Compromised: Is Jared Kushner Taking Orders from Vladimir Putin?

Posted on July 21, 2017 by Greg Olear

JARED KUSHNER did not set out to betray his country. He didn’t grow up in Livingston, New Jersey, a ten minute drive from my own suburban hometown, and set his sights on becoming a KGB double agent. I will give him the benefit of the doubt on that.

But given what we now know about his participation in a meeting that what was, at best, an overture by the Russians to see if the Trump campaign would coordinate with them to defeat Hillary Clinton, it’s fair to ask the question: Whose side is Jared Kushner on?

Kushner is notoriously private. Secretive, even. He’s had a Twitter account for eight years and has yet to post a single tweet. He rarely gives interviews. I’ve heard his voice exactly once. He’s basically the J.D. Salinger of the Trump Administration. Most of what we know about him derives from the Forbes profile that ran in December, 2016, a month after the election, which told the story of how Boy Wonder Jared applied Moneyball principles to the flailing, disorganized Trump campaign, and won his father-in-law the White House. That profile offers insight into Kushner’s role with both the campaign and its dealings with Russia, and demands a second reading in light of his upcoming closed-door testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

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Trump asked Kushner to take over the social media arm of the campaign on November 9, 2015, a full year before Election Day, on a flight back from a rally in Springfield, Illinois. He took some time to get acclimated, but he was good at the job:

At first Kushner dabbled, engaging in what amounted to a beta test using Trump merchandise. “I called somebody who works for one of the technology companies that I work with, and I had them give me a tutorial on how to use Facebook micro-targeting,” Kushner says. Synched with Trump’s blunt, simple messaging, it worked. The Trump campaign went from selling $8,000 worth of hats and other items a day to $80,000, generating revenue, expanding the number of human billboards–and proving a concept. In another test, Kushner spent $160,000 to promote a series of low-tech policy videos of Trump talking straight into the camera that collectively generated more than 74 million views.

It was not until June, 2016, however—after Trump had secured enough delegates to capture the nomination—that the social media campaign began to really take off.

By June, the GOP nomination secured, Kushner took over all data-driven efforts. Within three weeks, in a nondescript building outside San Antonio, he had built what would become a 100-person data hub designed to unify fundraising, messaging and targeting. Run by Brad Parscale, who had previously built small websites for the Trump Organization, this secret back office would drive every strategic decision during the final months of the campaign. “Our best people were mostly the ones who volunteered for me pro bono,” Kushner says. “People from the business world, people from nontraditional backgrounds.”

People like…oh, I don’t know…Russians? Because it was in early June, at the same time that Kushner assumed control of these data-driven efforts, that his brother-in-law, Donald J. Trump, Jr., arranged the fateful meeting with Kushner, Manafort…and several Russian nationals with close ties to Vladimir Putin, including at least one suspected FSB agent and one money laundering expert.

Before that June 9 meeting, Kushner was just an ambitious real estate developer—albeit one in charge of a company that was leveraged to the hilt, of which more later—trying to help out his father-in-law. On June 9, if not before, Putin had kompromat on him. Whatever his intentions beforehand, by attending that meeting, Kushner compromised both himself and his father-in-law’s campaign. He was in hock to Russia.

Also in June, Kushner and Brad Parscale enlisted the aid of Cambridge Analytica, a Mercer-financed company, which is possibly more evil than the FSB:

This wasn’t a completely raw startup. Kushner’s crew was able to tap into the Republican National Committee’s data machine, and it hired targeting partners like Cambridge Analytica to map voter universes and identify which parts of the Trump platform mattered most….Kushner built a custom geo-location tool that plotted the location density of about 20 voter types over a live Google Maps interface.

(Cambridge Analytica is litigious, so I hesitate to expound upon the outfit more here. I shall confine myself to pointing out that 1, it is under congressional investigation for its possible role in collusion with the Russians, and 2, Steve Bannon is involved.)

In June, then, in order to win the White House for Trump, Kushner chose to get in bed with two distinct baskets of deplorables: Russian intelligence and the Cambridge data team. One might imagine that he’d learned a lesson from his father, who went to prison for a similar kind of dirty trickery, but no: Jared moved forward.

As the election barreled toward its finale, Kushner’s system, with its high margins and up-to-the-minute voter data, provided both ample cash and the insight on where to spend it. When the campaign registered the fact that momentum in Michigan and Pennsylvania was turning Trump’s way, Kushner unleashed tailored TV ads, last-minute rallies and thousands of volunteers to knock on doors and make phone calls.

