Trump’s Betrayal

                 – A Commander-In-Chief’s Counterfeit Affection For The Troops

Note to readers:   the first edition of this eBook was originally published on August 27th of  (2022), and released as an exclusively donation offer.

Because of recent news revelations that underline and further confirm the narrative of this extensive report and because Donald Trump, a former president who is now a convicted felon and up on charges for serious state and federal crimes, is running for a second term and who constitutes an existential threat to America’s freedoms and Constitutional safeguards should he obtain a second term as president – National Compass is re-issuing the book with added perspective and insight and parenthetical updates in the text, including the statements that have emerged from former Trump White House Chief Of Staff, General John Kelly.

I am providing this book free, with a request for voluntary donations for National Compass’ site maintenance (see tip jar on the side bar and beneath the last page)  – but primarily in the interest that the comprehensive report we have assembled here, be distributed widely before the election and wherever possible, influence the perceptions of persuadable voters.

I authorize you to share it on any and all online platforms and to anyone you believe would benefit from knowing all the facts that pertain to Trump’s fitness for office.

In this exclusive eBook there are a handful of questions we tackle because the answers to them are pivotal with regard to the larger question of how our system of democracy could be at risk if  Donald John Trump is afforded another four years in the Oval Office, sitting behind the Resolute Desk.

A leading role in the healthy functioning of our democracy, is that played by the United States Armed Forces.  When a national leader is exploiting that institution to bend it to his personal agenda, doing so imperils that healthy functioning and endangers national security and democracy. That is what Trump has done and is doing as this mini book is being written.

So the central question related to this is specifically, what is the mindset of Trump as it relates to his role as Commander in Chief? Wanton disregard and negligence or concerned management and accountability?  And what true sentiments does he harbor toward the military community?

Trump’s voters told reporters that they were voting for Trump because they wanted a “disrupter.”  A review of the effects of Trump’s term, demonstrates that those voters, did indeed get the disrupter, the person they boasted would “shake things up in Washington”, they desired.  The consequences of that disruption are a litany of chaos, destruction and divisiveness that have spread not only throughout the District of Columbia, but throughout the nation.

Although we will focus on Trump’s role as Commander-in-Chief, dear reader, do realize that his conduct in that role cannot be viewed in isolation. It has a myriad of collateral impacts – economic, health, unity among Americans, and the integrity of our elections, among others.  We will establish that there is, in fact, no bright line or disconnect between the critical priorities of national security and domestic security. 

When a demagogue like Trump, touts that he will use, not only his “bully pulpit”, but the expanded powers of an imperial presidency to attack and infringe upon the freedoms of citizens that his voters hate and resent, he is standing in opposition to everything the United States armed forces risk their lives and wellbeing to defend.  If a president degrades and endangers domestic security, he renders the nation vulnerable and exposed on the global stage.

The risk runs the continuum from diminishing America’s prestige internationally – which itself is a factor of jeopardy, to providing our adversaries with enhanced opportunity to launch attacks of every sort against a weakened and divided country.  It should go without saying that not only will this situation profoundly affect our men and women in uniform, but the threats will deepen and intensify with a second Trump term in office.  In this context, we will present four core elements that demonstrate Trump’s reckless disregard and dereliction of duty.

One is his gross negligence in properly managing COVID-19 and his politically based opposition to the most qualified scientists in his administration, who have, from the beginning attempted to break through the false messaging from Trump and the disinformation that he fostered by recirculating it among his following.  To the degree that it illustrates the disconnect between his sworn oath as president to preserve, protect and defend – and that of his actual conduct,  it is entirely relevant and we will look at how it intersects with the Commander in Chief role.

The second leg of the termite eaten stool, is Trump’s persistent and enduring war against our institutions, not least among them, our domestic (FBI) and foreign intelligence community, exemplified by his baseless characterization of them as the “Deep State.”  

The intent here, is transparent.  In every instance when these agencies decline to support Trump’s alt-Right conspiracy narratives, Trump regards the refusal as insubordination. In sowing seeds of distrust in these components of national and domestic security, he weakens them and strengthens his hold on a political base that was already primed to view them with suspicion.  In weakening them, he also hands unearned success to our foreign adversaries, providing them with opportunities to undermine our standing internationally and launch counter-intelligence ops against us.

Number three is the ongoing attempt by Trump, to cast shade on a fundamental pillar of our structure of democracy – elections. We will stress the argument that when Trump undermines our Constitutional order by de legitimizing our electoral process and encourages foreign adversaries to do the same, he harms our men and women in uniform.

Among the many facets of this is Trump’s demonstrated efforts to involve the United States Postal Service in his plan to sabotage votes by mail in ballot by crippling mail delivery in the months and weeks before the election. Troops stationed overseas, it goes without saying, rely on the postal service to deliver their election ballots and that of their families to state election officials on a timely basis.

When Trump insists that the election was “rigged”, he is acting as a conduit for the propaganda of our foreign adversaries, particularly the ones that executed a full scale counter-intelligence operation on the last national election, targeting voters with disinformation.  According to our intelligence community, every election since, has been in the cross hairs of Vladimir Putin and his assets in the Kremlin.  Reports have been surfacing that Russia, along with China, Iran and North Korea are once again engaged in these operations to destabilize America in this election cycle, as well.  And, as the evidence reveals, Trump’s work on their behalf is bearing evil fruit, which brings us to number four.

The fourth is Trump’s cultivation and moral legitimization of right wing radicalized domestic groups that advocate armed resistance to duly constituted authority of state and local officials and similar often related elements of racist oriented organizations. (Editor’s Note: Since the original publication, scores of Trump’s devil dolls, the likes of the “Proud Boys” and the leadership of Oath Keepers, have been convicted and sentenced on charges of sedition, chiefly having to do with the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021.)

Trump’s relationship with the military, active and retired, and with its leadership, has been mercurial and turbulent even though he constantly asserts his deep appreciation for them (except when he is viciously excoriating their leadership).  Kellyanne Conway argued that “no president has shown greater respect for the military and the veterans”, but in keeping with Conway’s reputation for statements that are (understatement alert), unsupportable by evidence – the record on this president and by extension, his party, tells a quite different story.

But the article published on September 3rd (2020)  by Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic, detailing spiteful comments from Trump about U.S. troops who died in various conflicts including World War I and Vietnam – and by inference, other wars in our history, resulting in casualties of American forces – has amplified the debate about Trump’s real attitude about the U.S. armed forces and brought it to a full boil.

We present the fact pattern on the episode involving Trump’s choice to skip attendance at the World War I memorial at Aisne-Marne, in considerable detail, because it demonstrates to what lengths Trump will resort in doubling down on lies to preserve the crumbling facade that is his professed ardor for the American military and its veterans.

If Donald Trump inwardly harbors contempt for military service while at the same time professing deep love and admiration for those who serve, we have to sort out the facts and come to a determination of what is true and what is false.  I sense the question from some readers – “why – why do we have to determine Trump’s frame of mind about the military?”    I suppose it depends on how important you believe the role of the military is, in the life of this nation.

In the event that we can conclude that Trump sees the military as little more than a political prop and relates to it in purely abstract terms as an entity he can exploit to further his own interests, then the concern you should have is that Trump will make impulsive and uninformed decisions that put not only our men and women in uniform in danger, but in consequence – you as well. In our examination of Trump’s actions in the role of C in C, it will be clearly demonstrated to be the case.

This national security threat has been born out in many situations that have materialized on Trump’s watch, but one that stands out is the clumsy and reckless manner of his handling of the North Korea engagement, upon which the lives of 164,000 American civilians who live in and around Seoul, South Korea and over 28,000 American troops are exposed to the consequences.

The truth is that Trump does not have an accurate understanding of the culture and organizational dynamics of America’s armed forces.  Fact check this if you wish, but including himself, there are no men or women in his immediate or extended family that are serving or have the experience of military service, nor have there been any in the entire run of the Drumpf (the original family name) clan in America. None.

National Compass’ Tony Wyman outlines the last 3 generations behind Donald, that have weaseled their way out of harm’s way:

His grandfather, Frederick, for example, was also draft dodger. Frederick Trump emigrated from Germany at the age of 29, coming to America in 1898. In the spring of that year, he left the U.S. to live in Canada until 1901, going back to Germany in 1902 to get married. He attempted to return to Germany in 1904, but was refused to rejoin the land of his birth because officials determined he avoided his military service obligations while living in the country.

Mr. Trump’s father, Fred, was born in 1904, which made him approximately 35 during the draft for World War II, a war in which my 18-year-old uncle volunteered to serve. Unlike my Uncle Howard, who saw extensive combat experience in Europe and who would have been in the invasion force attacking mainland Japan had President Truman not used atomic weapons to end the war, President Trump’s father also managed to avoid serving.

Fred Trump was not involved in any of the occupations that were exempted from service, such as war production, safety or agriculture, nor was he physically or mentally incapable of serving. Unlike 16.1 million men at the time, Fred Trump, despite being fit to serve, chose not to volunteer during the greatest war in human history.

That’s highly unusual. I’m not suggesting some sort or organized conspiracy here, but it’s hard to deny that neither Donald Trump or his children (let’s leave Barron out of this), can relate to what service to the country actually means. At a minimum, it is an unhealthy situation.

Most Americans have a family member that has or is presently serving in the military – maybe your brother or sister are deployed or your father served in World War II, Korea or Vietnam or later missions in Iraq, Afghanistan or Africa.  Having heard the shared experiences from that loved one, you’ve gained insight about the reality of being called to service and the rewards and sacrifices  related to that.   To Trump, and everyone in his family, every direction you look – it’s nothing more than an abstraction. The most charitable explanation for Trump’s bizarre mixture of faux adoration and latent contempt, is that he just finds such sacrificial service incomprehensible. There’s no cubbyhole in what marginally serves as his brain, for it.

In an incredibly ironic twist, Trump’s campaign engagements have opened on numerous occasions with a curious musical selection, an anti-war anthem from Creedence Clearwater Revival – “Fortunate Son.”  This is not a song with an obscure message. It was known from day one as a protest song decrying the fact that certain people of the privileged social classes had access to the means of avoiding conscription.  Creedence’s band leader and songwriter, John Fogerty  comments on the cognitive dissonance of Trump and his campaign in featuring a song that in actuality, serves as an indictment of Trump:           

“Recently, the President has been using my song ‘Fortunate Son’ for his campaign rallies, which I find confounding, to say the least. The very first lines of ‘Fortunate Son’ are, ‘Some folks are born made to wave the flag, ooh they’re red, white and blue. But when the band plays ‘Hail to the Chief,’ they point the cannon at you.’

Well that’s exactly what happened recently in Lafayette Park. When the President decided to take a walk across the park, he cleared out the area using Federal troops so that he could stand in front of St. John’s church with a Bible.”

“Fortunate Son” plays as Trump de-planes, an entry for the “nobody listened to the lyrics” hall of fame. pic.twitter.com/fJBPI7CxGQ

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) September 10, 2020

In Trump’s case, even if we afford him the most generous interpretation of his callous, puerile and shallow behavior, it still is a hazard, because he demonstrates a stubborn refusal to even receive and familiarize himself with accurate information about national security and foreign policy, much less the day to day challenges of the men and women in uniform and their families. 

As has been noted so often by media observers (including myself), of the Trump phenomenon, Trump’s emergence on the national stage and his presidency is, if not a direct product, a by product of a plague on the culture of America known as ‘Reality Television’.  That fact is a very telling illustration of why this presidency is so dysfunctional and has not been made “great again.”   

Although the connection between Reality TV and the advent of Trumpism explains a lot about what we’re dealing with, I should first make a distinction between the two genres of Reality TV and acknowledge that not all of it is a scourge, (depending on your outlook).  While this may appear at first blush – off topic, when it comes to the manner in which Trump functions as a national leader, the relevance will become apparent.

Dear Reader, bear with me for a few paragraphs on this because it not only goes a long way towards explaining how we got to the moment we’re in, but more particularly, what deficit in our culture leaves us prone to con men the likes of Trump.  Of the two forms of Reality TV, the benign version consists of fare the likes of Mike Rowe’s “Dirty Jobs” – and “Somebody’s Gotta Do It”,  which possess value because while they entertain, they also laud the merits of work and the dignity of performing some types of work that we don’t always esteem as we should. I’m a fan.

Following behind comes the voyeuristic programming of such as the doctor who performs gastro-intestinal surgery on morbidly obese people, which I don’t personally understand the fascination with, but at least, other than the mildly exploitative angle, is not corrosive. Your mileage may vary.

Beyond that, in the positive or at least neutral category, are the info-tainment shows about the trials and travails of commercial fishermen, tech contests (my favorite – “Battle Bots”), search and rescue in the frozen tundra, hometown veterinarians, the curious and ostensibly unexplained – ancient cultures and mysteries, UFOs, ghost hunting and the like. Regarding the last categories – some of it flirts with the dubious and outlandish, but at least your brain is engaged and you are weighing the arguments. 

Next, in a category of its own, “Championship Wrestling”  is a hybrid of Reality television – choreographed athleticism, performance art and melodrama. Most everyone that watches it, realizes it is staged or at least we’d like to assume that to be the case. Trump has a storied history with this and it probably accounts for how he attempts to brand his opponents – “Crooked Hillary”, “Sleepy Joe”, “Mini Mike”, “Lyin’ Ted”, “Pocohontas”, “Shifty Schiff” and so forth.  Pro-wrestling, or what some dub, “wrassling“, is a diversion that, depending on your view, is not corrupting and should not be taken any more seriously than the character Alice Cooper inhabits on a concert stage.

We get that these characters have an on-off switch and that the participants are actors, some of whom have gone on to established success in Hollywood. True enjoyment requires us to have a well oiled facility in suspending disbelief.  But on the other side, the dark side of Reality TV –  is the sickening drama of people airing their personal disputes in front of a camera, ala “The Jerry Springer Show” and the rest of the genre it inspired. “Dr. Phil” is a milder, less combative version, but not much less exploitative and considerably more insidious. “What in the world” was I thinking? If I knew, I probably wouldn’t be getting the third degree from a shrink.

Finally, and arguably the most insidious, are the Kardashians and their ilk – including Kanye West, R. Kelly and P. Diddy, who exemplify the moral hazard of people with no talent, skills or commitment to anything other than hedonism and self worship, becoming wealthy as a consequence of harnessing the trend of socially prioritizing the glamour of celebrity and in so doing, creating a deficit of anything else of genuine benefit to society.

All of which brings us to Trump. A considerable segment of Donald Trump’s voters knew him not from his occasional forays into the arena of politics, but from the affectations of his contrived persona on “The Apprentice.”  There, he projected a fictional trope of the “successful businessman”, a portrayal that bamboozled millions of viewers. Sadly, in the case of The Apprentice, unlike championship wrestling, many who tuned in, did not comprehend that the show was scripted and staged and not at all spontaneous.  Members of the production staff and crew, learned some things about Trump that underline his orientations about minorities and women, reporting racial slurs and misogynous behavior and comments.

Those same viewers were primed to parrot Trump’s campaign’s assertion that he could competently manage the affairs of America on a national scale, because “he is not a politician” and “he’s a successful businessman.”  Never mind that neither of those notions actually held water. Penn Gillette, Tom Arnold  and other participants from the run of the show, have related that Trump regularly made racial and sexual comments that were highly offensive, but that the myth the program created, resulted in a consideration on the part of the producers that put money first and decency and ethics weren’t even a factor. 

The “successful businessman” myth had been widely discredited over the past 4 plus decades by investigative journalists, but once a persona like Trump becomes an icon of a cult following, there is no amount of evidence to the contrary that will pry the cultists away from the pied piper that validates their prejudices and illusions. 

Trump adopted the guise of this character for his 2015 launch at capturing the GOP presidential nomination.  He looked around at the political landscape and concluded that there was no lane for him in the Democratic party.  But he then turned his attention to the Republicans with it’s crowded field consisting mostly of buffoons, to whose number he could add himself and out buffoon them all. And he did and it worked.

Most significantly, he was keen to take the temperature of GOP voters, and discover a feverish, unsatisfied appetite for political incorrectness, resentment, angst, anger, nationalism, racism, xenophobia and demagoguery, that he could satiate with considerably more flair, hubris and audacity than any of others in the motley assemblage.  The Republican party was a perfect landing spot and now the party belongs to him exclusively. What’s left of the party after he is finished castrating it, that is.  And in the two plus years since the original publication of this book –  he is nearing the goal line of destroying what is left of the GOP that they haven’t destroyed themselves.  

Together with all this, there was one other element Trump identified – an affinity among Republicans for flashy, contrived and fetishistic patriotism – that indulgence Samuel Johnson keenly identified as the “last refuge of a scoundrel.”

Intertwined with this, Trump recognized a superficial sentiment of the glorification of military deployment and the false, jingoistic patriotism that characterizes it.  Whatever internal conflicts existed for Trump regarding this component of GOP political optics –  he recognized it and found the prospect of exploiting it, irresistible. 

The matter of whether Trump possesses authentic esteem and care for the U.S. military, is one that demands to be resolved because America was brought into the world by a military conflict in the form of a rebellion and the maintenance of the rule of law that was established in its wake – was and is, safeguarded by the existence of an institution of national defense.  

Is Donald Trump an ally and defender of the Constitution or is he in fact – an enemy within?  If he is lying about his “love for the military”, that’s a problem, an enormous one and one we ignore at our peril. Based on this, we need to determine what is going on with this and once we learn it, decide what we’re going to do about it in November.

I am of the persuasion that the processes of the criminal justice system – the methodology of examining evidence, conducting investigations and presenting the findings in a court trial setting, are the best way to determine guilt or innocence.  The manner in which we outline the subject matter and the facts attendant to it, will be an informal rendering of that process, in which we approach Donald Trump’s loyalty or alternately –  his treachery.

At the very least, we believe, if you are open to a comprehensive resetting of the history of Trump’s term in office, you will come to grips with the extent that Trump is unfit to govern, especially in a second term where there are absolutely no guard rails, no spike strips to box in his recklessness.  We can’t afford to have cold reality shock our eyes wide open after we have signed a blank political check payable to Donald J. Trump for another 48 months. 

The likelihood that the America we inherited from our parents, may not continue to exist or resemble anything like it at the very least –  is such that casting a ballot in ignorance of the facts concerning this, would be among the most reckless of acts of negligence.  National Compass has been covering the Donald Trump presidency from its very inception. We are not straight news, nor do we claim to be and we are not strictly objective as to Trump.  Our position is as follows:

Objectivity about Donald Trump might have been commendable at some point in the distant past, but it turned to cowardice once Trump began to disgrace and abuse the Office of the Presidency of the United States.

At this point, objectivity regarding Trump and the political mafia he installed at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, during his first term,  is glaringly conspicuous and discrediting in any other setting than front page news coverage.

Worse than that, to feign objectivity on Trump’s failed presidency, knowing all we know after three and a half plus years, would be grossly dishonest.  That is particularly the case, given the fact that his malfeasance has resulted in 400,000 deaths from (COVID 19) at the time he left office, from a pandemic we now know for certain he was aware would result in a catastrophic loss of life and sickness and chose to politicize instead of leading us out of. 

What we do at National Compass is “News Analysis / News Commentary.”  It’s not pure opinion, but instead, a dissection of the facts and data after which we don’t shrink from providing a determination based on that dissection, that scrutiny. The manner in which we handle this subject is consistent with that methodology. 

Richard Cameron
Editor in Chief
National Compass

nationalcompass.net

Trump’s Betrayal – A Commander In Chief’s Counterfeit Affection For The Troops

Trump’s presidency has featured a long and uninterrupted sequence of episodes that starkly contradict the political motif of admiration and ardor for those who serve in a national defense role. 

Trump hosted an observance in the East Room of the White House the night of Sunday, September 27, 2020, to recognize a group of Gold Star families in the Gold Star Mother’s Day event. This was the day following a debutante gala for Trump’s Supreme Court nominee to replace recently deceased Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  That event staged in the Rose Garden, designed to publicize the nominee, Appeals Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, resulted in several positive COVID-19 tests. There was virtually no use of protective face coverings nor was there social distancing.  Dr. Anthony Fauci classified it as a “Superspreader Event.” 

The total number of people who contracted the coronavirus from this gathering, is not known because the Trump White House, likely at his behest, is not following CDC (Centers For Disease Control) guidelines for contact tracing.

As everyone is now aware, Donald Trump has subsequently been infected with the virus. Based on the timing and circumstances of the Barrett event, journalists are concluding that the outbreak in the White House can, at least in part, be traced to the Rose Garden engagement.

Trump aims the finger of blame away from himself and toward Gold Star families

Trump, in a disturbing amplification of his customary gaslighting, is now offloading his responsibility for having become infected to the families of fallen servicemen and women. Trump made the following comments during a phone interview on Fox Business, October 8th.

“I got a lot of things going. And again, when I want to say hello to Gold Star families, what I — I’m not going to be in a basement saying, ‘Hey I can’t see you as you traveled in from California and all the different places.’ It’s OK.”

Then, after a puerile and pedantic explanation of the coronavirus pathogen, Trump insisted later that day to Sean Hannity, that he could not follow COVID-19 safety measures because military families are so wildly in love with him that he would be insensitive of their feelings if he observed safe conduct.  As a result, he speculates they may have infected him.

“It’s very, very hard when you are with people from the military or from law enforcement, and they come over to you and they want to hug you and they want to kiss you because we really have done a good job for them. And you get close and things happen.”

“I didn’t want to cancel that,” Trump told Fox host Maria Bartiromo, of the Sept. 27 event, which included several dozen guests and several high-ranking military officials. Trump continued:

“They all came in and they all talked about their son and daughter and father … They tell me these stories, and I can’t say ‘back up, stand 10 feet away,’ you know? I just can’t do it.  I can’t back up, Maria, and say, ‘Give me room. I want room. Give me 12 feet. Stay 12 feet away when you talk.’

And I went through like 35 people, and everyone has a different story … They come within an inch of my face sometimes, they want to hug me and they want to kiss me. And they do. And frankly, I’m not telling them to back up. I’m not doing it, but obviously it’s a dangerous thing, I guess, if you go by the COVID thing.”

The “COVID thing”? We know that when Trump is seen to have failed in any measure of a competent, caring or decent presidency, he believes he must always find someone or something else to hang the blame on.  In this case, it is Gold Star families.  And no sooner than he uses these families in a despicable manner, practically in the next breath, in a campaign video, he asserts that, “There’s never been anything like what I’ve done for the military.  I just want to let you know there’s never been a president that has your back like I do.”

In response, Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), herself a wounded Army veteran, told Business Insider:

“The president controls what happens at the White House. So if he says that he’s unable — and those around him are unable — to control these events because people were coming up to hug him, then that shows a failure on their part. And frankly, it’s shameful he would blame members of the military and members of the police force for his COVID-19 diagnosis. This is all his own fault for not wearing masks.”

Representative Seth Moulton (D-MA) , a former Marine Corps infantry officer, told Insider he was not surprised the president was deflecting from other public events, such as the one at the Rose Garden.

“Shifting blame is second nature for Donald Trump when the reality is he alone is responsible,” Moulton said. “He decided to ignore science and hold massive rallies. He decided to run the White House as if the virus didn’t exist.”

“As a wounded combat veteran, it’s absolutely disgusting President Trump would blame gold star families as the reason he contracted COVID,” Alan Pitts, a U.S. Army combat veteran who served in Iraq and is a Purple Heart recipient, told Newsweek.  “As if Gold Star families don’t have enough tragedy and guilt in their lives, the commander-in-chief is adding to their burden,” he said. “But it’s just the latest incident of Trump abdicating his responsibilities and shifting the blame to others. It’s extremely sad and embarrassing. Trump has no shame.”

Newsweek spoke to a number of vets about Trump’s latest stunt involving families of the fallen. Another with an apt analogy, was Jason Kander, retired Army National Guard Captain who served a tour in Afghanistan performing intelligence.

He recalled an incident where a senior officer randomly fired a round that would ordinarily be written up as a “negligent discharge.”  Instead of making up an excuse for the careless act, he recognized his role as an example to those under his command and took ownership without hesitation.    Kander contrasted that with Trump’s lack of a sense of personal accountability. “That wasn’t remarkable. Nearly any military leader would’ve responded that way,” Kander said. “(Trump) by exposing Gold Star families to COVID and then blaming them for his own mistakes, it’s like if that officer had accidentally shot one of his soldiers and then told the entire unit the soldier had attacked him.”

It should be noted that there has been no evidence that any of the families of fallen troops at the ceremony had tested positive before the gathering, for COVID-19 – so Trump’s blame bomb has blown up in his own face. That’s not to say that the timing of the event itself, the manner in which it was conducted and his insistence on it, wasn’t foolhardy in the first place. 

“Losers” and “Suckers” – the September Surprise. But was it, really?

Jeffrey Goldberg’s article in the Atlantic in early September 2020,  emerged as what one might describe as an “October Surprise” come a month early.  It was of that magnitude. Here is that report as reference. 

Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’

The president has repeatedly disparaged the intelligence of service members, and asked that wounded veterans be kept out of military parades, multiple sources tell The Atlantic.

The setting for the remarks attributed to Trump in Goldberg’s report, was Trump’s visit to France in 2018, and his refusal to take a trip on November 10th, to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery which occupies hallowed ground directly adjacent to the scene of the Battle of Belleau Wood. 

It’s where a century prior, thousands of men, primarily Marines of the 2^nd Division and its 4th Marines Brigade, the 6th Marine battalion and the Army’s 3rd Infantry, fought one of the fierce and pivotal battles of World War I in response to the German Army’s Aisne Offensive.

Military historian David John Ulbrich notes that the French, in tribute to the Marines, named the battle, “Bois de la Brigade de Marine” in honor of the incredible sacrifices and fierce struggles there.

By now, you have heard some or all of the statements attributed to Trump, but here is a reset of two of the most egregious:

         “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.”

And again, referring to the 1,800 fallen servicemen, in that bloody engagement who are buried at Aisne-Marne, Trump, dubbed them “suckers.”

Needless to say, Trump and his handlers and administration spokesholes are vociferously denying he ever said any of the things reported in Goldberg’s column and challenging him and the other news outlets, (Associated Press, Fox News, New York Times, CNN, the Washington Post, et al,)  that have confirmed the sources.

Trump describes the account in the Atlantic report, predictably, in the same terms he denies all of the corruption that he and his administration are up to their follicles in – saying it is a “hoax, just like Russia, Russia, Russia was a hoax.”

As a substitute for a credible explanation (which doesn’t exist), for opting out of the responsibility to honor the memory of the sacrifice of Americans, Trump predictably, lashed out at a widow, the late Apple founder Steve Jobs’ wife Laurene.

Referring to Ms. Jobs’ part ownership of the Atlantic, Trump tweeted:

‘Steve Jobs would not be happy that his wife is wasting money he left her on a failing Radical Left Magazine that is run by a con man (Goldberg) and spews FAKE NEWS & HATE,’ ‘Call her, write her, let her know how you feel!!!’ 

Trump has trotted out underlings to claim they themselves never heard him utter such abominable remarks. And Trump, enraged by this shameful episode having been revealed, lashed out once again at respected, reputable journalists for investigating and verifying it.

