21 VII 2019: Republicans and Trump and Jeffrey Epstein

Republicans are leaping to Trump’s defense. “Trump is not a racist.” “What he says is not racist.” I don’t know why they bother. The vast majority of his base are very comfortable with Trump the racist, indeed, that’s part of his appeal. So the Republicans could, I think, stand down on this one and save their hypocrisy for when it is really needed.

Trump seems to have a Stalin-like hold on the Republicans. It cannot be that they all agree with or approve of him, but they are all afraid to contradict him. Displeasing Stalin meant a bullet in the brain. Displeasing Trump might mean that he would bad-mouth the offender to Republican voters. So, if in broad daylight Trump says it is dark, the Republican leaders with flood the media with complaints about the darkness.

More and more is coming out about Jeffrey Epstein and about how he has been sheltered from investigation, prosecution, and even opprobrium. What do people in his circle say about him? Is it “Jeffrey’s a great guy, but he does have a problem”? Or do they, like Trump, regard Epstein’s perversion as a matter of preference? If all the truth of it should come out, the Epstein case would be more shocking and incriminate more people than the crimes of his pal, the President.

17 VII 2019: Send who back?

I see that the mob attending Trump’s latest party rally broke spontaneously into repeated shouts of “Send them back!” I suppose “Send them back” is the new “Lock her up,” though this is sure to confuse some of Trump’s keenest supporters who cannot even learn to yell “Sieg, Heil.”

All the while, America hastens towards its ruin. Sen. Rand Paul has again shown that he prefers being a contrarian to being human. The Trump administration is, without congressional oversight, screwing the poor at every turn. A few Republicans have brought themselves to criticize Trump, the rest cannot. Their silence amounts to saying “Trump is no more a racist than I am.”

16 VI 2019: Our President an angry drunk

Trump is reprising his “angry drunk” shtik. I think it was George Will who said early on that there is someone like Trump in every small-town bar. He’s the one who shares his militant ignorance and bigotry with everyone who can hear him, and, you know, not a few of them tell one another “Don really tells it like it is.” But Trump’s latest outbursts are more likely to elicit something like “Do you remember the time when Don got really drunk and said those liberal bitches should be deported?”

But I fear this was not really a case of Trump just blurting out his secret hatreds. To be sure his belligerence was not a put-on, nor is his bigotry a sham. This was the real Donald Trump. But it is also true that his raving is in fact rather slick political theatre. We should face the fact that it is statements like his recent tirade that won Trump the presidency.

Moreover, this latest explosion comes right out of Trump’s rules of engagement. Investigations into his misconduct continue. Another of his cabinet members has had to bail out, and it looks like the law has finally caught up with his soul-mate Jeffrey Epstein. The many atrocities of his war against immigrants are coming into public view. No one outside the U.S. has stepped forward to contradict former Ambassador Darroch’s assessment of Trump and his failed presidency. So Trump has again created a distraction, a bit of cheap uproar to shift attention away from his embarrassments.

How I wish the Democrats and the media would ignore Tweety Trump for just two weeks. Let him blather all he wants, but keep it all out of the news. Then we might learn more about his assaults on the American government.

15 VII 2019: Furriners, commies, and non-disclosure agreements.

President Trump has sunk to a new level of scurrility in his tweet about the four congresswomen. His “Why don’t they go back to where they come from?” is the time-worn shout of ignorant xenophobes, with all the implied claim to ownership of America and terror of valid criticisms that it suggests.

Lindsay Graham has sunk so low he needs a bathysphere. He appeared on “Fox and Friends,” that potting soil of deceit, and called the four congresswomen “a bunch of communists.” This is, of course, an appeal to the Trump-base, people who don’t know the difference between communist and bigamist, but feel that both sound pretty bad. “Communist” is too extreme a term for the four congresswomen. Their decidedly left-wing views do not make them communists any more than the Republicans’ love of tax cuts for the rich makes them thieves.

We’re learning more details about Jeffrey Epstein and his life of sheltered vice. It seems all his employees had to swear in writing that they would never speak about Epstein publicly. This struck me as rather like the non-disclosure agreements which have sheltered the real Trump.

11 VII 2019: Jeffrey Epstein, Sex Offender Deluxe; the Stench Arising from Trump’s Gulag

Listening to the news very nearly makes me ill.

Jeffrey Epstein: Well, Trump described him as a “great guy” with a preference for younger women. I guess so.

Clearly, Epstein also believes that when you’re a star you can …. He was caught at his sins some years ago, but his sins were forgiven. He got a slap on the wrist at a rigged trial at which he was represented by Alan Dershowitz and Kenneth Star (anything for some glitz and a buck). He did have to register as a sex offender, but I’m sure Jeffrey doesn’t mind, because everybody already knew that he is a sex offender.

So Jeffrey got off easy, and at once returned to his old ways, and now he’s again being brought to court. Who knows how this trial will come out? All I’ve heard is that he has asked that his financial situation not be brought up at the trial – reminds me of Trump with his income tax returns.

