charged a dozen Russian military officials with hacking and helping to release emails of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The hackers first tried to break into Mrs. Clinton’s personal servers on July 27, 2016 — the same day that Mr. Trump publicly called on Russians to do exactly that.

And he has charged Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian associate of Mr. Manafort and a suspected spy, with obstructing justice.

As Mr. Trump rages on about the unfairness of the investigation, remember that Mr. Mueller has been on the job for just 15 months. For comparison, the Watergate investigation ran for more than two years before it brought down a president and sent dozens of people to prison. The Iran contra investigation dragged on for about seven years, as did the Whitewater investigation, which resulted in President Bill Clinton’s impeachment.

Also remember we still don’t know anything about the ultimate fate of several other Trump associates who have been under Mr. Mueller’s microscope, including Roger Stone, Carter Page and Donald Trump Jr. (“If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer”).

For a witch hunt, Mr. Mueller’s investigation has already bagged a remarkable number of witches. Only the best witches, you might say.

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A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 22, 2018, on Page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: All the President’s Crooks. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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Unfortunately, the Trump Circus is just picking up steam. We’re sure to be subjected to a “carpet bombing” of lies, tweets, insults, and threats as the Emperor’s clothes come off piece by piece while the emasculated GOP Congress merely sits and watches. And, of course, there will be the “normal” Trump strategy of attempting to shift blame to the victims and away from himself and the other corrupt individuals associated with him. Seems Trumpie owes Stormy (and Melania) an apology

PWS

08-22-18

BESS LEVIN @ VANITY FAIR: Scott Pruitt Isn’t As Bad As You Might Think He Is – He’s 10X Worse! – GOP Takes an “Ethics Vacation” On Totally Corrupt EPA Sec!

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/04/scott-pruitt-is-an-even-bigger-monster-than-you-thought

Bess writes:

Earlier this month, in the wake of revelations about his pricey travel habits and sweetheart deal on rent courtesy of a high-powered lobbyist, Scott Pruitt sat down with a series of reporters to clear the air and explain what was happening. The negative headlines and stories painting him as one of the most corrupt Cabinet members in the Trump administration were the result of one thing and one thing only, he said: a liberal plot against him. The real issue, Pruitt and his defenders insist, is not his preference for flying first class when coach would suffice, or the $50 a night he was shelling out for part of a D.C. townhouse in a neighborhood where the market rate was several multiples of that, but that the left simply doesn’t appreciate his hydrocarbon-happy dismantling of Barack Obama’sregulatory regime. Which makes fresh accusations against Pruitt, by one of Donald Trump’s favorite staffers, somewhat awkward!

In a six-page letter addressed to Pruitt but circulated much more widely than his pair of very fancy desks, two senators and three House representatives detailed allegations that were brought to their attention this week by Kevin Chmielewski, who served as the president’s body man during the campaign—Trump called him a “star” and a “gem”—before going on to work as the E.P.A.’s deputy chief of staff. (Chmielewski was placed on administrative leave without pay after objecting to Pruitt’s spending policies, which can be loosely summed up as: F–k you, I do what I want.) Among the most damning allegations:

Pruitt demanded the agency “enter into a $100,000 per month contract to rent a private jet, which would have cost more than the administrator’s annual travel budget of approximately $450,000,” a situation Chmielewski says he prevented from happening, probably to the detriment of his employment;

Pruitt made travel decisions based on his “desire to visit particular cities or countries rather than official business” and then told staff to “‘find me something to do [in those locations]’ to justify the use of taxpayer funds,” which might explain his trip to Morocco to promote U.S. natural gas exports, despite the fact that said exports are not part of the E.P.A.’s mission to “protect human health and the environment”;

Pruitt booked his flights through Delta, despite the airline not being the federal government’s contract carrier for the route, “because [he] want[ed] to accrue more frequent flier miles,” just in case his private jet didn’t pan out;

Pruitt directed his staff to “find reasons for [him] to travel to Oklahoma, so [he] could be in his home state for long weekends at taxpayers’ expense,” where he has seemingly been laying the groundwork for a run for office;

Pruitt stayed in hotels that far exceeded the U.S. government per diem, sometimes by 300 percent. Exhibit A: when he traveled to Australia and Italy and refused to stay in hotels recommended by the U.S. Embassy, choosing fancier but less secure ones, which you think would concern someone who wanted a bullet-proof desk;

Pruitt blew through the $5,000 limit allowed by law to redecorate his office with items that included a $43,000 soundproof phone booth, art leased from the Smithsonian Institution, and a desk (one of two) that alone cost $2,075;

Pruitt insisted, as previously reported, on “the use of lights and sirens to transport [him] more quickly through traffic to the airport, meetings, and social events on numerous occasions” and required his drivers to “speed through residential neighborhoods and red lights, far in excess of posted speed limits,” because Scott Pruitt’s got places to be, people!