What won the election, per Forbes, is “Kushner’s system.” By November, might that system have included aid from the Russians, both monetary and technological? Was it really Kushner who did this “unleashing,” or a bot army marshaled by Putin? How exactly did the campaign “register” that change in swing-state momentum? Some researchers have suggested that Kushner’s “stealth data machine” was in actuality something quite sinister. (I won’t even get into how the entire fundraising operation was monetized, with funds used to buy more ads in order to raise yet more funds, a veritable Mobius strip of revenue).

In the event, Kushner made his choice, and he won the election for his father-in-law. Hey, family first, right?

But his motives may not have been completely pure. At the time, as mentioned, his company was in dire financial straits. He needed a cool $1 billion—billion with a B—in new investment capital to save his debt-ridden building at 666 Fifth Avenue. The Russians surely knew this, and may well have facilitated the $285 million loan he’d eventually receive, in October, from Deutsche Bank; it would not have been the first time Deutsche engaged in shady financial dealings with the Russians. Indeed, the New York Times this week reported that Trump’s relationship with Deutsche is again under scrutiny. Trump himself even hinted that he would fire special counsel Robert Mueller if Mueller began to look into these financial dealings.

Perhaps this was Kushner’s reason for asking the Russian ambassador, Sergei Kislyak, if he could establish a secret back channel to communicate directly with Moscow, via the Russian embassy—which he did on either December 1 or 2, 2016. (He’d already had at least three phone conversations with the multi-chinned ambassador by then, per Reuters, and had at least made Kislyak’s acquaintance at a Trump campaign event in April).

This may also have been why he met with Sergei Gorkov, trained FSB agent and president of Vnesheconombank (VEB), the Russian state bank that was, and remains, on the US sanctions list for its close ties to Putin. “The bank maintained…that the session was held as part of a new business strategy and was conducted with Kushner in his role as the head of his family’s real estate business,” according to the Washington Post. (The White House, meanwhile, claimed this was a “diplomatic meeting,” whatever that means.) Whatever the case may be, Gorkov flew directly to Putin immediately after the rendezvous, halfway around the world, ostensibly to report back in person. Wherefore the urgency, if all they had discussed was real estate?

Kushner declined to cite either meeting on his SF-86 security clearance form, which is a felony…or would be if the GOP Congress chose to pursue it. Indeed, we only know about these clandestine meetings because of great investigative journalism by our best news organizations. Given Kushner’s penchant for secrecy, this suggests that there are other meetings we don’t yet know about. As it is, we have no idea what was said, or promised, during any of these discussions. The return of compounds? The lifting of sanctions? Anything else? Despite this lapse, Kushner retains his seat at tippy-top-secret security briefings and enjoys the full trust of an erratic president. He’s arguably one of the most powerful men in the world right now.

So: a quiet, reserved guy, known for keeping his mouth shut and not leaking, has a series of meetings with high-level agents of a known adversary of the United States—a brutal dictator who has taken active measures to tamper with our election. Don Jr. claimed the June 9 meeting was about “adoptions,” which means the Magnitsky Act, which means sanctions; this indicates quid pro quo was on the table. At the time, Kushner’s company was under enormous financial strain, so he had personal incentive to play ball; a few months later, the company was given a sizable bailout loan by a bank with a recent history of shady dealings with said dictator. A nothingburger, you say?

It may well be that there is a benign explanation for all of this, but I honestly can’t come up with one. Neither, apparently, could his attorney, Washington bigwig Jamie Gorelick, who dropped Kushner as a client immediately after the Don Jr. email bombshell. Why would she do that, unless he withheld information from her, too?

~

It’s tempting to regard Jared Kushner as a little twerp, an undeserving nebbish who somehow gets to boink Ivanka and also run the country. Certainly the idea that this guy can bring peace to the Middle East and also end the US opioid crisis is ridiculous. But what if Trump had good reason to give him the heavy lifting? What if Jared Kushner is far and away the most competent person in the White House? What if he can actually get shit done? And what if he’s working for the Russians?

Most of the attention on “RussiaGate” has focused on Trump, and rightly so. Trump’s Russia ties are as long as the ones around his neck, and fishy as all get out. The President is so loud, and demands so much of the spotlight, that an unassuming eminence grise like Kushner can operate in the shadows with impunity. This is troubling, because we have no clue where his allegiances lie. For all we know, Jared Kushner is the greatest threat to national security since Julius & Ethel Rosenberg. Certainly he should be viewed as such until we know for sure.