Trump has denied the comments, saying:

Perhaps Trump would swear on the bible he held upside down so infamously in a staged photo op in front of St. John’s Church.  If you will indulge me for a moment, I would briefly like to take issue with Trump’s comment that, “only an animal would say such a thing.”  Excuse me, but animals (in my estimable experience) are infinitely more dignified and trustworthy than the man who uttered the slurs against the brave men who fought at Belleau Wood and in all of our other conflicts. I have immeasurably more respect for animals than I do for Donald Trump.

The appropriate noun would have been “monster”, as in “only a monster would say such a thing.”   You could, if you like, substitute the term, “moral reprobate.”  Either one would describe the now former president to a T.   It was outrageous that Trump himself went to the ‘monster’ card when he referred to Vice Presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, as one, following the 2020 debate between her and Mike Pence. Once again, Trump’s misogyny experienced a wardrobe malfunction. 

Defending the veracity of his article, Goldberg told CNN’s Brian Stelter on “Reliable Sources” that he felt confident about  publishing the story because he spoke to multiple people “with firsthand knowledge of the president’s views and comments.”

“That’s the only reason to publish anything. And I felt it was important to publish because, in my experience and in our collective experience, I don’t think we’ve had a president who has contempt for American soldiers, wounded veterans, people who’ve been killed in action. So it’s incredibly novel. It’s one of these things that’s in the category of shocking yet not surprising.”

But my purpose here is to construct a line of counterattack for you the reader, to employ when confronted with Trump and his allies’ various denials and alternately, their claims that “President Trump loves our military.”  It’s most likely you will hear it from Trump supporters themselves, whose confirmation bias and lack of intellectual honesty prohibits them from considering his true disposition. 

As an update to this segment of the book (first published on August 27, 2022 – Jeffrey Goldberg’s reporting has been confirmed by none other than former Trump White House Chief Of Staff, General John Kelly.  Axios sums up Kelly’s revelations about Trump’s reprehensible statements that the General, whose own son, Robert Kelly lost his life in 2010, serving in Afghanistan, was personally a witness to:  

– Trump saying at a 2017 Memorial Day event in the Arlington National Cemetery,  “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”

– Kelly said Trump did not want to include military amputees at a White House military event in 2018 because it would make spectators uncomfortable and added that Trump had said their presence “doesn’t look good for me.”

-Kelly also noted that Trump, in 2016, publicly belittled the parents of Humayun Khan, an Army Captain and Gold Star recipient who was killed in Iraq in 2004, after they criticized him for his anti-Muslim rhetoric.

-And Kelly condemned Trump for accusing retiring Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley last month of treason and suggesting that the punishment for such an act would have at one time, been death.

The outline of an investigation of Trump’s contempt for fallen and wounded soldiers

Here is the concept. Let’s for the sake of argument, imagine that denigrating fallen American troops from WWI, Vietnam or any other war we’ve engaged in, is a criminal act.  It obviously isn’t and we’re not arguing that it is or should be.

To be sure, no matter how reprehensible, we all have the constitutional right under the 1st Amendment, to say ugly things that are damning to our reputation among decent people, provided they are not inciting violence or disorder that results in injury or death, such as Trump did at the Ellipse on January 6th, 2021.  As it relates to Donald Trump, that’s another essay entirely, though we will note that Trump is on the record as desiring that he could curtail speech that does not venerate him, or at the minimum, bolster his falsehoods.

But it is, without question, a moral crime, the perpetrator of which, should be reviled, shamed and shunned in a civil society and so we’ll approach it from that angle. For our scenario, it is either a civil or a criminal offense subject to prosecution in the court of public opinion as versus a court of law.  On that basis, how would I proceed against Donald Trump?  First, let me put on the hat I wear when I play a District or U.S. Attorney on television.

OK, we can commence. Let’s begin by outlining how a suspect finds himself under arrest and facing court proceedings.  It begins with an investigation. We know or strongly believe a crime has been committed, but in cases such as this iteration of “People Vs. Donald J. Trump”,  the witnesses have made statements reporting the crime, but decline (so far) to testify. Trump’s media surrogates have sought to discredit Jeffrey Goldberg’s reporting, basing their objections on the fact that the material relies on unnamed sources. The reality is that investigative journalism employing unidentified sources is more the norm than otherwise, for reasons we will outline in a moment.

But it’s humorous to reflect that the people who cry foul the most vociferously about Goldberg’s report, are people who, without hesitation, hang on every unconfirmed account that emanates from the likes of “Q”, Alex Jones and Gateway Pundit (now, out of business)  – notorious purveyors of malicious and hallucinogenic right wing fiction packaged as news that responsible journalists won’t go near.

It’s even more amusing to consider that the conductor of the choir with the loudest objections, is Donald Trump himself, who, on a daily basis, when feebly attempting to back up whatever claim he happens to be making, credits unknown persons, with phrases like “people are saying”, “they tell me that ________”, “everyone knows” and similar evasions.

Somehow those anonymous citations are more than adequate when the object of a national (now international) personality cult is referencing them. By the way, fun fact – we know the name of the source Trump is citing in his South Lawn remarks on his way to boarding Marine One. His name is “John Barron.” 

There is a perfectly logical explanation why Goldberg’s sources have remained anonymous for now and it’s for the same reason the FBI maintains a witness protection program. Friends of the accused and impeached (Trump) have been known to issue death threats and in some instances have attempted to act on them. The witnesses are concerned about the safety of their families, since Trump has Secret Service protection and they don’t.

Their concerns are not unfounded. David Corn writing in Mother Jones describes Trump’s messaging designed to place the whistleblower that revealed Trump’s Quid Pro Quo with Ukrainian president Vlodymyr Zelensky, at risk of violent retribution:

“Since September 20, Trump has tweeted almost 100 times about the whistleblower. And the pace has quickened in the past week, with Trump zeroing in on the whistleblower on 16 occasions. Trump has assailed the whistleblower as a traitor and deep state operative. In remarks made at the US mission to the United Nations on September 27, Trump compared the whistleblower to a “spy,” and added, “You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? With spies and treason, right?”

Trump has a documented history of orchestrating intimidation against anyone he classifies as an impediment to his motives or personal interests.

A blueprint for our investigation of Trump’s true sentiments and motives

If we could not subpoena those who were witnesses to Trump’s reprehensible statements to publicly attest to them, we can still move forward with a preliminary investigation – a review of the reported crime and the facts. (Editor’s Note: As of October 2, 2023, we don’t need to subpoena the witnesses. They, such as General Kelly and White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson,  have confirmed what everyone who was not a member of Cult 45 or a MAGA political grifter, already suspected was fact.)  Kelly told CNN that:

“What can I add that has not already been said?” Kelly said, when asked if he wanted to weigh in on his former boss in light of recent comments made by other former Trump officials. “A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’

A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family – for all Gold Star families – on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.

“A person who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women,” Kelly continued. “A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason – in expectation that someone will take action.

A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.  “There is nothing more that can be said,” Kelly concluded. “God help us.”

It was not unexpected that Trump would react to his former Chief of Staff in the most disrespectful and disparaging of terms, despite the objective fact that General Kelly, has a stellar record of accomplishments in service to the United States and Trump has four indictments, a disastrous presidency and 91 criminal charges on his record.  Trump said of Kelly, in a post on “Truth Social”:  

“John Kelly, by far the dumbest of my Military people, just picked up the theme of the Radical Left’s lying about Gold Star Families and Soldiers, in his hatred of me.  He was incapable of doing a good job, it was too much for him, and I couldn’t stand the guy, so I fired him like a ‘dog. He’s a lowlife with a very small brain and a very big mouth.” 

 

We would examine the history of public and private statements uttered by the subject of the investigation and attempt to develop a fact pattern that allows us to substantiate our suspicions, leading to an arrest. All of this, we will do here.

The standard that will apply in arriving at a final determination whether to prosecute, the charges we will file and our recommendation to the jury (American voters), will hinge on the “reasonable man (or woman)” concept. After a full review of the evidence, would the reasonable man / woman believe Donald Trump’s denials and defenses against the cumulative sum of the facts? Would they, in his position, conduct themselves in the same manner?

Can we establish that Donald Trump harbors an intrinsic view that people who risk life and limb in military service are “Losers”and “Suckers”?

Donald Trump’s record of speaking disparagingly of men and women who have met with injury, capture or death in combat, is anything but hidden, despite his vociferous protestations to the contrary, such as,

“I’ve done more for the military than almost anybody else.” 

We discussed the most notable instance in our defense of the late Senator and Navy pilot, John McCain against the character assassinations perpetuated by alt-right propagandists that Trump repeatedly promotes:

Clearing The Record On John McCain's Record Of Service In The Navy

by Richard Cameron   Due to the proliferation of fictitious accounts of the late Senator John McCain’s actions and experiences while serving in the United States Navy during the Vietnam conflict, I made the decision as Editor in Chief of National Compass, that we must correct the record regarding the most frequently cited episodes – […]

Of McCain, Trump said during the run up to the 2016 Presidential election at the 2015 Family Leadership Summit in Iowa,

“Family Leadership Summit”?  That is an oxymoron, when we see what attends those gatherings.  In any event, during the interview, Trump uses the term, “loser” to refer to a man who suffered for six years at the hands of the brutal North Vietnamese government in a hellish prison camp.

“We’re not going to support that loser’s funeral.”

As a background to the above quote, it relates to the circumstances surrounding the celebration and remembrances of McCain’s life. Those who have contributed a lifetime of service to the nation, customarily receive a tribute in the form of lowering the flag above the White House to half staff.  Trump, as reports indicate and this has been confirmed by others aside from those that Jeffrey Goldberg spoke with – asked aides when seeing the flags lowered to half-staff, demanded to know “what the f-ck are we doing that for? Guy was a f-cking loser.”

Even if some might dispute whether Trump’s non-public comments are accurate (which now is not possible), what Trump said about John McCain publicly –  cannot be disputed. The sum total of Trump’s raw contempt is damnable. And it is also trauma inducing.  Whether you are a fan of McCain’s daughter Meghan or not, the fact that she loved her father deeply is not subject to dispute, nor should it be. She describes the impact of Trump’s indecency on her and her family:

So to establish here, Trump has a history of using the term “losers”, within and without the context of those who served.  Simply because – as far as we know, he only uttered it publicly once, is immaterial. This fact goes to establishing state of mind and habits of behavior.

Jeffrey Goldberg also cited sources that first hand, heard Trump refer to the 41st president, George H.W. Bush as a “loser” based on Bush, a Navy pilot in World War II, having been shot down by Japanese forces.

The Washington Post, in it’s own confirmation of Goldberg’s report, was told by one of the sources they heard Trump comment with regard to American fighting men in the Vietnam conflict who fall into the class, Missing In Action (MIA), that they “had performed poorly and gotten caught and deserved what they got.”

I just have to press pause and observe that for decades, one thing that Americans were nearly unanimous regarding, was the advocacy for ongoing efforts to either determine if any captured American servicemen were still being held anywhere, or failing that, for the U.S. government to do everything possible to recover their bodies so they could be returned home and laid to rest in a proper, respectful manner.  To have said anything resembling a comment that they “had performed poorly and gotten caught and deserved what they got”, would be assumed by all parties involved, to be fighting talk.  It would not have gone unanswered and likely the answer would have been a fist to the jaw.

But somehow, Trump’s loyalists can hear him demean the men who experienced the worst of the Vietnam conflict, and somehow condone and justify it in their minds. This is one of the key pieces of evidence that demonstrates that the MAGA phenomenon is something much more than a public figure having found an audience for audacity and indecency, but instead, it  arguably constitutes the largest personality cult in modern history, aside from Adolph Hitler.  More on that topic, later.

Actually, there are in the record, numerous instances of Trump having made incendiary remarks about decorated military leaders and we will introduce that to the outline so as to establish his basic true frame of mind about not only them but the men and women who serve under them.  Despite what Trump would have you believe, you can’t separate the two.

Blatant disrespect and Freudian slips

A key implement of Donald Trump’s tool kit in raising political capital, is trotting out the patriotic – pro military card.  It was one of his most resonant sales pitches when he was trying to break away from the rest of the pack in the primaries.

Trump takes mock boosterism for the armed services, injects it with super caffeinated insincerity and elevates it to an art form that would cause P.T. Barnum to blush.  

“No one loves the military more than me.”

 – Donald Trump

Despite the impressions he has created among his voting base, we’ve witnessed behavior that when viewed in its entirety, contradicts the facade he cultivates.  Actions that make his pro-military rhetoric in the flag waving rallies he appears at in Red State America, ring hollow.

Trump further displays his total ignorance of the mindset of the American soldier, by telling New York radio talker Howard Stern that his sexual escapades in Manhattan in the 80’s, while bravely attempting to avoid contracting sexually transmitted diseases, were his “personal Vietnam” and that dodging (not only the draft six times) but venereal diseases –  caused him to view himself as a “great and very brave soldier”.

It’s uncertain whether Trump is personally aware of how inappropriate, tone deaf and disrespectful he is. Nevertheless, that he is, could not be more obvious.  Equally disturbing is the nakedly manifest realization that Trump views everything from the lens of his own experience or the lack of it.  If he doesn’t identify self interest in something, he has no interest in it. 

And that trait is not exclusive to him within his family. It has infected his children as well. We mentioned earlier that no one in Trump’s family has performed military service and as such, they entertain a callous disregard for the price that is too often paid by those that have. In another illustration of the fact that no one in Trump’s family has the beginning of a clue about the meaning of commitment to anything beyond their pecuniary interests, his son, Donald Trump Jr., unashamedly conflated the death and dismemberment of U.S. troops, with the perceived self denial and disadvantage of his father’s presidency:       

As we drove past the rows of white grave markers [at Arlington Cemetery], in the gravity of the moment…I also thought of…all the sacrifices we’d have to make—giving up a huge chunk of our business and all international deals.

Another example of how Trump’s self aggrandizement and promotion, intrudes on events that should instead be effacing, is his tweet last Memorial Day – where he seizes the occasion, not to soberly reflect on the memory of those who gave all, but instead, to boast about his (fictitious) accomplishments:

“Happy Memorial Day! Those who died for our great country would be very happy and proud at how well our country is doing today. Best economy in decades, lowest unemployment numbers for Blacks and Hispanics EVER (& women in 18 years), rebuilding our Military and so much more. Nice!”

“Happy Memorial Day” ?  On what planet would that be a socially appropriate salutation?  Sure as hell, not on this one – at least not in America. 

Some insight on why it is a near impossibility that Trump possesses the capability of nurturing an authentic deep, abiding esteem for the men and women that serve in uniform, comes from the world of psychiatry and a standard reference volume widely consulted in it – the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-5.

Under the heading of “Narcissistic Personality Disorder”, we find a summary definition as follows:

“A pervasive pattern of grandiosity and fantasy or behavior, need for admiration, and lack of empathy, as indicated by five or more of the following:”

•  grandiose sense of self-importance,
•  fantasies of power and brilliance,
•  believes he is special or unique,
•  requires excessive admiration,
•  a sense of entitlement,
•  is inter-personally exploitative,
•  lacks empathy,
•  is envious of others, and
•  arrogant behaviors.

Alternatively, the list of behaviors prioritized in the biblical “Top Seven” – the “Seven Deadly Sins” could equally apply to the known deficits of Trump’s character, or lack thereof.  It’s stunning that there is not a single descriptor on the above list that Trump doesn’t totally and completely exemplify, but among all the markers, one stands out more than the rest as a red flag in our analysis – that being, “is inter-personally exploitative.”  

These are people whose character make up features,  highlight the fact that they do not have the capacity to hold any genuine affection, really about anybody other than themselves, and certainly not strangers who play no principal role aside from serving as stage props for political theater.  “Blacks For Trump”?  “Auto Workers For Trump” ?

In this context, it is illuminating to witness how Trump treats anyone with a history of service to the country that reads from a script other than the one he has handed them. If you block Trump’s motives, especially by publicly contradicting his version of reality, the faked magnanimity is withdrawn, the teeth are bared and the gloves on the tiny hands are off.  Not that anyone with any sense, is concerned about the tiny hands.  It’s his mouth and the collective menace of MAGA that gives them pause. 

Trump’s callous mistreatment of the injured, the dead and the survivors

Trump is a shameless exploiter of military families. Nowhere is this more obvious than the manner in which Trump has handled Gold Star families (spouses, parents and children of fallen soldiers) as pawns in his perverse personal marketing campaign. Beyond the most recent grievous episode we earlier referenced, there are numerous others.

Trump, at some point, or at the urging of presidential aides, got the idea that it would be valuable to his rah, rah, pro military image, if he placed personal calls to some families that lost husbands, sons or fathers in combat. 

One of them, the widow of Army Sgt. La David Johnson, Myeshia Johnson, reported to ABC’s Good Morning America last year that Trump “made me cry even worse” when he called her last week.  Ms. Johnson was disturbed by the president’s tone, his lack of preparation for the call, evidenced by his stumbling over Sgt. Johnson’s name and Trump’s callous reference that, “he knew what he signed up for.” 

“I heard him stumbling on trying to remember my husband’s name. And that what’s hurting me the most. Because if my husband was out here fighting for our country, and he risked his life for our country, why can’t you remember his name?” 

Congresswoman Frederica Wilson (D-FL) happened to be riding with Myeshia Johnson as they drove to Miami International Airport to meet the body of Johnson’s husband, Sgt. La David Johnson, when Trump called.

When asked by Miami station WPLG if she indeed heard Trump make the remarks that Ms. Johnson recounted,  she answered: “Yeah, he said that. To me, that is something that you can say in a conversation, but you shouldn’t say that to a grieving widow.” She added: “That’s so insensitive.”

Congresswoman Wilson, in the wake of General Kelly’s much too delayed confirmation of Trump’s indecency, has taken Kelly to task on not objecting to Trump’s behavior in real time.
“He knew Mr. Trump’s record,” Wilson said, referring to Kelly. “For him to stand in the White House behind the podium and lie — he’s an idiot and he should be ashamed of himself.  He’s an idiot for selling his soul for so long to a man who he knew was lying, a man who he knew who was disrespectful to military families, to Gold Star families, to widows, to members of Congress — anything that had to do with the military.” 

The remark, “He knew what he signed up for” blatantly reinforces the perception that Trump’s calculus of who he esteems, depends on the outcome of the circumstance.  In Trump’s equation of failed outcomes as opposed to successful ones, if a member of the armed forces dies on the battlefield, it was destiny and he classifies them as having died in vain and no one should lose any sleep over it.  If they come back crippled or dismembered, their status as a loser is only slightly less. If they come back without injury or any outward disfigurement, they are ‘winners’. 

This brings us to a couple of more recent episodes in which Trump made yet more insensitive and callous comments that reveal his true sensibilities about the sacrifice of military service, coupled with how he exploits families loss of loved ones for political opportunity. 

“It’s actually much better because everyone gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they are dead. She gets it and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman. And they’re rated equal, but she got the Presidential Medal of Freedom.”

Former President Donald Trump provoked a vigorous condemnation Thursday August 16, 2024  when he said the Presidential Medal of Freedom he awarded to Dr. Miriam Adelson, the widow of Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson, was “equivalent” and “much better” than the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military award for bravery in combat.

Trump spoke from his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey praising the late Las Vegas casino magnate as “one of the greatest businessmen in the world,” before drawing a false, crass and incompetent comparison between the Medal of Honor and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, typically awarded on the basis of recognized achievements in the arts, public service and other fields, such as science, education and medicine.  Prior to Trump, we did not have the Medal of Freedom going to people whose primary qualification was running gambling casinos and donating hundreds of millions of dollars to a presidential campaign.

“I watched Sheldon sitting so proud in the White House when we gave Miriam the Presidential Medal of Freedom. That’s the highest award you can get as a civilian. It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor, but civilian version,” said Trump with the backdrop of multiple American and Israeli flags.

He added, “It’s actually much better because everyone gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they are dead. She gets it and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman. And they’re rated equal, but she got the Presidential Medal of Freedom.”

2024 Republican Vice Presidential nominee, J.D. Vance, who is now in the awkward role of Trumpsplaining, defending, spinning, cleaning up or doubling down on Trump’s ill considered or radioactive statements, defended the indefensible.  “This is a guy who loves our veterans and who honors our veterans,” Vance replied, adding, “I don’t think him complimenting and saying a nice word about a person who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom is in any way denigrating those who received military honors.” 

Matt Zeller, a former Army captain and CIA officer who served in Afghanistan and has since worked for years to resettle Afghan allies who served with U.S. and coalition partners during America’s longest war, denounced the former president’s comments.

“People need to see that this is who Trump is and how he sees those of us who have served in the military. He’s been disparaging us for years,” Zeller told CBS News. “I can only hope this latest affront against military service is the one that finally makes the rest of my fellow veterans see the light — the man is a con.”

Trump, once again exploits military families for political gain and self aggrandizement in his shameful return to Arlington National Cemetery

Then, also this year, there was yet another incident at Arlington National Cemetery, this one in which Trump used the pretext of joining a family who lost a soldier during the withdrawal from Afghanistan, to leverage the occasion for both a political statement and a opportunistic photo op. 

A couple of problems. At Arlington there is a section in the Eastern portion of the cemetery that encompasses 14 acres, designated “Section 60”, which is off limits by regulation and law, to anyone and for any other purpose than for the families and survivors of fallen soldiers who served in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.  It was reported in late August that a member of Trump’s gangster posse, physically assaulted an Arlington employee assigned to enforce the observance of the restricted area.  National Public Radio, details the situation:

An Army spokesperson defended the employee in a statement, saying the participants in the remembrance ceremony had been “made aware of federal laws, Army regulations and DoD policies, which clearly prohibit political activities on cemetery grounds.”

The employee “who attempted to ensure adherence to these rules was abruptly pushed aside,” the spokesperson said. “Consistent with the decorum expected at ANC, this employee acted with professionalism and avoided further disruption.”

“This incident was unfortunate, and it is also unfortunate that the ANC employee and her professionalism has been unfairly attacked,” the spokesperson added. “ANC is a national shrine to the honored dead of the Armed Forces, and its dedicated staff will continue to ensure public ceremonies are conducted with the dignity and respect the nation’s fallen deserve.”

Deny, Deny, Deny

Trump and his campaign, as would be expected, lied about the circumstances.  Steven Cheung, Trump campaign spokeshole, described the employee as “clearly suffering from a mental health episode” .   The series of lies proceeding from his vile mouth, was even more appalling.  When asked about the altercation, Cheung replied, “False. Not even remotely true, and this person is a liar.  As someone who was there, this employee was the one who initiated physical contact that was unwarranted and unnecessary.”  The employee had a strong case to make against Trump’s hired thug, but declined to press charges, as many of us might opt to do, when confronted with the reality that Trump’s supporters are prone to terroristic threats and in numerous instances, the ambition to carry them out.

And Vice Presidential nominee, J.D. Vance waxed indignant, “You guys in the media, you’re acting like Donald Trump filmed a TV commercial at a grave site,” Vance said. “He was there providing emotional support to a lot of brave Americans who lost loved ones they never should have lost. And there happened to be a camera there, and somebody gave him permission to have that camera there.”  Except Trump was not there to provide any emotional support – that is an impossibility, when one understands that the only emotional support Trump is capable of providing, is to himself.

Moreover, this was just a case of a particular family, in particular, the mother in law of one of the 13 soldiers who died in an explosion set by Al Qaeda during the military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, who is a known supporter of Trump, appeared at Trump’s coronation ceremony in Milwaukee and who was willingly being used by Trump and his campaign to stage a photo op for exclusively political purposes.

Christy Shamblin. a real estate agent in Virginia,  told CNN  that Trump accompanied the family to Section 60 of the graveyard “at our request to spend time with our loved ones.” “There was not a press presence there,” Shamblin continued. “We privately took pictures among ourselves and it was, you know, a more celebratory feeling for that day. Because we want to celebrate our loved ones, and it’s very hard to find ways to do that at, you know, at a cemetery, but they were very respectful.”

When asked by conservative host Michael Smerconish (a former Republican) if it was appropriate for Trump to share footage from the visit in a campaign video on TikTok, Shamblin commented that she herself doesn’t use the social video app but insisted that “there’s no political campaigning that was done at Section 60 that day.” That was more than a bit disingenuous so Smerconish stayed with the topic as Shamblin added, “I just have to go back to, we really just want our kids to be remembered and honored, and it’s unfortunate that we can’t get that, you know, in other ways. So we support President Trump and he’s supported us.”

Shamblin was an invited guest and speaker at the Republican National Convention this year. She spoke about her daughter-in-law Sgt. Nicole Gee, who was among the 13 Americans and 60 Afghans killed in a suicide bombing in Afghanistan in August 2021.  Many of the families of the 13 fallen in Kabul, have been groomed by Trump’s orbit and members of the GOP House and Senate, to resent and hold accountable, President Biden for the incident and falsely assume that he was indifferent to their pain and loss.  Trump, for his part, displays the patented and sickeningly saccharine patronizing platitudes that he also showers the MAGA faithful with:

“They said to me—I’m not surprised, I never even thought of it—’Sir, would it be possible for you to have a picture with us by the tombstone of my son?’ You know, the beautiful white tombstones, marble, beautiful things. Carved, engraved with the names on it? I said, ‘Absolutely.’ “I wasn’t doing it for…I don’t need publicity. I get a lot of publicity.”

Here’s the fly in that whole ointment. Had Trump simply shown up at Shamblin’s invitation and participated quietly in the remembrance, without an entourage, and hadn’t had video and photos choreographed and subsequently used them for his own promotional purposes, nothing would have come of it. But that is not what happened and Ms. Shamblin knows that as well as anyone.

And despite the impression being put forth that everyone in the Gold Star community was on board with Trump’s opportunistic leveraging of Arlington – they weren’t.  The family of Master Sgt. Andrew Marckesano, a Green Beret who died by suicide after serving multiple combat tours and who is buried in Section 60, said according to their conversations with the cemetery, “the Trump campaign staffers did not adhere to the rules that were set in place for this visit. We hope that those visiting this sacred site understand that there were real people who sacrificed for our freedom and that they are honored and respected and treated accordingly,” they said in a statement.

Forbes magazine spoke with Karen Meredith, whose son First Lieutenant Kenneth Ballard was killed in Iraq in 2004 and is buried in Section 60.   She told the publication that the “most important thing” about ceremonies in Section 60, which is largely reserved for soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, is that there is “no politicization involved at all, ever.  You can go, you can take pictures. My family takes plenty of pictures when we go visit my son on the anniversary, but you cannot use it for political purposes,” she said.

The ceremony itself “was fine,” she said, but she took issue with videos from the ceremony being used in the post to social media.  “It makes me sick. I’ve been distraught all week,” she said. Ms. Meredith, also reflected on previous egregious episodes involving Trump, saying, “Going back to former President Trump’s comments about John McCain, was his first shot across the bow with how he feels about the military. Then all of the comments going further, when he attacked Captain Khan’s father and mother when they appeared at the [Democratic National Convention]. When he accused Gold Star families of giving him COVID, when it was the day after the Amy Coney Barrett celebration.”

