Spygate and Other Paranoid Fantasies

It seems like a day doesn't go by without Trump coming up with insulting nicknames, inaccurate descriptions of events and hyperbolic assuming of the martyr mantle. His latest focus, if the man is actually capable of focus, is what he has been calling "Spygate".  Trump has been alleging that "Obama" embedded a "spy" in the Trump campaign "long before this Russia thing". If you get all your news from Fox & Friends or your friends' Facebook statuses, then you might assume that this is true.

At the end of this blog post I will include a link to a Wikipedia page that contains a timeline - much more information that I can include in one sitting! But suffice it to say that Trump's allegations that Obama was spying on his campaign, that any attention was for political reasons, that Trump was not told of potential Russian attempts to co-opt his campaign staff, even that the Mueller investigation is a "witch hunt" are 100% false. Her are a few facts - I'll try to keep it simple.

• The FBI was investigating Russian "troll farms" as early as 2015
• The hack of the DNC server was confirmed to be by Russians
• The DNC was not the subject of an investigation, it was the victim of a crime
• The FBI did not ask for the physical server, therefore the DNC did not "refuse to hand it over"
• Documents hacked from the server, that reflected badly on Clinton & the Democrats was later released by Wikileaks
• There were a not insignificant number of Trump campaign staff that had questionable ties to Russia
• The British investigator Christopher Steele was initially hired by a Republican primary contender to investigate Trump's Russian connections through the firm Fusion GPS; when that person dropped out, the contract was picked up by the DNC
• Steele got some of his information from Russians (this is apparently the genesis of the charge the Clinton & the DNC "colluded" with the Russians)
• Some of this information implicated Trump campaign officials
• Steele reported his findings to the FBI
• Around the same time George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign foreign policy advisor, told an Australian diplomat, during a drinking session, that the Russians had "dirt" on Clinton that had been passed to the campaign
• This was the impetus for the FISA warrant to begin surveillance of some members of the Trump camapaign, the "dossier" gave additional information
• Previous to this, conversations of Trump campaign officials were picked up as part of routine surveillance of known Russian agents in the United States
• On August 17, 2016, Trump was warned in an FBI briefing that it was likely that Russian agents would attempt to compromise members of his campaign.
• Everybody and his brother apparently had illegal or questionable meetings with Russians and then lied about them
• At some point, it's unclear when, the FBI sent Stefan Halper, a foreign policy scholar, to set up meetings with various Trump campaign officials to attempt to get information about any Russian connections. He was not embedded in the campaign, was not in any way part of the campaign, but met with individuals outside of campaign offices to gather information. There was nothing political about it. 
• Obama approached Senate majority Leader McConnell with the suggestion that they make a bi-partisan announcement regarding the known Russian interference
• McConnell refused
• Obama, concerned that a unilateral announcement would look like he himself was attempting to influence the election, made no announcement
• Trump characterizes this as attempting to safeguard Clinton's assumed election win
• Obama did, however, institute several sanctions against Russian entities
• In 2017, Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, the titular head of the Russia Investigation, which by this time appeared to involve Trump, or at least his associates
• Trump then bragged to Russian diplomats that getting rid of Comey took a lot of pressure off him
• Shortly thereafter, Rod Rosenstein, Deputy Attorney General, who had oversight of any investigation since Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself, appointed Robert Mueller III, former FBI Director, as Special Counsel to head the investigation
• Trump regularly criticizes Sessions for recusing himself, stating that if he knew that he's recuse himself he would have gotten someone else for the job
• Rosenstein, new FBI Director Wray, former FBI Director Comey and Mueller are all Republicans
• Trump has started characterizing the investigation as "13 Angry Democrats"
• Trump also paints any of the investigators who were in place during the Obama administration as biased

It's pretty obvious that there's at least cause for an investigation. Whether there was knowing conspiracy, or just ignorance, there are numerous reasons to look into what happened and who was involved. Whether Trump himself is implicated is an open question, but his well-known tendency toward micro-managing, it stretches credulity to imagine that he didn't know something was going on. 

Timeline:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections

Trump's "Animals" Comment

Hey Trumpists! Congratulations! You finally caught the media in a verifiable mistake! The so-called Fake News Media said that your hero called immigrants "animals" when the context (determined by listening to the entirety of his remarks) indicates that he was specifically referring to members of the MS-13 gang.

Or does it?

Trump has consistently conflated immigrants in general, not just illegal immigrants, but all immigrants, with the  MS-13 gang (when Hispanic) or with terrorists (when Muslim). His barely articulated policy on immigration comes down to: Hispanic Refugees = Murderers & Rapists and Muslim Refugees = ISIS sympathizers; both categories are painted as hating America. It doesn't matter to him that while some people entering illegally from south of the U.S. are gang members, the majority are people fleeing gang violence, the percentage of MS-13 members who are deported is less than 1% of the total or that many MS-13 gang members are U.S. citizens. MS-13 is an American gang that has attracted many immigrants. It doesn't matter to him that the majority of potential immigrants from Muslim majority countries not only are fleeing violence in their own countries, but have been painstakingly vetted before receiving permission to emigrate to the U.S.

So, it's perhaps understandable that many news outlets jumped on the "animals" comment without providing the context, seeing how neatly it fit into Trump habits of speech. But unlike the President, who never admits his mistakes, and sticks to his misstatements and lies no matter how much video and audio evidence stacks up proving him wrong, media outlets backpedalled and corrected their earlier statements.

So even with the most unforgiving take on the media's motives, you've got one. One up against the almost daily lies that flow from the President's Twitter account, his press secretary's statements and the defenses by his lawyers and sycophants. Even though Trump regularly accuses the media of making up stories, attributing stories to nonexistent sources and having it out for him, an amazing number of stories have later (or sooner) proved true.