Let’s hope that Monday, the Senate Intelligence Committee gets some answers. We need to know if Trump’s unelected consigliere is compromised—or, rather: how compromised he might be.

Posted in Trump/Russia | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Trump and Trade

Posted on July 20, 2017 by KP Dawes

THERE ARE A LOT of ways in which Donald Trump will hurt this nation, but none may be greater than his war on global trade. While Trump’s xenophobia and bigotry can be easily explained as the natural evolution of two decades of vitriolic Republican rhetoric, his sustained opposition to the world order first envisioned in the twilight years of the Second World War is actually a regression to an older American tradition: isolationism. If Trump succeeds in his calls to shred international trade deals and impose tariffs on America’s leading trade partners, the resulting conflict could potentially lead to the last war of human history.

First some backstory.

As the momentum shifted in favor of the Allies during World War II, leaders and policy makers in Europe and the United States began drawing up plans for the post-Fascist world. It was recognized early on that the largest contributing factor to a war that killed some 80 million people was the economic conflict and instability of the 1930s. Economists and politicians agreed that to promote peace they had to promote prosperity and link the nations of the world through trade and commerce, so that any form of international conflict would countermand national economic self-interest. In other words, nations that trade with each other are nations that don’t fight each other.

This idea of peace through globalization was first codified at the Bretton Woods Conference in July 1944, where delegates from 44 Allied nations met to formalize a framework for international monetary policy, commerce, and finance. Built on the work of economists John Maynard Keynes and Harry Dexter White, the conference saw the birth of several global institutions including the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. As articulated by US Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, these international organizations would bring about the end of economic nationalism. Importantly, it was agreed that the wealthiest and most powerful Western nations, especially the United States, would bear the greatest burden of this new economic internationalism as a price for governing its systems.

Imagine a time when American leaders asked the nation to sacrifice for the greater good of the planet!

The foundations laid at Bretton Woods eventually manifested in the formation of the World Trade Organization, established to regulate and negotiate international trade. It also served as the framework for all future international trade agreements, promoting free trade across the globe. As a result, since the close of World War II, democracy has become the dominant political system across the Earth, economic growth has risen to levels unimagined since the start of the industrial revolution, and humanity has been witness to a technological revolution unlike any other in human history. Most importantly, globalization has prevented world war.

Although Bretton Woods has been recognized as perhaps the most successful international conference of its kind, and despite the fact that the world has not been subjected to a large global conflict since the end of World War II, free trade is not without its problems. Critics point to the emergence of transnational black markets, rising income inequality, worker exploitation, and capital flight. While the overall global community benefits, the poorest and least educated among us see jobs and opportunities vanish and hope disappear. It’s as true in India as it is in Pennsylvania. Globalization does not raise all ships.

An argument could be made that the globalized international system, shaped and transformed over the last 70 years by corporations and international banks to benefit the wealthy over the poor, is a major contributing factor to the rise of terrorism. Because while nations depend on free trade, the individual suffers, and that suffering leads to anger and resentment and extremism.

Enter Donald Trump: a self-absorbed Know-Nothing with strongman tendencies whose improbable rise is fueled by resentment over the current international system. Partly born out of his willingness to say anything to get himself elected, and partly from his mad ignorance, Trump has vowed to undermine the global economic system.

Trump has already pulled out of TPP and pledged to renegotiate NAFTA, threatening even to scrap it. He’s actively called for a rebirth of economic nationalism, and a policy of “America First.”

The question is not whether international trade should be reexamined. Economic globalization, as it stands, existing in a world of inherent inequalities, is not sustainable. But to allow Donald Trump to trash that system is an invitation to disaster.

It is easy to imagine a trade war with China spiraling out of control. Nothing to mention about the loss of capital at home. And as we cut the links that bind us, would our allies come when called? The entire modern-day international order, with the United States at its center, begins and ends with Bretton Woods and extends to everything beyond. And this world order is based on a supposition thought impossible today: that the United States would sacrifice slightly more than everyone else in order to deliver a Pax Americana. An unprecedented era of peace is now in danger of crumbling.

Let’s be clear one last time: Donald Trump is a danger to international peace. If he continues on his path to undermine a web of agreements that have kept most of us safe for nearly a century, for the sake of a few thousand jobs in the rust belt, he may very well be the last American president.