Adam Kinzinger,  former GOP Congressman and Lieutenant colonel in the Air National Guard,  skewered Trump for recording at the cemetery and for smiling next to soldiers’ graves. “Donald Trump is a disgrace to our nation, and to Arlington National Cemetery,” Kinzinger said. “To politicize that visit without regard for the rules is just par for the course from this sick man and his tiny minions.”

As further proof that the visit to Section 60 was merely the prelude to a calculated campaign gambit, Trump, the next day, attacked Vice President Harris, saying, “She does not respect you, ask the families of the 13 incredible servicemember heroes who died during the surrender of Afghanistan — which was surrendered by Kamala and ‘Sleepy Joe’ — whether or not Kamala Harris cares about our young people and our military.” 

As reported by the Washington Post, the law in question is 32 CFR § 553.32, which states, “The Executive Director shall ensure the sanctity of public and private memorial and ceremonial events. All memorial services and ceremonies within Army National Military Cemeteries, other than official ceremonies, shall be purely memorial in purpose and may be dedicated only to: The memory of all those interred, inurned, or memorialized in Army National Military Cemeteries; The memory of all those who died in the military service of the United States while serving during a particular conflict or while serving in a particular military unit or units; The memory of the individual or individuals to be interred, inurned, or memorialized at the particular site at which the service or ceremony is held.” 

More pointedly, the law addresses the sort of conduct displayed at ANC on that day, “Memorial services and ceremonies at Army National Military Cemeteries will not include partisan political activities” and “Private memorial services may be closed to the media and public as determined by the decedent’s primary next of kin.”

Trump’s lack of judgment and unwillingness to consider consequences results in needless risks to U.S. forces

As it regards him personally, in his calculus, if someone could engineer a means to avoid the risk of service, such as succeeding in exempting themselves from the draft, that would demonstrate the virtue of shrewd self preservation and is of the highest merit.  No matter how much Trump’s handlers might try to discourage him from giving vent to his innate indecency, it seeps out because Trump prides himself in spontaneity and flicking the switch on whatever filter he might have, to the “off” position. And it is set there almost all of the time.

We started off the year of 2020, with Trump ordering a military strike that was an exercise in disregarding the restraint, caution, informed decision making and a commitment to the Constitutional order of Separation of Powers required of his office.  It also demonstrated how Trump’s impulses and his instinct to derive political capital from them, is foremost in his decision making process.

Professor of Law at Yale University and director of the Center for Global Legal Challenges, Oona A. Hathaway, assesses Trump’s order to launch in these terms:

“The drone strike that killed Major General Qassem Soleimani, leader of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, raises many legal issues, but one of the most significant—at least to the American constitutional order—is that President Donald Trump ordered the strike without so much as informing Democratic leadership in Congress, disregarding Congress’s essential role in initiating war.”

According to The Wall Street Journal  on 10 January 2020, Trump reportedly told associates, following the assassination that he was motivated to strike Soleimani for domestic political advantage, particularly to influence Republican senators to vote down his impeachment in his upcoming Senate trial

Trump’s unilateral action, unleashed a scenario that had the potential to drag the United States into a regional conflict or worse.  Within five days of the U.S. assassination of Soleimani, a series of retaliatory missiles were launched from Iran, one of which hit an American airbase, Ayn al Asad, in Iraq that resulted in the injuries of 64 U.S. troops.  It’s telling that Trump and his campaign and surrogates among GOP House and Senate lawmakers, plus certain of the Gold Star families – politicized the tragedy associated with the final withdrawal from Afghanistan, but ignore, entirely, the direct role Trump played in that outcome as well as the life altering injuries sustained as a consequence of his order to strike Qassem Soleimani.

Prior to Utah Senate Republican Mike Lee falling into line and capitulating to the Trump regime, Lee strongly criticized the after event Pentagon briefing, describing it as “absolutely insane” and the “worst briefing on military action he’s seen in his nine years as the Senate.”  “They had to leave after 75 minutes while they’re in the process of telling us that we need to be good little boys and girls and run along and not debate this in public.  I find it insulting and I find it demeaning to the Constitution of the United States,” he said.   

Trump’s indifference, ignorance and apathy about veteran’s healthcare

Trump was quick to deny and dismiss the injuries at Ayn al Asad as “headaches.”  What the injuries actually were, was something else entirely – TBI or “concussive severe enough to cause either loss of consciousness or restriction from full duty due to persistent signs, symptoms, or clinical finding, or impaired brain functions for a period greater than 48 hours from the time of the concussive incident.” Some of those who are injured, have long term trauma. 

In an interview in Davos, Switzerland, Trump denied the facts:

Weijia Jang: Mr. President, a question on Iran: Initially, you said repeatedly to Americans that after Iran retaliated for the Soleimani strike, no Americans were injured. We now know at least 11 U.S. servicemen were airlifted from Iraq.  Can you explain the discrepancy?

Donald Trump: No, I heard that they had headaches, and a couple of other things. But I would say, and I can report it is not very serious—not very serious.

Jang: So you don’t consider a potential traumatic brain injury serious?

Trump: They told me about it numerous days later. You’d have to ask [the] Department of Defense. No, I don’t consider them very serious injuries, relative to other injuries that I’ve seen.

I’ve seen what Iran has done with their roadside bombs to our troops. I’ve seen people with no legs and with no arms. I’ve seen people that were horribly, horribly injured in that area, that war—in fact, many cases put—those bombs put there by Soleimani, who is no longer with us. I consider them to be really bad injuries.

No, I do not consider that to be bad injuries. No.

One can only speculate that possibly at a subconscious level, Trump, being what he is, doesn’t perceive that loss of some or most brain functioning would much affect him personally, so he concludes that losses of limbs and other physical debilitation would, for him, be of much more serious consequence.  Of course, he avoided service altogether to eliminate those risks.

The Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) refused to remain silent in the face of Trump’s false and self serving insistence that it wasn’t a thing, issuing a rebuke in the form of this press release:

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – “In light of today’s announcement from the defense department that 34 U.S. service members suffered traumatic brain injuries as a result of Iran’s retaliatory strike and President Trump’s remarks which minimized these troops’ injuries, the Veterans of Foreign Wars cannot stand idle on this matter. 

TBI is a serious injury and one that cannot be taken lightly. TBI is known to cause depression, memory loss, severe headaches, dizziness and fatigue — all injuries that come with both short and long-term effects. 

The VFW expects an apology from the president to our service men and women for his misguided remarks. And, we ask that he and the White House join with us in our efforts to educate Americans of the dangers TBI has on these heroes as they protect our great nation in these trying times.

Our warriors require our full support more than ever in this challenging environment.”

— William “Doc” Schmitz, VFW National Commander

Everything Commander Schmitz wrote was true and accurate, despite the fact that you’d sooner get a Mermaid to do the splits than pry an apology about anything out of Donald Trump. Donald Trump demands apologies from others for imaginary slights but refuses to issue them when he harms others. 

Trump is willfully and spitefully ignorant about nearly any subject of importance that you could name and the result, obviously, is that his ignorance compounds problems that are already difficult to manage. That extends to the mental health issues that soldiers returning from deployment, experience.  Part of Trump’s inability to relate to the human side of combat related trauma is his shallow conception of the military, informed by fictional stereotypes.

Trump’s fantasyland conception of military service and the human costs involved are the result of his notions about hyper masculine tropes

Trump’s reality seems steeped in the comic book renderings typical of “G.I. Joe”, “Sgt. Rock” and “Nick Fury” and the sort of Hollywood war movie fare of the 40’s through the 60’s (John Wayne, comes to mind)  that was conceived as part fiction, part recruitment propaganda. 

Because of this, Trump believes he grasps the psychological dynamic of the soldier. They are “tough guys” for whom emotional scars and the impact of witnessing a fallen comrade succumb to field injuries are just occupational hazards that one sublimates and “soldiers on.”  The reality of what men and women in uniform suffer from combat duty, is a nearly complete abstraction to him.  Trump’s mind inhabits a solar system of counterfeit masculinity, so despite his constitutional inability to display any evidence of even that which is esteemed in popular culture, he compensates by employing school playground taunts and name calling to approximate it.  That he has a gullible audience for it, only reinforces these tendencies. 

The Man Box: How an Obese, Draft Dodging, Misogynist Became the Masculine Role Model For Men

A look at the underpinnings of Donald Trump's faux masculinity and the defective social paradigms that have built up around the mythology that accompanies it.

It’s the faux and hyper-masculine trope that is especially appealing to certain of those who view military service from the lens of serial draft evasion. This was revealed in his comments at an event sponsored by the Retired American Warriors political action committee that he attended in October 2016.

The subject of the need for more funding and advocacy for programs purposed to deal with and prevent suicides and providing mental health resources for soldiers suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, (PTSD), traumatic brain injury and depression issues was raised, and Trump was invited to weigh in. That was a mistake.

Instead of recognizing this as an opportunity to ask questions and better inform himself, Trump, as is his tendency in such situations, saw it as an opportunity to put his ignorance on full display.  Trump commented that: 

When you talk about the mental health problems — when people come back from war and combat, and they see things that maybe a lot of the folks in this room have seen many times over, and you’re strong and you can handle it. But a lot of people can’t handle it. And they see horror stories. They see events that you couldn’t see in a movie, nobody would believe it.

Zach Iscol, Marine veteran and executive director of the nonprofit Headstrong Project, a charity that facilitates free care for veterans impacted by PTSD, told PBS that Trump’s comments weren’t “just wrong, they’re dangerous. PTSD is basically a rewiring of the brain as the result of trauma or prolonged trauma. That is not a reflection of a person’s strength, character, stamina — any of that.”  David Maulsby, executive director of the Texas-based PTSD Foundation of America, told The Associated Press that when he first was informed of Trump’s comments, he thought they must have been misquoted or taken out of context. But when he saw Trump’s remarks on video, he came away from it with deep concern and disappointment.  

“At the very least, it’s a very poor choice of words. PTSD is basically a rewiring of the brain as the result of trauma or prolonged trauma. That is not a reflection of a person’s strength, character, stamina — any of that,” Maulsby said.

Maulsby explained to U.S. News and World Report, the dilemma posed by Trump’s misunderstanding and false equivalence about the mental health effects of war:               

“PTSD is a serious wound of the mind, and left alone and untreated, it most certainly can be – and too often is – terminal. The stigma of a mental health diagnosis is often a great obstacle to the brave, well-honed warrior. Post-traumatic stress is often misunderstood by the masses and given a false narrative in the media. As a result, the veteran is pushed further and further away from the help he or she could benefit from in a great way.”

National Compass recently posted an essay written by James Hatch, a 52 year old former Navy Seal and veteran of 25 plus years of service, and 150 missions including in Iraq, Bosnia and Afghanistan, about his life changing decision to enroll at Yale University. He’s known to his fellow veterans and friends as “Jimmy Hatch”.

In their review of  the book Hatch wrote about his service and life as a veteran, the Navy Times, summarizes that,:

“Touching the Dragon: And Other Techniques for Surviving Life’s Wars,” released Tuesday by Alfred A. Knopf, refers to a technique Hatch learned in a mental hospital after his wife encountered him at home with a gun in his mouth. The approach involved writing, over and over, about the night that he suffered a career-ending wound searching for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who walked off his post in Afghanistan.  

That written recollection sets the stage for Hatch’s reflection on how commandos fighting abroad cope with returning to civilian life and, as Hatch writes, “shoulder the darkness that accompanies such work.” Hatch endured 18 surgeries to fix skin and bone mangled by an enemy bullet. As he recovered, Hatch struggled with dark thoughts about his missions.

Compounding  Hatch’s PTSD, was the death of his comrade, “Remco” – his military dog, in the catastrophic episode that unfolded during the search for dishonorably discharged Bowe Bergdahl. 

Remco went down in the first hail of bullets and Hatch was next to be hit by a volley of enemy fire, saved from bleeding to death only by the timely application of a tourniquet by a fellow soldier. “The fighters sprayed AK-47 bullets in our direction. Remco was shot in the face, dead, and I stopped a bullet just above my right knee”, Hatch told the Capitol Gazette. 

Is Hatch not “tough” enough for Trump? If Hatch was made of the sort of mettle that exists only in Trump’s fetid hallucinations, would he be resilient enough to man up and move on?  It’s a simple matter for Trump to depreciate men and women that have endured these experiences and brand them as not being “strong”, when he himself has never faced an event in his own life that put his fortitude to the test. Actually, that is not entirely accurate. The COVID-19 pandemic put him to the test and he has failed that test spectacularly.

We have a mental health crisis alongside the healthcare crisis among active and retired military in America and Trump’s neglect has magnified it. The chaos that has reigned during Trump’s presidency that has plagued cabinet agencies across his administration, has also impacted the Veterans Administration.

Despite empty boasts, Trump is not getting the job done for vets

The VA, under Trump, was struggling to deliver a broad range of services to veterans while attempting to manage the impact of 50,000 vacancies—a number larger than the Departments of State, Labor, Education, and Housing and Urban Development combined.

But these vacancies only reflect the metric of staffing needs that occur when employees of the agency retire or leave to seek other employment opportunities.

The number does not take into account the hiring necessary to cover the incremental growth of staffing needed each year to adequately address veteran health needs as the numbers of veterans enrolled in the VA system is projected to increase by 46% by 2028.

Suzanne Gordon and Jasper Craven, writing in The American Prospect, outline some of the factors that are contributing to this situation on Trump’s watch:                                       

Since coming into office, Trump has undermined recruiting and retention efforts by cracking down on labor protections and gutting employee benefits. VA leaders have installed, promoted, and protected incompetent administrators who have violated labor agreements, leveled threats against employees, and instituted punitive management practices.

This has driven many dedicated staff out of the agency entirely, and discouraged potential recruits from filling their positions. These developments, combined with one of the most aggressive federal privatization agendas in American history, have placed the future of the VA in jeopardy.

“This is going to really impact veterans in a negative way,” Peter Kauffmann, a former U.S. Navy officer and current senior adviser to VoteVets.org, told the New Republic. “By freezing hiring, you’re cutting off one path for veterans leaving military service to transition into civilian life.”

And employment isn’t the only need the hiring freeze will leave unmet. At the VA, Kaufmann said, there are “thousands” of open positions that now will not be filled. “Keeping in mind the devastating impact of PTSD on a generation of veterans? If we can’t staff suicide hotlines this may cost the lives of veterans,” he said. “That’s not hyperbolic. That’s actually true.”

Lt. Col. Ted Blickwedel, a Marine Corps veteran and former VA counselor who was among the mental health providers who, as a result of the staffing deficits, was ordered to double the number of appointments and counseling sessions. “They kept pushing the numbers, the numbers, the numbers. We had counselors taking leave, burning out, facing suicidal thoughts, or obtaining their own therapists.”

A directly related issue to that of PTSD, is suicides among veterans returning from military deployments and engagements. It’s also an issue that despite promises to make a serious impact to reduce them, the data indicates anything but. 

A report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), discovered that out of $6.2 million – frankly a paltry sum to begin with, that was designated for a suicide awareness campaign in fiscal 2018, just $57,000 was actually spent.

Additionally, Marine Times reports further that social media content from VA officials on the subject dropped by more than two-thirds from fiscal 2017 to fiscal 2018. Two planned new public service announcements on the topic were delayed, and no public outreach messages were aired on national television or radio for more than a year.

Veterans advocates called the report shocking and disappointing, which, of course, it is.  The GAO also reported that blurred lines of accountability, contributed to ineffective performance in reaching out to the people who need to know how to access resources available to them – servicemen and women at risk.

“By not assigning key leadership responsibilities and clear lines of reporting, VHA’s ability to oversee the suicide prevention media outreach activities was hindered and these outreach activities decreased,” the report authors wrote. “As a result, VHA may not have exposed as many people in the community, such as veterans at risk for suicide, or their families and friends, to its suicide prevention outreach content.”

What tends to mislead the American public about these sorts of issues, is that as a substitute for knuckling down and actually following through on stated intentions, Trump will make all sorts of splashy pronouncements about how he’s going to accomplish delivering unprecedented assistance and resources and then he moves on to something else.

That sort of endless kicking the can down the road, is exemplified not only by his hollow assurances to those who serve active duty and vets, but to an actual plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, which since he took office, has repeatedly claimed would be “out in a couple of weeks” – and which, for several years, he’s been claiming he has a plan and a policy regarding and to this day, he has not revealed. That means he does not.

The Trumps “really don’t care – do you?”

The sad truth is best summed up by the fashion choice and messaging of the First Lady’s wearing of this Zara jacket during her viewing of caged immigrant children separated from their families at a detention center in McAllen, Texas. 

It all adds up to big talk without results.  But what registers in the minds of most people, (other than the people who actually rely on the assistance and whose lives are negatively impacted), is that Trump promised it. 

Kelsey Baker, is a Marine vet with two Middle East deployments.  In a guest essay in The Hill, she describes the gap between the promises and what’s actually delivered:

“Last year, Trump signed an executive order to prevent veteran suicides. The PREVENTS plan is still skin and bones 18 months later. The promise to work with non-profit groups and develop holistic ways of addressing the mental health needs of the men and women who served the country hasn’t materialized, despite Trump’s overselling the whole idea back in June. The administration even touts its “PREVENTS’ accomplishments,’ which seem to be none. At least that’s what the Veteran’s Affairs website says. 

It looks like PREVENTS is just a shell of an idea with no policy infrastructure. Even if we give the president the benefit of the doubt and blame any inaction on the virus that’s diverted everyone’s attention, the proof of his lack of concern for this population is Trump’s other policies, ones that predate the pandemic. 

Much of his budget threatens veterans’ health. Any attempt to slash Medicaid — something that his administration keeps trying to do — forgets that 1.7 million veterans rely on that program for their health care needs.”

The problem is that Trump’s empty promises fit on a bumper sticker, but the explanations about the assistance that never materialized, don’t.  

Looking strictly at the defense budget and the portion of it that is allotted to veteran services, does not tell the full story about how the Trump administration affects the health and well being of veterans. 

Mike Barnhill in a guest editorial in News Tribune, points out how the White House’s proposed cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security would harm millions of veterans:

 

“Critics suggest that while the current budget of 2020 supports 9 million enrolled veterans, more than 9 million also rely on Medicare. Yet the president’s proposed budget cuts Medicare by a half-trillion dollars. Nearly 2 million veterans rely on Medicaid for health care.

The president would cut that program by $900 billion. Hundreds of thousands of “wounded warriors” receive Social Security disability benefits, but the president would cut Social Security by at least $24 billion. Nearly 1.3 million veterans live in households that receive federal nutrition assistance to make sure they can feed their families, yet the president would cut that program by $182 billion.

All told, DJT is proposing more than $1.6 trillion in cuts to programs relied on by millions of veterans. While proposed 2021 budget may create a show of preserving veterans benefits, the reality would cause real harm to millions of veterans and their families.”

 

Trump has a cost cutter inside the Pentagon, who is assembling proposals for cuts in active duty healthcare, which some in the DOD identify as an effort to shift spending toward new generation weapons systems at the expense of the troops.  Pentagon insiders interviewed by Politico, point to the Pentagon’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office, or CAPE, headed by John Whitley, who has been acting director since August 2019, as the architect of the budget cutting proposals. CAPE, Politico notes, conducts analysis and provides advice to the Secretary of Defense on potential cuts to the defense budget.

Whitley identified the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences for closure. That’s a problem. The USUHS is a teaching program that  prepares graduates for the medical corps. Whenever these attempts are reported by journalists, Defense Secretary Esper’s office issues a denial. That’s because the publicity of taking money away from active duty healthcare investment obviously contradicts Trump’s opportunistic messaging. 

Once the smoke clears however, they resume the attempts to take the scalpel to programs that produce vital outcomes for our soldiers. CAPE is now seeking major cuts to USU as part of the $2.2 billion overall reductions. The reductions include eliminating all basic research dollars for combat casualty care, infectious disease and military medicine for USU, as well as shrinking operational funds.

Robert Kadlec, the HHS assistant secretary for emergency and preparedness and a retired Air Force colonel wrote a memo in 2019, warning that the Pentagon’s announced intent to cut the active duty medical force by about 20 percent, or roughly 17,000 personnel, over the next five years, would put active duty forces at risk for poor healthcare outcomes. 

Kadlec wrote that the U.S. civilian health system “is unable to absorb and provide sustained care for large numbers of injured service members returning from combat.”

The Trump administration is playing with veteran funding in the manner of a Three Card Monte game. While touting meager increases in the VA budget, they, at the same time take money away from entitlement programs that millions of veterans rely on.

One example is the Individual Unemployability (UA) program. It’s the VA equivalent to the civilian disability insurance program and the monthly payments to vets, in many instances are the lifeline that stands between them and homelessness.  

John Rowan, national president of Vietnam Veterans of America, said the IU cuts and the entire Trump budget proposal would “completely abandon many of the most severely disabled veterans of the Vietnam generation and could make thousands of elderly veterans homeless.”

“We’re extremely alarmed by this budget proposal, because this is the opposite of what President Trump promised veterans,” Rowan said.

Trump and his media surrogates tout that Trump has been the moving force in reducing Veteran homelessness. but just as Trump conveniently took credit for upward economic trends that gained impetus under President Obama (before Trump drove the economy into a ditch), Trump has pretended that the fortunes of veterans suddenly turned positive under his watch.  However, as you can see from this graph, such is not the case and in fact, the trend lines show the progress stalling under his watch.

Trump and the GOP’s rhetoric about the poor and the social safety net, actually harm veterans.

Trump’s 2021 budget slashes funding for Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) rental assistance programs by $3.5 billion in 2021, providing zero new funds for the Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing Vouchers (HUD-VASH) program.

Trump voters tend to generally view food assistance programs as ‘welfare’ and ‘socialism‘, despite the established fact, supported by data, that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), is utilized more by the backbone of Trump’s political base – whites without a college degree – than any other demographic group.

Out of the top seven states in utilization of SNAP – 4 of the 7 are red states, Mississippi, West Virginia, Louisiana and Mitch McConnell’s home state, Tennessee.

Thirteen out of the top 15 states found to be most dependent on the federal government, voted for President Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Ten out of the 15 least dependent states voted for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Even given that reality, Trump and the GOP continue to stigmatize recipients because it tends to have the effect of racial dog whistling.  A possibly unintended consequence of the politicization of programs designed to lift the working poor out of poverty, is that Trump’s cuts are putting poor veterans in jeopardy. Any punitive effort by Republicans to cut assistance to those in poverty – a majority of which are actually the working poor, has the collateral effect of harming veterans. According to the House Committee on the Budget, approximately 1.2 million veterans, or nearly 7 percent of the veteran population, had incomes below the federal poverty level in 2018. 

A study from Feeding America highlights that approximately 20 percent of households receiving help from the charitable food assistance network (which includes food banks, pantries, and shelters) include a veteran. 

“Right now, we have an increase of the amount of veterans, reservists and National Guard members that are dying by suicide. This is not the time to take one of the few benefits that was widely utilized by the veteran community away from them,” said James Fitzgerald, deputy director of the NYC Veterans Alliance.

Fitzgerald who himself, is a wounded war vet injured in Afghanistan in 2010, notes that it can take years for the Veterans Administration to process disability benefits for vets – while in the meantime, their only lifeline is public assistance programs like SNAP. “Taking into account some of the barriers that are already stopping our servicemen and women from getting the benefits and services — like adequate employment, housing, things of that nature — we have to take into account are we making it easier or harder for our veterans to access these benefits?”, Fitzgerald stated.

Cuts to Social Security Take Benefits Away From Wounded Warriors

The House Budget Committee also outlines the effect of Trump and the GOP’s designs on Social Security:       

President Trump’s budget cuts Social Security benefits by at least $24 billion over 10 years – despite the President’s claims he would leave Social Security alone. This cut reflects $11 billion of the President’s vague $63 billion disability “reform” to restructure and reduce federal disability benefits – including Social Security’s Disability Insurance (DI) program – along with payment integrity measures affecting programs administered by the Social Security Administration. 

The DI benefits provide coverage for severely disabled workers and their dependents, including veterans. The budget cut to DI benefits could financially harm wounded warriors—approximately 621,000 military veterans received these benefits in 2016.

Acting Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought testified before the House Budget Committee to answer House members questions about Trump’s proposed (2019) budget in which the administration would round down, not up, the cost-of-living adjustments given to veterans.

In response, publications like Military Times noted that the idea “has been decried by veterans groups in the past as unfairly using their earned benefits to balance the budget.”

Vought defended the reductions in cost of living allocations, saying, “We don’t think [the cuts] will have any adverse impact” when asked about the attack on veterans by Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA).

“No adverse impact? No adverse impact to decreased cost of living adjustments?” Moulton asked incredulously. “That’s correct,” Vought replied. Moulton pushed back. “I think you should speak to some veterans, Mr. Vought,” the congressman replied, ending the exchange.

Project 2025 threatens Veterans and Active Duty 

Cutting benefits for disabled veterans

The granular outline for what policy initiatives would be implemented by Executive Order by a second term Donald Trump, is one that, for reasons that are obvious, once it is unpacked, Trump falsely denies knowledge of, Project 2025.  Project 2025 is sweeping in regard to the subject matter it deals with and is also toxic, when it is unpacked and explained to Americans who would be subjected to its provisions. The devil in the devilish details is disgraceful and the effects would be cruel and an abject betrayal.  Project 2025, poses particular risks to the health and well being of Veterans and by extension, Active duty members of the United States armed forces.  The following are among  the most concerning provisions it contains:

Project 2025 would make  it harder for veterans to obtain disability benefits by reducing the scope of pre-existing medical conditions that service members could submit in their applications to qualify for disabled status. Not only would veterans currently eligible for a disability rating but that have not yet presented a claims application be denied benefits entirely, but those with existing claims and who have been granted a disability rating could see their benefits from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and other safety net benefits slashed. Project 2025 also pushes to dehumanize the process through automated systems, which has the potential of increasing denials. The bottom line is that it would make the system more challenging to navigate and result in further neglect of needy veterans.

Cutting health coverage for veterans and reducing the quality of care

While  the Veterans Health Administration provides health coverage  to many veterans, approximately 1 in 10,  younger than 65 are enrolled in Medicaid for health care coverage, with 2 in 5 relying on Medicaid exclusively. Project 2025 includes plans to cap Medicaid payments to states regardless of their actual spending needs for health and long-term care. Equally appalling is the recommendation to allow states  to deny coverage of particular services, including long-term services and substitute less proven and inadequate alternates.   According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the proposed funding caps could force states to restrict eligibility for certain types of services and supports currently provided through Medicaid.  Medicaid funding caps could result in under resourced states denying coverage of particular benefits, especially costly services such as long-term care.

A separate Project 2025 proposal to force VA hospitals to “increase the number of patients seen each day to equal the number seen by DoD medical facilities” would significantly undermine the quality of care.

