5 years after the Mueller report into Russian meddling in the 2016 US election on behalf of Trump

Mueller did a poor job of putting the facts about Russia's election interference before the public

Howard Manly, The Conversation

In the long list of Donald Trump’s legal woes, the Mueller report – which was released in redacted form on April 18, 2019 – appears all but forgotten.

But the nearly two-year investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election dominated headlines – and revealed what has become Trump’s trademark denial of any wrongdoing. For Trump, the Russia investigation was the first “ridiculous hoax” and “witch hunt.”

Mueller didn’t help matters. “While this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him,” the special counsel stated.

A Professional Weighs In On Donald Trump’s Alarming Mental Condition

His malignant narcissism is a problem for us all

By Alan D. Blotcky



Donald Trump seems to think he deserves to be enshrined on Mount Rushmore because, as he has said, “I’m the greatest, most successful” president ever.  Trump’s Fourth of July festivities were a choreographed celebration of him, not America.  

By Bill Bramhall, New York Daily News

To make matters worse, the lack of mask-wearing and social distancing put supporters and employees at high risk for the coronavirus. And there was the risk of a wildfire from the fireworks as well. But nothing could keep Trump away from his faux coronation.

Trump’s phone calls to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdogan have come to light in recent days.  

According to Carl Bernstein, Trump is heard pandering and bragging to these murderous, authoritarian thugs that he is “rich” and “a genius.”  I guess that’s what Trump believes is the “Art of the Deal.”

Right before Veteran’s Day weekend, Trump admits to stealing more than $2 million from veterans for his own personal use.

Trump used money raised for vets as campaign slush fund. That alone should end his political career

Ian Reifowitz for Daily Kos

Not a real check - Trump STOLE the money for himself. He admitted
it in a court settlement with the New York State Attorney General.
This was part of $2.8 million raised by Trump's Foundation for veterans'
charities but used instead to fund Trump's 2016 campaign and to buy
Trump portraits that hung in his properties. (ProPublica)

In 2016, the two major party candidates for president both had a charitable foundation that bore their name. One of them—the Clinton Foundation—received a tremendous and, yes, unfair amount of media coverage regarding supposed corruption and misdeeds, even though every charge leveled during the campaign has turned out to be baseless. You might remember in particular the explosive yet absurdly false charge about uranium—and wasn’t it great to watch Joy Reid absolutely pick that one apart, simply destroying one of its main purveyors on live TV.

In the end it was the other one, the Donald J. Trump Foundation, that turned out to be corrupt—rotten to the core, in fact. 

This week The Man Who Lost The Popular Vote was forced to admit it thanks to the work done by New York State Attorney General Letitia James and her office, as well as that of her predecessor, Barbara Underwood. Crooked Hillary? It’s always been Crooked Fucking Donald.

The details are even worse.

A state judge ordered Trump to pay $2 million in damages to nonprofit groups on Thursday after Trump admitted misusing money raised by the Donald J. Trump Foundation to promote his presidential bid, pay off business debts and purchase a portrait of himself for one of his hotels.

Among Mr. Trump’s admissions in court papers: The charity gave his campaign complete control over disbursing the $2.8 million that the foundation had raised at a fund-raiser for veterans in Iowa in January 2016, only days before the state’s presidential nominating caucuses. The fund-raiser, he acknowledged, was in fact a campaign event.

Donald Trump May Have Just Lied His Way to Prison

Con man gets snared in his own con

By David Cay Johnston, DCReport Editor-in-Chief

Pay close attention to the front page story in Wednesday’s New York Times about Paul Manafort’s lawyer cooperating with Trump’s lawyers. 

It may well prove to be very important news just a short way down the road.

Bob Somerby at The Daily Howler, among others, has poked fun at the piece since it basically has one key new fact, not the torrent of them we find in so many other important stories about Trump White House intrigues.

Its sole named source is Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s television lawyer. 

Giuliani acknowledged that information gleaned from Manafort’s meetings with FBI agents and prosecutors as a cooperating witness was being passed to Team Trump by Manafort lawyer Kevin Downing.

That one fact could well doom Trump’s presidency and perhaps land Trump and others behind bars.