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Russian Vote Hacking? Check. Collusion? Check. Quid Pro Quo? “I Love It.”

Posted on July 14, 2017 by Greg Olear

AS I’VE EXPLAINED previously on these pages, there are three tiers to Trump/Russia:

The first tier, that Russia actively tampered with our election, is the consensus viewpoint of the 17 intelligence agencies comprising the US Intelligence Community, as Hillary Clinton mentioned in the debates, and is established fact to everyone but Trump’s immediate family and Sean Hannity.

The second tier, that the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to tamper with the election, is, in light of Donald Trump, Jr.’s stunning disclosure, now incontrovertibly true. Even if no other evidence of collusion[1. Yes, I know collusion technically refers to finances, like when the MLB teams colluded to screw Andre Dawson out of money 30 years ago, just like treason can only technically happen when we’re at war, but this is no time for cute semantics, so I’m using the word anyway.] emerges (spoiler alert: there’s lots more where this came from), the content of that e-mail exchange—and the fact that the now-President’s namesake son, son-in-law, and campaign chairman met with a known agent of the Kremlin in order to get dirt on Hillary Clinton!—is unquestionably proof of this coordination, whatever it says on Kellyanne’s desperate flash cards.

The third tier, not yet proven, is quid pro quo. Trump apologists cling to the hope that evidence of this won’t come out, that it’s FAKE NEWS, but why would Trump and his associates coordinate with a thug like Putin—and why, for that matter, would Putin coordinate with a lying sack of shit like Trump—on spec?

Absent collusion, there may have been a possibility that Russia tampered with the election to foist a defective president upon us, and watch him destroy us from within. But now that coordination between the Kremlin and Trump Tower has been confirmed, it is unthinkable that there wasn’t some sort of larger deal in place. The question is: what did the quid pro quo comprise?

There had to be more to it than “lifted sanctions in exchange for cyber election help.” Remember: Trump did not want to be president. His aim, when he entered the race, was to come in third or fourth, get people talking about him, and raise his profile to enrich the tacky Trump brand. Richard Nixon wanted the White House badly enough that the promise of the presidency alone may have compelled him to seek succor with Russia. Not Trump. Not the guy who didn’t want the job, who doesn’t enjoy the job, who would rather golf than do the job. No, Trump would have needed more incentive than just Russian cyber-help. What did our artful dealer get out of the deal?

Forget about blackmail involving the “pee-pee tape.” Although it almost certainly exists, that sort of kompromat is not enough to sink the man who got away with bragging about sexual assault, even if it were streamed on PornHub, and the threat of its release was certainly not enough to compel Trump and his minions to betray the country. No, this must be about money.

The Steele dossier suggests that there was a financial component to the deal, which makes sense for a number of reasons. First, money is all-important to Trump, a man who is notorious for stiffing contractors, scrimping on charitable donations, and profiting off the presidency, conflicts of interest be damned. Second, while Trump may be a billionaire, he’s highly leveraged; his credit rating is so bad, no US bank will lend money to him. He personally guaranteed a number of nine-figure loans, and when he needed cash desperately, after being turned away by the banks, he went to loan sharks. Russian ones. Debt is a powerful weapon, and Putin, like any good loan shark, knows how to wield it to his advantage.

When the sanctions are lifted on Russia, the oil partnership between Putin’s cronies and Exxon could be worth something like $4 trillion. That’s a lot of kopeks. As I’ve written before, my theory is that Putin did not pay off Trump, but rather forgave a mammoth debt. The discrepancy between the commission on 19% of the Rosneft sale and the actual sale of 19.5% suggests that the half a percent was Trump’s commission: about $270 million, or about what he owes Deutsche Bank. That, I believe, is the number to look for.

Sooner or later, the awful truth will come out. And we’re very close to that truth emerging. Trump/Russia is like a pinata we’ve been whacking for months, and the candy is about to burst onto the floor like pee from a Russian prostitute. How well do you think Donnie Jr. will fare testifying under oath before Congress? As one Twitter wag put it, the guy who repeatedly wet his bed in college thinks he can outsmart the FBI? Please.

