This made him a hero.
He would defend the millionaires who sent boys of twelve and eleven and ten and nine and eight years old to straddle a conveyor on which traveled the shale their fathers were sending up from the pits half a mile below the surface. They literally broke up the oversize pieces. Or, if they did it wrong, the oversize pieces would break them up and, as the commission heard, could easily take off a boy’s hand or arm or leg. For thirteen cents an hour.
“These men don’t suffer! Why, hell, half of them don’t even speak English.”
I have been thinking a lot lately of George F. Baer and the other demons of the 1902 coal strike. I hope there is a hell solely for people like them. They exist in all generations, their view of man’s duty to other men twisted and perverted and unimaginable to nearly all of us—and roundly cheered by the sadistic and the money-obsessed and the comfortable. They exist today. They are the people like Donald Trump. And Paul Ryan. And the others involved in the repeal of the often ineffective, far-from-finished first step toward establishing the absolute and inalienable right of every man woman and child in this country to have their health minimally protected through the intervention of the government, that first step they have derisively called Obamacare.
Trump and his ilk look at the transplant recipients who gained new life under it, and will now have no means of paying for the drugs to keep themselves alive, and they shrug and congratulate themselves on tax cuts for themselves. Trump and his ilk look at the special-needs kids who will have no insurance and see only “liberal tears.” Trump and his ilk will look at the as-yet-uncountable number of poor people who will die because of the greed of the rich, and they will celebrate what they actually believe is a victory. These men don’t suffer! Why, hell, half of them don’t even vote Republican.
George F. Baer died 103 years and one month ago, and I hope he’s still suffering somewhere. All that he knew—the railroad industry and the coal industry that used to dominate this nation—it’s all gone. Without the government, there would be no train service in this country. And coal mining is an afterthought, no matter Trump’s false promises. And child labor is, in retrospect, impossible to believe. But man’s inhumanity to man lives on, in Donald Trump. And Paul Ryan. And in every other so-called human being who voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
Be heartbroken. Be terrified. Be angry. But mostly, be vengeful—quietly, persistently, permanently vengeful. To Trump and Ryan and every man and woman who voted for this medieval act, this barbarism: we know your names, we will destroy your careers, we will make you suffer, and—like George F. Baer and the mine owners—if any of the religions are correct, future generations will comfort themselves and move forward driven in part by the comfort of knowing that you, Paul Ryan, and you, Donald Trump, will burn in hell.
YATES PROVES TRUMP’S TREASON
Post date • MONDAY, MAY 8
Sally Yates, American hero.
A little oversimplistic. And in some respects, damning the American government with faint praise. Because all she has testified to the Senate that she did, that she said, that happened to her, used to be the minimum standard for public servants in this country, but now, in the era of Trump, she stands out like a champion. You are the goddamned president of the goddamned United States and your acting attorney general tells your White House counsel that your national security adviser “essentially could be blackmailed by the Russians” and “you don’t want [him] to be in a position where the Russians have leverage over him”—and you . . . fire the acting attorney general? Not the national security adviser. You fire the acting attorney general? The person warning you that a man charged with giving you arguably the most important advice in the world—what to do to keep this nation secure from international threat—is ripe for blackmailing by this country’s primary national enemy. A person of extreme importance in our White House, who can influence you, who could influence you on behalf of the Russians—and you fire her and keep him?
Which are you? An idiot? Or a traitor?
What Sally Yates testified to; what Jim Clapper testified to; the pathetic redirections and sad obfuscations of Chuck Grassley and John Cornyn and Ted Cruz and the other Republican Trumpian lapdogs desperate to change the subject, desperate to talk about “unmasking”—the Trump-Russia equivalent of saying that the true victim of Watergate was Richard Nixon, because those audiotapes of him betraying democracy made him sound bad, because people got to hear him swearing all those expletives deleted—all that was important.