Exacerbating veteran homelessness

Homelessness is a widespread social scar on communities across America.  A segment and a not insignificant one among the homeless are veterans.  Back in 2008, a Supportive Housing program was initiated jointly by the U.S. departments of Housing and Urban Development and Veterans Affairs. As a result, 81,400 veterans receive support to obtain rental housing, and Congress additionally appropriated funds to help a remaining 35,000 homeless veterans obtain housing, with the objective of ending veteran homelessness. An important component of this program, according to experts on veteran assistance, is a policy strategy called Housing First, which prioritizes getting homeless veterans off the streets and getting a roof over their head, so that other vital aspects of care, such as drug treatment and mental health care can be accessed and provided.  The concept is a fix rather than a band aid.  Project 2025 proposes to end the successful Housing First strategy, which could result in thousands of veterans losing housing and could imperil their financial security.

Making it easier for scammers to prey on veterans

Project 2025 proposes to abolish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which plays a critical role in protecting veterans from financial fraud and scams. Since the agency began operating in 2011, CFPB reports service members have submitted more than 400,000 complaints relating to possible violations of consumer protections or military financial rules. “In total, the CFPB’s enforcement actions in 42 cases involving harm to servicemembers and veterans has delivered $183 million in redress to victims,” the agency states. Without this critical protection, those who have served the United States would have little recourse for redressing financial fraud or scams.

Veterans put their lives on the line to protect all Americans and defend the very freedoms Project 2025 seeks to destroy. Project 2025 embodies an existential threat to their security and prosperity.

If you dearly loved vets and active duty soldiers, would you turn the loan sharks loose on them?

Although Trump has said, “Our vets are being mistreated… and it’s not going to happen anymore”, we learned in 2018, that veterans have been thrown to the swamp dwellers and even the Pentagon was not alerted beforehand.  The Trump administration has virtually pulled the rug out from under the consumer protection regulations that were providing an additional layer of protection for active duty soldiers and vets.

Until November, 2018, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), had an office that was pro-actively monitoring the practices of various segments of the finance industry to which military personnel and their families were most vulnerable.  Rachel Gittleman with ConsumerFed.org, explains the pullback by the bureau:

Tragically, the CFPB is now claiming that it does not have the statutory authority to ensure MLA compliance through these preventative supervisory audits. The legal analysis released today by CFA’s Chris Peterson, CFA’s Director of Financial Services and a former CFPB attorney, shows this claim to be categorically false.   The analysis shows that the CFPB has supervisory authority under its enabling statute, the Consumer Financial Protection Act (CFPA), as well as the MLA itself, for the following reasons:

• Violations of the MLA render service members’ loans void, thereby triggering concurrent violations of federal consumer financial laws under CFPB’s supervisory jurisdiction.
• Federal law directs the CFPB to “obtain information” about “compliance systems or procedures” of large banks and payday lenders covered by the MLA.
• Under the CFPA, the CFPB can cover MLA violations within its exams for the purpose of “detecting and assessing risks” to consumers.
• The MLA requires the CFPB to enforce the MLA the same way that the CFPB enforces the Truth in Lending Act and expressly directs the CFPB to use “any other applicable authorities available” to protect our men and women in uniform.

These are fellow Americans, many of whom are already facing and trying to manage precarious financial circumstances.  The CFPB was a program initiated by Trump’s predecessor,  Barack Obama, to be a watchdog on the “payday loan industry” and protect veterans and active duty warriors from being taken to the cleaners by this exploitative segment of the retail financial market.  These lenders of last resort, who were put on a short leash by the CFPB under Obama and the leash was cut by Trump and his former Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney.  Sounds like yet another program Trump spitefully felt obligated to destroy because it had Obama’s imprint on it. 

Eric Levitz, writing in the Daily Intelligencer, points out the hypocrisy of director Mike Mulvaney’s positioning that his agency lacks the legal authority to conduct such supervision under the MLA – (Military Lending Act):

In reality, the administration is pretending that it has a legal obligation to suspend routine enforcement because it knows it has no politically viable argument for doing so voluntarily. Helping payday lenders rip off garden-variety working-poor Americans is one thing; helping them fleece “our troops” is another.

“For some inexplicable reason, the Trump Administration is directing the CFPB to overlook illegal, usurious lending to our troops within supervisory exams,” said Peterson with the Consumer Federation of America. “America’s military families deserve the protection from predatory lending offered by the Military Lending Act—not to be abandoned by the CFPB.”

The president has repeatedly confirmed that this position is wholly cynical, by adopting extraordinarily expansive interpretations of executive authority when it suits him. According to the Trump administration, the White House lacks the power to proactively enforce financial regulations, but can unilaterally declare Canada’s steel industry a “national security threat,” and then impose tariffs on it without congressional consent.

And this breach of faith with what are essentially working class people with above average on the job risks, is an inside job. Trump and his minions had to decide who was going to get a haircut and the guys and gals that already are being made chumps with a 2.4 percent raise, are the designated losers. The winners? The Industrial Banking Complex and its lending lobby.

It’s definitely neglect, but it’s anything but benign

Trump frequently harps about his claim that he cares much more about taking care of military – active duty and retirees, than his predecessor, Barack Obama. Yet the contradiction is that in fact, Trump and his administration are chipping away at benefits that Obama maintained for these recipients.  One program, the TRICARE Retiree Dental Program (TRDP) has insured an estimated 5.4 million military retirees and their families with an affordable dental benefits plan for decades.

But Trump and the Republican party saw the existing program as an opportunity to outsource and privatize these services and replaced TDRP, with a program called Federal Employees Dental and Vision Insurance Benefits Program, or FEDVIP – which has resulted in increased costs for retirees.  Added expenses like this might seem trivial on their face, but remember that the vets who rely on these services the most, are on fixed incomes and every penny is spoken for. 

A general misunderstanding exists regarding the role of Medicare and Medicaid in the lives of veterans. Roughly half of veterans (9.3 million), in the VA health care system also have some inter-sectional involvement in Medicare. For one thing, veterans who are enrolled in TRICARE for Life, a health insurance program administered by the Department of Defense, are required to enroll in Medicare Parts A and B.  If Trump is re-elected, he’ll be adamant about cutting half a trillion out of Medicare, because his entire second term will effectively be a lame duck term – a term in which he will have virtually zero concern for the optics of creating more suffering. 

All one needs to do is to look at the attempts made to cut Veteran program benefits that Trump has already made, that were thwarted because the optics were horrible at the time, such as his attempt to slash a benefit  termed “individual unemployability” (IU) and that is paid out (as part of the Department of Veterans Affairs disability compensation program) to military veterans who are unable to find work because they have a relatively high level of disability sustained during service in the armed forces.

In Trump’s 2018 budget plan, disabled veterans would have seen reduced annual disability benefits – resulting in a drop from around $35,686.32 to $13,002.24 under Trump’s proposal to cut IU for disabled veterans who were old enough to receive Social Security payments.

AMVETS warned in 2017 that it was “deeply concerned” by the planned cuts, which they said would affect “perhaps the most vulnerable segment of the veterans population.” Detailing their objections, they responded that:         

The argument for this cut is that these senior citizens would be eligible for Social Security retirement benefits at age 65. That argument is flawed because these veterans have largely been disabled, out of the work force and not paying into Social Security for many years before reaching 65. Many have been severely disabled as a result of their military service and unable to work since the day of their discharge.

After the stuff hit the fan from veterans’ advocacy groups, the administration pulled back the proposal along with a bloody stump which was well deserved. And Medicaid is another aid program that is in the cross hairs of Trump and the GOP. Approximately 1.8 million veterans are situationally reliant on Medicaid.

In a letter to the editor of the Jefferson City (MO) News Tribune, reader Mike Barnhill, summarized an opinion piece published in a May 2020 edition of the American Legion magazine:

Critics suggest that while the current budget of 2020 supports 9 million enrolled veterans, more than 9 million also rely on Medicare. Yet the president’s proposed budget cuts Medicare by a half-trillion dollars. Nearly 2 million veterans rely on Medicaid for health care. The president would cut that program by $900 billion.

Hundreds of thousands of “wounded warriors” receive Social Security disability benefits, but the president would cut Social Security by at least $24 billion. Nearly 1.3 million veterans live in households that receive federal nutrition assistance to make sure they can feed their families, yet the president would cut that program by $182 billion.

All told, DJT is proposing more than $1.6 trillion in cuts to programs relied on by millions of veterans. While proposed 2021 budget may create a show of preserving veterans benefits, the reality would cause real harm to millions of veterans and their families.

The Center For American Progress details the overall economic reality of the veterans in America that Trump claims to love so intensely and the impact of specific program cuts such as job training:

Despite the common belief to the contrary, veteran-specific benefits and services fall short of meeting the needs of veterans and their families, many of whom struggle to meet basic needs even with Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) supports.

More than 3.9 million veterans live paycheck to paycheck—meaning their family incomes are less than twice the federal poverty level, or less than $50,000 for a family of four.  Yet new CAP analysis reveals that if Trump’s proposed cuts to key job training programs were applied directly to program participation, more than 340,000 veterans could lose access to critical employment services that help boost wages.

Bill Pascrell Jr. in an opinion post in USA Today spotlights the dichotomy between Trump’s rhetoric and what he is actually presiding over:

“Despite Trump’s avowed affection, his administration has repeatedly attempted to slash benefits for veterans. Under current law, veterans are eligible to receive generous disability compensation the day after being discharged or released from the hospital or rehabilitation. Importantly, when disabilities worsen, veterans have wide leeway to apply for increased financial support.

In each of its last three Veterans Affairs Department budgets, the administration has tried to narrow veterans’ ability to apply for disability benefits. Under these proposals, eligibility would be limited only to cases of injury occurring during combat or training, lessening the time veterans have to obtain disability assistance.”

Another item that reveals Robert Wilkie’s true colors, is found in a congressional hearing in 2019.  The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), a union that includes among its ranks, a large component of Veterans’ Administration employees. They were in attendance at a House Veterans Affairs Committee hearing in late February of last year.

One of the central subjects in question, was the inexcusable fact that the VA – over two years into Trump’s term, was still appallingly behind in filling thousands of vacancies that make the difference in the level of care provided to vets.

What they witnessed was this:

He went on to ask whether Wilkie was concerned about the vacancies and what steps he has taken to try to fill these positions. Wilkie replied, “I will be honest with you. Yes, I am concerned. I would not be honest with you if I told you that my focus would be filling 49,000 vacancies.”

You have to ask the question – if Wilkie claims that he is “concerned”, why would getting seriously to work on filling these 49,000 essential jobs not be a priority? Because let’s be serious, the neglect in replacing these vacancies has led to the closing of internal, PTSD, ENT and clinics all across the system and the nation.

The AFGE thinks it knows the answer. They say the department has had difficulty recruiting employees because the Trump administration and their allies in Congress have repeatedly attacked employees’ workplace rights and voice at work.  Last year, they report, the VA attacked Title 38 employees – nurses, doctors, and other medical staff – by removing their ‘official time’ – the hours they use to make sure employees have the resources and training to do their work and to combat workplace discrimination and retaliation.

So, one could reasonably conclude that there is a politically based anti-organized labor campaign inserting itself into the hiring equation in order to exclude another layer of accountability that is essential at the front lines of patient care at the V.A.

The numbers game to camouflage the neglect

The caveat with all of the above, is that if you Google something like “Trump’ Veteran Budget”, what you will find will be a large number of articles in which the writers have simply taken White House press releases that, on their face, appear to indicate that Trump has “increased funding” for one or another veteran benefit or category. 

The reality is that such is not the case, but rather that the administration and Republicans in Congress have merely effected some clever slight of hand tricks with the budget, by taking money out of one bucket and pouring some or all of it into another. The authors of these reports, regurgitating Trump administration talking points, are too lazy or disinterested – or perhaps dishonest, to dig into the details to find the devil in them. This is what makes the House Committee on the Budget and non-government veterans’ advocacy organizations so valuable in terms of cutting through the smoke and mirrors.

To be equitable, such hocus pocus as is practiced by the Trump White House, the relative cabinet agencies and the Republican party, is something that goes on with both parties depending on the budget categories in question and what message to their voters is most politically opportune and it is standard operating procedure for as far back in the modern political era you wish to look.

Ronald Reagan said, regarding the monitoring of arms reduction agreements and treaties, “Trust, but verify.”  In this case, a modification of that might be in order – “Never trust, but always verify.”

As we have demonstrated here, Trump’s sentiments of concern and commitment to the active and retired in the ranks is more in word than in deed.  But before we move to other issues, one more item illustrates this in bold relief and that is Trump’s willingness to place his political objectives above the needs of those who serve. 

Borrowing from G.I. Joe (and Jane) to pay for “The Wall.”  

One of the cardinal themes of Trump’s 2016 election campaign and something he bloviated on at each and every one of his rallies, was a firm promise to build a “big”, “great, great”, “beautiful” wall that the Mexican government would pay for. Trump was explicit that it would be a concrete wall. The Trump / GOP platform specified it “must cover the entirety of the southern border.”

The wall was directly equated in Trump’s speeches and consequently in the minds of his voters, with border security. The simplistic but false equivalence was that the proposed wall would be not just the most effective means of securing the border between the United States in Mexico, but that it would be entirely effective.  The issues of migration and smuggling would be solved once and for all, case closed, was the picture Trump was verbally projecting to his support base. It was of no consequence to those who cheered on Trump’s solemn vow, that: 

1. Building a “wall” along most of the Southern border is a physical, legal and engineering impossibility. As Bloomberg’s Mark Niquette outlines, “Most of the border land without any wall is in Texas along the Rio Grande River, and much of that is privately owned, meaning the federal government would need to purchase or seize it to build barriers. Land along the border cuts through cities as well as rural farmland, desert, arroyos, craggy mountains and wildlife reserves.”

2. There was less than zero chance that Mexico would agree to fund this “wall.” In fact, in a private conversation, with then President of Mexico Enrique Pena, Trump acknowledged to Pena that he knew Pena’s government had no intention of funding the wall, but requested that Pena not raise the subject publicly.

The discussion had a very similar flavor to the conversations that Trump had with journalist Bob Woodward, in which Trump admitted knowing that COVID-19 was highly contagious and deadly, but opted not to level with the American people about the extent of the risk. 

3. Physical barriers as measures to prevent the flow of humans and contraband, no matter the construction methods employed, are proven to be largely ineffective for that purpose and extremely inefficient from a cost / benefit analysis. They are far from “impenetrable” as Trump, like the sleazy carnival barker he is, claimed in his sales pitch to voters who already had their wallets open. 

So – what’s the point here?  The point is this – Trump opted to pursue the Quixotic quest of the “impenetrable” wall, knowing that Mexico would not be paying for it, but he had a Plan B and a Plan C.  Plan B was to go full court press and try to intimidate Congress into budgeting money for the boondoggle.  That didn’t happen, but there was still Plan C – declare a false “national emergency” and – yup, you guessed correctly – siphon money that had been designated for the military. The estimates range from $3.5 billion to upwards of $10 billion. 

That move did not go unnoticed or unopposed. There was widespread objections from military and veterans’ advocacy groups. Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) filed an amicus brief in two cases related to the Trump’s border wall: Sierra Club v. Trump and California v. Trump.

“IAVA is speaking out on behalf of service members and their families,” CEO Jeremy Butler said in a statement. “Regardless whether you support or oppose the border wall, it should not come at the expense of our service members and their families.”  The money Trump attempted to divert, was discovered to be budget allocations already designated for projects intended to reduce environmental risks to active duty service members and their families and improve safety at military bases and facilities.

The Hill describes some of the key projects that would have been defunded:

The Pentagon on Sept. 4 released a list of military construction projects that would see some of their funding go toward the wall, including schools and hurricane-destroyed bases.

Among the gutted tasks is a $16 million undertaking needed to revamp a rail holding area at an ammunition plant in Indiana, where service members “currently work in violation of Army safety standards while handling and storing explosives.”

Another is a $37 million project for a specialized Air Force facility in Maryland meant for unloading hazardous cargo and a range for bomb-defusing training.

When I say “would have been defunded”, I am referring to a series of court decisions that have derailed Trump’s attempt to dip into vital, Congressionally designated funds for the military that Trump professes that he is over the moon over. 

The families of the active duty faced the consequences of Trump’s attempt at confiscation as well. Trump’s commandeering of the already planned for money would have led to nine canceled school projects in the United States and overseas.  The existing schools, IAVA found, “all suffer from varied states of disrepair and overcrowding,” such as at the middle school at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland., “which has a waitlist of 115 children, suffers from mold and pest infestations as well as sewage backups and heating and ventilation failures.”

Bechtel Elementary School in Germany is described as “in failing condition” and “does not meet U.S. fire suppression standards and needs extensive infrastructure work ranging from electrical branch circuits to lighting to plumbing and piping.”  IAVA summed up the the breach of faith displayed by Trump in this contingency:

“Service members are used to discomfort. … But they should never be asked to work in unnecessarily unsafe or harmful conditions, or to wait even longer for basic facilities that are already long overdue. That is the result of the funding diversions, and this Court should bear that result in mind as it considers the issues before it.”

Trump – the pusillanimous pugilist that punches with his mouth

Viciousness is Trump’s calling card whenever anyone refrains from kissing his ring. That’s reflected in his shocking response to the Khan family – Khizr Khan and his wife, Ghazala. The couple’s son, Captain Humayun Khan, died in service to America when killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq, 14 years ago.

Trump, who was offended by Mr. Khan’s suggestion, during the 2016 Democratic National Convention that Trump should actually read the U.S. Constitution, was triggered to respond by belittling Ms. Ghazala for not speaking.  He quipped that she might have “not been allowed to have anything to say” – the implication being that she was subservient to her husband due to cultural reasons. A slur against Muslim immigrants.

Mr. Khan responds:

“Everything, every word is wrong.  These men and women, my sons and daughters, signed up for something more than this president can comprehend. This is beyond his comprehension, patriotism, sacrifice. When John McCain sacrificed so much to serve this country, this president ran away. This president ran away from serving.”

In a bizarre retort to the Khan’s mention of sacrifice, Trump countered that he, too, had made sacrifices because he “created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs, built great structures.” Trump also asked aloud in an interview at the time, “Who wrote that? Did Hillary’s script writers write it?”

But it was the follow up comment that was puzzling. “I think I’ve made a lot of sacrifices. I work very, very hard.” What did that have to do with?  What sacrifices?  The next time Trump ever sacrifices anything, even a moment in which he marshals the self-discipline to rein in his impulse to say something crass, vulgar and stupid – will be the first time.  If that doesn’t betray the fact that Trump sees the sacrifices of men and women in combat as trivialities, what more do you need to hear?

How about a Trump administration official at the Department of Health and Human Services, Jon Cordova and Trump’s crony pardon recipient, Roger Stone, circulating a baseless conspiracy theory that Khizr Khan is a “Muslim Brotherhood agent”?  The Daily Beast recounts that:

Stone took to Twitter to write: “Mr. Khan more than an aggrieved father of a Muslim son—he’s Muslim Brotherhood agent helping Hillary.” Stone then linked to a conspiracy theory website claiming Khan’s son was killed not as a hero in Iraq, but as a Muslim on an “Islamist mission” killed before he could complete it. 

Trump, of course, let the abhorrent accusation stand.  In response to Trump with reference to the Khan incident, 17 Gold Star families authored a letter to Trump, care of Vote Vets.org:

When you question a mother’s pain, by implying that her religion, not her grief, kept her from addressing an arena of people, you are attacking us. When you say your job building buildings is akin to our sacrifice, you are attacking our sacrifice.

House Member Max Rose (D-NY 11th Dist.), Army Captain and Afghanistan War veteran made the unforgivable error of voting his conscience and principles when joining his colleagues in impeaching Donald Trump. Doing so, in Trump’s estimation, invalidates his service. 

“He’s a fraud. Don’t forget, he said, I will never impeach the president, bah, bah, bah. And Staten Island is Trump country. You know, he campaigned on fighting for the president, right? ‘He’s gonna fight.’ He didn’t do anything, he’s just the opposite. He’s a puppet for Pelosi.

He shouldn’t represent the people of Staten Island, who I love. And that’s Trump country. That’s really Trump country. I know everything about Staten Island. I’ve spent a lot of time in Tysens Park and Grymes Hill and all the different locations. I love Staten Island. But he shouldn’t represent the people of Staten Island, he’s too weak.”

It’s both amusing and appalling, to hear Trump calling anyone else ‘weak’, much less a ‘puppet’. Notice also, that as president, his computation centers around whether a particular GPS coordinate is devoted to him. If so, then it’s “Trump Country” and he loves, loves, loves, them. If not, he’s not their president other than to inflict his authority and consequentially, his spite upon them. 

If Trump sent you a greeting card, there would be postage due

An episode that David Frum recounts in his recent column in the Atlantic, was one involving the Baldridge family whose son, Sergeant Dillon Baldridge and two other soldiers were killed in Afghanistan in June of 2017.  During a call Trump placed to the Baldridges, Dillon’s father Chris, happened to mention that the Veterans’ Administration had a case of the slows regarding getting survivor benefits out.  Trump spontaneously replied, “I’m going to write you a check out of my personal account for $25,000.”

The promised check, of course, never arrived. Three months later, Baldridge’s father related this interaction to The Washington Post.

“I could not believe he was saying that, and I wish I had it recorded because the man did say this. He said, ‘No other president has ever done something like this,’ but he said, ‘I’m going to do it.’”  

A report of a similar nature from the New York Daily News, indicates that the shallowness of Trump’s sentiments about military casualties, is far from the exception. Relatives of at least three sailors killed when the USS John S. McCain crashed in the summer of 2017 informed reporters they didn’t receive condolence letters until nearly two months later.

At a fundraiser in Des Moines, Iowa, on Jan. 28, Trump announced to the crowd, “We just cracked $6 million! Right? $6 million.”  He told those in attendance – “I don’t want to be called a politician. All talk, no action – I refuse to be called a politician. Donald Trump gave $1 million. Okay?”

Except he didn’t.

Trump was sued by the New York State Attorney General Barbara Underwood, for channeling money donated to his Donald J. Trump Foundation to blatant electioneering, using veterans’ charities as a political foil and unlawful campaign expenditures by a 501(c) (3) non-profit organization.  The foundation itself, was identified and red flagged, as a pass through tax avoidance scheme, posing as a charity.

Although it appears by most accounts that the bulk of the money raised at the campaign rally in Des Moines, Iowa – the ostensibly military themed event staged because Trump had a tantrum about having to face Fox News’ Megyn Kelly (or Ted Cruz) at another debate – eventually was turned over to charity; the campaign put Trump’s name on the presentation checks, rendering the impression that Trump himself, contributed to the funds raised.

Trump only put his own money in the collection plate 4 months later on May 23, when the Washington Post’s David Farenholt wrote a report questioning the disbursement of funds contributed mostly by Trump’s wealthy friends in the investment community. That Wa Po and its pesky journalists can really be a thorn in a kleptomaniac’s side.

However, Trump – not content in attempting to stiff one charitable organization, just couldn’t break the habit – this time another veteran’s charity and a host of other worthy non profits.  While New York A.G. Underwood had no option but to place Trump’s phony philanthropy on probation, her successor, A.G. Leticia James, had no option but to put the scam operation out of business permanently. 

Here’s the text of her official notice from December of 2019:  

Donald J. Trump Pays Court-Ordered $2 Million For Illegally Using Trump Foundation Funds 

Is that the same Donald Trump Jr., who was snowflaking about all the “deals” he and his siblings have had to forego due to dad becoming president? Oh the humanity!

Trump respects military service so much that he took extraordinary pains to avoid it

Something we also take into consideration that implies Trump’s innermost attitude about military service being foolish, is our analysis of the motives behind his having avoided the draft.

Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, testified in a Congressional (House Oversight Committee) hearing that:

Mr. Trump claimed (his medical deferment) was because of a bone spur, but when I asked for medical records, he gave me none and said there was no surgery.  He told me not to answer the specific questions by reporters but rather offer simply the fact that he received a medical deferment. “He finished the conversation with the following comment: ‘You think I’m stupid, I wasn’t going to Vietnam.’”

In our analysis, our background investigation will place a strong degree of significance on Trump’s serial draft evasion in terms of its relevance to his authentic views on the subject and value of military service.

“You have somebody who thinks it’s all right to have somebody go in his place into a deadly war and is willing to pretend to be disabled to do it. That is an assault on the honor of this country,”, South Bend, Indiana Mayor and erstwhile Democrat presidential primary contender Pete Buttigieg told ABC’s This Week.  Mayor Buttigieg served in the Navy Reserve as an intelligence officer, spending six months in Afghanistan.

Former presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg says reports of President Trump denigrating US service member fits a “pattern of behavior.”

“I think a lot of us who served are processing the emotions of being, on one hand, shocked, and on the other hand, not surprised.” pic.twitter.com/Vs7BNPdMp3

— The Lead CNN (@TheLeadCNN) September 4, 2020

Trump’s disrespect for Mayor Buttigieg’s service came in the form of mocking the pronunciation of Buttigieg’s name. “I think it was boot-edge-edge, boot-edge-edge. They said ‘think of it as boot, and then edge, edge’ because nobody can pronounce this guy’s name.”  Except anyone with reasonably competent neural functioning, which leaves Mr. Trump out in the cold. 

Trump’s successful attempts to evade the draft during the height of the Vietnam conflict, adds substance to the suspicion that he inherently views serving in the military – especially in combat roles, as foolish and lends further credence to the likelihood that his observations about John McCain, were not a one off, nor were his sentiments about McCain, exclusive to McCain.

Remember the quote – “I like guys who weren’t captured.”  Notice that “guys” is plural, not singular. So, prisoners of war, as a class, are people who Trump harbors disrespect and disdain for. McCain was simply a high profile representative sample of these men, in terms of Trump’s general view.  The medical deferment related to the mythological “bone spurs”, was Trump’s last ditch effort to avoid call up, after 4 previous student deferments. There is a clear duopoly of cowardice coupled with an estimation on Trump’s part, that either recruitment or enlistment is only for people who don’t have anything else going in their lives, i.e., “losers.”

Amazingly, National Compass Senior Contributing editor, Tony Wyman seems to have anticipated that Trump would eventually be discovered to regard veterans like himself as “suckers.”  On January 22, 2018, (at the time Trump was maneuvering to shut the government down over border wall funding), Wyman wrote: 

“Those of us who served, who volunteered to be the point of the spear, who loved our country enough to risk injury or worse in her service, don’t appreciate you hiding behind our uniforms now when you aren’t able to negotiate a simple deal with the Democrats, a mission that ought to be easy for the self-proclaimed master of negotiation to complete.

And, don’t get us wrong, it isn’t that you didn’t serve that bothers us – hell, only .5% of Americans ever put on the uniform – it is that you avoided serving when needed by concocting a phony excuse that gets under our skin.

If you truly loved the troops, your country, and the American people, sore heels wouldn’t have kept you out of uniform. And everyone who has ever worn a uniform knows this.

If you didn’t want to serve, so be it. If you had a way around it, using your wealth and connections, then that is as much a black mark against our system that allows the spoiled children of our wealthy and unscrupulous families to set themselves apart from the common man, from the – what do you call them – the forgotten man, as it is against you.

