*
John Dean smiled.
It may be very simple, he said. You immunize somebody to get him to testify against somebody bigger. Flynn would not be given any kind of immunity to testify against Paul Manafort or Carter Page, probably not even against Jared Kushner. The only person bigger than Flynn in this scandal is Donald Trump. Why wouldn’t they jump at a chance to get a witness to testify against Trump, even if they had to let Flynn get away with whatever he did?
The likeliest reason?
They don’t need him to make the case against Trump.
They don’t need anybody to make the case against Trump.
They may have made the case against Trump already.
Turns out the dog may not be doing nothing in the nighttime.
He may be reading through all the transcripts and listening to all the recordings of the Russian embassy economist whom American intelligence has reportedly identified as the spy Putin put in Washington to supervise Russian efforts to get Trump elected.
And it may also turn out that the witness vital to convicting Donald Trump is actually Donald Trump.
SO—NEW ELECTION?
Post date • WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5
So.
New election?
Our last one was influenced by a foreign power, coordinated with the victorious presidential campaign—influenced and coordinated, that is, barring the most extraordinary and unexpected vindication, one so sweeping that not even Trump’s most ardent supporters have successfully hinted at it, let alone articulated it.
So—new election?
Obviously, it will be impossible ever to prove that Russian cyberwarfare, an internationally managed disinformation campaign, targeted marketing tied to hacked and stolen voter registration records, and maybe even laundered money caused the seventy-seven thousand Americans who decided the Electoral College count to actually vote the way they did, and that they otherwise would not have voted. We cannot examine the brains of every voter in the country, and Lord knows that with the ones who voted for Trump we wouldn’t have much to examine anyway.
But the mechanics of the interference—and let’s call it what it was: a Russian act of war, a virtual invasion of the United States, with the collaboration and support of Americans who would be, by legal definition, traitors to this country—the mechanics of how that war was successfully waged against our election and our freedoms and our way of life: that can be proved.
So . . . new election?
Not only are those who oppose Donald Trump getting closer to connecting every link in that chain, but each time he opens his mouth about how he was “wiretapped” and how his campaign was spied upon, he is also connecting every link in that chain. Humpty Dumpty over there is simply so focused on his unquenchable, existential need to make himself the victim that he has begun to resemble the proverbial defendant charged with killing his parents who complains he is being persecuted even though he’s an orphan.
So: new election?
There is no philosophical construct in which, were the Russian conspiracy proved and Trump impeached and removed from office, the Republican Party should be rewarded with continued control of the White House. The Republicans not only had ample opportunity to derail Trump’s nomination, and even his victory in the Electoral College, but he gave them a dozen reasons and opportunities to do the right thing. They did not. To hell with them.
*
So—new election?
Well, we don’t do it that way. We have had a presidential vote of some kind every fourth year since 1788. We have held a presidential election when nobody knew what the rules were and only six states had popular voting. We have held a presidential election while the British were forming a blockade of our ports. We have held a presidential election in the middle of the Civil War.
Every. Four. Years.
You want a new election? You’ll get it. In 2020.
*
And none of that is in the Constitution.
Article 2, section 1, clause 6. It is amazingly vague. It was later clarified by the Twenty-fifth Amendment—but the pertinent part is as vague today as when the Framers wrote it: “In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.”
“Until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected”? Not “until the term of the elected president shall expire.” The Constitution specifies that an elected president serves four years. In the scenario in which the elected president is out . . . it specifies . . . nothing. No “every four years.” No serving out the term. That’s just the custom. And in fact, the first time a president did not make it to the end of his term—when William Henry Harrison died after just thirty-one days in office in 1841—there were those who argued that the vice president, John Tyler, should act as caretaker in chief until another election could be held. While this was being debated, Tyler simply had himself sworn in as president and basically told his opponents to try to do something about it.
That—“the Tyler Precedent,” as they call it—is the entirety of the reason that President Mike Pence would presumably finish Trump’s term. Or that President Paul Ryan would presumably finish Trump’s term if Trump and Pence were both swallowed up by the Russian scandal. Or President Orrin Hatch, who’s third in line. Or President Rex Tillerson, who’s fourth. Or President Betsy DeVos, who’s fifteenth.
President Betsy DeVos!
So—new election?
A new presidential election before 2020 is entirely constitutional, though presumably politically impossible, because some legislation would have to be passed by the Senate or the House and presumably affirmed by the Supreme Court, and all three bodies would have to be hit by lightning simultaneously to knock enough patriotism and morality into the Republicans who control them to get them to actually hold a 2017 or 2018 presidential election.
However.