Pruitt insisted the E.P.A.’s director of scheduling “act as his personal real estate representative, spending weeks improperly using federal government resources and time to contact rental and seller’s agents, and touring numerous properties in which [he] might wish to reside”;

Pruitt gave two favored aides giant salaries after they were denied by the White House (which Pruitt claimed in recent interviews to not know anything about);

And that Pruitt did not even pay the $50 per night he owed lobbyist J. Steven Hart, who complained during a phone call Chmielewski heard on speakerphone that Pruitt “had never paid any rent to him” and that Pruitt’s daughter “had damaged his hardwood floors by repeatedly rolling her luggage across the unit when she was staying there.”

According to the letter, Chmielewski’s employment with the E.P.A. ultimately ended thanks to his refusal to “retroactively approve [a favored staffer’s] first-class return flight from Morocco.” That Chmielewski, contends, caused Pruitt to remove him from his post. But naturally Pruitt did not do the dirty work himself, allegedly relying instead on the head of his security detail, Nino Perrotta, who Chmielewski says threatened him in such a way that he reported it to the local police, E.P.A. officials, and the White House Office of Presidential Personnel. (Speaking of Perrotta, i.e. the guy who deemed it too risky for Pruitt to sit in coach, we highly suggest checking out his self-published memoir, Dual Mission, which includes lines like, “I cannot tell how many women in those days held [my] gun during very passionate late-night moments. It was, in some ways, like a dangerous, forbidden sex toy to some, and I played right along. Although never loaded, I am certain to have broken a rule or two in terms of allowing unauthorized access to and use of a federal firearm.”)

While the lawmakers concluded that the information left them “certain that [Pruitt’s] leadership at E.P.A. has been fraught with numerous and repeated unethical and potentially illegal actions on a wide range of consequential matters,” it’s not clear that Trump will have him removed. On the one hand, the guy is on a roll when it comes to firing people. On the other, Pruitt has done such a stellar job dismantling Obama’s environmental legacy in his short time on the job, and good work is truly hard to find. While Trump has said nothing about the matter on social media, during a speech today ostensibly about tax reform, he told the crowd that that he plans to sign a “presidential memorandum directing the E.P.A to cut” even more regulations on manufacturers.

For their part, Pruitt’s handlers appear to be on the offensive: just hours after the letter detailing the E.P.A. head’s ethically challenged habits was released, word leaked that Chmielewski “never filed required financial disclosure forms during his year in the Trump administration.” That, combined with Pruitt’s stellar work turning the environment into an ashtray, should help him hang on little while longer.

On the other other hand . . .

Bloomberg reports that Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, has been confirmed by the Senate to serve as the E.P.A.’s deputy administrator, which means he would lead the agency should Pruitt suddenly be told to clean out his desk. Many Democrats were opposed to the nomination, given Wheeler’s push to roll back regulations while working on behalf of his clients, among them one of America’s largest coal-mining companies. That may not be as impressive as Pruitt’s credentials for leading the agency—suing it 14 times—but it’s something.

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Go on over to Vanity Fair at the link to get the full “Levin Report.”

In an Administration loaded with ethically challenged individuals, starting with the “Big Boss,” Pruitt stands out. Nevertheless, because he is deconstructing the EPA and dismantling critical environmental protections — “turning the environment into an ashtray” — nobody in today’s GOP dares to agitate for his removal. Could you imagine how apoplectic the GOP would have been if Hillary Clinton or anyone else in the Obama Administration were fingered for doing this type of stuff?

PWS

04-15-18

FACED WITH PREDICTABLE FAILURES OF “GONZO” IMMIGRATION POLICIES, TRUMP DOUBLES DOWN ON RACISM — “Browning Of America,” Hispanic Americans, Real Targets Of The “New Jim Crow!”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is-hoping-youre-too-stupid-to-notice/2018/04/02/b20a6e9a-36a6-11e8-8fd2-49fe3c675a89_story.html

Eugene Robinson writes in WashPost:

. . . .

