Donald Trump is proving what any sane American knows: that he is a traitor tied to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, and has been from the beginning of his Presidency.
The revelation that Russia made payments to Taliban fighters to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan, and that Trump has done nothing about it, and claims no knowledge had ever been given to him regarding this, is totally infuriating, and requires a swift removal from office.
If only Vice President Mike Pence had guts and courage, and worked to gain the support of a majority of the Trump cabinet, Trump could be forced out, but clearly, that is not about to happen.
There are rumors that Trump might resign, due to his poor reelection polls, but that is still hard to believe, and one has to wonder what Mike Pence and cabinet members knew, and whether they have been in on the scam.
America is in a very bad time, with the CoronaVirus Pandemic, the economic depression, the racial animus, and now this national security issue.
This is, more now than when the Impeachment trial took place, the most crisis ridden moment since the Great Depression, and possibly more so than the events of the 1930s.
There are signs of some Republicans in Congress starting to stir in anger, but the party has been so feeble, one wonders what will come out of the situation.
More than ever, for sure, it is urgent that Joe Biden defeats Donald Trump by a massive margin in November, or the nation is doomed long term!
RF: “Donald Trump is proving what any sane American knows: that he is a traitor tied to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, and has been from the beginning of his Presidency….America is in a very bad time, with the CoronaVirus Pandemic, the economic depression, the racial animus, and now this national security issue.”
How, exactly, is the Russians paying the Taliban “bounties” to kill American troops in Afghanistan “a national security issue”?
And how does Trump’s reaction and response to this ~ the latest, un-confirmed and not independently verified “revelation” from unidentified but [we are assured by the NYT, WaPo, WSJ, and the MSM] “reliable” sources within the American intelligence community ~ how does any of this “prove” that he is a “traitor”?
Those are very strong words, Professor; not to be taken lightly. Just for starters, how accurate have all those carefully choreographed disclosures by our vaunted MSM of all that “insider reliable sources” information proven to be in the past? Remember Saddam and the NYT’s claims about all his big, bad WMDs?
The Taliban [and other Afghanis] have been trying to kill American troops for the last 19 years, ever since we launched our so-called “Global” so-called “War On” so-called “Terrorism” on their homeland on October 7, 2001. With or without Russian “bounties.” What’s different now?
Just like we paid, trained, and equipped the mujahadeen [aka OBL and Da Boyz of al-Qaeda] to kill Russian troops in that same Afghanistan back in the 80s, and we no doubt offered bounties, as well. What’s the difference between what we did then and what they are allegedly doing today?
The question You and all Your cohorts and compeers on the Left need to be asking Yourselves is: Why were there still any American troops in Afghanistan [or Iraq, Syria, etc] to get killed when Trump assumed the reign from Obama, who in eight years accomplished absolutely nothing except get a bunch American soldiers killed and crippled, and massive numbers Afghani, Iraqi, Syrian, etc civilians killed, maimed, and rendered homeless, helpless, and hopeless? And a million dollar Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.
Concern about Russian “meddling” in Afghanistan ranks right up [or down] there with concern about their meddling in our elections. Given America’s history of interference in other nations’ government’s elections ~ to say nothing of its coup d’etats, “color revolutions,” and regime changes ~ on what possible, conceivable basis do You claim America to be exempt from the very things that outrage You so about the Russians?
Or, as Caitlin Johnstone put it all so well: “This Russia-Afghanistan Story Is Western Propaganda At Its Most Vile” [http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55284.htm].
You concluded: “More than ever, for sure, it is urgent that Joe Biden defeats Donald Trump by a massive margin in November, or the nation is doomed long term!”
Unless the citizens of this nation force themselves and their elected officials [and their owners and operators] to deal with America’s $26.3+ Trillion national, sovereign debt and its $120+ Trillion Unfunded Liabilities [Social Security, Medicare, Pensions, Veterans, etc], this nation is doomed regardless of who wins in November and by how much. And it might not take the long term for that to happen.
This Russian incident is yet another in the many reasons why Trump needs to be kicked out of office.
Seconded, Pragmatic. This nation is doomed if Trumpty Dumbty wins another election.
Obama’s accomplishments
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/januaryfebruary-2017/obamas-top-50-accomplishments-revisited/
Thanks for that, Leia. 🙂
Great list. Great president.
Rump – worst president ever.