Things are about to get ugly in Trumpland—or uglier, I should say. Manafort, Flynn, Stone, Kushner, Sessions, and Cohen are already toast. Now Trump’s eldest son is on the fast track to federal prison. Reince Priebus was at Trump Tower when that meeting took place. Mike Pence was glued to Flynn’s hip all last summer. Steve Bannon and Eric Prince were actively involved with the data side of things; ditto Kushner; meanwhile, the one GOP lackey who copped to trying to weaponize data provided by Russian hackers just killed himself, leaving a Heathers-like suicide note insisting that there was NO FOUL PLAY WHATSOEVER with respect to his death. Paul Ryan made his GOP cronies take a vow of silence on Russian financial aid. Mitch McConnell knew about Russian tampering in June and stonewalled Obama’s attempt to stop it. And the list goes on.

Debt is a powerful weapon, but prison is even more so. There are too many people involved in Trump/Russia who now have all the incentive in the world to rat each other out. And when the truth emerges, I believe that the sheer audacity of the crime will be hard for most Americans to fathom. Trump/Russia makes Teapot Dome or Watergate look like shoplifting a pack of gum.

Everything Trump touches turns to shit. He’s infected the entire GOP with his noxious stink. He must be ousted before it spreads to the country.

Posted in Trump/Russia | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Worst Americans: Scott Pruitt

Posted on July 11, 2017 by Sky Pape

WHO DOESN’T like to fling a good word? These ones have been trending on Merriam-Webster’s site, as curious people, seeing unfamiliar terms describing incredible scenarios, scramble to digest the latest scoop:

complicit

collusion

kleptocracy

narcissism

nepotism

oligarchy

salacious

suborn

sycophant

treason

Sure, those words conjure up the most prominent players amongst our all-star cast of worst Americans in this kakistocracy.  Yet, they don’t suffice to describe Scott Pruitt, the particular individual occasioning the venting of this here spleen.

Pruitt earned the moniker “Polluting Pruitt,” by filing fourteen lawsuits to block EPA safeguards for clean air and water before being appointed as Chief Dismantler of the agency.

Immense opposition to Pruitt’s appointment included a letter to the Senate signed by 447 former EPA officials, worth reading in its entirety. They protest, “Mr. Pruitt’s records and public statements strongly suggest that he does not share the vision or agree with the underlying principles of our environmental law,” i.e., to protect public health and the environment. They sound an alarm: “Mr. Pruitt has gone to disturbing lengths to advance the views and interest of business,” and voice greatest concern over his “reluctance to accept and act on the strong scientific consensus on climate change.”  But like so many of Trump’s appointments, Pruitt’s was rammed through and since then he has relentlessly been reshaping the EPA as “Every Polluter’s Ally.”

This venal American was brought to you by Exxon Mobil, Koch Industries and the like to clear away barriers to environmental destruction. He loves this mission as much as baseball and peanut butter milkshakes.

He has plowed ahead at break-neck speed, appointing cronies with massive conflicts of interest, all determined to achieve maximum damage as fast as possible. The NY Times reported, “In the four months since he took office as the Environmental Protection Agency’s administrator, Scott Pruitt has moved to undo, delay or otherwise block more than 30 environmental rules, a regulatory rollback larger in scope than any other over so short a time in the agency’s 47-year history…”

He’s been busy getting greased at the Trump International Bordello, dining with oil & gas CEOs from the American Petroleum Institute’s Board of Directors. He conferred with the chief executive of Dow Chemical, right before reversing the EPA’s ban on Dow’s pesticide chlorpyrifos, which EPA scientists had concluded causes damage to children’s nervous systems.  Yep, that was Pruitt up there on the podium, eyes sparkling with delight, standing next to the methane-producing orange turd himself during the Rose Garden announcement to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord.

He has ignored the expertise of career professionals at the EPA, and further hobbled the agency by recently dismissing 57 of 68 of the EPA’s Board of Scientific Counselors, which then canceled all meetings for the foreseeable future.

Pruitt is bent on killing the Clean Power Plan that sought to reduce greenhouse emissions in the U.S. and intends to void Obama’s WOTUS (Waters of the United States), a rule intended to protect water supplies for some 117 million Americans and countless wildlife by limiting the release of chemicals and pollutants into our waterways. We have all just been Flinted.  

To benefit his benefactors, Pruitt proposed delaying implementation of a national smog standard that would restrict air pollution from oil & gas. Fortunately, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit blocked Pruitt’s effort in early July, so the protective limits will be put into effect. This powerfully underscores the importance of our independent judiciary as a most crucial safeguard, and we know that it too, like the media/free press, is targeted by this administration.