So, I'm not really willing to give Trump a pass on this. He's either a bigot, or feigns bigotry because he knows bigotry plays well with his most ardent supporters. Yeah, I'm willing to look at the context, the full context of two years of candidate and President Trump making bigoted and hateful statements.

And for you Trumpists - apparently bigotry and hatred aren't disqualifying characteristics.

What does that say about you?

Walking on Water

A refrain that I often hear from Trumpists is that Trump could cure cancer (or walk on water or some other far-fetched event) and liberals would find fault. I don't know if they realize that that's the flip side to Trump's own assertion that he would lose no support even if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue. Like most people who are against Trump, I do find fault with him, no matter what he does. Not because I think that everything he does is wrong, or harmful, although at the moment I'm at a loss to think of anything that he did that I agree with. No, my problem with Trump is why he does things, and with the fact that his 24/7 lying casts doubt on whether he actually accomplished what he says he accomplished. Here's a few examples:

I believe that we should secure our borders. Not because I think that people who want to come here are bad people, but I think that there should be a process for admittance to the United States. On the flip side I think that the process as it stands is burdensome, and people fleeing gang violence or poverty often have no recourse other than entering illegally. I think that once someone has been here for a number of years and has demonstrated that they are a productive, hard-working member of the community, we should allow them at least the opportunity to convince a judge that should be allowed to stay. Right now men and women who have been here for decades, even those who have served in our military, are deported without a second thought. Trump's border security positions are not based on a sincere desire to keep our country safe, as he says, but are based on a hatred and bigotry toward "the other". How do I know this? I followed his campaign. He characterized Mexicans as rapists and drug dealers and Muslims as terrorists. His cries for a "big, beautiful wall" were nothing more than an applause line in his rallies, without an actual policy or plan to implement. His demands for money to build the wall are at odds with another applause line, the assertion that Mexico would pay for it. His budget cuts funding for proven border security measures such as upgraded radar and other detection technology, surveillance aircraft that track drug shipments, canine units, and personnel at ports where smuggling takes place. ICE has been rounding up of people who have been here for decades and have faithfully checked in with ICE and arresting and deporting them, despite his pledge that he would focus on criminal aliens. Instead ICE has focussed on low-hanging fruit such as people dropping their kids off at school, or showing up in court or at work. So, while Trump claims to prioritize border security and the safety of our citizens, what he is really doing is inflaming ignorance and bigotry and appealing to the least common denominator of the electorate. Why would I believe anything he says about the border, immigration, or public safety?

I believe that out tax code was in dire need of reform before last year's tax changes were instituted. It was complicated and despite tax rates increasing as ones income rose, the multiplicity of deductions, credits and incentives caused it to favor the wealthy. Trump and his Republican allies bragged that they would pass a "massive" tax cut, benefitting ordinary Americans, and that "historic" rate cuts to corporations would inject even more life into an already booming economy. What we got did include huge tax rate cuts to corporations without the accompanying loophole closures that we were promised. A handful of companies made sure that we knew about thousand dollar bonuses that their employees received, but less attention was lavished upon the plant closures or the companies that used their tax windfall to buy back stock, raising price per share and guaranteeing that the C-suite boys and girls (mostly boys) would receive princely bonuses, surely well in excess of a paltry grand. Meanwhile, many working class Americans received a tiny increase in take-home pay, while others saw an increase in their taxes. Simple math and five minutes studying the rate charts and brackets will reveal that anyone with more than two children earning around the national median income will see a higher tax bill. Despite this, Trump continues to brag that this was a "massive, historic, tax cut". He has rewarded himself and his billionaire buddies while throwing crumbs to working Americans. Why should I believe anything that he says when he claims that he cares about the middle class and working Americans?

Another reason to be consistently against whatever Trump comes up with, even if it might sound a little reasonable at first is twofold. Trump is famously uninterested in expert opinion. Or even informed opinion at any level that does not buttress his own ignorance. In his first year he has consistently undermined and fired anyone who might disagree with him and didn't slavishly fawn over his every word. An illustrative example  was his National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster. After ditching the lunatic loyalist Michael Flynn, Trump brought in McMaster, an active duty Army Lieutenant General who has a PhD in American history and is, by all accounts, brilliant. But his security briefings bored Trump and had to be dumbed down to hold his attention. Nuance, subtlety, shades of grey; these were all things that eluded Trump. But, despite his and his followers' wish otherwise, the world is nothing but shades of grey. The other half of this is Trump's predilection toward lying. Lying is his default position. He lies regularly and outrageously. He doesn't always lie just to cover up and obfuscate, he lies to brag, he lies because it will make him look good or his opponents look bad. He lies about lying. He acts as if there is no such thing as a tape recorder or a video camera or that everyone has cell phone cameras and recorders. Is he stupid? Deluded? Or does he just think we are? His lies are so far ranging that I can't trust anything that he says. So when he unveils a new policy, it's safe to assume that he either has no idea what he's talking about or that he's lying about it.

Finally, there's his crazed obsession with undoing everything that President Obama accomplished. Sometimes this aligns with mainstream Republican priorities, but often it's just mindless destruction. And it's personal. Let's not forget that Trump jump-started his political career by claiming, again and again, that President Obama was an illegitimate President who wasn't born in the United States. How else can you explain his antipathy to the Iran Nuclear "Deal" when he is planning on giving North Korea virtually the same "deal"? Or how he is undermining our nation's standing by pulling out of agreements negotiated in good faith?

To the Trumpists I say that if Trump is credited with curing cancer I'd have every reason to disbelieve it, or question whether he was getting kickbacks. And even if it were true, he still be an cheating, misogynistic, bigoted, xenophobic, bully.

Fuck him.