But the meat of that Senate committee hearing was the timeline . . . the cynical, disloyal, amoral timeline. November 10: President Obama warns Trump not to make Flynn his national security adviser. NBC reports Trump explains that he thinks Obama is kidding. January 26: Acting Attorney General Yates warns the White House that National Security Adviser Flynn has been compromised by the Russians, does so in order that the White House can take action. January 27: Yates goes back and repeats to White House Counsel McGahn that Flynn’s been compromised, could be blackmailed by the Russians, has lied to other White House officials; that the Russians know about the conversations with Flynn. January 30: Trump fires Yates, claiming he is doing so because she would not defend his Muslim ban in court. January 31: Trump does not fire Flynn. February 1: Trump still does not fire Flynn. February 2: same. February 3: same. The fourth. The fifth. The sixth. Seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth: the same. February 13: The Washington Post breaks the story of the Yates warning that Flynn has been compromised by the Russians and the Russians could be blackmailing the man who tells the president how to preserve our country from destruction by a foreign power, and only then is Flynn forced out.
If the Post had not broken the story, how long would Flynn have remained in this White House? Iago, pouring whatever lies the Russians might be blackmailing him into telling into the ears of Trump. Even if Trump is somehow innocent of everything implied and inferred about collusion with Russia, he is not innocent of choosing a Russian stooge, a Russian vessel like Flynn, and defending him to the last, even to the point of veiled threats. Like the one just hours before that hearing began: Trump tweeted, “Ask Sally Yates, under oath, if she knows how classified information got into the newspapers soon after she explained it to W.H. Counsel.”
As Congressman Ted Lieu of California noted, there is a law—18 U.S. Code 1512—which defines “intimidation” of a witness to “influence” testimony in an “official proceeding” as a federal crime, the perpetrator of which “shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.” Trump chose Michael Flynn, a blackmailing victim waiting to happen, over Sally Yates, an honest American public servant, on January 26, and he has chosen Flynn and smeared Yates every day since. And today he adds intimidation—possibly criminal intimidation—to the list.
Once again: if The Washington Post had not broken the story, how long would Flynn have remained on the job? He’d still be there now, wouldn’t he?
Potentially being blackmailed by the Russians. To influence the president.
It is treachery of the highest order, and no matter who is the puppet and who is the puppeteer, our country is not safe in the hands of these idiots, and Trump and all of them must go, and must go now.
FOLLOW THE MONEY
Post date • TUESDAY, MAY 9
Follow the money.
Follow, say, a hundred million dollars as it reportedly went from Russia to Trump in 2014.
“Follow the money” is the most famous line in political history, said by Deep Throat to Bob Woodward in All the President’s Men. And of course, Deep Throat never said it. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t true, then or now. Then it was true—as we investigated a corrupt president’s attempt to subvert the two-party system, but he was dumb enough to leave a paper trail of endorsed checks. Now it is true—as we investigate precisely how much Russia and Donald Trump may have subverted our 201
6 election exactly six months ago, and he and his son were perhaps dumb enough to leave a verbal record of how Russians allegedly gave them a hundred million dollars.
Follow. The. Money.
James Dodson is a golf writer. An expert. The coauthor of Arnold Palmer’s autobiography. And over the weekend he was featured on the regular sports segment on the Boston Public Radio station WBUR, where he recounted being invited to play golf with Trump at Trump’s new club in Charlotte, North Carolina, three years ago, in 2014, to play with Trump and Eric Trump, and to immediately not just wonder how Trump was financing all his golf courses, when the world of golf never really recovered from the 2008 recession, but to ask him how: “When I first met him I asked him how he was—you know, this is the journalist in me—I said, ‘What are you using to pay for these courses?’ And he just sort of tossed off that he had access to a hundred million dollars.”
Donald Trump had “access to” a hundred million dollars, for what James Dodson knew was one of the diciest investments in the world? Luxury golf courses? Three years ago? That wasn’t all of it. Dodson says he was paired with Eric Trump for the first nine holes. “So when I got in the cart with Eric, as we were setting off, I said, ‘Eric, who’s funding? I know no banks—because of the recession, the Great Recession—have touched a golf course. You know, no one’s funding any kind of golf construction. It’s dead in the water the last four or five years.’”