But don’t try to pretend you have some special affinity for us. You don’t. Your history says you have nothing but contempt for us, that you think we were suckers for having served when stable geniuses like you found a way to use the system to get out of serving.”

 

“I don’t get it – what was in it for them?”

Another incident we looked at that bolsters the likelihood of Trump habitually devaluing the sacrifice of men and women in our armed services, is the conversation he reportedly had with his former Chief of Staff, John Kelly during a visit to Arlington National Cemetary in 2017.

“I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” Trump asked retired Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly, as he stood before Kelly’s son –  1st Lt. Robert Kelly’s grave.

Kelly had said of his son’s death while on patrol in Afghanistan in 2010, “Robert was killed in action protecting our country, its people, and its values from a terrible and relentless enemy.”  What Trump said to Kelly, was the verbal equivalent of relieving himself on the man’s grave marker.

Trump’s question to Kelly, about what was “in it” for such as Lieutenant Kelly, is a red flag to us in our investigation as to motive. He could not have made it more clear that he measures everything with the yardstick of is there something in it for him. If he concludes that there isn’t, he has no interest in it whatsoever. 

A president who asks a Gold Star parent, while standing on the hallowed ground of @ArlingtonNatl‘s #Section60, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” is unsuited for the Constitutional role of “commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.” https://t.co/FP1pKGBj4e

— Phillip Carter (@Carter_PE) September 3, 2020

Along similar lines, we are looking at reports of Trump having expressed disdain for wounded vets.  General Mark Milley told The Atlantic that when he invited a wounded, wheelchair-bound soldier to sing “God Bless America” at Milley’s welcoming ceremony as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, Trump admonished him. “Why do you bring people like that here?” Trump asked, according to Milley. “No one wants to see that, the wounded.”

In Jennifer Griffin’s (Fox News) discussions with officials who heard these comments, she was told that he did not want “wounded guys” at the grandiose July 4th vanity parade because “it’s not a good look.”

This indicates that in Trump’s conception of patriotic themed events, it’s not really about honoring vets, but rather it’s about production values.

What @realDonaldTrump will never understand is that our Wounded Warriors earned their wounds. They are our badges of honor from our service to the country we love.

If he can’t bear to witness those who have sacrificed for our nation, perhaps he should avert his cowardly eyes. https://t.co/wQ8mCLgWei

— Tammy Duckworth (@SenDuckworth) September 4, 2020

The Aisne-Marne no show and the excuses with more holes than Swiss cheese

We also, when we are evaluating statements that a subject, in this case Trump, has reportedly made, become more suspicious when we learn that his alibi is fictitious. If the alibi doesn’t stand up, then something is being covered up.  Trump claims that the reason he declined to visit the Aisne-Marne memorials is that bad weather prohibited it and that his security detail advised against it.

“They had a rainstorm the likes of which you’ve rarely seen. The fog was so great, it was as dense as I’ve ever seen and i almost knew that you couldn’t use the helicopter…the helicopter would have been very quick, but the helicopter could never fly in that weather.”

We found that to be a story, to put it mildly, that cannot be affirmed by the facts.  Others, and myself, when not speaking journalistically – call it Horseshit. Trump’s assertion is transparently a dissimulation. How so? It’s pretty straight forward. “(Their attendance) has been canceled due to scheduling and logistical difficulties caused by the weather,” the White House said in a statement at the time.

Was there anything happening on the weather front in that region of France at the time? Something like a fierce storm, a torrential downpour or Typhoon like winds? No, only a “steady light rain and light cloud cover.” The cemetery is not a drive of several hours. It is only a couple of clicks over 50 miles east of Paris.

A notable contingent of world leaders in attendance for the occasion managed to negotiate the minor atmospheric conditions and pay their respects to the dead in other nearby localities without calamity.  They would include Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who paid tribute to his own countries’ troops felled at Vimy Ridge, in northeastern France – 118 miles away – more than twice the distance that Trump would have traveled to Aisne Marne.

Also attending memorials that day, were French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Compiegne.

What actually was Trump doing when decency and respect dictated he should have represented our country at this poignant and solemn gathering?  He was schmoozing on the phone, tweeting and watching television. Those were his priorities. That and the risk of his hair getting wet.

Millions died to protect the free world during WWI, and Trump can’t be bothered to honor their memories. Instead, he’s chosen to sit in a hotel and live-tweet Fox News.

Just imagine if President Obama sat out a Veterans Day ceremony because of the rain… https://t.co/3WDdUfeSbK

— Rep. Don Beyer (@RepDonBeyer) November 10, 2018

Audacity and seeming inability to comprehend the yawning chasm between the text of some of the prepared speeches he recites and his own lack of character, are a hallmark of the dissonance that is Trump.

At the one memorial in Suresnes that he did consent to attend, he regurgitated this tragically ironic line:

“Through rain, hail, snow, mud, poisonous gas, bullets and mortar they held the line and pushed onward to victory.”

Trump himself, nixed the Aisne Marne excursion on the basis of moderate inclemency. The fecklessness was not lost on Nicholas Soames, a British member of Parliament and grandson of World War II era former Prime Minister Winston Churchill.  Of the fallen heroes as contrasted to Trump, Soames noted on Twitter:

“They died with their face to the foe and that pathetic inadequate @realDonaldTrump couldn’t even defy the weather to pay his respects to the Fallen.”

It’s disgraceful that in contrast to Trump’s crass disregard for the sacrifices, other national leaders, allies of the United States, have a no compromise understanding and appreciation of those sacrifices.  Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau commented at the memorial he attended:

“As we sit here in the rain, thinking how uncomfortable we must be these minutes as our suits get wet and our hair gets wet and our shoes get wet, I think it’s all the more fitting that we remember on that day, in Dieppe, the rain wasn’t rain, it was bullets.” 

Also part of the widespread indignation against Trump missing in action status that day, and representative of the grievance, was this from another Vietnam combat veteran you might have heard of, former Senator and Secretary of State, John Kerry:

President @realDonaldTrump a no-show because of raindrops? Those veterans the president didn’t bother to honor fought in the rain, in the mud, in the snow – & many died in trenches for the cause of freedom. Rain didn’t stop them & it shouldn’t have stopped an American president.

— John Kerry (@JohnKerry) November 11, 2018

The story about the presidential helicopter not being able to navigate the short flight to Aisne Marne, does not comport to reality either.

Suppose you are of the inclination to give Trump the benefit of the doubt about the nonsense regarding he couldn’t withstand the complications of an hour and 15 minute or so drive to Aisne-Marne on account of you know – the killer bees, the murderous hornets, the need for frequent pee stops and uh, the inconvenience to pedestrians in the outskirts of Paris. That would put Trump in the clear, because he already told you that Marine One couldn’t fly in light drizzle and patchy atmospherics, right?

Wrong.

The presidential helicopter, “Marine One”, referred to by pilots as the “Flying Beast”,  is a custom equipped Sikorsky VH3 Sea King.  These birds, aside from hauling Trump’s sorry butt from one spot to another on a regional basis, perform such cream puff assignments as, brace yourself – search-and-rescue, minesweeping, transport, medical evacuations, disaster relief efforts, anti-shipping, medevac, plane guard, and airborne early warning operations.

Keep in mind also, that these POTUS transports at the president’s disposal, are not piloted by green rookies just out of flight school. Nope – these guys. the two pilots and crew chief can make the Flying Beast do pretty much anything you could ask for, in far more challenging meteorological conditions than were present on November 10, 2018.  And the helicopter is classified as an all-weather amphibious helicopter. What does that mean in practical terms? It means that the helicopter and its pilots, with state of the art navigational instruments (Day/night/all-weather operations, self-contained navigation system, GPS, TCAS, survivability systems) can fly thorough all kinds of nasty poop without breaking a sweat.

Military.com informs us that the Flying Beast is even equipped with standard military anti-missile countermeasures such as flares to counter heat-seeking missiles and chaff to counter radar-guided missiles, as well as AN/ALQ-144A infrared countermeasures.  This ride is safer than a Volvo. Not that Trump would ever be seen in a Volvo. Wouldn’t play well in Roberts County, Texas, you know.

Ben Rhodes, President Obama’s Deputy National Security Adviser for strategic communications dismissed the administration’s version of Trump’s avoidance of the appearance.  “I helped plan all of President Obama’s trips for 8 years,” he wrote on Twitter. “There is always a rain option. Always.”

NBC News reported at the time that François Heisbourg, a political analyst and former campaign adviser to French President Emmanuel Macron, posted a photograph on Twitter of someone bicycling in Paris and wrote that the inclemency that deterred Trump from the ceremony was – “Nothing a cyclist can’t handle, let alone a presidential helo.” And he was right on the money, as we will see in a moment.

We realize that Trump supporters may look at this event and its particulars and reflexively conclude that it’s all a deluxe nothingburger – as they categorize everything that exposes him as a liar and a scoundrel. But Trump obviously doesn’t see it as a nothingburger.  If he did, he and his communications team would not have gone to such great lengths to concoct the phony alternative account on this event that we’ve debunked. They did so, because the truth blows ginormous holes in Trump’s put on that he is madly in love with American men and women in uniform. The only person he would be madly in love with in a uniform, would be himself, if he was wearing one. 

Trump’s defenders have a skin in the game

There is some indication that Trump did not anticipate the firestorm of criticism and naturally, instead of holding himself accountable, lashed out at the top aides involved in the logistics and political ramifications of the events on Trump’s itinerary.  Reports indicate that Trump felt blindsided by the reactions to his non appearance at Aisne- Marne and that he hadn’t been advised of the political risks. As a consequence, Trump blamed Chief of Staff Kelly and General Kelly’s Deputy Zach Fuentes, saying that their failure to red flag his decision, was “fucking him.”

It’s worth noting, in the context of the types of people who Trump’s aides have enlisted to contradict Jeffrey Goldberg’s reporting, that Fuentes is among the former and current officials that have defended Trump against the allegations.  Zach Fuentes issued a statement that, “Honestly, do you think General Kelly would have stood by and let ANYONE call fallen Marines losers?” 

But Pro Publica explains how Fuentes has a skin in the game, whereby his personal financial interests would be in jeopardy should he acknowledge what other administration officials witnessed in France and that worse yet, Fuentes has exploited the government’s need to supply reliable PPE (Personal Protection Equipment) to the most vulnerable minority communities:

A former White House aide won a $3 million federal contract to supply respirator masks to Navajo Nation hospitals in New Mexico and Arizona 11 days after he created a company to sell personal protective equipment in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Zach Fuentes, Trump’s former deputy chief of staff, secured the deal with the Indian Health Service with limited competitive bidding and no prior federal contracting experience.

The IHS told ProPublica it has found that 247,000 of the masks delivered by Fuentes’ company — at a cost of roughly $800,000 — may be unsuitable for medical use. An additional 130,400, worth about $422,000, are not the type specified in the procurement data, the agency said.

Trump trotted out a dozen or so administration officials to deny the details in the Atlantic report, but we view Trump’s character witnesses in the administration as unqualified by dint of personal interests, to vouchsafe for Trump’s patriotism and “love for the military.”  It was a rushed and clumsy effort, not taking into account that most all of them would have not been witnesses of Trump’s vile comments to begin with. Not that such a detail would have any impact on the intended audience in any event. 

Think hack mouthpieces like Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who jumped straight from the Trump clown bus right onto the conservative television and radio blabosphere, and former Deputy White House Press Secretary, Hogan Gidley, likewise.  They are all noted as having been reliable conveyor belts for Trump’s lies on a day to day basis, during their stint at the White House and yet the presumption is that we are to take their word now, uncritically.  And former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows? Well, this is a guy with his head so far up the Agent Orange arse, that he once claimed Trump is,

“the only president who actually went after a terrorist and took him out”

That’s a lie that we will examine in more detail in a later section of the book.  But these people, the shameless purveyors of Trump alibis and alternate facts laden elaborations, have jobs and lifestyles to think about and we know that they collectively have a track record of misleading or outright lying to the American people concerning all variety of matters. Matters that a recitation of the actual truth concerning, would put their well paid positions in jeopardy. Trump doesn’t keep people around who don’t display unflagging, sycophantic loyalty.

Another study in compromised integrity  is Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie, who told CNN reporter Dana Bash:

“I see the proof in the pudding. The proof in the pudding is our military is stronger, and our Veterans Affairs Department is in a place that it has never been. This is the renaissance, and it’s all because of one man.”

The problem, among many, with Wilkie’s testimony on behalf of Trump, is that his comment is a gross misrepresentation, euphemistically speaking and an outright, shameless lie, not euphemistically speaking.  If there is “one man” who can be credited with being a persistent champion for the needs and welfare of veterans, it is not Donald Trump.  It is instead the very man, John McCain, whose sacrifice for his country, Donald Trump has callously trashed.

Another problem with Wilkie, is his affinity for the Confederacy. Wilkie is on record in 1995 in a Capitol hill speech to the United Daughters of the Confederacy as describing Confederate President Jefferson Davis as a “martyr to ‘The Lost Cause‘ and an “exceptional man in an exceptional age.”

Today marks the 187th anniversary of the birth of Jefferson Davis; planter, soldier, statesman, President of the Confederate States of America, martyr to ‘The Lost Cause,’ and finally the gray-clad phoenix — an exceptional man in an exceptional age.

Wilkie also spoke about Robert E. Lee to the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) at a pro-Confederate event in 2009, with glowing admiration:

We always come back to Lee. There he sits; frozen in time, the iron gray general on the iron gray horse—the inscrutable patrician, born commander of men. What else can be said about a soldier so smothered by the worship that his very soil seems lost to posterity? The answer is plenty. It is past time to resurrect what informed Robert E. Lee the Man and why understanding his culture is essential to preserving freedom today.

A former member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Wilkie also called abolitionists who opposed slavery “radical”, “mendacious”, and “enemies of liberty”, and stated that the Confederate “cause was honorable.”  There was a time, perhaps a narrow band of linear time, where defining opponents of slavery as enemies of liberty, would have been considered pretzel logic and blatantly White Supremacist rhetoric.  Not now.  MAGA has reinvigorated such sentiment and provides cover for it. 

So, in Wilkie’s estimation, opposing slavery makes someone an enemy of liberty? The Confederate cause  – maintaining and perpetuating the existence of slavery was “honorable”?  No wonder Wilkie is such an admirer of Trump’s Orwellian contradictions in rhetoric.  Wilkie is also the subject of an investigation by the Inspector General of the Veterans Administration, on charges of having ordered staffers to dig up damaging information to discredit a congressional staffer who said she was sexually assaulted in a VA hospital.  In sum, in order to give credibility to the chorus of denials from the White House, we have to put stock in Trump’s reputation of hiring the “best people.”   

However, more notable than the host of vermin that stepped forward at Trump’s insistence, (that’s presuming they didn’t pop up like Jack-in-the-Boxes to volunteer) – were the people who haven’t appeared in Trump’s defense. People whose assurances would carry a lot more heft. 

David Frum (still a registered Republican), writing in the Atlantic, describes it thus:

“Amid the clamor, it’s easy to overlook those who are not yelling, those who are keeping silent. Where are the senior officers of the United States armed forces, serving and retired—the men and women who worked most closely on military affairs with President Trump? Has any one of them stepped forward to say, “That’s not the man I know”?

How many wounded warriors have stepped forward to attest to Trump’s care and concern for them? How many Gold Star families have stepped forward on Trump’s behalf? How many service families?

The silence is resounding. And when such voices do speak, they typically describe a president utterly lacking in empathy to grieving families, wholly uncomprehending of sacrifice and suffering.”

We’re more inclined to view with credibility, the assessment made by former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, himself a Vietnam vet, saying of Trump, during an interview with Martha Raddatz on ABC’s “This Week”, “He’s on the record with saying things himself over the past few years. And that makes the credibility of this article (Goldberg’s) and those anonymous comments more and more credible.”

Hagel, might have had in mind Trump’s malicious remarks against people like Gold Star parents, Khizr and Ghazala Khan in 2016 or his callous comments to the widow of fallen soldier La David Johnson that “he knew what he signed up for.”  Of course, we know that Donald Trump, knows what he himself, didn’t sign up for and instead, fraudulently avoided with the assistance of his daddy.

Come on, man – can you maybe just keep your story straight?

We have a problem with stories that don’t jive. Pick one and go with it. Otherwise we begin to recall the line in the classic poem, “Marmion” by Walter Scott about the proverbial “tangled web” of deceit.

Here, as we noted, the original explanation for declining to attend the event at Aisne Marne, was ostensibly weather related. But in a subsequent absence note from his mommy (long deceased), Trump explained the no show was accountable to his motorcade possibly resulting in traffic congestion in Paris.  There’s more to this, however. Our antenna is up when Trump professes to “love the military”, but abstains from not one but two significant opportunities to honor fallen troops in a span of one week.

Trump also skipped out on the Arlington National Cemetery event on Veterans Day (the 12th). Trump, in trying to excuse his absence from Aisne Marne, in an interview with Fox News Sunday’s Chris Wallace, injects a statement that is a patent lie about the circumstance:

As you know I just left the day before the American Cemetery and I probably think — and that was one where it was raining as hard as you can imagine and I made a speech at the American Cemetery the day before. And I probably, you know, in retrospect, I should have. And I did last year, and I will virtually every year. But we had come in very late at night and I had just left, literally, the American Cemetery in Paris. And I really probably assumed that was fine and I was extremely busy because of affairs of state — doing other things.

Problem here is that it was not “raining as hard as you can imagine.” We’ve all been in storms where it rains nearly as much or more than we can possibly imagine and this was not it – not even close.  Re the Arlington no show Trump said. “I was extremely busy on calls for the country, we did a lot of calling as you know.” However, in contradiction to his claim, a look at the president’s official scheduling calendar, shows minimal activity for September 1 through the 8th, but no scheduled activity for the 12th – Veterans Day.

Another lie we caught Trump in is a claim that he “called home, I spoke to my wife and I said, ‘I hate this. I came here to go to that ceremony.’ And to the one that was the following day, which I did go to. I said I feel terribly. And that was the end of it.”

The sand in the vaseline on this one is that Melania was actually with Trump in Paris, so unless there is another “Melania” that we are not aware of that was receiving his call in the White House, Trump once again stepped in it and got it all over his shoes.

Either this is an impostor in this photo of Trump’s visit to the Elysee Palace or it is the real Melania, and Trump placed a call to the First Lady impersonator at 1600 Pennsylvania. The simple interpretation is that Trump gilded the lily, just as he gilds everything else at his residences and hotel properties.  But what is the motivation behind this lying? It’s clearly that he sees political vulnerability at being perceived as having disrespected the memory of those Americans buried at the cemetery.

It’s more than that really. Trump can’t afford to lend credence to the narrative that he fakes orgasms about “our great, great, military” and his fetish for the National Anthem, the flag and all the rest that neo-Fascists cloak themselves in for the purpose of obscuring their true motives.

Trump’s nostalgia for the “Lost Cause”

Some might ask “which flag?” After all – Trump has had photos taken wrapping his arms around the flag, but then alternately, he bemoans efforts to eradicate the public display of not only Confederate traitors to the country, but the flag they carried with them into battle against the United States. 

At the inception of the movement to rid state capitols as well as federal property of Jim Crow era tributes to traitors and slave owners, Trump pushed back, describing them as “beautiful statues and monuments.”  In a series of tweets, Trump lamented:  

“Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments. You can’t change history, but you can learn from it.  Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson – who’s next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish! Also the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!”

 

“The Beauty”?  Monuments to traitors and saboteurs and enemies of the Constitution?  It begs the question, why would they ever need to be “comparably replaced”? In June of this year, Trump, in opposition to the effort to remove Confederate memorials, implored his audience at the COVID-19 super spreader event in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to “save that beautiful heritage of ours.”  Notably, it is not just a heritage, but a “beautiful one.”  The “beautiful heritage” was the legacy of slavery and an unlawful secession that resulted in the greatest loss of human life in our nation’s history. 

Robert E. Lee’s descendants don’t even support the public preservation of his monuments. One of them, Karen Finney, writing in the Washington Post, told readers that Lee’s legacy doesn’t “deserve to be honored or defended.”  William Jackson Christian and Warren Edmund Christian, great – great Grandsons of Stonewall Jackson, while acknowledging that Jackson was not altogether a terrible person, maintain in their essay in Slate:

“But we cannot ignore his decision to own slaves, his decision to go to war for the Confederacy, and, ultimately, the fact that he was a white man fighting on the side of white supremacy. While we are not ashamed of our great great grandfather, we are ashamed to benefit from white supremacy while our black family and friends suffer. We are ashamed of the monument.

The people who descended on Charlottesville last weekend were there to make a naked show of force for white supremacy. We are writing to say that we understand justice very differently from our grandfather’s grandfather, and we wish to make it clear his statue does not represent us.  They are overt symbols of racism and white supremacy, and the time is long overdue for them to depart from public display.”

Even Senator Lindsey Graham, who typically finds any number of excuses and explanations for Trump’s conduct, could not back Trump on the Charlottesville, Virginia episode, in which White Supremacists staged a rally “Unite The Right” – to protest the removal of the Robert E. Lee monument.  This tragic incident resulted in a counter-protester, Heather Heyer, being run down in a vehicular homicide by James Alex Fields Jr., one of the members of the Neo-Nazi assemblage that day.

Trump could not be persuaded to unequivocally condemn the racist groups, saying only that there were “fine people on both sides.”  Graham responded with a statement in which he said Trump’s handling of the Charlottesville violence was being praised by “some of the most racist and hate-filled individuals and groups in our country. For the sake of our Nation — as our President — please fix this. History is watching us all.”

“If the Republicans don’t toughen up and get smart and get strong and protect our heritage and protect our country, I think they’re going to have a very tough election.” 

                                                                                                                                                 -Donald Trump

Of Trump’s appeal to preserve these visible symbols of racial subjugation, Michael Steele, the former Republican National Committee chair who was the first black man to hold that position, observes, “It appeals to people who believe that America is America because it’s white. So you talk about erasing ‘our heritage’ — you hear those words, what does that say to you? No one in this country talks like that except for racists.”

The following month, Trump tweeted, “This is a battle to save the Heritage, History and Greatness of our country.”  There’s no whitewashing this. Trump’s meaning is unmistakable. His sentiments and affections lay with the traitors and the seditionists dedicated to the defense of the slavery system.

What does Trump’s nostalgia about segregation, Confederate war icons and the plantation era South, have to do with the question of what his estimation of the U.S. military actually is?  There are two other aspects to this. One is that Trump has also vehemently opposed removing the names of Confederate generals from U.S. military bases across the country.

Every branch of America’s armed forces is integrated and consists of a diverse mix of races and ethnicities. According to the latest data (2018), African-American women make up 29.22 percent of the U.S. military and African-American men account for 16.82 percent.  Insisting that military bases continue to be named for Confederate generals, is particularly an affront to men and women, whose lineage is only seven generations removed from the status and institution of chattel slavery.

Trump believes and has stated, and there is no reason to believe he is wrong on this, that maintaining the statues, the base names and the flag that represents treachery, is part and parcel of the “culture war” between his voters and Democrats.  And Trump’s insistence on defending the display of the Confederate flag, not surprisingly, places him out of step with, “the generals”, including the head of U.S. Forces Korea, Army General Robert Abrams. Abrams banned the Confederate flag on all USFK installations last month, saying in a memo, “The Confederate Battle Flag does not represent the values of U.S. Forces assigned to serve in the Republic of Korea.”

It’s not just me who is making this observation, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,  U.S. Army general Mark Milley, told attendees in a House Armed Services Committee hearing that.

“The American Civil War was fought and it was an act of rebellion, it was an act of treason at the time, against the Union, against the Stars and Stripes, against the U.S. Constitution, and those officers turned their backs on their oaths.”

Milley went further, raising the argument that continuing to honor rebel generals, is a divisive message to servicemen and women of color. 

“For those young soldiers that go onto a base — a Fort Hood, a Fort Bragg or a fort wherever named after a Confederate general — they can be reminded that that general fought for the institution of slavery that may have enslaved one of their ancestors.”

Mick Mulroy, the former deputy assistant secretary of defense for then Secretary of Defense James Mattis and a retired Marine, said American soldiers “should serve on bases that are named after the heroes that have sacrificed and fought for our country, not against it” and suggested that they should be re-named after Medal of Honor recipients.

Not Trump, however. The Senate passed a resolution calling for the renaming of the bases named for Confederate heroes and Trump quickly promised to veto it if it crossed his desk. He’s that invested in the legacy of slave owners and traitors.

Makes sense – given that it hasn’t been lost on anyone not in regular attendance at his worship services, otherwise referred to by the media as campaign rallies, that Trump, aka “Agent Orange”,  is the present day embodiment of Confederate treachery.

Beware when the subject makes contradictory statements

Another cardinal tenet of discerning whether a subject might be lying, is if their original story either changes materially or another is substituted for it at a later time. This is a warning sign that the subject is purposefully attempting to deceive you.

Our senses are at this point, in as contradictory a manner as to defy description, both keen and at the same time, are dulled by the infinite barrage of exaggerations, gross misstatements, deceptions, falsehoods and totally naked lies Trump has told just in the last half a decade – the year and a half he was campaigning for the GOP presidential nomination and the over three and a half years he has occupied the White House.

The last time the New York Times gave an updated count that I have been able to find, (July) – had the tally of lies and deceptions at well over 20,000. That is staggering, even for Trump.  I have yet to see an example of Trump’s instincts for lying and the intent and motive behind it, that better illustrates his modus operandi, than the deposition Trump had to submit to when he tried to push forward a lawsuit against writer Tony O’Brien, in a trumped up defamation case. 

The attorney questioning Trump in this exchange, was what Trump might describe as the toughest in a tray of tough cookies, Mary Jo White – the first woman to be the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. White is a hot knife and Trump is a room temperature stick of butter.

Mary Jo White: Now, Mr. Trump, have you always been completely truthful in your public statements about your net worth of properties?

Donald Trump: I try.

White: Have you ever not been truthful?

Trump: My net worth fluctuates, and it goes up and down with markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings, but I try.

White: Let me just understand that a little bit. Let’s talk about net worth for a second. You said that the net worth goes up and down based upon your own feelings?

Trump: Yes, even my own feelings, as to where the world is, where the world is going, and that can change rapidly from day to day. Then you have a September 11th, and you don’t feel so good about yourself and you don’t feel so good about the world and you don’t feel so good about New York City. Then you have a year later, and the city is as hot as a pistol. Even months after that it was a different feeling.

So yeah, even my own feelings affect my value to myself.

White: When you publicly state what you’re worth, what do you base that number on?

Trump: I would say it’s my general attitude at the time that the question may be asked. And as I say, it varies.

 

There it was – Trump admitting that his claims of net worth, were based on nothing more or less than whim or flights of fancy, not hard, objective data.  So, whenever you hear Trump speaking on any subject, other than his own self esteem, it’s the safest of safe bets, that he is, as they say, peeing on your leg and trying to convince you it’s raining.  It may seem to some readers that the topic of Trump’s compulsive lying is tangential to the topic at hand, but if you will pardon an unintentional pun – that could not be farther from the truth. Nothing is more cardinal to our thesis.