Leaving aside Trump’s rather Germanic approach to capitalization, that tweet is an occasion to paraphrase Mary McCarthy’s famous quip about Lillian Hellman: Virtually every word is a lie, including “and” and “the.” Democrats repeatedly offered to deal on DACA, as did Trump. No newcomers could possibly “get onto the DACA bandwagon,” because only immigrants who were brought here before 2007 were eligible. And immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born citizens.

Why such a frenzy of untruth? Because Trump apparently sees anger building among his most fervent supporters over his utter failure to deliver on what they understood as his central campaign promise: to halt or reverse the flow of Latino immigration and the “browning” of America.

That’s what this is really about. On the emotional level, Trump appealed to white Anglo chauvinism. He skillfully stoked the anger and resentment of those who are annoyed when they phone the electric company to straighten out a bill and are told to press 1 for English, press 2 for Spanish. When he writes things like “our country is being stolen,” it’s crystal-clear who’s supposed to be stealing it.

What I didn’t realize during the campaign was that Trump’s base realized he could never fulfill his absurd pledge to deport all of the estimated 11 million people who are here without papers. But his supporters did expect him to do something to stem what they see as an invasion — something concrete and unambiguous. Like the promised wall.

. . . .

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Read Robinson’s complete article at the link.

White nationalism, racism, voter suppression, environmental destruction, rewarding fat cats, punishing ordinary folks and “enemies,” unnecessary trade wars, loss of international standing and leverage, destruction of honest government, war on public education, lies, immorality, greed, unethical behavior, those are what Trump and today’s sick GOP stand for. And that’s what the folks who continue to support this parody of a President and mockery of humane American values are aligning themselves with.

This is a time when the lines between human decency — the right side of history — and all the “worst things about America” — the wrong side of history — have clearly been drawn. I wonder what Dr. King would think if he were still living?

PWS

04-03-18

MAX BOOT @ WASHPOST: A KLEPTOCRACY OF GRIFTERS – THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION — “[T]here have been more crooked regimes — but only in banana republics. The corruption and malfeasance of the Trump administration is unprecedented in U.S. history.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-trump-administrations-no-good-very-bad-wednesday/2018/03/01/7dc60fd2-1d69-11e8-ae5a-16e60e4605f3_story.html

Max Boot reports from The Swamp for the Washington Post:

“One of the great non-mysteries of the Trump administration is why Cabinet members think they can behave like aristocrats at the court of the Sun King. The Department of Housing and Urban Development spent $31,000 for a dining set for Secretary Ben Carson’s office while programs for the poor were being slashed. The Environmental Protection Agency has been paying for Administrator Scott Pruitt to fly first class and be protected by a squadron of bodyguards so he doesn’t have to mix with the great unwashed in economy class. The Department of Veterans Affairs spent $122,334 for Secretary David Shulkin and his wife to take what looks like a pleasure trip to Europe last summer; Shulkin’s chief of staff is accused of doctoring emails and lying about what happened. The Department of Health and Human Services paid more than $400,000 for then-Secretary Tom Price to charter private aircraft — a scandal that forced his resignation.

Why would Cabinet members act any differently when they are serving in the least ethical administration in our history? The “our” is important, because there have been more crooked regimes — but only in banana republics. The corruption and malfeasance of the Trump administration is unprecedented in U.S. history. The only points of comparison are the Gilded Age scandals of the Grant administration, Teapot Dome under the Harding administration, and Watergate and the bribe-taking of Vice President Spiro Agnew during the Nixon administration. But this administration is already in an unethical league of its own. The misconduct revealed during just one day this week — Wednesday — was worse than what presidents normally experience during an entire term.

The day began with a typically deranged tweet from President Trump: “Why is A.G. Jeff Sessions asking the Inspector General to investigate potentially massive FISA abuse. . . . Why not use Justice Department lawyers? DISGRACEFUL!” Translation: Trump is exercised that the Justice Department is following its normal procedures. Sessions fired back: “As long as I am the Attorney General, I will continue to discharge my duties with integrity and honor.” Translation: The president is asking him to act without “integrity and honor.”

