A question: If that dossier had been about Bill Clinton—lurid details and all—and Donald Trump had a copy of it, and Trump had read it aloud at his campaign rallies—who would have complained about all the networks televising those rallies live?
What news organizations refused to publish or broadcast Trump’s wildest accusations, or the material he read from WikiLeaks? Who waited until it could prove they were all true?
Correct—none.
In our new world in which reporters seek facts and let the truth fall where it may, BuzzFeed was entirely right to publish the dossier.
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Besides which, the key to the dossier is not the perversions and the pee jokes.
It’s the money.
To quote the impeccable BBC reporter Paul Wood:
“Last April, the CIA director was shown intelligence that worried him. It was—allegedly—a tape recording of a conversation about money from the Kremlin going into the US presidential campaign.”
This eventually led the Department of Justice to get a warrant from the FISA Court, last October.
“They wanted permission to intercept the electronic records from two Russian banks. . . .
“Ultimately, the investigation is looking for transfers of money from Russia to the United States, each one, if proved, a felony offence.
“A lawyer—outside the Department of Justice but familiar with the case—told me that three of Mr Trump’s associates were the subject of the inquiry. ‘But it’s clear this is about Trump,’ he said.”
And Trump still defends Russia, or lumps it in with China, or just ignores the question.
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There is a hawkish, Blue Dog Democrat, seven-term former California congresswoman, and ex–undersecretary of state named Ellen Tauscher. Seven years ago, she negotiated the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with the Russians. On January 7, she summed this up on Twitter: “PEOTUS is either traitorously ignoring Russia hacks and provocations or simply naive and weak Com.-in Chief to be.”
So, Mr. Trump, let us ask you once again.
Can you stand here today, once and for all, and say that no one connected to you or your campaign had any contact with Russia leading up to or during the presidential campaign?
And if you again choose not to answer . . .
Perhaps you should begin to formulate your answer . . . for the impeachment trial. Or the one for espionage.
PACKING THE COURT OF PUBLIC OPINION
Post date • WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 18
Trump’s Banana Republicans have proposed that White House press briefings be moved out of the presidential mansion and held “next door” at the Old Executive Office Building, and why should you care for one damned minute?
Reince Priebus says it’s a great thing, because the result would be “about quadrupling the amount of reporters that can cover the White House,” and certainly that sounds like a wonderful intensification of the bright, shining light of a democratic free press on the operation of the commander in chief and his staff.
The more the better, right?
Just the way it works in Russia.
A giant crowd of reporters, screaming for the leader’s attention, making signs indicating what organization they belong to, and even signs and props indicating what questions they intend to ask . . .
Some of them showing exactly the kind of objectivity and respectful skepticism a free press is supposed to bring to the coverage of government at its highest levels, and, yes, she’s a self-described journalist at a Putin news conference holding a picture of Putin ripping off his shirt to indicate that he’s actually Superman.
Just a few steps removed from the contestants trying to get emcee Monty Hall’s attention during a taping of the old game show Let’s Make a Deal.
Though I would never want to insult anybody in a comparison among Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and Monty Hall.
I have respect for Monty Hall.
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Look, I don’t know the last time anything at a White House news conference, or anything done by a White House correspondent, actually contributed anything measurable to the coverage of a president—not since Sam Donaldson used to make news by bellowing questions at Ronald Reagan and Reagan would condemn himself by refusing to answer.
I also think that if traditional journalism contributes in any way to the prevention of dictatorship here, it will be by grunt work: fact-checking the White House news conferences and revealing legislation and departmental orders and checking legalities and confronting an administration’s lies with facts. The next Woodward and Bernstein will get there not at the news conferences but through their skill at filing Freedom of Information Act requests.
But the idea of “quadrupling the amount of reporters that can cover the White House” is a Trojan horse with a lot of Trojans in it.
First, there is the Putin-like spectacle. The bigger the room, the more room for staffers and hangers-on and, for want of a better term, Trump plants.
Trump gave this stunt away at last week’s news conference. He packed the place with people applauding for him, and they have as much right to be at a presidential news conference as would people booing him, and that amount of people is: none.
Quadruple the number of so-called reporters at the news conferences and you have suddenly created another stop on the Trump perpetual campaign rally tour.
Quadruple the number of so-called reporters at the news conferences and you suddenly make it easier to ignore the reporters with actual questions—as opposed to the ones carrying signs showing Trump wearing a Superman shirt.
Quadruple the number of so-called reporters at the news conferences and you suddenly change from difficult to impossible any coordinated action to prevent Trump repeating the stunt he used in New York last week: singling out and attacking one reporter the way the bully picks one kid out of the crowd to beat up while the others say, “Thank goodness it wasn’t me,” and continue to participate in the farce.
The press corps should’ve walked out, then and there—but all that would’ve happened then would have been more questions from Trump staffers.