If Trump has a reputation for lying about a wide range of subjects, there is no conceivable basis for presuming that Trump’s profession of ardor for active duty and retired men and women in uniform is genuine or an exception to the general rule.  In fact, as we have seen and will continue to see, there are an abundance of reasons to believe Trump is displaying false emotions.  There is no category of topic or subject matter that Trump has not lied and lied copiously regarding.

Name it – his involvement with Russia, their meddling in our elections, his dealings with North Korean leader Kim Jong un, the trade war with China that has sent so many of our domestic industries into a tailspin, his engagement with Ukraine president Zelensky and the COVID-19 pandemic. Examine any of those and dozens more, and you will see a tell tale trail of liar’s droppings anywhere Trump has been. 

Trump’s “Liar signifiers”

There’s value in study the behaviors and tactics of habitual liars, if only as a point of situational awareness and self-defense – materially, physically and emotionally. Social psychologists that have studied the behavior of such individuals, say that along with observing body language, a lot can be discerned by paying close attention to the use of particular types of phrases.  Specifically, they are phrases that belie the inner sense of the person employing them, that they themselves are aware they are saying something dishonest and that they believe sprinkling into or prefacing their comments with subliminal reassurances, they will be more successful in deceiving the listener.

We should advise here that pretty much everyone is prone to use these in a casual context.  What we are pointing to is the frequency and consistency of the use of terms that over emphasize trustworthiness. Things like “to tell the truth”, or quite frankly “to be honest with you.”  Trump, has his own go-to options and as we warned, he uses them with great frequency and repetition.

He’ll preface a statement with “frankly”, tell the listener to “believe me”, cloak his misstatements with “lots of people are telling me”, “many people are saying” –  and his other signature phrase, “that much I can tell you” – a device intended to convey to the hearer that he is dispensing inside knowledge and bringing them, at least in part, into his confidence. Oh, and one we heard today, “to be perfectly honest with you”, which of course means that the speaker has a deliberate gradation, depending on the situation, of how truthful he will be or more to the point, what degree of dishonesty he will resort to. 

What the hell is that supposed to mean? That the only time he’s being “perfectly honest”, is when he alerts you to the fact by tagging that on? Well, we know that is not the case.

Social Scientist Bella DePaulo, analyzed a large group of Trump’s public statements, fortunately beginning in 2017, before they had piled up higher than Mount Everest, and organized them according to the known categories. According to DePaulo: 

Nearly two-thirds of Trump’s lies (65 percent) were self-serving. Examples included: “They’re big tax cuts — the biggest cuts in the history of our country, actually” and, about the people who came to see him on a presidential visit to Vietnam last month: “They were really lined up in the streets by the tens of thousands.”

Trump, as you well know, issues these sorts of falsehoods on a minute to minute basis. The remarks will always feature a boastful lead in, along the lines of , “no one in history has ever …”, “I’ve done more for (fill in the blank) than anyone …”, “what we have done for (fill in the blank) …. is unprecedented”, “never before in history, has anyone  …”, “nobody loves (fill in the blank)… more than I do” and numerous other variations on these themes. 

Ms. DePaulo elaborates further on the mechanics and the nature of a great deal of Trump’s malicious lying tirades:

The most stunning way Trump’s lies differed from our participants’, though, was in their cruelty. An astonishing 50 percent of Trump’s lies were hurtful or disparaging. For example, he proclaimed that John Brennan, James Clapper and James Comey, all career intelligence or law enforcement officials, were “political hacks.”

He said that “the Sloppy Michael Moore Show on Broadway was a TOTAL BOMB and was forced to close.” He insisted that other “countries, they don’t put their finest in the lottery system. They put people probably in many cases that they don’t want.”

And he claimed that “Ralph Northam, who is running for Governor of Virginia, is fighting for the violent MS-13 killer gangs & sanctuary cities.”

Trump’s conduct unbecoming is not merely vigorous hyperbole. It carries with it extreme risk of inciting violence and insurrection. Governor Northam of Virginia and Gretchen Whitmer, Governor of Michigan, were both targeted by tweets from Trump, calling for both states to be “liberated” – code for an armed assault on the government. And it did inspire plans among a militia group to do just that, with some elements involving the kidnapping and murder of elected officials including both governors. 

FBI says Virginia governor was a potential target for militia kidnapping plot

An FBI agent testified during a hearing about the alleged plot to kidnap Michigan’s governor.

Greg Weiner, writing in the Times, references a pivotal figure in the history of tactical and strategic political lying as, at the very least, a subliminal influence on the sociopathy of Trump.

“Five centuries ago, Niccolò Machiavelli called this the “effectual truth”: Claims that are true, he wrote in “The Prince,” are so – not because they correspond to objective reality but because they are politically “useful.” 

The extent of Trump’s seemingly uncontrollable impulse to lie about all manner of things, from the serious and of critical importance, all the way down to things that are so trivial as to be beyond explanation as to motive –  is so voluminous that James P. Pfiffner, Professor Emeritus in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, has actually broken Trump’s lies into distinct categories in his research paper titled, “The Lies of Donald Trump: A Taxonomy”.

In summary, Pfiffner outlines them as follows:

1) trivial lies,

2) exaggerations and self aggrandizing lies;

3) lies to deceive the public; and

4) egregious lies.

Trump, in his role as president, is at the pinnacle of the command structure of the military. We reflected on this and it occurred to us that Trump’s pattern of pathological lying, constitutes a repudiation of standards of conduct required by anyone in the armed forces command structure.  Although Trump himself is not legally obligated to tell the truth, (other than technically within the context of testimony under oath), it is entirely a reasonable expectation that he not lie about matters of critical importance, as a matter of ethics and how that relates to fitness to command. 

What are the standards of conduct that members of the armed forces are constricted by specific to circumstances where they might lie to those under their authority?  One segment of the UCMJ that lays out specifically the prohibition against false statements, either verbal or written, is Article 107, UCMJ – False Official Statements:

Were an officer in any branch of the the U.S. armed forces, to develop and exemplify a record of deception of the magnitude of Trump’s, they would long ago been court-marshaled and sentenced to a term in military prison. They certainly would not be contemplating a promotion – in Trump’s case, to a second term as Commander-in- Chief of the largest and most powerful military in the world.  

It’s important to note at this point, that in our investigative interviews with him, Trump vehemently maintains that everyone other than himself and his subordinates within the administration are lying about his statements and sentiments. He has even invoked (yet another) conspiracy theory:

President Trump: “I’m not saying the military’s in love with me. The soldiers are. The top people in the Pentagon probably aren’t because they want to do nothing but fight wars so all of those companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy.” pic.twitter.com/XhxKV9lMku

— TV News HQ (@TVNewsHQ) September 7, 2020

This is a bookend to various other statements Trump has made that are disparaging to military leadership, both prior to becoming president and since. One example is this from November 5, 2016. Pay particular attention to the comments at 2:26 into these remarks at a campaign rally:

How Trump’s discordant rhetoric alienates the rank and puts enlisted, officers and command staff at odds

One facet of Trump’s pushback against the implication of his scurrilous dismissals of soldiers who gave their lives in battle, is that yes, he has a low estimation of the leadership ranks in the military, but that has nothing to do with his professed admiration for the rank and file. The false equivalence that is central to his defense, doesn’t withstand the sniff test.

We all know that Trump’s gambit of dividing the American populace has demoralized the nation and pushes even the boundaries that touch upon inciting a national civil war – some of which are bearing poisonous fruit. As dangerous as that is, it is equally a national security risk, if not more so, for him to take this device of pitting the enlisted ranks and the leaders against one another with incendiary rhetoric.

“If Americans stop believing in the system of institutions, then what is left but chaos and who can bring order out of chaos: only Trump.  It is the theme of every autocrat who ever seized power or tried to hold onto it.”

– Admiral William McRaven

Here is the argument with respect to that. The armed forces were conceived of and intended by the founders of America as an institution that is insulated from political controversy and correspondingly immune from partisan political activity.  The wisdom of that design has never been seriously questioned until Trump arrived on the national scene and assumed the role of Commander-in-Chief. Trump has violated centuries of established norms. To illustrate this, I ask that you indulge me for a moment while I outline something that is somewhat pedantic, but is foundational to the argument.

The United States military is organized in a fundamental manner that centers around status and position of rank and chain of command. It’s not something we as a nation invented. It’s based on established models reaching all the way back to the Roman Empire. The structure of the chain of command and the imperative to be responsive and subordinate to those in authority at the next level up, is in the DNA.  Don’t take it from me, take it from Mike Harris, an Iraq War vet who served as Second Lieutenant and later as a Major:

“In the military, the chain of command is drummed into us from the moment we join. Basic trainees are taught to identify every officer and Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO) in their chain of command, from the President on down through their platoon sergeant. This chain simplifies giving and taking orders. The primary duty of each Soldier is to follow the orders of those in his chain of command, as they have what is known as “command authority,” that is, authority derived from a command position.”

What is the risk to the cohesiveness and the effective and orderly function of executing a mission when a man who is unfit to occupy the role of Commander-in-Chief, acts in a manner that promotes discord, dissension and alienation between leadership and those who are subject to their authority?  It is a recipe for calamity. It may not result immediately in an egregious event, but the effect over time is corrosive.  How does Trump’s conduct contribute to an atmosphere of division in the military?  Let’s examine some of that. To begin with, Trump has verbally attacked military leaders.

Then Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis and then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arranged a briefing for Donald Trump in the first year of his term, in an attempt to bring him up to speed on national security and foreign policy. It was a well intentioned mistake.

The Washington Post outlined the dynamics:

Trump by now, was in one of his rages. He was so angry that he wasn’t taking many breaths. All morning, he had been coarse and cavalier, but the next several things he bellowed went beyond that description. They stunned nearly everyone in the room, and some vowed that they would never repeat them. Indeed, they have not been reported until now.

“I wouldn’t go to war with you people,” Trump told the assembled brass.  Addressing the room, the commander-in-chief barked, “You’re a bunch of dopes and babies.”

Trump’s War against the Warriors

Trump has made a disturbing series of disgraceful statements about former members of his administration that served in the capacity of directing affairs of the armed forces and our national security and intelligence apparatus. All of these men are distinguished veterans.

All of them were praised by Trump when first appointed to their post. Let’s start with former Secretary of Defense James Mattis.  When Mattis originally came on board, Trump said this of him at one of his worship services, disguised as a MAGA rally in Ohio:

“I don’t want to tell you to this, I refuse to tell you, don’t let it outside of this room. I will not tell you that one of our great great generals, don’t let it outside, we are going to appoint Mad Dog Mattis as our secretary of defense and we’re not announcing it until Monday so don’t tell it to anybody.”

That was before it became clear that Mattis was not going to rubber stamp Trump’s agenda, such as in Trump’s uninformed and impulsive move to suddenly remove troops from Northern Syria, thus betraying our stalwart allies in that region, the Syrian Kurds.

Blowback: Trump’s Precipitous (And Traitorous) Immature And Premature Syrian Withdrawal

In firm opposition to that order, Mattis issued his resignation in December of 2018. After Mattis resigned, Trump initially downplayed the break between the two:

General Jim Mattis will be retiring, with distinction, at the end of February, after having served my Administration as Secretary of Defense for the past two years. During Jim’s tenure, tremendous progress has been made, especially with respect to the purchase of new fighting….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 20, 2018

And that was followed shortly by this:

….equipment. General Mattis was a great help to me in getting allies and other countries to pay their share of military obligations. A new Secretary of Defense will be named shortly. I greatly thank Jim for his service!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 20, 2018

But in June, Trump changed his tune and began (falsely) claiming that he fired the General:

Probably the only thing Barack Obama & I have in common is that we both had the honor of firing Jim Mattis, the world’s most overrated General. I asked for his letter of resignation, & felt great about it. His nickname was “Chaos”, which I didn’t like, & changed to “Mad Dog”…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 4, 2020

That was not enough to purge the bile from Trump’s system, so he added this bit of scurrilous trash talk:

…His primary strength was not military, but rather personal public relations. I gave him a new life, things to do, and battles to win, but he seldom “brought home the bacon”. I didn’t like his “leadership” style or much else about him, and many others agree. Glad he is gone!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 4, 2020

What precipitated the change in Trump’s posture toward Mattis? Had to be Mattis’ scathing denunciation of Trump in an essay in the Atlantic, which included the following observations from the General:   

“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.”

Mattis took strong objection to Trump’s illegitimate use in early June, of non-civilian forces (Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Army and National Guard) to squelch lawful, peaceful protest, as witnessed in the incident where Trump ordered demonstrators removed from Lafayette Park and Black Lives Matter Plaza and to afford himself to stage a photo op with an upside down Bible he has never read, in front of St. John’s Church, that he never attends.       

“When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.”

Trump made a series of backbiting comments about Navy Admiral William McRaven, a special forces member of the Navy Seals himself, and commander of Seal Team Six, the spec ops strike force that carried out the successful operation against al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

“Wouldn’t it have been nice if we had gotten Osama bin Laden a lot sooner than that, wouldn’t it have been nice?”

The inference of this typically puerile and moronic comment was that somehow McRaven was pussyfooting around and dragging out the commencement of the operation needlessly. 

Robert O’Neill, the team member that personally took out bin Laden in 2011, rose swiftly to McRaven’s defense, responding in a tweet to Trump’s assertion that McRaven was a political partisan, that his commander was “born” to lead the mission”, and clarified that it was a “bipartisan effort”.

But this week, it just got worse, if such a thing is possible. Trump re tweeted a post from a QAnon-linked account, which alleged that bin Laden is still alive and that Joe Biden and Barack Obama “may have had Seal Team 6 killed.” The tweet, from an account that has now been suspended by Twitter, read: “Hiden Biden and Obama may have had Seal Team 6 killed! EXPLOSIVE: CIA Whistleblower Exposes Biden’s Alleged Role with the Deaths of Seal Team- Claims to have Documented Proof. RETWEET!!!”

Prior to the 2020 election, at an NBC town hall event on Oct. 16, host Savannah Guthrie questioned the soon to be former president as to why he promoted the “Seal Team Six” conspiracy theory to his 87 million Twitter followers.  Trump’s reply?  “I know nothing about it, that was a retweet, that was an opinion of somebody, and that was a retweet. I put it out there, people can decide for themselves, I don’t take a position.”

Translated, “I just lob grenades haphazardly, how should I be expected to account for where they land or who gets hurt?  I’m not aiming at anyone.”  By now, it is, or should be clear to everyone other than Cult 45, that Trump’s $hit Kingdom is held together by fomenting chaos and then when confronted with his conduct, either doubles down on it or looks to his left then his right and asks whoever calls him on it, “who, Me?”  It’s also of value to note here, that claiming to be an expert on everything, when it suits his agenda and claiming to know nothing, when it doesn’t, is Trump’s stock in trade as a manipulative, imbecilic demagogue.

The key takeaway here, despite my reluctance to even dignify the Parrot man’s Magic ‘Shroom fantasy, is that if the calculus on the part of Biden or Clinton or Bush or whoever else might be implicated, was to pacify the Saudis, who – it is claimed, had a lingering affinity for Osama Bin Laden – that notion doesn’t even get out of the starting gate.  There would have been no point or external compelling influence,  in allowing OSL to escape Afghanistan or to allow him to chill out in Pakistan. 

The Saudis loved OSL as an external actor – a devil doll, if you will – but once he and the terror group he created, Al Qaeda, began to be a menace to the Kingdom Of Saud and their authority in Saudi Arabia, they washed their hands of him, and this was long before we actually tracked the piece of human garbage to his lair or compound in Abbottabad.  So there is not a shred of evidence or even a plausible motive that any of these U.S. administrations took a hands off posture to OSL.

Snopes linked a summary of Parrot’s extravagant allegations in their reporting on his claims.  Here is a portion of their analysis of Parrot / Khalsa’s assertions:

Parrot also claimed that Biden “paid with the blood of Seal Team Six when he had them killed,” suggesting that those deaths were ordered as a kind of “blood sacrifice,” to accompany the $152 billion payment to Iran. However, in his Oct. 12 interview, Parrot also indicated that Biden orchestrated the deaths of Seal Team Six in order to ensure their silence about the Abbottabad raid. Snopes asked Parrot to provide clarification on this point, but he declined to do so.

The biggest grain of sand in this jar of Vaseline, is the obvious fact that none of the members of Seal Team Six have ever been reported to have been killed in any operation, much less the one that canceled OSL’s ticket.  The kicker, which should surprise no one with a functioning frontal cortex, is that Trump, prior to his conveyance of Noe and Parrot / Khalsa’s conspiracy claims, publicly affirmed the death of the actual Osama Bin Laden, not once, but twice on the platform formerly known as Twitter, here:

and here:

It also may be of interest that just this past June 22, Parrot, who pronounces his birth surname as “Par-oh” was arrested by state authorities in Maine on undisclosed charges and held on $25,000 bond.  The charges in USA vs. Parrot, would seem to be more than trivial to lead the judge to impose a $25,000 bond.  Since nothing specific shows up on Google, the question remains regarding what crime Parrot is alleged to committed, but it is likely as anything that it is related to animal welfare having to do with his Perigrine breeding, sales and training activities.

It also turns out that Parrot now goes by the moniker “Hari Har Singh Khalsa”, that he established at the age of 22, when he converted to the Sikh religion. What is clear from what is documented about Khalsa / Parrot, is that he has a long standing reputation of leveraging unfounded accusations to create chaos and disrupt competitors in his field of work. It then, is not surprising that conspiracy theories would be a hobby for Hari Har.

If the name thing, “Hardy Har Har” or whatever it happens to be,  isn’t weird enough at this point, it is known that in 1992, Khalsa petitioned a court in New Mexico to have his name changed back to Parrot. That alone suggests we’re not looking at a guy whose screws are all tightly fastened. Now he uses both names interchangeably and simultaneously.

Robert O’Neill, (one of the men who participated in the Abbottabad operation that took out OSL) was known at one point to have been, a nominal supporter of Trump, but no longer, affects amusement at the nonsense that Trump retweeted, but he clearly is not charmed. The sentiment would be better described as bemused.  This is a great interview and explains / debunks the entire load of alt-Right poop with authority and clarity.

It’s not a stretch to speculate that O’Neill’s estimation of Trump and what Trump is about, is that flushing sound you heard. The man that commanded the operation that took Bin Laden out, was Admiral William McRaven. He was O’Neill’s commanding officer on the mission. McRaven, a target of Trump’s character assassinations.

In November 2018, Fox News’s Chris Wallace asked about an op-ed by McRaven that complained of Trump’s divisiveness.

Chris Wallace: Bill McRaven, retired admiral, Navy SEAL, 37 years, former head of U.S. Special Operations—

Donald Trump: Hillary Clinton fan.

Wallace: —Special Operations—

Trump: Excuse me, Hillary Clinton fan.

Wallace: —who led the operations, commanded the operations that took down Saddam Hussein and that killed Osama bin Laden, says that your sentiment is the “greatest threat to democracy in his lifetime.”

Trump: Okay, he’s a Hilary Clinton backer and an Obama backer, and frankly … wouldn’t it have been nice if we got Osama bin Laden a lot sooner than that? Wouldn’t it have been nice? You know, living—think of this—living in Pakistan, beautifully in Pakistan.

McRaven, has not been reluctant to voice his conviction about Trump’s unfitness to serve in the role of Commander-in-Chief:

“Today, as we struggle with social upheaval, soaring debt, record unemployment, a runaway pandemic, and rising threats from China and Russia, President Trump is actively working to undermine every major institution in this country,” McRaven wrote in an op-ed article published in The Washington Post.

McRaven went on to point out that Trump was planting “the seeds of doubt” in the minds of the American people about the legitimacy of institutions such as the intelligence community, law-enforcement agencies, the media, the military, the courts, election officials, medical experts, and postal workers.

The former Navy Admiral sees warning signs pointing to a budding autocrat.  “If Americans stop believing in the system of institutions, then what is left but chaos and who can bring order out of chaos: only Trump,” It is the theme of every autocrat who ever seized power or tried to hold onto it.”

National Compass has been covering Trump’s war on the warriors for the entire run of his term.  The people he is trashing, are honorable people who have more than proven their loyalty to America and to the Constitution. The examples of Trump’s spite, abound.  We’ll just provide a few more instances.

Robert Swan Mueller III, the Special Counsel appointed to examine foreign interference in the 2016 elections, was  a participant in the bloody, intense Tet offensive and a recipient of the Bronze Star with V and a Purple Heart.

Just to underline the significance of this, let’s take a quick look at what both of these awards represent. The Bronze Star with Valor, signifies that the soldier or officer, exhibited exceptional heroism in combat. It is the fourth highest decoration in the U.S. armed forces. You don’t get it for goldbricking. Goldbricking, these days, gets you elected president by “poorly educated voters”.

The other award Mueller was honored with is the Purple Heart. That one denotes that you engaged the enemy and were wounded in the process. The closest Trump ever got to one of those was when he cravenly allowed a retired veteran, Army Lt. Col. Louis Dorfman, a poor soul who fell victim to Trump’s con job on his deep love for all things military, to gift him his Purple Heart.  That, lapse in judgment we can more than forgive Lt. Col. Dorfman for. But what we cannot forgive Trump, the unworthy worm that he is, for, is the sickening and cynical acceptance of it.

“Today, a Donald Trump supporter handed him a Purple Heart,” Barney said. “Trump’s flippant and repugnant reply: ‘I always wanted to get the Purple Heart. This was much easier’.  As someone who fought for our country in Iraq, was injured, and was awarded a Purple Heart, I can tell you, no one should ever ‘want’ to get a Purple Heart.” 

Mueller, incidentally, who, like Trump, was born into a well to do family, was turned down in his first attempt in 1966 to volunteer for service on medical grounds and returned a year later and re-petitioned for duty and was accepted. This was a mere few months prior to Donald J. Trump receiving his first draft deferment for what we now know were fictitious bone spurs.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who incurred Trump’s wrath for testifying in Congressional hearings about what he witnessed regarding Trump’s conduct in the “Quid Pro Quo” incident that involved Trump trolling for dirt on election opponent Joe Biden by holding aid to Ukraine in ransom, told Congressional investigators:

“I sit here, as a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army, an immigrant,” Vindman testified on Tuesday, according to The Times. “I have a deep appreciation for American values and ideals and the power of freedom. I am a patriot, and it is my sacred duty and honor to advance and defend our country, irrespective of party or politics.”

According to the Army, Vindman’s awards include the Purple Heart, Defense Meritorious Service Medal (2nd award), Meritorious Service Medal, Army Commendation Medal (4th award), Army Achievement Medal (3rd award), National Defense Service Medal , Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, Korean Defense Service Medal, Army Service Ribbon, Overseas Service Ribbon (4th award), Valorous Unit Award, National Intelligence Meritorious Unit Citation, Republic of Korea Presidential Unit Citation, Presidential Service Badge, Joint Chiefs of Staff identification Badge, and Navy Unit Commendation.

Republicans Target Iraq War Veteran Alexander Vindman For Character Assassination

Trump has also abused General Stanley McChrystal, a former commander of forces in Afghanistan:

“Known for big, dumb mouth” ?  Does Trump have a compulsive habit of applying an obvious self description to everyone else he attempts to verbally or rhetorically downgrade?  No one is immune from Trump’s venom. Trump went rabid on his former Chief of Staff, John Kelly. Yes, the same John Kelly, that was the first person witness to disrespectful remarks when the two visited the military cemetery that Kelly’s son was buried in.

Well, when Kelly left the White House because he had finally discovered the limits of his endurance for a lazy, mouthy, fool – Trump turned on him of course, as he does with everyone else, in a maniacal obsession about saving face and not appearing to have been jilted, Trump claimed he fired the general. 

“When I terminated John Kelly, which I couldn’t do fast enough, he knew full well that he was way over his head,” Trump tweeted in February. “Being Chief of Staff just wasn’t for him. He came in with a bang, went out with a whimper, but like so many X’s, he misses the action & just can’t keep his mouth shut.”

Neither, it appears, can Trump, because he felt compelled to add this insult, four months later:

John Kelly didn’t know I was going to fire James Mattis, nor did he have any knowledge of my asking for a letter of resignation. Why would I tell him, he was not…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 4, 2020

…in my inner-circle, was totally exhausted by the job, and in the end just slinked away into obscurity. They all want to come back for a piece of the limelight!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 4, 2020

We’ll be hearing the last word from Kelly a little further on in this book, but what happens when a president unqualified to command, persists in acidic and defamatory statements about the very people that occupy a position of authority in the U.S. Armed Forces?  Eventually, to one degree or another, those who are to receive orders distrust leadership and cohesiveness and morale break down.

Trump Threw U.S. Troops Under The Bus For A Second Shot At A Nobel Prize

Of all the incidents in Trump’s term in office, this one, it could be argued, ranks either at the top or close to it in it’s repudiation of Trump’s effervescent boasts on how much he dearly loves the troops.  In July of this year it surfaced that (impeached) president Donald Trump was informed that Russia placed a bounty on the heads of American troops in Afghanistan in early 2019.  This is according to interviews with members of U.S. intelligence agencies conducted by reporters with the New York Times and the Associated Press.  

The Times reporters were told by their sources that an outline of the arrangement between operatives of the GRU, Organization of the Main Intelligence Administration, (Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravlenie, Russia’s cabinet level directorate of intelligence Agencies) and the Haqqani network – the leading terror network / militant group within the Taliban – was disclosed to Trump in a Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB), on February 27, 2019.  U.S. Military Intelligence learned of the Russian effort to add incentive to Taliban militants to kill American soldiers, primarily from debriefings of Taliban detainees captured in the field.  The officials that the Associated Press spoke with, detailed that the accounts of the Russian operation, were consistent among Taliban agents throughout Afghanistan. 

Not only was Trump informed of the activities of the GRU, but the officials who spoke to the AP, indicated that various options to respond to the actions originating in the Kremlin, were set aside and not pursued. Trump’s former National Security Advisor, John Bolton, author of a recently released tell all book on his interactions with and perceptions of Trump’s conduct in the Oval Office, told colleagues within the administration that he personally had briefed Trump in March of last year, outlining the activities of Russia in Afghanistan.  The Associated Press reports that “the classified assessment of Russian bounties was the sole purpose of the [Trump-Bolton] meeting.” 

Needless to say, Trump, Vice President Pence and pliant, likely implicated cabinet officials are in unison in their denial of having ever been informed about what Trump characterizes as the “the so-called attacks on our troops in Afghanistan by Russians.”  Trump spokesdrone, Kayleigh McEnany maintained on Tuesday that Mr Trump was never briefed on the issue of Russian payments for U.S. forces in body bags and claimed that “rogue intelligence officers” were behind the leak to the New York Times.  Asked if she was implying that the reports were the consequence of a plot by the intelligence community to sabotage Trump, McEnany responded, “It very possibly could be.”

The Pentagon itself, is handling the intelligence in a fashion that strongly indicates that they assume the facts support Russian aggression.  An investigation is being pursued to establish whether the arrangement between the GRU and members of the Haqqani network – a large and well coordinated contingent of the Taliban, was directly tied to the deaths of three U.S. Marines who were killed when a bomb rigged vehicle exploded as their transport returned to Bagram Airbase in April 2019.