This is part of a long pattern of the president pressuring the “beleaguered” Sessions — a.k.a. “Mr. Magoo” — to misuse his authority to shut down the special counsel investigation of Trump and to launch investigations of Trump’s political foes. Because Sessions won’t do that, Trump has tried to force him from office. The president does not recognize that he is doing anything improper. He thinks the attorney general should be his private lawyer. The poor man has no idea of what the “rule of law” even means, as he showed at a White House meeting Wednesday on gun control, during which he said: “Take the guns first, go through due process second.” This from a supposed supporter of the Second Amendment.

But wait. Wednesday’s disgraceful news was only beginning. Later in the day the New York Times reported that Jared Kushner’s family company had received hundreds of millions of dollars in loans from companies whose executives met with him in his capacity as a senior White House aide. The previous day, The Post had reported that officials in the United Arab Emirates, China, Israel and Mexico had discussed how they could manipulate the president’s son-in-law “by taking advantage of his complex business arrangements, financial difficulties and lack of foreign policy experience.” Oh, and don’t forget that during the transition in 2016, while Kushner was trying to refinance a family-owned office building, he met with a Russian bankerclose to the Kremlin and with executives of a Chinese insurance company that has since been taken over by the Chinese government.

President Trump’s nepotism has compromised U.S. standing in the world, says Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt. (The Washington Post)

Little wonder that the previous week Kushner lost his top-secret security clearance. The wonder is that a senior aide with such dodgy business dealings was allowed access for a full year to the government’s most sensitive secrets — and that he still works in the White House. This is the kind of nepotism that plagues dictatorships and is a defining characteristic of Trump’s kleptocratic rule.

Of course, we are still only scratching the surface of administration scandals. This is a president, after all, whose communications director quit on Wednesday after admitting to lying (but insists her resignation was unrelated); whose senior staff included an alleged wife-beater; whose former national security adviser and deputy campaign manager have pleaded guilty to felonies; whose onetime campaign chairman faces 27 criminal charges, including conspiracy against the United States; whose attorney paid off a porn star; and whose son mixed family and government business on a trip to India. Given the ethical direction set by this president, it’s a wonder that his Cabinet officers aren’t stealing spoons from their official dining rooms. Come to think of it, maybe someone should look into that.”

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The total ugliness, dishonesty, corruption, and lack of accountability of the Trumpsters is hard to contemplate. Everybody mentioned in this article probably belongs in jail. Other than that, though, they’re a great bunch of guys. Check those pockets and briefcases for the spoons! Draining The Swamp indeed!

PWS

03-02-18

THE LEVIN REPORT: “A wise person once said, of working in the White House: ‘It’s worse than you can imagine. An idiot surrounded by clowns . . . I am in a constant state of shock and horror.’” 🤡🤡🤡🤡

Bess Levin writes in Vanity Fair:

“A wise person once said, of working in the White House: “It’s worse than you can imagine. An idiot surrounded by clowns . . . I am in a constant state of shock and horror.” Whether or not that description can be attributed to Gary Cohn or is simply “representative” of his views, we may never know, but it’s obviously a good summation of what life is like inside the capsizing Carnival cruise ship that is the West Wing, particularly over the last 24 hours.

To recap, on Wednesday night, The Washington Post reported that Donald Trump was expected to announce major tariffs on aluminum and steel on Thursday, a development that apparently caught administration officials completely off guard. Though Trump has been itching to start a trade war since he announced his candidacy for president, virtually all of his advisers, outside the truly batshit insane ones, strongly advised against such punitive measures, as they could ultimately hurt many U.S. allies and provoke retaliation by U.S. trading partners, among other terrible consequences. During a June meeting with his Cabinet to discuss the issue, a whopping 22 people were said to be against Trump’s wishes, to the three who weren’t: Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, then-senior adviser Steve Bannon, and Trump himself. Unhappy that more people weren’t on his side, Trump reportedly screamed, “I want tariffs. And I want someone to bring me some tariffs!”

With Bannon’s departure, there was a thought that sheer numbers, if not sanity, would prevail. In addition to Cohn, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and Secretary of Defense James Mattis have all strenuously argued against the tariffs, warning that they could hurt the global economy, damage key relationships, and threaten national security. That was obviously wishful thinking, though, given that 1) when Trump gets an idea in his head, no matter how dumb it is, he doesn’t let it go, and 2) the president has recently been taking the advice of Peter Navarro, a hard-line trade adviser who makes Bannon look like a “globalist cuck.” (For reference, Navarro wrote a book called Death by China, has encouraged Trump to go after freaking Canada, and thinks the North American Free Trade Agreement is responsible for an increase in spousal abuse, divorce, and infertility.) Considering Navarro’s growing influence in the White House, in retrospect it probably shouldn’t have come as a shock that this afternoon, this happened:

President Trump said on Thursday that he will impose stiff and sweeping tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum as he moved to fulfill a key campaign promise to get tough on foreign competitors. Mr. Trump said he would formally sign the trade measures next week and promised they would be in effect “for a long period of time.” The trade measures would impose tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum. It is unclear whether those would apply to all imports or be targeted toward specific countries, like China, which have been flooding the United States with cheap metals.