Alexander Acosta, now Secretary of Labor, was years ago the prosecuting attorney who bungled Epstein’s trial and collaborated in getting him ‘easy time.’ The best Mr. Trump has found to say for Mr. Acosta so far is that he is a hard worker. Clearly Trump is waiting for the rest of the story to come out, for other wealthy sinners who frequented Epstein’s island paradise have so far kept silent, but surely the whole story will go from bad to worse. I think Acosta and Trump had better have a look at Cardinal Law’s playbook for suppressing scandal arising from sex abuse, for this looks like a movers-and-shakers version of the clergy abuse scandal.

2) I hear that the secret pol-ICE will on Sunday begin raids to round up some illegals. This is to be, I suppose, the first pogrom in Trump’s expulsion of a million immigrants from our shores, his own War on Immigrants. If the ICE boys can also manage to smash up a few bodegas, we can have our own Kristalnacht.

The misery of the men, women, and children that Trump has imprisoned on our Southern border continues without hope of relief. I heard on the radio that the border police who guard these prisoners find it a hazardous duty because the stench arising from the never-washed bodies is so intense that it penetrates the guards’ clothing. 

8 VII 2019: Glory and utter shame

Two items caught my attention in today’s Post-Dispatch.

1) The victory of the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team: Aren’t they a joy? Their countrywomen and men must support wholeheartedly their demand for equitable compensation.

2) Yet again the incompetence, indifference, and viciousness of the Trump administration’s treatment of migrants is openly displayed. Kevin McAleenan of Homeland Security (what a euphemism!) explained the government’s abuse of migrants because “It’s an extraordinarily challenging situation.” But is the government so lacking in foresight and so rigid in their non-response to humanitarian emergencies that this explanation could at all suffice? In addition, our duplicitous President, sounding like a holocaust denier, tweets that reports of the awful treatment of the migrants are much exaggerated. 

I think Sen. Jeff Merkley is right to perceive in this disaster “an underlying philosophy that it’s O.K. to treat refugees in this fashion.” This would be an application of the principle that non-whites have no rights. But I would say more. This atrocious mistreatment of refugees is not merely tolerated by the administration as being O.K., it is being done on purpose. It is a well-planned screw-up whose dog-whistled purpose is to reduce dramatically the number of brown-skin people entering our country. It is part of a determined effort to keep America white, a goal of the white supremacist program of Trump and his inner circle.

7 VII 2019: Just short of holocaust

We’ve seen the photographs, heard the reports of the inhumane treatment of migrants at our southern border. I am sure that what we have seen and heard is only part of the horror. Now we learn about the secret Facebook group of thousands of current and retired border guards who share their bigotry, brutality, and sadism with one another. To tell you the truth, I am not surprised. We know what the personnel of the extermination camps were like. Indeed, if to our cages, holding cells, and concentration camps we would add gas chambers and crematoria, we would have our very own Dachau and Auschwitz.

6 VII 2019: Trump’s parade rained upon

Well the Trumpist Fourth of July celebration has come and gone. It was, they say, unlike any celebration of the past. Of course, Trump is not interested in doing what his inferior predecessors have done. No, Trump wants to impress his peers, the despots he so much admires and whose club he is trying to join. 

But the military didn’t like their role in the show, the Park Service wanted to know who would pay for it, and much of the country objected to the Trump ist America, America Trump ist! message. Now the Dear Respected Marshal of North Korea and the Autocrat of Russia and the Crown Prince of the Saudis never hear this kind of back-talk. So the King of America has a way to go before he can join the despots’ club.

Trump should have played to his strengths and put together a parade of Bikers for Trump, neo-nazis, white supremacists, alt-righters, ICE agents, and border guards. They would all have been eager to participate and many in his base would have loved it.

1 VII 2019: He can’t help lying

So now Trump is claiming falsely that Pres. Obama was begging again and again to meet with the Korean mass murderer. Trump makes things up as he goes along as he rewrites the truth to evade responsibility or support his self-aggrandizement. I don’t think he can stop lying,

Perhaps it is his compulsion to lie that accounts for Trump’s preference for murderous dictators who also lie instinctively.

Trump and his toadies are now said to be trying to rewrite the Mueller investigation, to claim bias where there was none. A leading figure in this is Rep. Jim Jordan who seems to know everything except that a sexual predator was buggering the wrestlers he was coaching at Ohio State.

25 VI 2019: Can’t afford not to believe Trump

As expected, Republicans are falling all over themselves as they rush forward to support their Leader when he denies assaulting E. Jean Carroll. But of course, they have to at least pretend they believe him. The intelligent among them know quite well that Trump is a pathological liar. But how would they look if they begin to question Trump’s denial after they have accepted countless other lies? No, they have to keep the Big Lie of Trump’s integrity rolling forward, lest it roll back and crush them.