Trump is absolutely treasonous.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/2020/06/30/is-trump-projecting-when-he-accuses-others-of-treason/
Another well-deserved attack on Rump by the Lincoln Project.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nytBEWbwOkw
‘Leave Lincoln Out of It’
The Lincoln Project partakes of the spirit of a famous Republican president—but he’s not its namesake.
By Andrew Ferguson, June 30, 2020
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/tactics-lincoln-project/613636/
To take a full accounting of Donald Trump’s corrosive effect on our politics, you need to look at his enemies. After the president’s disappointing (for Trump fans) rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a political action committee calling itself the Lincoln Project jumped into the fray, as it tends to do, with both feet. It released not one but two video ads ridiculing the president.
The first was about Trump’s claim at the rally that he asked his “people†to slow down the pace of coronavirus testing. Trump’s spokesperson later said the remark was “in jest,†and the president himself told an interviewer it was “semi–tongue in cheek.†But it is the job of the president’s opposition nowadays to pick and choose what to believe. The Lincoln Project chose to believe his first remark, drawing the implausible inference that the president actually wanted to slow testing, which would only inhibit the reopening of the economy, the one thing he doesn’t want to do. I think I’ve got that right.
The voice-over of the first ad was male and stentorian; that of the second was female and mocking. The second commercial was called “Shrinking.†“Hey Donald,†the announcer said. “Turnout in Tulsa? A dud. You’ve probably heard this before, but it was smaller than we expected.†Cut to a shot of Trump bringing his palms together. “It sure wasn’t as big as you promised. Honestly, we’re not surprised … We’ve seen that you’re shaky, you can’t keep your polls up … sad, weak, low energy. Just like your presidency. Just like you.â€
When the project’s Twitter account announced the ad’s debut, it made sure to tag Stormy Daniels.
“Shrinking†was in the spirit of another recent Lincoln Project product, called “Trump Is Not Well,†from earlier this month. That ad used footage from Trump’s speech to the graduating class at West Point. Over pictures of the president holding a glass of water with two hands, the voice-over suggested he was suffering from some kind of disability that rendered him unfit for high office, evidently based on the theory that our nation’s commander in chief must be able to sip water with one hand.
The Lincoln Project’s ads—personally abusive, overwrought, pointlessly salacious, and trip-wired with non sequiturs—are familiar: They are undertaken with all the relish the president shows when he jokes about the mental hiccups of “Sleepy†Joe Biden, just as four years ago, he happily implied that Hillary Clinton suffered from some nameless disease. One reason Trump does this is to annoy his opponents; now his opponents’ supporters are returning the favor.
The ads’ intended audience may be a surprise. In December, the PAC’s organizers published a manifesto in The New York Times, to mark their group’s launch. The headline read: “We Are Republicans, and We Want Trump Defeated.â€
“The 2020 general election, by every indication, will be about persuasion,†the organizers wrote. “Our efforts are aimed at persuading … disaffected conservatives, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents in swing states and districts.†As for the name, they said, “We look to Lincoln as our guide and inspiration.â€
The claim to the mantle of Abraham Lincoln was truer than the organizers knew. Long before he was made a martyr and then a myth, Lincoln was a small-time politician on the Illinois prairie, with a talent for what one of his biographers, Douglas Wilson, called “attack journalism.†Throughout his early career, he filled the columns of party newspapers with scurrilous, usually anonymous assaults on his political adversaries. Lincoln used every tool in the demagogue’s kit—slander, innuendo, mockery. Factual accuracy didn’t restrain him, on those rare occasions when facts were at issue.
Lincoln knew his audience. His readers, Wilson wrote, were “basically partisan.†“They tended to take delight in any and all hits against their political opponents. The seductive appeal of demagogy is, of course, that meanspirited and unfair arguments do score points.â€
Such arguments, in other words, thrill those already on board, and only those. The Lincoln Project’s ads are not, as the manifesto claimed, “about persuasion.†Like a Trump rally, the ads work exclusively on the predispositions of the faithful. Try to imagine the “disaffected conservatives†or “Republican-leaning independents†whom the Lincoln Project says it hopes to win over. They straddle their fences, scroll through their timelines, leaning first this way then that … Biden, Trump … Trump, Biden … until at last they come upon a Project Lincoln ad and they discover—can it be?—that the president’s genitalia aren’t functioning nearly as well as the world thought!
“By God,†they might cry. “This is the last straw! We need Joe Biden to restore the soul of America!â€
But probably not.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that the Lincoln Project isn’t quite what it told us it wanted to be, given how many politicos fly under false colors in the Trump era.