This could be opening Pandora’s box, like turning off all the gravity. If we somehow were able to break the tradition—the Tyler Precedent—the industry into which we have made politics and government could conceivably generate a new presidential election every six months. Elect a president, swear him in, impeach him and his successors, pass legislation for another new election, lather, rinse, repeat. I mean, imagine what the Republicans would do with this.
Well, of course, we kind of already know. If a Democratic president had been elected as part of a secret Russian war against this country—the Republicans would impeach that president and the vice president and everybody on the Democratic chain of succession and embrace the cry of “New Elections Now” rising from the streets—Wall Street and K Street, specifically. Hell, in 1998, Newt Gingrich reportedly had dreams that he would impeach and remove Bill Clinton, then President Al Gore would pardon Clinton, and Gingrich could then impeach Gore for pardoning Clinton. That would have made the Speaker of the House—Newt Gingrich!—president. Instead of what he is now: a guy whose last presidential campaign defaulted on debts of $4.6 million.
You missed the sunrise today because somebody put something in your drink last night? You can’t go back in time to see it, and you can’t declare a second sunrise at four p.m. You have to wait. But you don’t have to wait three and a half years.
So—new election??
It would be unprecedented and dangerous. And unprecedented and dangerous is where we are now, with this disloyal punk in the White House. Thus, to me, we should keep a new election on the table. Despite the risk, and, more obviously, despite the near impossibility that it woul
d be, politically.
However, if you want a guaranteed new election to take the government out of the hands of these thugs; if you want, after Trump’s removal, to keep our freedoms safe from the fourteenth in line to succeed him—that’d be President Rick Perry, who would serve just before President Betsy DeVos; if you want a new election—you’ve got a bunch of them this November. I don’t care if it’s the two state governorships up for grabs or the mayoralties in twenty-one major cities, or balloting for the head of whoever in your city government supervises the Visiting Nurse Association. Throw the Republicans who profited from this—and they have all profited from this, and they all knew who they signed on with—throw them out and put their party out of business this fall, and next year in the midterms.
Concentrate on voting out every single Republican from the House and Senate in 2018.
Run them into the ground.
So—new election?
That’s your new election.
Matter of fact—that’s your new sunrise.
THE SYRIA STUNT
Post date • MONDAY, APRIL 10
Trump’s bombing raid in Syria was a stunt.
The heartfelt policy change? The secrecy? The element of surprise? The retaliation? The neutralization? The mission itself? . . . A stunt. And much of the news media and who knows how much of the public believed every stupid word! Swallowed it like mother’s milk. Object: distraction. And they fell for it.
The Trump Gang publicly confirmed that the Russians were warned in advance, per the terms of a deconfliction agreement. ABC News reports that the Syrians guessed, or knew far enough in advance to move personnel and equipment out of the targeted air force base. How in the hell could that have happened? Maybe the Russians told them? And while the Russians knew, and the Syrians knew, did Congress know? Did the American people know? They didn’t even tell the State Department.
It. Was. A. Stunt.
And what do you call a stunt in which the Americans make sure the principal ally of the targeted nation knows in advance that it’s coming, but our own Congress and State Department don’t? It’s called Collusion with the Enemy. It was a stunt—a glorified fireworks show—which did nothing to impede the Assad regime from again using chemical weapons against its own people. It was a stunt that did nothing to impede the Trump regime from using propaganda weapons against its people.
Four years ago, Trump sent out a fistful of tweets about Syria, condemning exactly the stunt he just pulled in Syria. Two months before Trump’s stunt, he banned refugees from Syria from coming here—so the kids and the adults who died such horrible deaths had one fewer place to run to, because of Donald Trump. And four days before Trump’s stunt, his government said removing Assad wasn’t the plan anymore. And three days before Trump’s stunt, as the children still lay there choking to death, he blamed Barack Obama for it.
And two days before Trump’s stunt, he cut the U.S. contribution to the United Nations Population Fund by nearly half and threatened to cut it completely, and last year 48,000 pregnant women in Syria were able to deliver their babies in safety because of that funding Trump just cut, so don’t tell me he had some kind of change of heart because of the video of those dying kids, because by the end of the year, more children may have died in Syria because of Donald Trump than because of Bashar al-Assad!
And less than twenty-four hours after the last of the bombs hit the ground, the Syrians were running more missions out of the same base. Bombing more civilians. We dropped a reported $94 million worth of bombs, and we didn’t even put a hole in the runways, and nobody noticed, because seventy-eight senators publicly said that this stunt—this meaningless, dangerous, cynical, exploitative, bullshit stunt that didn’t even slow Assad’s bombers down—was a good thing.