The Defense Department identified the men as Marine Staff Sgt. Christopher Slutman, 43, of Newark, Delaware; Sgt. Benjamin Hines, 31, of York, Pennsylvania; and Cpl. Robert Hendriks, 25, of Locust Valley, New York – infantrymen assigned to 2nd Battalion, 25th Marines, a reserve infantry unit headquartered out of Garden City, New York.

Hendriks’ father, Erik, told the Associated Press that even a rumor of Russian bounties should have been immediately addressed.

“If this was kind of swept under the carpet as to not make it a bigger issue with Russia, and one ounce of blood was spilled when they knew this, I lost all respect for this administration and everything.”

The dates of the intel briefings to Trump, are significant in that they fit in the timeline of Trump’s request for a meeting with high ranking representatives of the Taliban at Camp David in September of 2019.

There is no room for doubt that Trump had been informed of the markers placed on U.S. and allied troops by Russian operatives under the approval of Russian president Vladimir Putin. There is also strong reason to suspect that a motive existed in Trump’s mind, to disregard the information he’d been presented – the possibility of a second bite at the apple that eluded him in his personal diplomatic effort with North Korea’s authoritarian tyrant, Kim Jong-un – a Nobel Peace Prize.

The same thing is true regarding the low key manner in which the administration has handled intel reports indicating that Iran also had their own arrangements with the Taliban for cash contracts on U.S. troops.  Zachery Cohen of CNN observes:

Despite acknowledging that the relationship “poses a significant threat to US interests,” National Security Council officials ultimately recommended in late March that the administration should not take specific steps toward addressing the underlying Iran-Haqqani Network nexus as officials concluded that any response would likely have a negative impact on the peace efforts, according to an internal memo obtained by CNN.

Cohen’s Pentagon source also underlined the prioritization of the sketchy peace deal over a response that would have exacted a price from the Haqqani network. “The overarching element to all of this has been the prioritization of the peace deal with the Taliban and that, even going back to December 2019, was a well-known priority in terms of what the US response would be to a potential incentivized attack backed by a foreign government”, Cohen’s source told him.

Can you see the pattern here? Decisions on policy, based not on sound strategic considerations, but on what was perceived to best serve the exigencies of Trump’s political fortunes. 

Trump’s critics in the ranks of retired military leaders and members of the diplomatic corps, see treachery in Trump’s dealings with Putin, when Trump knew or should have known of the operation targeting American servicemen.  Among those in the foreign service community, former Deputy Secretary of State, Brett McGurk, not only finds Trump not credible, but finds his conduct to be patently treacherous:

TIMELINE 👉

PDB in late FEB includes Russia bounty intel (per NYT)

TRUMP spoke with PUTIN on:
MAR 30
APR 9, 10, 12
JUN 1

JUN 3: Trump says “common sense” for Russia to return to G7

INDEFENSIBLE

— Brett McGurk (@brett_mcgurk) June 30, 2020

Ms. McEnany, it is evident, did not fully grasp the implications of her statement to reporters in response to questions concerning whether the president reads his intelligence reports, saying he “does read and also consumes intelligence verbally.”  McEnany added, “This president I’ll tell you, is the most informed person on planet earth when it comes to the threats that we face.”  In a sense that’s true.  He certainly is well acquainted with himself and that most decidedly, is a threat we face.

Here’s the problem. Let’s give all of this the most generous interpretation conceivable. Even though, for the sake of the argument, one might concede that it is possible, although extremely unlikely given the fact pattern that is emerging, that Trump was briefed on the threat, but that Trump was spacing out when he was informed of it – this does not exonerate the (impeached) president on the question of abdication of leadership.  If Trump was merely distracted and displaying attention deficit disorder, he is at the very minimum, extremely unfit for the role of Commander-in-Chief and dangerously so. There is no positive spin on this to be seen. 

In a letter to Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe and CIA chief Gina Haspel, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, (D-CA), stated, “The questions that arise are: was the President briefed, and if not, why not, and why was Congress not briefed.”  This trended in the media so radioactively that even the normally quite pliant and subservient Republican members of Congress are finding it impossible to stroll past. House member Liz Cheney (R-WY), daughter of former Vice President, Dick Cheney, yesterday tweeted the demand for answers to the following basic questions:         

“1. Why weren’t the president or vice president briefed? … 2. Who did know and when? 3. What has been done in response to protect our forces & hold Putin accountable?”

 

Trump’s true sentiment toward veterans?  “Not in My front yard.”

What we’re referring to here, is an episode that Donald Trump would rather not be brought up, but instead be cast in the depths of the sea of our collective forgetfulness.

That episode? It began in the early 90s. Donald Trump, was a property owner in the prestigious environs of Fifth Avenue (yes the very Fifth Avenue that Trump stated he could shoot someone in the middle of and not lose any voters). 

Trump looked at the raggedy and motley assemblage of street vendors, the majority of which were impoverished and disabled veterans, and concluded that they needed to be removed from the public space in front of his establishment – the 68-story Trump Tower, a retail and luxury condominium building. His was the leading voice in petitioning the city and the New York State Assembly, to do just that. 

The Daily News reported that in 1991, Trump wrote a letter to John Dearie, then-chairman of the state Assembly Committee on Cities, advocating that the city ban vendors on Fifth Avenue, including veterans.

“While disabled veterans should be given every opportunity to earn a living, is it fair to do so to the detriment of the city as a whole or its tax paying citizens and businesses?” Trump wrote in the letter. “Do we allow Fifth Ave., one of the world’s finest and most luxurious shopping districts, to be turned into an outdoor flea market, clogging and seriously downgrading the area?

A deal was struck at the time, to push the vendors away from the sector in dispute and allow them to operate elsewhere, in so called “core areas” nearby in exchange for a payoff by Trump and some like minded store owners (the Fifth Avenue Assn.). 

This was a means of bypassing the creation of a new ordinance and the prospect of litigation that would result, because the statute that was in effect, dating back to 1894, had carved out exceptions to anti-peddling ordinances for Civil War era “disabled veterans on any commercial street or in any park anywhere in the state.”

“We must protect and cherish and take care of our veterans.”

       – Donald Trump

The regulations adopted in 1991, were set to be revisited in 2004, under the Mayoralty of Michael Bloomberg. Trump appealed to Bloomberg, re the street vendors: 

“Whether they are veterans or not, [the vendors] should not be allowed to sell on this most important and prestigious shopping street.  The image of New York City will suffer. … I hope you can stop this very deplorable situation before it is too late.”

The operative phrase in the above statement is “whether they are veterans or not”.  These men who did not receive a no obligation (tax dodge) “loan” from  their daddy like the Donald did; were simply trying to scrape together a living. They didn’t have a safety net to land in like Donnie.  The situation is uncomfortably reminiscent of Trump’s objection to having disabled veterans be part of his proposed “Salute to America” parade in 2018, when he made the comment, “nobody wants to see that.”

But one thing that came up in the reporting of this controversy at the time is quite intriguing, in light of the fact that we know Trump reveals his own attitudes through the device of fictitious discussions he claims to have had with other unnamed persons.  Trump offered an anecdotal account of a conversation he says he had with one vendor who he said was offering caps and shirts featuring the expression associated with his catchphrase, “You’re Fired!”  According to Trump, he asked the vendor which war he had fought in, and the vendor smiled and replied, “Mr. Trump, I am too smart to fight in a war.” 

Based on what we have determined Trump’s perspective on military service to be – especially combat duty, it sounds more like Trump answered his own question. 

In 2015, when Trump was jockeying for the GOP nomination, reporters spoke to vets that were street vending in the same area that was the subject of the dispute.  One was 48-year-old Sean Williams, who served in the U.S. Army from 1987 to 1992, and now sells hats and scarves on East 43rd Street, just off Fifth Avenue. His legal activities have been a vital support to his family for over a decade. In response to a recital of Trump’s record of opposition to the hustles of his and fellow veterans, Williams, replied, “Despicable – he never served. And not his kids.” 

As they say, “Whoomp, there it is!”

Domestic security is National security

In some people’s thinking, there exists a dichotomy between domestic issues and the best interests and well being of those who serve in deployments.  Some of this is the result of particular dividing lines such as the distinction between the civilian justice system and the military justice system. Actually though, when you take a more holistic view of the matter, you recognize a broader landscape.

What happens in the homeland, without exception, affects and has impact on our servicemen and women. After all, the answer you most often will hear in response to the question, “why are you serving in the military?”, is “I do it to keep the homeland safe.”  Even if there is not a great deal of conscious thought involved, the decision to enlist or attend officer training school, inherently involves well considered enlightened self interest.  Their families and friends are back home here while they are out on deployment. Our government is supposed to function like a home security system while they are absent.

Implicit in this is that military service is a rampart against attacks on our fundamental rights as Americans from external threats. There is an implied contract that while the military is fulfilling their role, elected officials and institutions are protecting the nation from internal threats. 

The Office of the Presidency is not only tasked with faithfully fulfilling the role of Commander-in-Chief, but to defend civil rights – equality under the law, freedom of speech, freedom of the press and all the others. If there is dereliction of duty, or worse, an actual frontal assault on these, Houston – we have a problem.

If a president or any other elected official is conducting domestic affairs in a manner that endangers the security of home or demonstrates an intention to replace the Constitutional order with the arbitrary rule of a tyrant – that is a betrayal of that soldier’s service. 

The individual that brings this very betrayal most into focus, is – yes, that is correct, Donald Trump.  Trump advocates any and all conceivable remedies whatsoever to claw back his defeat from the jaws of our Constitutionally ordered system of elections and he is not bashful about the nuclear option, stating in a post on “Truth Social” in December of last year:      

“A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”      

Another example of his instinct to suspend basic rights enshrined in the Constitution, was his ordering of a contingent of riot response teams that included elements of the National Guard for the purpose of clearing a peaceful assembly of protesters in the vicinity of the White House.  Retired military leaders responded with clarity.

Former Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, at the time, objected strenuously, saying:

We must reject any thinking of our cities as a “battlespace” that our uniformed military is called upon to “dominate.” At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state governors.

Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington, D.C., sets up a conflict—a false conflict—between the military and civilian society. It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves are a part. Keeping public order rests with civilian state and local leaders who best understand their communities and are answerable to them.

No doubt after reflecting on his participation and likely having heard an earful from a lot of peers in the miltary fraternity, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, steeled himself to contradict Trump’s disgraceful and clownish Tin Pot dictator act:

The option to use active duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort, and only in the most urgent and dire of situations. We are not in one of those situations now. I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act.

The next day after the Lafayette Square episode, retired Admiral Mike Mullen, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated in an essay in the Atlantic:

It sickened me yesterday to see security personnel — including members of the National Guard — forcibly and violently clear a path through Lafayette Square to accommodate the president’s visit outside St. John’s Church. I have to date been reticent to speak out on issues surrounding President Trump’s leadership, but we are at an inflection point, and the events of the past few weeks have made it impossible to remain silent.

The current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark A. Milley confronted the mounting criticism related to his involvement in the shocking spectacle, with a straightforward apology for his actions that afternoon. “I should not have been there,” he said during a recorded keynote address to the National Defense University’s class of 2020. “My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics. … It was a mistake that I’ve learned from.”

Even mismanaging the economy to the extent that it craters or acting irresponsibly in the face of a pandemic for indecipherable political motives, is a breach of trust.  If that is true, then certainly, a president signaling that he embraces right wing domestic terrorism, also fits into that category of infidelity.

Trump, the “Great Communicator” … to racists

The only thing worse than a president who doles out moral legitimacy to militant hate groups, is a president who uses the so-called ‘bully pulpit’ he’s been given, to actually behave as a bully and to act as a conveyor belt for racist and incendiary messaging. Has Trump done this? He’s done it in spades.

Let’s begin – although it is hard to decide where to begin –  with Trump’s poorly camouflaged favorable messaging to White Nationalists and domestic extremist / terror groups.

As a prelude, there was his late summer of 2015 campaign launch, where he described undocumented immigrants as “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”  Trump is anything, if not a creature of habit.  The escalator speech we quoted above, is very reminiscent of a false and inflammatory statement he made about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio,  most recently at the ABC News televised debate between him and Democratic party presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris.

“They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats.  They’re eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”

Later during the primary campaign, Trump, in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulous, repeated a unfounded rumor and embellished it further by lying that he actually witnessed “thousands and thousands of people …. cheering as that building (the World Trade Center) was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering.”

TRUMP: “There were people that were cheering on the other side of New Jersey, where you have large Arab populations. They were cheering as the World Trade Center came down. I know it might be not politically correct for you to talk about it, but there were people cheering as that building came down — as those buildings came down. And that tells you something. It was well covered at the time, George. Now, I know they don’t like to talk about it, but it was well covered at the time. There were people over in New Jersey that were watching it, a heavy Arab population, that were cheering as the buildings came down. Not good.”

This was Trump telegraphing to what we subsequently found, was a significant percentage of American voters that are nativists and xenophobes, the sort of national mouthpiece he would become as president, for their hate and paranoia of “the other.” That no proof existed that this incident ever actually occurred, was of little to no consequence to either them or Trump.

There is so much in the way of demonstrating his tactics of signaling to racists that he is on the same page of music that they are, that it is unnecessary to drive the point home any more than it has been. Nevertheless, a few more items are worth reciting. We have already referenced his reaction to the Charlottesville, Virginia episode (“Unite The Right”).

A pattern with Trump is his practice of re-tweeting racist material and then denying he ever knew what it contained or making equivocations and standing firm on them for a length of time that confirms to the racist element that he is with them, before he yields to pressure to disavow them, which is never done in a concrete fashion.

Trump retweeted this video taken in mid June of this year at a retirement community “The Villages” near Sumner Lake, Florida. In it, one of the the Trump supporters shouts at a protester, “White Power.”

In late July, President Trump announced his intention to dismantle an Obama-era fair-housing rule and tweeted, “I am happy to inform all of the people living their Suburban Lifestyle Dream that you will no longer be bothered or financially hurt by having low income housing built in your neighborhood…. Crime will go down.”

At a Midland, Texas, rally the same day, he said that low-income housing has been “hell for suburbia…. So enjoy your life, ladies and gentlemen.”  As someone who vividly remembers the era of “white flight” during the 60s and into the 70s, I know exactly what Trump is conveying with this and so do those which are the intended audience for it.

Of course, you recall Trump’s comments in 2019, that four women of color in the House of Representatives, (“The Squad”), were “from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe,” and recommending they should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”  Following these comments and others similar, there arose a rash of verbal and in some instances, physical attacks on immigrants or people of color perceived to be immigrants, that included the epithet, “go home where you came from!”

Trump’s deep denial of systemic racism and his rejection of efforts to enlighten whites as to the history of slavery, subjugation and segregation in America, serve to keep the wounds open and deny the disinfectant of sunlight upon them.

Alexander Hinton, writing in Sapiens, recites the record:

In a September 6 tweet, Trump warned that the Department of Education would not continue funding public schools in California that use The New York Times Magazine’s “1619 Project,” which tells the story of the U.S. through the history of slavery and racial injustice, in their history curricula.

Days later, it was revealed that Trump likens awareness of White privilege to drinking “the Kool-Aid,” a metaphor for cult-like obedience to dogma. On September 17, he announced the creation of the 1776 Commission, a committee to combat “decades of left-wing indoctrination” about race and oppression that has “defiled the American story.”

Reasonably speaking, a sober minded look at the run of our history, would argue that centuries of race and oppression have done a great deal more to defile the American story than decades of supposed ‘left-wing indoctrination.’  

“Stand Back and Stand By”

More recently, Trump was asked in the first (and apparently, the only) presidential debate, about whether he would repudiate the white supremacist element among his following.  Manny Fidel, writing in Business Insider, picks up the action:

About midway through the debate, Chris Wallace asked President Trump to emphatically denounce his supporters who are white supremacists. Trump hesitated and stammered a non-answer before asking Wallace who exactly he was referring to.

Joe Biden answered “The Proud Boys,” which is surprisingly not the name of an after-school acapella group. In reality, they’re a white supremacist gang that’s been seeking out violence in cities that have been undergoing anti-police brutality protests. In response to Biden’s mention of The Proud Boys, Trump told The Proud Boys to “stand back” and “stand by.” This is not a condemnation.

Chris Wallace: “Are you willing, tonight, to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and to say that they need to stand down…”

Trump: “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by! But I’ll tell you what, somebody’s got to do something about antifa and the left.” pic.twitter.com/4vrPocKzcu

— Axios (@axios) September 30, 2020

Everyone – whether they were willing to admit it or not, understood Trump’s meaning of the phrase, “stand by.” There’s no mystery to that. That is not even dog whistling. It’s whistling in the normal range of human hearing. It’s whistling “Dixie.” And for their part, the Proud Boys acknowledged receipt.

Walter Masterson, actor and TikTok personality, visited an October 3rd Trump rally on Staten Island that had among the attendees, a contingent of Proud Boys. One, who declined to disclose his identity, consented to be interviewed.

As you will see, the quotes that have folks talking about this, begin at the 00:57 mark, where we hear, “If Trump doesn’t get re-elected, there’s going to be a riot. If he doesn’t get elected, this is when you’re going to see a civil war.”

Notice also, he regurgitates the same talking point as Trump has been repeating ad nauseum, about if Trump loses the election, “it was rigged.”  Trump is the mafia boss of all this – there is no mistaking that fact. With regard to the spectre of Civil War II -that’s something we have been ruminating on since April of two years ago;

America Is Heading Towards A Second Civil War

by Tony Wyman Thirty-five percent. That was the consensus chance a panel of national security experts polled by Foreign Policy magazine in 2017 said America had of entering into a second civil war over the next 10 to 15 years.  And that poll was conducted five weeks before the fractious clash of alt-right hate groups […]

Trump uses slogans that White Nationalists understand perfectly, such as “We’re Going To Take Our Country Back.”

Former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke invoked President Trump’s name at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.  

“This represents a turning point for the people of this country. We are determined to take our country back,” Duke said. “We are going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump. That’s what we believed in. That’s why we voted for Donald Trump, because he said he’s going to take our country back.”  

It’s fascinating and reprehensible that if you get a rank and file Trump supporter even moderately wound up and get them talking, you are going to hear the phrase that obviously stems from White Nationalists like Duke, speaking of Trump, “he’s going to take our country back” or “we’ve got to take our country back.”  Key in identifying the underlying sentiment in these statements is the collective noun or pronoun, “our”.  “Our” is code for White Americans of the Christian tribal identity. They reflect that they once wrote the rules of the social order and enforced them and now their grip is slipping and they feel that it is a dire necessity to restore it.

Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric is used as a mitigating factor in domestic terror trials 

Trump’s call for violence against the people his voters despise, don’t go unheeded. “How do you stop these people?” Trump remarked to a rally audience in Florida, referring to undocumented immigrants – to which an audience member replied shouting, “Shoot them!”  Instead of rejecting that, Trump embraced it and his rally attendees laughed it off. “That’s only in the panhandle you can get away with that stuff,” Trump said. “Only in the panhandle.”

In El Paso, Texas, attorneys for another right-wing terrorist, Cesar Sayoc, argued to the court that Trump was the impetus for his planned attacks on various public figures.  “In this darkness, Mr. Sayoc found light in Donald J. Trump,” attorneys for Sayoc wrote in a court filing for the defendant, who was sentenced Monday after pleading guilty to sending pipe bombs to prominent critics of the president. “He became obsessed with ‘attacks’ from those he perceived as Trump’s enemies” and “decided to act out—to send a message, to try to intimidate and scare Trump’s perceived enemies.”  A Trump “superfan,” Sayoc “began to consider Democrats as not just dangerous in theory, but imminently and seriously dangerous to his personal safety,” his attorneys concluded. 

In late January, Donald Trump did something that would have sunk almost any other presidential campaign: He retweeted an anonymous Nazi sympathizer and white supremacist who goes by the not-so-subtle handle @WhiteGenocideTM.  Trump neither explained nor apologized for the retweet and then, three weeks later, he did it again. This subsequent retweet was quickly deleted, but just two days later Trump retweeted a different user named @EustaceFash, whose Twitter header image at the time also included the term “white genocide.” 

Patrick Eugene Stein, was one of three men convicted of plotting to bomb Somali refugees. His lawyers, Jim Pratt and Michael Shultz, argued that their client should receive a more lenient sentence because he was inspired by then-candidate Trump. “The court cannot ignore the circumstances of one of the most rhetorically mold-breaking, violent, awful, hateful, and contentious presidential elections in modern history,” they wrote.

“You could literally pull out excerpts from—I hate calling them manifestos—but the San Diego, the Christchurch, and now the El Paso manifestos, you can just crib from them the tropes and the narrative they are attempting to espouse and compare them, side by side, with comments from the president, in regards to immigrants to congresswomen of color to Muslims to whomever,” said Nate Snyder, a former senior DHS counterterrorism official.  “And you literally see, coming from him, that our southern border or other areas are under attack and are being invaded by others,” Snyder added.

J. Wells Dixon, an attorney whose practice specializes in international terrorism says that a national leader of the visibility of Trump, exerts substantial influence on people who are for one reason or another, whether it is a psychological state or otherwise:

“Individuals don’t just wake up one day and decide that they are going to commit an act of terrorism. If you are someone who has an ax to grind or feels aggrieved or persecuted in your whiteness, for example, hearing the president say these things validates your feelings and it provides, in your own warped mind, an excuse to go out and act on your grievances.”

 

Ronald Schouten,an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School sees Trump’s hyperdrive divisive remarks via Twitter and at political events, as exacerbating risks that already exist with troubled individuals:

“Continued rhetoric along these lines, without it being addressed directly and refuted, runs the risk of encouraging more people of marginal psychological stability who have bought into an ideology of hate and racism and misogyny, and moving them along a pathway to violence.

To the extent that people are already radicalized to extreme beliefs, one of my concerns is that reinforcement of those beliefs by prominent figures may move them to the next level—radicalization to violence—by offering justification for their violent fantasies and impulses.

For these particular individuals at risk—and it is only a very small percentage of people—that is encouragement. That is a license. That is an endorsement of not only their feelings but their fantasized actions going forward. And for sure, the higher up that endorsement is coming from, the more substantive the impact. And when that perceived encouragement is coming from the president of the United States, “Well, it is hard to unring that bell,” he added.  

 

There is a pretty persuasive argument to be made, that if the so far, two attempts (the most recent, still in process of being adjudicated in the courts) to assassinate Trump, are what they seem to be on their surface, Trump himself could be said to have created and amplified the social environment that produced those attempts on his life.

Trump targets a foundational staple of American democracy – the freedom of the press

Trump, in addition to disparaging Mr. Goldberg and the publication he writes for, made veteran news journalist Jennifer Griffin a special target of his wrath, calling for Fox News, who confirmed the story, to fire her, tweeting,  “All refuted by many witnesses. Jennifer Griffin should be fired for this kind of reporting. Never even called us for comment. @FoxNews is gone!” 

We should pause for a moment and reflect. Trump’s attacks on the free press in America, tell us something very unsettling about the nature of his orientation toward the safeguards that were built into our system as firewalls against would be dictators.  This is so typical of Trump’s view of American life and its institutions as participants in ‘Reality TV’ drama.

Way to inadvertently draw attention to Fox News corroborating this story.pic.twitter.com/7kVY3vmAwB

— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) September 5, 2020

Trump embraces the flag, but when he does so, he defiles it. He defiles it because he is a cheerleader for muzzling the free media – the media that sees its role as reporting facts, but doesn’t accept marching orders from Trump calling for them to whitewash his corruption and abuse of power.

But among the many pillars of freedom that our men and women in uniform swear an oath to defend, the independence and unfettered function of the press, is bedrock. If you attack that, you disrespect the Constitution and in turn, disrespect the military.

Trump’s consistent verbal assaults are inspiring a growing number in the ranks of law enforcement to view reporters and journalists as adversaries and are acting accordingly.   

Donald Trump And The National Police State’s War On Journalists

There was a time when if we thought of a national hostility toward journalists from a police state, we thought of places like Russia, Latin and Central America and various governments in the Middle East and Asia. We thought also, of the horrific slaughter of Jamal Khashoggi, by a group of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s personal agents.

With some exceptions, America was thought to be relatively “exceptional”,  in that field reporters possessed a measure of immunity from the brutality of police intent on not having their activities documented. It never was the case, it just seemed as though it was, if only by comparison to places where matters were worse.  The attempts to document the national response to George Floyd’s murder, have been met with excessive force by uniformed thugs with badges.

Since the death of #GeorgeFloyd in police custody sparked #protests across the U.S., police have assaulted and arrested journalists covering them—in some cases causing serious injury. CPJ’s @MustafaHameed compiled some of the shocking moments caught on video. #PressFreedom pic.twitter.com/LCgGurJ91r

— Committee to Protect Journalists (@pressfreedom) June 5, 2020

An information clearinghouse maintained by journalist advocacy groups like the Freedom of the Press Foundation and the Committee to Protect Journalists – the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, has confirmed over 328 violations of press freedom, from May 26 and June 6, related to their field coverage of the national George Floyd protests. 

It has cataloged and referenced the following:

LATEST DATA, MAY 26 – JUNE 6 12pm ET

*328+ total press freedom incidents*

54+ arrests
208 assaults (173 by police)
45 equipment/newsroom damage

Assault category breakdown:
73 physical attacks (47 by police)
49 tear gassings
25 pepper sprayings
83 rubber bullets/projectiles

— U.S. Press Freedom Tracker (@uspresstracker) June 6, 2020

What has transpired so far, is tracking well ahead of the trends of the last 3 years, with 2020 totals approaching that of all of the documented attacks on journalists and press freedom in 2019.

It is plainly the fact that Donald Trump has been a prime motivational factor influencing these assaults on the American press.  Trump’s messaging against the media, while not strictly speaking, explicit – has been more than implicit enough to convey his intentions. He calls the media “the enemy of the American people.”

Stephanie Sugars, Committee To Protect Journalists (CPJ) research assistant, compiled these statistics on Trump’s barrage against journalists on the Twitter platform and the numbers she sites do not even include the blistering rhetoric from the last 18 months:

“Since announcing his candidacy in the 2016 presidential elections to the end of his second year in office, U.S. President Donald Trump has sent 1,339 tweets about the media that were critical, insinuating, condemning, or threatening. In lieu of formal appearances as president, Trump has tweeted over 5,400 times to his more than 55.8 million followers; over 11 percent of these insulted or criticized journalists and outlets, or condemned and denigrated the news media as a whole.”

A representative tweet from Trump of more recent vintage, was this from a week ago:

“The Lamestream Media is doing everything within their power to foment hatred and anarchy. As long as everybody understands what they are doing, that they are FAKE NEWS and truly bad people with a sick agenda, we can easily work through them to GREATNESS!”

CPJ also tracks reports it receives from journalists that have been targeted for reprisals after having been specifically named by Trump as his opponents. 