The project’s board of advisers includes a few figures who might be described as “famous for Washingtonâ€â€”and famous for doing the things that all professional Washington operatives do. In a report last month, the Center for Responsive Politics, a campaign-finance watchdog group, wrote that the Lincoln Project is engaging in practices similar to those of pro-Trump PACs.
“The Republican super PAC has amassed a substantial war chest,†the report said, “but it has come under scrutiny for funneling money to its advisory board members and spending relatively little airing political ads to influence voters. The group also hides some of its vendors by stealthily paying subcontractors, making it difficult to follow the money. The Lincoln Project reported spending nearly $1.4 million through March. Almost all of that money went to the group’s board members and firms run by them.†This is, indeed, similar to what all PACs have done from the day of their invention.
Who are these swamp creatures? The political consultant Steve Schmidt guided John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign to a thunderous loss, and then quickly repaid his old boss by relating unflattering confidences to the authors of a gossipy campaign book. (The book’s depiction of Schmidt, by contrast, was highly favorable.) Another political consultant, Rick Wilson, was the creator of a campaign ad questioning the patriotism of Democratic Senator Max Cleland, a Vietnam veteran and a triple amputee; McCain called the ad “reprehensible,†and most Republicans agreed.
George Conway, another project adviser, was for decades a well-connected stalwart of the further reaches of the conservative movement, where he met and married Kellyanne Conway, now a counselor to Trump. More recently he has drawn attention not only as an energetic anti-Trump activist but also as one-half of the most mysterious marriage in American history. The political consultant John Weaver is known for directing McCain’s first losing presidential campaign, in 2000, after which he went to work for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. (He gingerly returned to the GOP fold by signing on to the fugitive presidential campaigns of Jon Huntsman and John Kasich, in 2012 and 2016, respectively.)
Read: Rush Limbaugh is cheating on conservatism with Donald Trump
The uneven pedigree of this motley crew hasn’t kept mainstream publications from referring to the Lincoln Project as a “conservative PAC.†This misnomer affords the group the privilege of having their cake and eating it too: Coming from Republicans, their attacks may appear fresh, principled, and transpartisan, while remaining stale, unprincipled, and partisan. Like many unhappy former Republicans, the leaders of the project have crossed over from being “never Trump†to being “never Republican,†taking aim even at such GOP moderates as Cory Gardner and Susan Collins. Their most recent ad, called “How a President Leads,†is an unabashed valentine to Joe Biden.
Which is fine! But they’d do better, for the sake of history and intellectual honesty, to leave Lincoln out of it. Lincoln ripened, history shows us, and grew away from the young pol he’d been on the Illinois prairie. The circle of his sympathy expanded, his soul deepened. Such growth is unlikely to overtake the Lincoln Project while it peers obsessively at the object of its hatred. This is an old story: We become what we behold. The project partakes of the spirit of a famous Republican president, all right. But he’s not Lincoln.
Thanks for that, Rustbelt. Love the Lincoln Project attacking him. We need all the help we can get to defeat him in November. Their ads are very effective.
Seconded, Leia. I could care less whether or not they’ve been Republicans in their past or what the name of their group is.
How Would a Competent President Respond to Russia Right Now?
Hiding in a bunker and blaming “fake news†isn’t leadership. It’s a temper tantrum.
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/06/30/how-would-a-competent-president-respond-to-russia-right-now/
Just heard that MoveOn.org is supporting Biden.
Also, just heard that hundreds of people who served under Bush are supporting Biden as well.
The Republicans that GOP groups like the Lincoln Project and 43 Alumni For Biden are reaching out to is the suburban Republicans who are fleeing the cult of Trump.
http://www.cnn.com/2019/11/12/opinions/trump-suburbs-nearly-gone-for-gop-dent/index.html
Trump Has Taken Republicans Down a Dead End of Anti-Expertise
The president’s war against masks may pander to his base, but it’s literally killing Americans.
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/07/01/trump-has-taken-republicans-down-a-dead-end-of-anti-expertise/
What Are Trump’s Plans for Reviving His Failing Campaign?
Meaner nicknames for Biden and a partisan fight over the Supreme Court are under consideration.
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/07/01/what-are-trumps-plans-for-reviving-his-failing-campaign/
What these Republican groups that are supporting Biden like about him is his decency and that he has decades of experience. That is what is desperately needed during these challenges we are facing.
Rational Lefty, you have hit the precise point–decency, empathy, tons of experience of Joe Biden, more than ANY President has ever had in American history!