Data will be collected on how bad things get, but don’t expect any credence to be given to provable facts in this alternative facts universe. Hell. Pruitt doesn’t even need to deny the facts. He has acknowledged the ill-effects his actions would have on children, but expresses concern only about the oil and gas industry’s profits.

And don’t think Pruitt’s odious activities are restricted to one area. His LinkedIn page brags that he filed the “first lawsuit challenging the implementation of the Affordable Care Act,” and was “leading a multistate lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Dodd-Frank financial law.” He is a staunch opponent to same-sex marriage and immigration. Pruitt was “grateful” for the SCOTUS Hobby Lobby ruling that, on the basis of religious beliefs, privately held companies could withhold birth control coverage from employees.  (BTW, holy Hobby Lobby just got schooled about stealing.)

Putrid Scott Pruitt is perhaps not as much an outright liar as others in this administration, but more of an information withholder, a practiced manipulator, a cherry-picker, a misrepresenter, and a question-deflector on par with Kellyanne.  Whereas our distractible demagogue is crass and infantile, Pruitt is focused, skillful, and dangerously competent. He is connected and young enough to have a lengthy political career ahead of him, leaving our environment decimated in his wake. The young and less-monied classes will bear the brunt of it.

Pruitt is from the same mold as that other worst American, Mitch McConnell. He earns his spot in the ranks of the worst because his callous, calculated actions will bear out a destructive impact unrestricted by borders or the term of his appointment.  We’ve been warned that the climate crisis will be unstoppable if not addressed proactively within three years, and that’s being optimistic. If Pruitt continues steamrolling onward, legions will fall ill and die prematurely due to air, water and toxic pollution, the EPA may itself be a casualty, and what of the future of our planet?

Let’s remain aware, communicate, and act. Here are some suggestions:

  • Follow/support NRDC, EDF, LCV
  • Contact your elected officials to tell them climate, environment and related public health safeguards are major voter concerns.
  • In NY, support environmental efforts of Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and push for the State Senate to pass the Climate & Community Protection Act
  • Stop using plastic straws, bags, etc. Recycling is good. Better to wean yourself off things that harm the environment.

Posted in Worst People in America | Tagged , , | 12 Comments

Worst Americans: Dan Scavino, Jr.

Posted on July 10, 2017 by KP Dawes

TRUMP WOULDN’T BE TRUMP without social media, and he wouldn’t be what he is on social media without Dan Scavino. A former caddie at Trump’s Westchester golf club, Scavino has risen through the ranks to become the president’s director of social media. Yes, Trump has a director of social media. And yes, he used to be his caddie.

Scavino, who first latched onto Trump’s coattails in 1990, presumably while handing him a five iron, is a true believer. In fact, Savino has a reputation for being amongst the most loyal of Trump’s willing executioners. He is daily tied to POTUS’ massive hip, filming events for broadcast on the White House’s official Facebook page, and often tweeting from Trump’s own account.

Scavino is so good at Trump-speak that it’s sometimes difficult to tell which tweets actually come from the president himself. Though we do know that he’s been responsible for some of Trump’s greatest hits, including the infamous picture of Hillary Clinton with a Star of David, which was quickly deleted following accusations of anti-Semitism. He’s also been instrumental in Trump’s many attacks on prominent Muslims, including London’s mayor Sadiq Khan.

To read Scavino’s own Twitter feed is like sifting through the mind of a less popular though equally unhinged Donald Trump. Like his boss, Scavino is defensive and quick to belittle those who criticize the White House. Loser Billy (Bill Kristol), Dummy Don (Don Lemon), and Lyin’ Leakin’ Susan Rice are just a few examples. And while, reportedly, much of the White House staff has tried (and failed) to curtail Trump’s Twitter outbursts, it’s Scavino who’s been cheering him on.

Scavino represents the worst type of the Trump administration’s many minions. In terms of bootlicking he is nearly in a class all by himself. Outside of a brief stint at Coca-Cola, his life has been completely devoted to Donald Trump, and in trying to outdo his lickspittle competition he encourages Trump’s worst instincts. Every single time Trump has derailed his own agenda with a tweet you can be sure Scavino was close by.

Other presidents have been served by sycophants to be sure, but Scavino is especially dangerous precisely because of the president he serves. Trump is a pure-bred narcissist with a dangerous disregard for the rule of law. He either doesn’t understand democracy or else doesn’t respect democracy. And so when Trump is likely to be swayed by the last voice in the room, especially when that voice is one of blind encouragement, Scavino ranks among the most powerful, and frighteningly influential, caddies in the history of the world.