You still have time to make your guess—and grab your popcorn.
“And this is what he said. He said, ‘Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.’ I said, ‘Really?’ And he said, ‘Oh, yeah. We’ve got some guys that really, really love golf, and they’re really invested in our programs. We just go there all the time.’” Donald Trump boasting to a golf writer that he alone had “access” to $100 million to invest in golf courses, and Eric Trump explaining that “we have all the funding we need out of Russia” and “we just go there all the time.”
And you and I are listening to the ground and sniffing the wind for evidence that the reported possible Trump-Russia grand jury met in the Eastern District of Virginia today. And we are parsing the new testimony of the former acting attorney general, who tried to warn Trump about the treachery of General Michael Flynn. And we are sifting through the claim that there are anywhere from twenty-eight to forty-two names on the FBI Trump-Russia target list. And while we’re expending all that energy, between them, Donald and his son Moron Twin Number 2 may have told a golf writer at a Trump golf course (my God, it’s always him and some goddamned golf course) that as of three years ago, the Russians gave them a hundred million dollars.
Follow the money. I mean, at minimum, if this is true, Eric Trump makes his father out to be a liar. February 7, Trump tweets, “I don’t know Putin, have no deals in Russia . . .” Is this the part where we take him seriously but not literally?
That he thinks of a Russian-funded golf course in Charlotte not as a “deal in Russia” but as a “deal in North Carolina”?
In addition to all the non-mainstream-media coverage of what Comey is doing behind the scenes, and how many FISA warrants were granted last year, and what’s up with the Russian company Alfa-Bank and its disputed links to computers inside Trump Tower . . . there is just as much media coverage of this labyrinth of financial connections between Trump and Russia. Like the old (but true) cliché goes, they didn’t send Al Capone to jail for killing people—they sent him to jail for cheating on his tax returns. And oh, by the way, a respected golf writer says Donald Trump and Eric Trump told him three years ago that the Russians gave them a hundred million dollars. Which might have inspired this in a Sunday-morning tweet: “When will the Fake Media ask about the Dems dealings with Russia & why the DNC wouldn’t allow the FBI to check their server or investigate?”
On January 9, I noted that Trump could not leave the subject of Russia alone, and I predicted that it would—sooner or later—destroy him. A week ago, he said that the so-what news about Michael Flynn getting security clearance while Obama was president had “devastated” everybody questioning Trump’s ties to the Russians, “because you know what? That kills them. That’s the end of that subject.” Less than three days later, while attacking FBI Director Comey on Twitter, he added, “The phony Trump/Russia story was an excuse used by the Democrats . . .”
He cannot leave Russia alone. It will destroy him. It is destroying him.
And it will be especially delightful if it destroys him on, or because of, one of his goddamned golf courses.
Follow the money.
“Deep Throat,” by the way, never said that to Bob Woodward.
Bill Goldman said it. Wrote it, actually. Bill Goldman wrote the film adaptation of All the President’s Men, and everything else from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to The Stepford Wives to The Princess Bride. And I know him—he lives about ten blocks from me, and he’s got one twelve-foot-high apartment wall full of political books, and the most famous line in political history isn’t in any of them, because the guy who wrote it is sitting there! And it’s still true. Follow the hundred million dollars in Russian golf money!
And you know what would really help Trump now? If he had some way of proving the James Dodson story wasn’t true, or was misinterpreted, or if a hundred million was a drop in his golf ball bucket, or if it really was just golf money and the guys who gave it to him weren’t Putin spies and if he didn’t agree to sell out our country for a hundred million. You know—if only there was some tax record or tax data or, I don’t know, tax return he could release to clear his good name and stop people from connecting a hundred million in Russian golf money to, you know, treason. But alas, I guess his tax returns from 2014 are still under audit, so we have no way of seeing them, so he can’t clear himself, so we’ll just have to assume the worst and that the hundred million is the tip of the iceberg and if Trump doesn’t do what Putin wants, Putin will take a lot more than a hundred million dollars from him.
Follow the money.