Quadruple the number of so-called reporters at the news conferences and you lose any sense of who is asking the questions and what their motivations are. You may abhor Fox News as Fox News viewers abhor me, but you don’t have any doubts as to why we are asking what we are asking.
And you don’t have any doubts about whether or not . . . we have been planted there.
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It is, in retrospect, so absurd as to be almost unbelievable, and almost forgotten.
His name was Jeff Gannon—or so he said—and he represented something called Talon News, and on February 28, 2003, the Bush White House press office began issuing him day passes to its news conferences.
But then, on January 26, 2005, President Bush held his own news conference, and there was Gannon of Talon News, asking him about Senate Democratic leaders: “How are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?”
Within two weeks the whole stunt had collapsed.
“Jeff Gannon” was actually James Guckert, and the closest thing he’d come to journalism before he began asking friendly questions at the White House was having his naked pictures appear on a series of gay escort websites.
Gannon shuttered his website. The White House never gave him another press credential. His “Talon News” organization tracked back to the owner of the website GOPUSA, and then the Talon site was shuttered. It was also later revealed, but never explained, how Gannon/Guckert had learned of an internal government memo about the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame.
Just as this was playing out, federal records were revealed showing that the Bush administration had paid a man named Armstrong Williams $240,000. Williams had a syndicated newspaper column, and in exchange for the
money, he was supposed to write positive articles about Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” program—and to try to convince other African American journalists to do the same.
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The Bush administration’s attempt at media manipulation—including literally buying good coverage—was amateurish compared with what we can expect from Trump and his White House chief strategist, former campaign boss and head of the Breitbart Propaganda site, Steve Bannon.
Why was it that the Gannon and Williams scams didn’t work?
They didn’t work because they were too easy to spot in a crowd.
Solution: make the crowd bigger.
Move the White House press briefings next door and, as Reince Priebus says, you can quadruple “the amount of reporters that can cover the White House.”
So what if you don’t know if they’re being paid to ask softball questions or to cheer, or just to serve as more useful idiots at a Trump rally? It’s only the end of the First Amendment.
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Oh, and by the way, the guy the Bushies paid for positive newspaper columns, Armstrong Williams? He’s still around. He works with a Dr. Ben Carson, and when that nominee for secretary of housing endorsed Trump in March 2016, the endorsement was confirmed by . . . Armstrong Williams.
BOYCOTT THE INAUGURATION
Post date • THURSDAY, JANUARY 19
Boycott the inauguration.
It’s very simple.
Don’t go, don’t watch, don’t tweet, don’t respond, don’t spend money on it, don’t spend one brain cell on it.
Depend upon this: if the Bible leaps from his touch or the authorities arrest him for violating the Logan Act, you’ll hear about it. I’m headed for Los Angeles to be on Bill Maher’s show inauguration night—we’ll give you the info.
And if you’re an elected Democratic official, under no circumstances attend—I don’t want to hear about you working with him, unless you’re working with him to move to the Caymans. I want to hear about your plans to impeach him or force him to resign.
An exception is offered to President Obama, though later, sir, you will regret having had anything to do with this man.
“I believe in forgiveness,” Congressman John Lewis said. “I believe in trying to work with people. It’s going to be hard. It’s going to be very difficult: I don’t see this president-elect as a legitimate president.
“I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected and they helped destroy the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. I don’t plan to attend the inauguration. It will be the first one that I’ll miss since I’ve been in Congress.
“You cannot be at home with something that you feel is wrong.
“I think there was a conspiracy on the part of the Russians and others to help him get elected. That’s not right, that’s not fair. That’s not the open democratic process.”
Correct.
“To John Lewis, one of my heroes,” wrote Nebraska senator Ben Sasse. “Please come to the Inauguration. It isn’t about a man. It is a celebration of peaceful transfer of power.”
Bullshit.
If you think, Senator, that handing over this country to the puppet of Vladimir Putin should be celebrated and should be a peaceful transfer of power, not only are you not loyal to this country, but you know nothing . . . about John Lewis.
If you think, Senator, that we will let you or anybody else normalize the transfer of power to a racist, psychotic Russian plant, perhaps you should look again at how heroes like John Lewis responded the last time the white supremacists of this country insisted that this was about power and that we must all accept its use—and its misuse—“peacefully.”
“John Lewis once did very noble things,” tweeted the editor of The Wall Street Journal’s Weekend Review, “but that shouldn’t give him a pass for poor judgment now.”
Irony. Poor judgment. A Wall Street Journal idiot invokes the language of apartheid. John Lewis—“we shouldn’t give him a pass.”
And of course:
“Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results. All talk, talk, talk—no action or results. Sad!”
That’s right: a hero who in the sixties literally put his skull where his mouth was, attacked by a clown who on a daily basis puts his foot where his mouth is.