The true villains in history, certainly in the last century, wouldn’t have been able to achieve infamy without armies of toadies ready to carry out their most deranged wishes, or, worse, what their lackeys perceived to be their master’s wishes. Strongmen don’t have to sign memos ordering mass executions or arrests, they need only to create the environment in which such acts are rewarded.

In the race for Trump’s notoriously fickle gaze, the competition is fierce, and Scavino has proved himself willing to go to great lengths. When not retweeting Nazis or encouraging attacks on minorities, Scavino has recently turned his sights on Trump’s political opponents. Just last month Scavino was reprimanded by the Office of Special Counsel for violation of the Hatch Act, which prohibits senior members of the executive branch from interfering in elections, after he took to social media to call for the ouster of Rep. Justin Amash, a wayward Republican from Michigan.

You may think bad tweets and ethical infractions are a long way from violations of civil rights, but power is corrupting especially when in the hands of fools. And in Trumpland, Dan Scavino may just be the court jester.

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The Manchurian President: On Trump’s Unconditional Surrender to Putin

Posted on July 9, 2017 by Greg Olear

ON FRIDAY, at long last, Donald Trump met with Vladimir Putin: the prime beneficiary of Russia’s act of cyber warfare against the United States convening with his audacious benefactor. This is, at least, the consensus view of the 17 agencies that comprise the US intelligence community. Trump, unsurprisingly, has other ideas:

Because of Trump’s insistence on a small, intimate gathering, the details of the meeting are a bit murky. What appears to have happened is: Putin denied having anything to do with tampering with the US election; Trump accepted this denial on its face, complaining about “fake news” outlets making so much of Russian election tampering and blaming Obama; the two decided to join together some sort of task force to ensure the integrity of future elections:

In other words, the chief executive in charge of the defense of this country announced that he holds with the view of the hostile foreign power who perpetrated this act against America, and not that of his own intelligence community…and, worse, that he intends to ally with the former, ostensibly to prevent further cyber attacks.

This is such an egregious act of capitulation that it demands further unpacking.

~

Twitter is so abuzz with comparisons, it’s like a Verbal SAT for Treason:

https://twitter.com/Rontildawn/status/884043415775846400

https://twitter.com/michaelianblack/status/884043551042129924

Or like a rape prevention task force with Bill Cosby, or a fiduciary integrity task force with Bernie Madoff, or a winning football task force with the New York Jets.

It may well be the most preposterous idea Trump has ever floated. Or, to put it more bluntly:

https://twitter.com/MollyJongFast/status/884017506557587456

This is the part in the Manchurian Candidate where Angela Lansbury suggests playing a little game of solitaire. The sleeper agent has been activated.

A few months ago, Glenn Greenwald made fun of me for calling Trump a compromised asset of Russian intelligence. After today, it’s not possible to make the argument that he’s anything but.

~

Modern right-wingers have an antecedent in the John Birch Society, an ultra-conservative group whose original members included Fred C. Koch, father of the Koch brothers.

You know whom the Birchers hated more than anyone? Communists. They were key players in fanning the flames of anti-Communist rhetoric in the 60s.

You know whom they held in the highest regard? Intelligence agents. The eponymous John Birch was an intelligence agent who died fighting the Communists in 1945—allegedly the first casualty of the Cold War.

For the Republican president of the United States to repudiate his own intelligence agencies, his spy army of John Birches, and instead kowtow to the Rooskies of all people, is something that would have been unimaginable to Fred Koch sixty years ago.

~

The Left tends to be distrustful of the intelligence community, which itself tends not to be staffed by Left-leaning agents.

In the battle between privacy and security, the Left unequivocally favors the former. After 9/11, it was the conservatives who demanded that privacy be sacrificed for security, who set up the Department of Homeland Security, who made trips to the airport so unpleasant.

I can remember foolish Leftists publishing long essays about how PRISM was dangerous and how Obama was laying the foundation for a totalitarian presidency. Now those same Leftists, having seen the error of their ways, are cheering on the so-called Deep State, which is under attack by…conservatives?

This is unheard of.

~

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” This is the Second Amendment, the summation of our Constitutional right to bear arms.

The NRA and other 2A advocates are quick to point out that they need assault rifles and other heavy weaponry not to hunt elk, but to rise up against the government in the event of a tyrant coming to power. That’s what the Founders most feared: being under the yoke of another mad king.