The announcement capped a frenetic and chaotic morning inside the White House as Mr. Trump summoned more than a dozen executives from the steel and aluminum industry to the White House, raising expectations that he would announce his long-promised tariffs. However, the legal review of the trade measure was not yet complete and, as of Thursday morning, White House advisers were still discussing various scenarios for tariff levels and which countries could be included, according to people familiar with the deliberations.

It’s hard to overstate how bad of an idea this is. In addition to going against the advice of nearly all of his advisers and most people on Capitol Hill, essentially flipping off the World Trade Organization, and likely alienating important allies, the “JOBS JOBS JOBS” president is putting countless “JOBS” at risk in sectors like the automotive industry that obviously rely on aluminum and steel to manufacture their products. (According Axios’s Jonathan Swan, a report put out by Wilbur “wake me when the meeting is over” Ross that recommended imposing tariffs enraged Cohn because it didn’t factor in such collateral damage. Cohn and other staffers were also reportedly irked by the fact that the report suggested Trump’s fantasy of a manufacturing Renaissance could come true, when everyone knows it’s never gonna happen.)

To give you an idea of how unpopular today’s announcement was, even the Brothers Koch have come out against it, calling the tariffs, via their Americans for Prosperity mouthpiece, “a misguided approach that will hurt American businesses and families by increasing costs and undermining the tax relief just delivered by Congress and President Trump.” Larry Kudlow, whose name as been floated as a possible replacement for Cohn, and who is a huge fan of Trump’s, slammed the move, too, saying “All that will happen with steel tariffs is you will raise prices for all import users and that includes businesses and of course consumers. You will wind up hurting millions of people to help 140,000 people in the steel industry.” But don’t take their word for it. Here’s how Trump’s favorite metric responded:

(For those of you who are not visual learners, what we’re saying is: the Dow plunged 550 points on the news, closing the day down more than 400 points. For a stock-market obsessed president, that’s gotta hurt.)

Scott Pruitt, risking his life, will fly coach

Earlier this month, Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruittcame under fire for routinely flying first or business class when coach would have sufficed. His excuse? That “we live in a very toxic environment politically, particularly around issues of the environment,” and one time someone went up to him in the airport and uttered completely factual statements to his face. From there on out, his security detail decided that flying at the back of the plane was too much of a risk, and that Pruitt’s safety could only be ensured in the part of the aircraft where the booze is on the house. Today, however, this hugely brave American announced that those days are over.

During an interview with CBS News, Pruitt said that he has told his security detail “to accommodate those security threats in alternate ways . . . up to and including, flying coach going forward.”

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Get “The Levin Report” full version here https://tinyletter.com/besslevin/archive

Perhaps showing why we have the Trump “Clownocracy” in the first place, some Dems actually enthusiastically endorsed Trump’s idiotic move. As the late great Casey Stengel might have said, “Can’t anyone here play this game?” Guys, we need steel and aluminum, and we import one heck of a lot more than we make. Even an “economic dummy” like me knows that. So, a trade war that hurts American consumers and manufacturers who use steel and aluminum is going to be a big loser for us. Countries like ours that are, and almost certainly always will be, net importers rather than exporters can’t afford trade wars (particularly with our, perhaps soon to be former, “friends” like Canada & the EU)!

Finally, a “too bizarre not to be true rumor” sweeping the “world of inside the Beltway punditry” is that “Don the Con Man” will fire “Mr. Magoo” (a/k/a “Gonzo Apolyptco,” a/k/a “Jeff Sessions”) and temporarily replace him with the ethically challenged Scott “First Class” Pruitt for long enough to completely dismantle the Justice Department and our system of justice just as he did with our environment and the EPA. Talk about the “GOP Wrecking Crew” and the not-so-smart minority of folks who voted them into power. Vladi must be laughing his tail off!

PWS

03-02-18

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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