Trump shows no respect

The Rule of Law

By Robert Reich

Democracies depend on what’s known as the “rule of law.” It’s based on three fundamental principles. Trump is violating every one of them.

The first is that no person is above the law, not even a president. Which means a president cannot stop an investigation into his alleged illegal acts.

Yet in recent weeks Trump fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who at least had possessed enough integrity to recuse himself from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump’s possible collusion with Russia in the 2016 election, and replaced him with an inexperienced loyalist hack, Matthew G. Whitaker – whose only distinction to date has been loud and public condemnation of the investigation.

As a conservative legal commentator on CNN, Whitaker even suggested that a clever attorney general could secretly starve the investigation of funds.

There’s no question why Trump appointed Whitaker. When asked by the Daily Caller, Trump made it clear: “As far as I’m concerned this is an investigation that should have never been brought. It should have never been had…. It’s an illegal investigation.”

The Incredible Orange Bulk

The Most Disturbing Excerpts From Woodward's New Book on Trump White House

From "Let's F**king Kill Him" to "We're in Crazytown"

By Jake Johnson, staff writer for Common Dreams

For more cartoons by Mike Luckovich, CLICK HERE.

Legendary Watergate journalist Bob Woodward has a book coming out next month that details the first year and a half of Donald Trump's presidency, and excerpts published by the Washington Post and CNN on Tuesday depict a White House in the midst of a "nervous breakdown," sparked by a man who top aides have referred to as "an idiot," a "fucking moron," a "professional liar," and "a goddamn dumbbell" who has the understanding of "a fifth- or sixth-grader."

"He's an idiot. It's pointless to try to convince him of anything. He's gone off the rails. We're in Crazytown."
—John Kelly, White House chief of staff

According to the Post—where Woodward has worked as a reporter and editor for decades—the "thrust" of Fear: Trump in the White House "mostly focuses on substantive decisions and internal disagreements, including tensions with North Korea as well as the future of U.S. policy in Afghanistan."

But these substantive decisions and disagreements often produced startling moments in which the president revealed his total ignorance and lack of fitness for office.

"He's an idiot. It's pointless to try to convince him of anything," White House Chief of Staff John Kelly reportedly complained during a small group meeting. "He's gone off the rails. We're in Crazytown. I don't even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I've ever had."

Here are some of the most revealing and disturbing excerpts from Woodward's book, which will be published on Sept. 11.

Must be fake, huh Donald

Trump’s Made-Up Problems

See Any Pattern Here?

By Terry H. Schwadron, DCReport New York Editor

As a Trump-watcher, what kept striking me was the president’s pattern in targeting issues as hot crises that he then almost ignores, while looking askance at actual problems, and just ignoring them.

That there are plenty of examples should give us pause about whether we are simply hurtling along as a country or actually aiming the country’s might toward some obtainable goals. 

Here’s what I see:

Iran and its nuclear program, a real problem, was a target, but only for a day for President Trump. Once he unloosed a tweet threatening the destruction of that nation, then offered to meet unconditionally with its elected president, then simply dropped the whole idea. Meanwhile, Iran is doing business with Russia and Europe. What’s our plan?

Health care. While continuing to attack Obamacare, another real problem, the president moved to allow companies to sell low-cost health care policies that don’t actually cover most health care, including maternity costs, treatments for pre-existing illnesses or prescriptions. It may look good, but really does this address the problem? The White House seems content to just leave it there.

Election meddling. With reports of hacking that looks a lot like Russia’s effort (the incidents are under investigation) starting to flow from Missouri’s Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) and New Hampshire’s Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D), this real problem is drawing a most meandering reaction in the White House. 

There were more questions than answers about the White House trotting out intelligence agency heads meant to assure voters that voting systems are being properly protected this year, but unable to explain why Trump doesn’t seem to agree. 

After seemingly embracing Russian leader Vladimir V. Putin in Helsinki, the president has called a single meeting about election meddling for less than an hour, and generally, the issue that has prompted a year’s worth of special counsel investigation has drawn pretty much of a yawn from the president. 