Oh, and one last word: Fore!
YOU CANNOT FIRE THE MAN WHO IS INVESTIGATING YOU
Post date • WEDNESDAY, MAY 10
Donald Trump has declared war on the legal system, moved to overrule the spirit of the Constitution, and enacted a coup against the ideals of the United States of America. And at this hour, one of two things is, already and irretrievably, under way: either the end of Trump or the end of American democracy—because both cannot continue—because, simply: You cannot fire the man who is investigating you. It is axiomatic, it is simple, it is eternal, it is proven: You cannot fire the man who is investigating you.
Even the dumb people will understand what you are trying to get away with. No matter what excuse you provide. No matter who you get to agree with you. No matter what you think it will accomplish for you. No matter what you think it will protect you from. No matter if you are the president of the United States and the man you have fired may be guilty of something: You cannot fire the man who is investigating you.
To do so is to inherit the wind. To do so is to immediately, and irreversibly, take whatever problems you face, whatever investigations you have to suffer, whatever crimes you may or may not have already committed, and to magnify them by a number so large it almost cannot be counted: You cannot fire the man who is investigating you.
It is, by itself, a cover-up. Not just part of an already extant cover-up. Not another drop in a bucket of corruption and dishonesty. It’s an entirely new bucket. Donald Trump fired the man who was investigating him. That, by itself, without further explanation, without further evidence—that alone immediately is a cover-up. Donald Trump should be impeached, today, for this one act. No Russian collusion needs to be proved. No financial records need to be assayed. No Michael Flynn, no Carter Page, no Paul Manafort, no Ambassador Kislyak, no Steele dossier, no Trump tapes, no Eric Trump tapes, no Pence tapes, no ha
cking, no sanity hearing, no hundred million golf course dollars from Russia, no last-minute Comey requests for a larger Russian investigation budget.
You cannot fire the man who is investigating you.
Trump is effectively guilty today of an impeachable offense, and if enough of the Republican members of the House and the Senate are anything other than political whores and the fully owned lickspittles of corporations and other special interests, Trump will be impeached. Within two hours of Trump’s strategically inexplicable blunder, Republican congressman Justin Amash of Michigan tweeted: “My staff and I are reviewing legislation to establish an independent commission on Russia. The second paragraph of this letter is bizarre.”
Amash was referring to this, in Trump’s dismissal notice to James Comey: “While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur . . .” “Bizarre” is an understatement; it is suicidal. Trump simply says, “I am not under investigation.” He never mentions under investigation for what. And there is no evidence that Comey ever told him anything of the sort—or that Comey made a distinction to him between an investigation of his campaign and him personally.
James Comey testified last week that the FBI is coordinating with two prosecutors, one at the Department of Justice and one who is the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, in their investigations of possible collusion between Trump’s campaign team and the Russian government. The non-mainstream observer Claude Taylor had claimed that there was already a Trump-Russia grand jury sitting near Washington, and CNN reported last night that indeed there was a grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, and it had issued subpoenas to associates of Michael Flynn “in recent weeks.”
It is fair to assume that some part of this news was what got Comey fired. And whether or not, in his hazy grasp of reality, Trump really thought he could somehow put the Russian toothpaste back in the FBI tube, he clearly thought—CNN reported this Tuesday night—that there would be no political blowback. Trump’s ham-handed, falsely lighthearted tweets Wednesday morning about “when things calm down” and how “Republican and Democrat alike” will be thanking him confirm this. His next round of tweets—criticizing the Vietnam service controversy of a senator, without remembering that this would also invoke his own five deferments from Vietnam—confirmed the mixture of rage and panic that had been reported earlier, that he had raged over how much television coverage Comey was getting, and he had been screaming at television coverage of his Russian scandal and Comey’s refusal to make it all disappear. At minimum, somebody told this unstable president—or he told himself—that any fallout would be less damaging to him than letting Comey proceed. This is not true, because of the simplicity of the only takeaway from this naked power grab:
Trump Is F*cking Crazy (This Is Not a Joke) Page 39