And then Trump also claimed it was the plan. “The reason you don’t generally hit runways is that they are easy and inexpensive to quickly fix (fill in and top!)” Right. When you bomb air bases, you never try to destroy the runways to keep the planes from taking off. And the media bought all of this. A TV anchor giddily quotes Leonard Cohen lyrics about the beauty of the video of the missiles. A TV analyst says, “I think Donald Trump became president of the United States last night,” which is exactly what another analyst on the same network said a month earlier, after Trump’s speech to the House and Senate, because every time this idiot Trump doesn’t crap his pants or pay one of his companies another million dollars of taxpayer money, apparently that makes him Abraham Goddamned Lincoln. The retired anchormen who won’t go away and the ex-generals making TV per diem and the war correspondents who have nothing to do if there’s no war congratulated Trump on getting “away with this one without having an escalation of the conflict,” and USA Today wrote about Trump’s “successful week” and asked if he would continue his “winning ways.”
Just like in the three years after 9/11, the news media in this country is right now suffering from a kind of journalistic post-traumatic stress disorder. Everything around them is so outside their own experience, so different and alarming and real, so existentially threatening, that none of their clichés fit anymore and none of their default story lines work anymore, and by God, when something vaguely familiar happens—like American missiles taking off and blowing stuff up in the Middle East without congressional authorization—they feel like the tiny little world inside the Beltway, the only thing simple enough for them to digest and regurgitate and pretend they know what the hell they’re talking about, they feel like that’s back—that the unique nightmare of a president who has something wrong with his brain and tells you he’s been in office thirteen weeks when it’s only been eleven is finally pivoting—just like they predicted!—into an ordinary president who just blows stuff up, and they can revert to rewriting what they wrote in 2010 or 1996 or 19-goddamned-12!
It was a stunt!
And the media believed every stupid word! Object: distraction! And they fell for it!
Let me fully explain the media in two rules.
Rule one is: “Bombs = Easy to Understand.” Swoosh, kaboom, “boots on the ground,” Greatest Generation? Easy to understand.
Rule two is: “Russian Cyberwar ≠ Easy to Understand.”
Disinformation, collusion, hacking, voter registration rolls, microtargeting? Not easy to understand.
And what did those corners of the political media miss while they fell for it? They missed nearly four dozen tweets from Trump in 2013 and 2014—virtual messages in a bottle from the Trump of Christmas Past to the Trump of Christmas Present, like this one:
“Again, to our very foolish leader, do not attack Syria—if you do many very bad things will happen and from that fight the U.S. gets nothing!”
And they also missed all of Trump’s 2017 cheerleaders, in the Senate, in the House, in the media, praising him for this stunt when they condemned Obama for even proposing action four years ago. Sean Hannity, September 2013: “Glad our arrogant Pres. is enjoying his taxpayer funded golf outing after announcing the US should take military action against Syria.”
And in falling for it—again—much of the media missed the real lessons of Trump’s Syria stunt. Less than twenty-four hours later, what was the pro-Trump super-PAC Great America—the one run by the eternal Republican Ed Rollins, a man who told me to my face that I was right, that Trump is crazy—what was that PAC doing? Fund-raising off the children dead in Syria from sarin gas, and off Trump’s stunt!
Fund-raising off a stunt that accomplished nothing except make the stupid people of this country fall for it just like they fell for it in Iraq in 2003 and just like they’ll fall for it next time, because the actual outcome of the Syrian stunt was that Trump learned that whenever he can convert true international outrage and heartbreak into a publicity photo-op stunt, he will get applause and support and prestige—and people from all around the nation willing to pretend he’s a president and not an unstable egomaniac
; people willing to pretend he’s a leader and not a charlatan who, while in the middle of being investigated for electoral collusion with Russia, decides it’s the perfect time for military collusion with Russia by staging a phony bombing run that saved no children, delivered no message, drew no line, showed no leadership, provided no hope, resolved no crisis, and did not even produce potholes in the runways!
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Author’s note: Just after this piece was recorded and posted, Eric Trump told Britain’s The Telegraph, “If there was anything that Syria did, it was to validate the fact that there is no Russia tie.”
A MESSAGE TO PRESIDENT JACKASS
Post date • WEDNESDAY, APRIL 12
(Voiceover announcer: “And now a message to the President of the United States.”)
You are a jackass.
There have been many words used to describe you during these first two and a half months of this human waste treatment plant of an administration of yours, and I’ve used most of them: demagogue, liar, idiot, despot, simpleton, traitor, schmuck, asshole, buckpasser, puppet, lunatic, toddler, fascist, jerk, schmo, schnook, dope, dipstick, lamebrain.
But after prolonged consideration . . .
You are a jackass.
You are President Jackass.
Who else but a jackass would look at the dying children of Syria and, as your first reaction, blame your predecessor when your predecessor did exactly what you urged him to do at least forty-seven different times just on Twitter?
Trump Is F*cking Crazy (This Is Not a Joke) Page 34