If you ever needed evidence that Trump—not just some of his followers, not just some of his nominees—evidence that Trump was himself personally, always, and unchangeably racist and in tune with true white supremacy—he just confessed to it.
To racist scum like Trump, because Lewis is African American, his district must be in horrible shape and falling apart. In fact, his district contains Georgia Tech, Emory University, the busiest airport in the world, the Centers for Disease Control, and parts of the wealthy, 80-percent-white suburb of Buckhead, which likes to style itself as Beverly Hills East.
What a stupid, weak man Trump really is.
Bluntly, these tweets were written by a pig.
Boycott this pig’s inauguration.
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Actually . . . that’s not fair.
Pigs are supposedly as intelligent as three-year-olds.
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Lost in all this is that the true operative part of John Lewis’s remarks is not his words about the Russian Conspiracy.
The Russian Conspiracy is obvious to everybody from this nation’s true patriotic conservatives and Republicans to this nation’s intelligence infrastructure to everybody but this crazy man Trump and his gullible supporters, even the smarter ones who are coming out of their trance and, according to the polls, beginning to understand that he has already fleeced them.
But that’s not the key right this minute.
Nor is the key what Congressman Lewis said about Trump’s illegitimacy. He is an illegitimate president; his name will someday appear with an asterisk, or it will be wiped from our history altogether.
No. This sentence is the key.
“You cannot be at home with something that you feel is wrong.”
There’s your rule.
Thank you again, John Lewis.
You do not open your door to the man, the thought, the act . . . that you know is wrong.
And you don’t go to his home, to his speech, to his parade.
Happily, this message is getting across.
See this?
This is the Gallup poll on how Americans of all shapes, sizes, and parties are reacting to how Trump is handling the transition. And congratulations, Russia, he’s now officially in the red . . . 51 percent disapproval, up from 48 percent disapproval the month before.
At this time in 2009, Obama—some of whose opponents believed he was the Antichrist—was at a disapproval of . . . 12 percent.
And Trump got to majority disapproval because of . . . the so-called independents who put us into this nightmare in the first place.
In December, 46 percent of independents approved his handling of the transition.
Now? 33 percent.
A quarter of his support among independents, gone in a month.
They have been seeing something with new eyes that the rest of us either concluded months or years ago or were standing too close to see.
They looked at the snot-nosed punk at the news conference, with the props, and the terrified woman from the winner of the Russian Law Firm of the Year award . . .
And they looked at those gratuitous, stupid, raving tweets about John Lewis on the weekend before Martin Luther King Day.
And maybe they saw a full-fledged racist, and maybe they didn’t . . .
And maybe they saw a psychopath, and maybe they didn’t.
And maybe they saw a Russian mole, and maybe they
didn’t.
But you know what they didn’t see?
They didn’t see . . . a president.
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Boycott the inauguration.
KEYNOTE SPEECH TO MEETING OF DEMOCRACY MATTERS
Fort Lauderdale, FLORIDA
Post date • THURSDAY, JANUARY 19
Thank you.
Incidentally, when you come up here, you actually hear crickets. I just wanted to mention that before we start.
It is an honor to be here, it is an honor to see many old friends and to meet many new ones.
And now that my affable remarks are over, let me get down to the raw meat.
Let me begin with the worst-case scenario—or one of them, in any event. Imagine it is not January 19, 2017, but instead January 19, 2018. You and I are here, in these same circumstances, right here, and I repeat to you then what I am going to say to you now.
And as I finish, or earlier, or even as I begin, I am arrested. Or I am detained. Or I am put on a watch list. Or I am audited. Or I am denounced somewhere. Or I am who knows what happens to me. One year—and that is just an estimate; your punishment may vary. It could be two years from now, it could be two months from now, it could be tomorrow afternoon after the inauguration. And of course—if and when it happens—it will not be me alone. For the act of listening to me, you could be arrested. Or detained. Or who knows what.
I see some concern on some faces. “Political science fiction.” “Hyperbole.” “A paranoid dystopian view of January 19, 2018?” “A work of fiction.” If, one year ago tonight, we had been here on January 19, 2016, and I had told you that in one year’s time, a deranged, infantile, imbecilic, paranoid, sexist, racist, militaristic, fascist, perverted, vulgar, stupid, paper-thin-skinned man-baby would not merely be nominated for president by a major political party, in this country, but would swamp all of his rivals, including the brother and son of one former president, and if I then told you that, after unleashing all that is worst in America, he would be able to conjure the perfect electoral storm in the Electoral College to defeat, in the election, the wife of another president, who won 2,900,000 more popular votes than he did. And if I told you, further, that in one year’s time, all we would be left asking here was not whether or not the Russians had tampered with our sacred election, but how much they had tampered with it—would you have called that political science fiction? Because I would have. And I like to think I’m smarter than I have turned out to have been on this.
Trump Is F*cking Crazy (This Is Not a Joke) Page 22