“The Second Amendment is not about hunting at all,” the NRA website proclaims, on a surprisingly well-argued FAQ page. “The Second Amendment is about protecting the right of a free people to defend that freedom and to protect their families and communities from threats.”

Yeah, so we have a mad king now, guys, and he’s just given Vladimir Putin the national SSL keys. If you NRA/2A folks defend Trump now, after this brazen act of kingly madness, then your entire raison d’etre is a sham, and you might as well admit that you exist, as Trump does, to enrich your corporate benefactors.

Come on, NRA. Prove that you’re more than hot air. Be true patriots. Join the Resistance. We need you. If you guys lobby to have Trump impeached, our national nightmare will be over by Labor Day.

~

Do I have to get into how Putin kills journalists, and how Trump would like to do the same, as per the violent CNN memes he disseminates? Or how Putin orchestrated the “terrorist” attacks in Chechnya so that he could impose martial law? Just read the Kasparov book, and trust me: Putin is an evil motherfucker, no matter what Sean Hannity might tell you.

~

I was at Yankee Stadium on Friday, as it happened. I haven’t watched baseball for years, because the conservatism of the MLB puts me off, all the quasi-religious reverence for tradition, but Friday night, I was stirred by the patriotic spectacle.

I found myself not only singing the National Anthem, but also being moved by it. And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. Those lyrics were written during the War of 1812, when the British, then our mortal enemy, were bombing the shit out of Baltimore harbor. We survived that, as the song reminds us, and we can survive Trump/Putin, too.

But the time has come for us Americans to recognize the real enemy, and unite to fight against him. Trump this weekend revealed himself to be the puppet of Putin that Hillary Clinton accused him of being during the campaign. To argue otherwise is to repudiate values conservatives traditionally hold dear—national security, high esteem for the intelligence community, the foundational principles behind the Second Amendment, antipathy towards Russian autocracy, and unequivocal contempt for tyranny at home.

As Jesus remarked: “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.” You’re either with the patriots, or you take orders from Vladimir Putin, like Trump. Time to decide.

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Worst Americans: Mitch McConnell

Posted on July 7, 2017 by Greg Olear

Rather than participating in the governance of the country through the time-honored tradition of compromise, he spent eight years as a living, breathing roadblock. The current Senatorial system of obstructionism has his fingerprints all over it.

He engaged in a SCOTUS staring contest with Obama concerning the Merrick Garland nomination and did not blink until Neil Gorsuch, a pro-corporation-anti-human conservative of the worst kind, was sworn in. This will have malefic impact on our country for the rest of my natural life.

When debriefed on the extent to which malignant Russian intelligence forces were compromising the presidential campaigns and the election, he threatened to accuse Obama of playing partisan politics if he went public with the bombshell. Once again, Obama acquiesced. With the election over, and no Constitutional clause for an invalidation of the result, he is in a position to make noise about this act of war by an enemy power. He has done nothing.

His wife, Elaine Chao, is the daughter of the Taiwanese shipping magnate James S.C. Chao, who is responsible for both personally enriching his son-in-law and for contributing to his campaigns, which would be fine if not for the big cocaine bust nobody paid any attention to. Elaine Chao serves in Trump’s cabinet, because of course.

He censured Elizabeth Warren for attempting to read a letter by Coretta Scott King at the confirmation hearing of inveterate racist and Putinist collaborator Jeff Sessions.

He is the prime mover in the Senate of the campaign to repeal Obamacare. The toxic healthcare bill he’s floated would throw 23 million people off insurance and lead to thousands of deaths and bankruptcies. It would also have a deleterious effect on the economy, as many thousands of jobs would vanish if the ACA were repealed. He doesn’t care. At all.

The story of his recovery from polio being financed by the government is bogus, but he did suffer from the disease as a child, and he did recover thanks to a program put in place by FDR. That he is actively seeking to deny medical care to so many sick children (that’s who’s on Medicaid, mostly: children) speaks volumes about his loathsome character.

He’s sympathetic to the Confederacy.

Worst of all, and quite unlike almost every Republican involved with Trump, he’s astonishingly good at his job. He wants us to die and go bankrupt and be ruled by the laws of the Christian right and continue to have our elections stolen by the KGB. And he’s savvy enough to make it happen. As GOP strategist Rick Wilson said, “Washington is littered with the bodies of people who underestimate Mitch McConnell.”

He’s the worst person in America. And arguably the most dangerous.

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