Does this issue matter or not? Intelligence and Department of Homeland Security say yes; Congressional Republicans this week let a bill to provide more money for states to be ready in November to die on the floor.  

It doesn’t take much strategic head-scratching to recognize that cyberwar efforts ought to rank pretty high in America’s defense.

Life in the Stupidverse

For more cartoons by Tom Tomorrow, CLICK HERE.

Bad to the bone

Curdling the milk of human kindness

By Michael Winship for Common Dreams

Our “I alone can fix it” president has gotten us in another fix, all right.

Of course, whenever he screws up big time, Mister I Alone starts blaming everyone but Mister I Alone.

He had admitted as much the other day when he was in Singapore for his summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and bragged about the great deal he imagined he had made: “I may stand before you in six months and say, ‘Hey, I was wrong.’ I don’t know that I’ll ever admit that, but I’ll find some kind of an excuse.” He was, in his gruesome way, joking, but many a truth in jest, etc.

Last week, The Daily 202, the compendium of political news from the Washington Post, made a list of some of the many times Donald Trump has tried to avoid responsibility—when he ended DACA, when Congress failed to completely scuttle Obamacare, when anti-gun violence legislation failed to pass, when the tax cut plan was in danger, when a failed covert operation in Yemen cost the life of a Navy SEAL.

“Time and time again, the president has sought to shift the blame for his own decisions and their consequences to his political opponents,” James Hohmann wrote. “He’s doing it again this week by falsely blaming Democrats for his own policy of forcibly separating migrant children from their parents at the border, which he could stop with one phone call.”

Rewriting the Bible

For more cartoons by Ruben Bolling, CLICK HERE.

Invasion of the baby snatchers

For more cartoons by Tom Tomorrow, CLICK HERE.

WWJD

The Bible made us do this to children

Two Videos, same subject

See this video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezxRf1-1Jf4

 

See this video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxrogLn39Do

Whitehouse and Reed blast Trump policy of breaking up immigrant families

Reed, Whitehouse counter forced separation of undocumented families

By Will Weatherly in Rhode Island’s Future

Sen. Jack Reed and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse renounced the Trump administration’s separation of immigrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border during a meeting of immigration advocates, community leaders, and pediatricians at Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island on Monday. 

Both senators have announced their support for the Keep Families Together Act, introduced by California Senator Dianne Feinstein, which seeks to put an end to a practice widely critiqued as irreparably destructive for undocumented families and violently traumatic for undocumented minors.

Border and customs officials forcibly tear children away from their parents as a result of arrests of undocumented immigrants crossing the border.

Those children are then transported to “sponsors” within the country or detention centers, in many cases thousands of miles away, and within facilities as decrepit as the boarded-up Walmart Texas Senator Jeff Merkley tried (and failed) to enter in Brownsville, Texas on June 3. 

These Are the Real Republican Family Values

Trump Separates Immigrant Families, Losing Children in a Screwed-Up Detention System

By Terry H. Schwadron, DCReport New York Editor

In a tweet, Trump criticized Democrats for a law that calls for separation of immigrant families who cross the border illegally, sending children into detention centers to assure that parents will show up for deportation meetings.

It is a horrible practice, but the policy is that of the Trump administration, not the Democrats, and it’s not a law.

In a tweet, Trump urged Americans to “put pressure” on the Democrats to “end the horrible law that separates children from there [sic] parents.”

This is the separation policy that his own administration put into effect last month, and was underscored in a speech in early May by Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions.

It is true that the policy has run into criticism for the dehumanization of people, and even as bad immigration policy. 

It has led to court confrontations over medical treatments for minors under detention, including at least two cases involving directed overturning of attempts by the government to stop to unwanted abortions.

But mainly it is seen as an unseemly way to force parents to show up for deportation hearings.

On top of all that, the government apparently has lost some of its detainees in the mix. 

In Senate testimony, last month, Steve Wagner, acting assistant secretary of the Health and Human Services department charged with housing under-age immigrants along the border said that the government was unable to locate nearly 1,500 children who had been released from its custody.

Wagner insisted that the federal agency is “not legally responsible for children” once they’ have been handed over to a sponsor.

Spygate?

Wingnuts and Alice in Wonderland logic