Ms. Sugars details that, “the rhetoric has sometimes resulted in harassment of individual journalists in the U.S., where CPJ is aware of several journalists who say they were harassed or threatened online after being singled out on Twitter by Trump.”

One insidious result of Trump’s campaign against reputable news outlets and the men and women who gather and report news, is that polling surveys find that one third of the respondents believe that all journalistic venues other than Fox News and the thousands of conveyor belts on the internet of disinformation and propaganda – are “enemies of the American people” and consist of “fake news.”

The expression, “enemy of the people” Trump uses in modified form, to describe the news media, the majority of which he disapproves of and classifies as personal opponents – has a rich and storied history of use by murderous authoritarian regimes.

One citation that employs the phrase – and we apologize in advance for the nature of the sickening content –  is from Nazi era propaganda arm, Der Stürmer:

“The Jews don’t want to go to Madagascar – They cannot bear the climate. Jews are pests and disseminators (sic) of diseases. In whatever country they settle and spread themselves out, they produce the same effects as are produced in the human body by germs. … In former times sane people and sane leaders of the peoples made short shrift of enemies of the people. They had them either expelled or killed.”

There is a unacceptably high concentration of this antagonism among the ranks of law enforcement, which goes a long way toward accounting for the hostility and physical assaults visited on anyone wearing press credentials at such events as protests against excessive force and police misconduct.  Los Angeles Times reporter Molly Hennessy-Fiske was among the journalists who was fired upon and hit in the leg by tear gas by police in Minnesota last weekend.  

Hennessy-Fiske recalled the experience in an article for the Times in which she observed that police officers fired “tear gas indiscriminately into the street” before backing her and fellow Los Angeles Times photographer Carolyn Cole against the wall and repeatedly firing tear gas at them at point-blank range.

More than 54 journalists have been arrested and a total of 208 assaults on reporters so far, with 173 of the incidents committed by police.  U.S. Press Freedom Tracker data shows that to date, of the 73 physical attacks on journalists (47 by police), there have been 83 instances of reporters being hit by rubber bullets or projectiles.

“It is not just disturbing, it’s unprecedented,” Kirstin McCudden, the managing editor of the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, said on Wednesday. “What’s really important to note is that the majority of [incidents] are coming from law enforcement.”

Nick Waters, a senior reporter for investigative journalism website Bellingcat, has also collected 140 incidents of police targeting journalists who were covering the protests in a thread on Twitter, many of which are accompanied by graphic video evidence. 

Here, in this clip from MSNBC, you can see that Louisville, KY police fired rubber bullets directly at members of the Wave 3 News crew:

Bellingcat also reported that photo-journalist Linda Tirado was hit in the left eye by a less lethal round while covering events in Minneapolis. She later found out she had been permanently blinded.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), this past Wednesday, filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of journalists who were targeted and attacked by Minneapolis and Minnesota state police. In the filing, the civil liberties advocacy org charges Minnesota law enforcement of wrongfully arresting, injuring and harassing journalists covering the protests.

“The past week has been marked by an extraordinary escalation of unlawful force deliberately targeting reporters,” the ACLU said in its filing. “These apparently deliberate attacks on journalists violate the First Amendment freedom of the press, and they will not go unanswered.”

The ACLU and its affiliates in other states, will be filing additional suits dealing with assaults, false arrests and excessive force under color of authority against journalists elsewhere across the nation.

There are so many incidents, the deliberate nature of which are too numerous to fully outline here, but that they are intentional, there can be no serious question.

Gordon Stables, the director of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Journalism, contends that the police’s widespread attacks on and arrests of journalists is not random, but deliberate.

“It is inescapable that in a number of communities, especially on Saturday evening, the police seem to regard journalists as part of the problem and not a constitutionally protected part of the community, which is really disturbing. I appreciate how difficult this is for law enforcement, but it’s not just one police officer in one city…We are in a very worrying place where we see people who have been international correspondents saying that this feels like their experiences in nondemocratic regimes.”

The targeting of journalists by elements of law enforcement who militate against any sort of documentation, written or multi-media, of their actions, is clear, as evidenced by the simple fact that reporters make it a point to wear clear identification that police assigned to cover public demonstrations are well familiar with.  It’s important to realize that apart from a clear probable cause example of interference with the duties of a police officer, there are no legal grounds for arresting a journalist. 

Reporting is protected under the First Amendment, but arrests are made as a form of harassment, because in many cases, officers face little to no accountability or consequences as they hide behind un-Constitutionally constructed defenses of “qualified immunity.”

The awareness on their part of who they are targeting, is summed up by the Dallas P.D. officer who told a photojournalist while arresting him during protests on May 30, “Yeah, yeah. Press, press. You are going to jail!” 

“We put our hands up and yelled, ‘We’re media!’”

That’s what MSNBC anchor Ali Velshi said on the network  reporting that police shot a rubber bullet at him while he was reporting on a protest in Minneapolis, Minnesota in early June. “They responded, ‘We don’t care!’ and they opened fire a second time.”

Is Trump’s affection and admiration of Adolph Hitler a national security hazard?  

We referenced some discussions that former White House Chief Of Staff, John Kelly had with Trump that he has revealed about his time serving the ex-president.  They are damning and this one doesn’t follow too far behind.  On one occasion, Kelly relates that “He (Trump)  said, ‘Well, but Hitler did some good things.’ I said, ‘Well, what?’ And he said, ‘Well, [Hitler] rebuilt the economy.’”  General Kelly remembers thinking,  “It’s pretty hard to believe he missed the Holocaust, though, and pretty hard to understand how he missed the 400,000 American GIs that were killed in the European theater.”

Kelly failed, but not for lack of effort, to educate Trump on the realities of Hitler and his relationship with the German military.  “He would ask about the loyalty issues and about how, when I pointed out to him the German generals as a group were not loyal to him, and in fact tried to assassinate him a few times, and he didn’t know that,” Kelly said. “He truly believed, when he brought us generals in, that we would be loyal — that we would do anything he wanted us to do.”  

“He was shocked that he didn’t have dictatorial-type powers to send US forces places or to move money around within the budget,” Kelly said. “And he looked at Putin and Xi and that nutcase in North Korea as people who were like him in terms of being a tough guy.”

Trump has been known to have possessed and perused a copy of Adolph Hitler’s screed, “Mein Kampf” written during Hitler’s stint in prison.  Or at least, it was what Trump thought was Mein Kampf.  The following is an account of one episode revealed in a Vanity Fair published profile of Trump written by the investigative journalist Marie Brenner:

Is the mishandling of a pandemic a national security issue?

We touched on the concept that a runaway pandemic that Trump is not addressing and that his negligence in that regard  has now (at the time of publication) claimed over 222,000 American lives, is a matter that disqualifies him as a Commander-in-Chief.

The reasoning behind this is that when lives are in jeopardy, a deadly virus doesn’t interview a person it might potentially infect whether or not they are on active duty status or a civilian. Servicemen and their female counterparts have families – and a president’s active management of a public health crisis is patently a homeland security contingency.

So with that established, can it be said that Trump has defended those in uniform, veterans and their families, or – betrayed them?  Accredited contagious disease experts and the numbers say no.

Dying in a Leadership Vacuum | NEJM

Editorial from The New England Journal of Medicine — Dying in a Leadership Vacuum

Trump’s fecklessness and recklessness on the pandemic also got him taken to the woodshed, by a prestigious medical journal, the New England Journal of Medicine – that has never, in it’s long and storied history beginning in 1812, ever declared a sitting president “dangerously incompetent” in managing a public health crisis, or recommended that he and his administration not be granted a second term. 

“When it comes to the response to the largest public health crisis of our time, our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent,” reads the editorial signed by nearly three dozen of the journal’s editors. “We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs.”

“There have been many mistakes made that were not only foolish but reckless,” Rubin tells CNN, “and I think we want people to realize that there are truths here, not just opinions.”

Clearly referring to Trump and the unqualified political appointees he has brought in to add another layer of incompetency, confusion and chaos to a process that should instead be driven exclusively by scientists and medical experts, the editorial states, 

“Instead of relying on expertise, the administration has turned to uninformed ‘opinion leaders’ and charlatans who obscure the truth and facilitate the promulgation of outright lies.” 

Of the effect of Trump’s failure, the editorial states: 

The magnitude of this failure is astonishing. According to the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering, the United States leads the world in Covid-19 cases and in deaths due to the disease, far exceeding the numbers in much larger countries, such as China. The death rate in this country is more than double that of Canada, exceeds that of Japan, a country with a vulnerable and elderly population, by a factor of almost 50, and even dwarfs the rates in lower-middle-income countries, such as Vietnam, by a factor of almost 2000.

 

Trump, in his rallies, is mocking and belittling Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases – referring to him as if he is befuddled and confused on the realities of the pandemic, repeating the absurdity that “the virus will disappear”, and lying to audiences about the “great job” he and his administration have done.

And Trump’s campaign is airing completely deceptive ads suggesting that Fauci has praised Trump’s handing of the health crisis.  Fauci, for his part, is having none of it, and in this interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, pushes back against Trump, while outlining the facts:

Cornell University,  in the first comprehensive examination of coronavirus misinformation in traditional and online media, has concluded that impeached president Donald Trump is the pre-eminent driver of false and unscientific assertions and claims about COVID-19 – it’s origins, how it is spread, the health risks, mitigation and therapeutics.

Evanega-et-al-Coronavirus-misinformationFINAL.pdf

Alliance For Science - Cornell Univesity report on the distribution and sources of misinformation on COVID-19 and the pandemic associated with it.

Sarah Evanega, Director of Cornell Alliance for Science and the study’s lead author, remarked that, “The biggest surprise was that the president of the United States was the single largest driver of misinformation around Covid. That’s concerning in that there are real-world dire health implications.” 

We’re not quite sure why Trump turning out to be the leading source of fake news, would be the “biggest surprise”, but be that as it may, that he is – is now official. You can choose to follow credentialed and universally respected virologists, epidemiologists and infectious disease control authorities, or you can risk your health heeding Trump and his quack brigade.

Trump, retweeted the rantings of an unhinged woman who practices medicine in Houston, Texas, who many in the medical community are scratching their head just how it is that she still holds a license to practice.

                                              “Hello, you don’t need a mask. There is a cure.”

                                                                                                                    – Stella Immanuel

The woman, Stella Immanuel,  purportedly a pediatrician, maintains that such women’s gynecological related health issues as cysts and endometriosis are the result of people having intimate relations (“Astral Sex”) with demons and witches, resulting in “Nephilim”.

Her Twitter profile describes her as, “Physician, Author, Speaker, Entrepreneur, Deliverance Minister, God’s battle axe and weapon of war. Rehoboth Medical Center, Houston, TX. Fire Power Ministries.” At least she wraps her arms around the “battle axe” trope though the cultural context here in the U.S. of A. evidently escapes her.  Immanuel additionally asserts that the medical establishment and pharmaceutical companies are devising a vaccine that will destroy people’s capacity to embrace Christianity and alleges that “alien DNA” is currently used in medicines and medical treatments.  This woman is also invested in the notion that the federal government has been infiltrated and under the influence of “reptilians”.

Despite the clear evidence of this woman’s psychological pathology, when asked about her record of bizarre statements and behavior, Trump responded that her remarks about chloroquine were “spectacular”.  “I think they’re very respected doctors. There was a woman who was spectacular in her statements about it and she’s had tremendous success with it.”  Of Immanuel specifically, Trump was quoted as saying,  “I thought she was very impressive in the sense that she came — I don’t know which country she comes from — but she said that she’s had tremendous success with hundreds of different patients.  And I thought her voice was an important voice, but I know nothing about her.”  

So Trump is impressed by the woman, but stumped when attempting to recall “which country she comes from” and thought “her voice was an important voice” but knows “nothing about her.”  In times past, an ignoramus and incompetent, unwilling to base any views or public comments on objective facts, was relatively harmless and ignored by most. Not in the era of Trump. Trump’s ignorance and inanity are instead celebrated by those who see him as their era’s Moses, or in some cases, Jesus. 

Immanuel is also a proponent of the use of the substance Hydroxychloroquine as a treatment and a “cure” for coronavirus.  She was part of a group of like minded individuals that filmed a statement in support of Hydroxychloroquine in front of the Supreme Court building, which has named itself, “America’s Frontline Doctors”. The name is a misnomer.  None of the individuals featured have been working in emergency rooms or manning Intensive Care Units, even in a support role. Of the ten featured in the video, which was paid for and distributed by Tea Party Patriots, two were Ophthalmologists, which is a specialization that has no relation whatever to treatment of infectious diseases or those infected.

Interestingly, Senator Rand Paul (R-TX), also an Ophthalmologist, has shown himself to be a skeptic of legitimate science and research on COVID-19.  Of the remainder of the participants, MedPageToday  was not able to verify whether they were even actively practicing medicine or to what extent. They are all aligned with alt-Right political ideologies and all are Trumpublicans.

Another of the self described, “America’s Frontline Doctors”, Dr. James Todaro, co-authored a paper on Google Docs, with an attorney, Gregory Rigano back in mid March, referencing the use of Hydroxy Chloroquine in China, which filtered its way through the right wing ghetto on social media and eventually arrived at Fox News, where it likely caught the attention of Donald Trump. At no point did this paper ever come under the critically important scrutiny of peer review. Why? Because it was incompetent and illegitimate and because the authors are not peers of any credible scientists.

Members of the “America’s Frontline Doctors” collective, are unanimously antagonistic to Dr. Anthony Fauci and Jenny Beth Martin, president of Tea Party Patriots, stated falsely:

“My message to Dr. Anthony Fauci is to have a meeting with these frontline doctors who are seeing real patients. They’re touching human skin, they’re looking people in the eye, they’re diagnosing them, and they’re helping them beat the virus.”

But these quacks are not standing on any “front line” with the doctors and nurses who are actually working exhausting shifts, bravely struggling to keep COVID-19 victims alive. They are instead, fakes, frauds and the group is astroturf to the max.

Trump will boost with re-tweets, any person or group that attempts to contradict or discredit Dr. Anthony Fauci.  Is it because Fauci isn’t providing expert guidance to Americans on the correct path to protect their health and that of their loved ones? No. It’s because those same Americans in the majority, find Dr. Fauci to be more credible and trustworthy on the subject of COVID-19, by a ration of 2 to 1.

But strange never sleeps. Trump has been referencing in press engagements, a petition that is so out in whackville on the science of this pandemic, that many, including myself, would not be surprised to discover that it was conjured up as a prank to actually troll Trump and his voters.

It is named the “Great Barrington Declaration.”  It advocates the nihilistic proposition of “Herd Immunity” achieved by everyone in the population just foolheartedly bulling back out into the world, gathering in crowds at entertainment and sports venues, gyms, parties, frat beer keggers, holding large gatherings, crowding bars and packing into restaurants – all without social distancing, masks or proper hygienics.  The concept is based on a proposition that is universally rejected by reputable and credentialed health experts and would lead, just in the United States, to an estimated death count of 2 million or more Americans.  

Apparently, the count of 222,000 deaths and over 8.2 million infections, is not enough for them. The idea behind Trump touting this declaration is that he thinks just the mention of it will give a sheen of legitimacy among his voters, for dismissing recognized medical authorities both private and public. What is notable, but far from unexpected, is that just like “America’s Frontline Doctors”, the individuals that signed this are associated with types of practices that are considered to be on the fringes of the medical community. 

The letter had hundreds of signatures from the likes of massage therapists, hypnotherapists, a “therapeutic sound practitioner” and dozens more alternative medicine practitioners and proponents, including homeopaths. No, I refuse to say, “what’s up. my homeopath?”  Not gonna do it. Can’t make me.

Aside from the naked death culture / social Darwinism inherent in this, there is an unintended (or perhaps intended) humorous angle to this thing.  Sky News reports that they “found dozens of fake names on the list of medical signatories, which anyone can add to if they tick a box and enter a name. These included Dr. I.P. Freely, Dr. Person Fakename and Dr. Johnny Bananas, who listed himself as a “Dr of Hard Sums”.

Particularly face palm inducing was the signature of Dr. Harold Shipman, a general practitioner in the United Kingdom.  According to Wiki, “Harold Frederick Shipman, known to acquaintances as Fred Shipman, was an English general practitioner who is believed to be the most prolific serial killer in modern history.  On 31 January 2000, Shipman was found guilty of the murder of 15 patients under his care; his total number of victims was approximately 250.”  Oh yes, absolutely, that is the sort of healthcare authority you want to take your cues from when it comes to how to avoid contracting a potentially deadly virus. 

One imagines that if the roster of signatories to this Barrington Declaration was scrutinized closely enough, there would be discovered the signatures of “Dr. John” (RIP), “Doctor Doolittle”, “Dr. Mengele”, “Dr. Pepper”, “Doctor Kildare”, “Dr. Kevorkian”, “Dr. Doom”, “Doctor Strangelove”, “Dr. Zhivago”, “Dr. Who”, “Doctor Inferno”, “Dr. Orloff”, “Dr. Goldfoot” (and his ‘Girl Bombs’), “Dr. Lao”, “Dr. Jekyll” (and Mr. Hyde), “Doctor Evil” and …

OK, sorry – I apologize for what might be inappropriate sarcasm. But then it probably isn’t – inappropriate, that is.  But that’s more than you’ll get from Trump. You could sooner get a Mermaid to do the splits than you would get an apology out of Trump for anything. That’s not  “Dr. No”, that’s “Dr. Not Happeningever.”

Trump persists in putting us all – civilians and men and women in uniform at grave risk

Now as of the last few days, Trump is professing to his throngs of unmasked (possibly unwashed) and non social distancing attendees at his worship services poorly disguised as campaign rallies, that the United States is “rounding the curve” on the coronavirus. Nothing could be further than the truth, but then I repeat myself.

The reality is that infections and new outbreaks are trending upward in every state, some quite dramatically. And the number of new cases is averaging 50,000 and one day the past week, a record breaking 63,000. 

Take a moment to reflect. Who lies to you about things that carry life or death consequences?  Someone that really loves you and cares about your health and safety? Does this illustrate Trump’s assertion, nay empty boast that he and his administration have “done a great job”?

If Trump had done an about face in the manner in which he has mishandled and politically weaponized COVID-19, 6 or 7 months ago, public opinion in the majority, might have held Trump less accountable for the terrible tragedy that we are still suffering through. But he hasn’t and he isn’t and frankly, if he had, we’d be forced to conclude that the Donald had undergone a brain transplant and been the recipient of someone’s noggin that was substantially more intelligent, eminently more humane and dramatically less self absorbed. It’s clear he still has the old reptilian one.

So, with Trump, “it is what it is” and we are where we are – with projections based on algorithmic models indicating that unless there is a course correction and soon, we could be looking at well over 300,000 fatalities before the next president is sworn into office.  And profoundly symbolic of the likelihood of that risk and the zero odds of a course correction from the impeached president, are images like this of Trump’s super-spreader events. 

Trump – a genuine, authentic Manchurian president

Think about this. Is there anything that Russian president Vladimir Putin or Chinese president Xi Jinping  could orchestrate to weaken this country that matches what Trump has made a reality?  They both are celebrating the fact that Trump has accomplished more of the destabilization of American society and its institutions than they ever could have dreamed possible, without them scarcely having lifted a finger.

It has been reported and confirmed that Trump, on multiple occasions during his term in office, has held private meetings one on one with Vladimir Putin in which the topics discussed were withheld from officials within his administration, from journalists and consequently, the American people.

In June of 2019, Trump was asked as he was walking to board Marine One to head to the G-20 Summit in Tokyo, whether he would raise the topic of Russia’s efforts to intrude in our elections with Vladimir Putin. Trump responded by telling the reporter, “What I say to him is none of your business.”

Following the face to face private meetings with Putin, Trump has taken steps to conceal any record of the discussions. When Trump met with Putin in Hamburg, Germany in July 2017, directly at the conclusion of the conference, Trump took possession of the translator’s notes.  The same thing happened a year later at the infamous summit in Helsinki, Finland.

Ongoing Fallout From Trump's Press Conference And Helsinki Summit With Putin

by Richard Cameron Helsinki Summit – A Disaster and a bigly clean up job Donald Trump, after approximately 24 hours of furious reactions to his abominable actions in Helsinki, relented to administration political advisors and agreed to stage what amounted to a transparently insincere damage control dog and pony show. What caused the firestorm to […]

At that gathering, Trump spent two hours in discussion with Putin, during which time, Trump may have provided any number of concessions and agreed to maintain the status quo – which has, and remains, aggressive Russian counter-intelligence activities designed to aid Trump in widening the political divisions their efforts enhanced in the 2016 presidential election. It is inconceivable that the complete lack of transparency on the part of Trump can be accounted for in any other way.

Trump also functioned as a Russian propaganda conduit in the following press conference, in which he did reference that Putin had made an “extremely strong and powerful” denial that Russia interfered with the U.S. election. In none of the 16 total unaccountable private pow-wows with Putin, has Trump ever made it crystal clear and unequivocal that the election tampering needed to cease.  Quite the opposite. In denying what everyone in our national intelligence community knows as settled fact, from the FBI, to the CIA, to the Pentagon, to the then serving Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats to the Republican controlled Senate Intelligence Committee, that Russia has engaged in a sustained and ongoing effort to subvert our election process, Trump has tacitly given the Kremlin the green light to continue.

And amazingly, the press conference featuring Trump and Putin, confirmed not only that Trump was fully committed to advancing the Russian narrative, but that even Putin himself is in no way either in denial or remorseful having directed an attack on our elections.

Reporter: “Did you want President Trump to win the election and did you direct any of your officials to help him do that?”
Putin: “Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U.S. Russia relationship back to normal.”

That is the Russian President – plainly and spontaneously both admitting and confirming that he personally authorized a counter intelligence operation involving officials of his government to interfere with our elections.  A bit further on in the proceedings emerged what the focus of Trump’s ostensible corrective statements on Tuesday, centered on.

My people came to me, Dan Coates (sic), came to me and some others they said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be. But I really do want to see the server but I have, I have confidence in both parties.

Remarkable is the paradox of Trump saying he has “confidence in both parties”. That is a logical impossibility. Neither Trump, or anyone else for that matter, can possibly have confidence in both parties. This is reminiscent of Trump’s remarks about the White nationalists in Charlottesville, Virginia. 

Remaining on the bill of fare, was another notable question and equally amusing pants on fire assertion of facts not in evidence – this time, a coordinated effort from Putin and Trump.

Putin: And now to the compromising material. Yeah, I did heard these rumors that we allegedly collected compromising material on Mr. Trump when he was visiting Moscow. Now, our distinguished colleague, let me tell you this. When President Trump was at Moscow back then I didn’t even know that he was in Moscow. I treat President Trump with utmost respect. But back then, when he was a private individual, a businessman, nobody informed me that he was in Moscow.

Trump: And I have to say if they had it (compromising information), it would have been out long ago and if anybody watched Peter Strzok testify over the last couple of days and I was in Brussels watching it, it was a disgrace to the FBI, it was a disgrace to our country. And you would say that was a total witch hunt.

These answers were virtually fact checked in real time. What was uncovered was that contrary to Putin’s statement that “I didn’t even know that he was in Moscow”, Putin most certainly knew Trump was in Moscow.  How is this established? Fairly simply, really. Trump told the CPAC conference in 2014 that Putin had delivered to him a “beautiful present with a beautiful note” while Trump was in Moscow hosting the 2013 Miss Universe pageant.

Trump on another occasion, boasted to the National Press Club that he “spoke, indirectly and directly, with President Putin, who could not have been nicer”. The “reasonable man”, witnessing that exchange, asks himself, “if both of them are lying, what are they hiding?”

ABC News reported at the time that House Oversight Committee chair Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, announced  that his committee sent a follow-up letter to Trump’s acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, demanding information about Trump’s meetings with Putin. That request, as could have been predicted, was stonewalled, based on the administration’s abuse of their overarching interpretation of the “unitary executive” theory. 

Of Trump’s violation of the Presidential Records Act –  Austin Evers, executive director of American Oversight objected that:

“This may be the only written record of a meeting between two heads of state, and the interpreter’s notes can’t be seized or destroyed just because President Trump might want them hidden. U.S. law requires that the interpreter’s notes are recovered and preserved.”

U.S. Senator Gary Peters, Ranking Member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, former Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Navy Reserve and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee raised the alarm about the misuse of the classification system by Trump and the National Security Adviser’s office.

“The role of the National Security Council and of the classification process is to protect national security, not personal or political interests. An attempt to ‘lock down’ official documents using systems established solely for codeword-level intelligence information would be a misuse of critical national security systems and resources available to the White House.”

Congress has discovered that records of conversations between President Trump and President Vladimir Putin of Russia, the Saudi Royal family, and President Xi Jinping of China have been archived in a code-classified server instead of a repository that is at the same time, secure, but also conforms to the safeguards established to prevent the obscuring of presidential misconduct and abuse of power.

Senator Peters, is also concerned about the lack of transparency as to “policies, protocols, or other guidance relating to the type of information to be stored on the National Security Council’s shared classified computer system as compared to the codeword-level intelligence information system managed by the National Security Council Directorate for Intelligence Programs.” 

The fact begs the question that if this server is customarily only reserved for “highly sensitive classified information, including covert operations and national security material”, what is Trump discussing with these leaders, (two of which are considered adversaries by our intelligence community) that he, his aides and White House lawyers consider so potentially damaging to the president (and the United States) that they must be hidden from Congressional oversight?  And the Trump White House is in violation of an Executive Order that has not been rescinded in Trump’s term, Executive Order 13526, which remains in effect under the current Administration, information should never be classified in order to “conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error” or “prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency.”

The relevance here to the larger issue of Trump’s improper conduct of his role as Commander- in- Chief, is the appearance that Trump is undermining the national security through communications with adversaries that may very well be advancing his own personal interests while placing the nation, and consequently the men and women in uniform whose mission is to defend us, at a disadvantage with those same entities.

It could be a matter of dispute if it is viewed in isolation, but given the other actions Trump has been proven to have committed, it takes on a sinister context.  There is a considerable  body of evidence that suggests Trump’s loyalties extend only to himself. 

What we undoubtedly know about Trump’s alliances with our adversaries, is disqualifying

We have seen a great deal in the past 8 plus years, that demonstrates that the only terms under which Trump will even feign admiration and appreciation toward both command level and rank and file military, is if they maintain total unquestioning loyalty and obedience to his directives, even if they are shown to be unlawful.  Conversely, he has demonstrated not only deference to our adversaries and those of our allies, but he has publicly messaged to them his willingness to stand by and allow them to attack fellow democracies and militarily menace partners of the U.S. established defense partnerships.

In February of this year (2024), Trump, speaking at a campaign event in Conway, South Carolina, indicated that under his presidency, he would refuse to order a response to a Russian attack on countries that participate in the N.A.T.O. (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) military alliance if they did not contribute some undefined and arbitrary sum of money he claims they have not been ponying up.  Trump referenced a fictitious conversation he had with an unnamed foreign head of state:

“One of the presidents of a big country stood up [and] said, ‘Well, sir, if we don’t pay and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?‘  I said, ‘You didn’t pay, you’re delinquent,'” No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want.”

Some might say that this is just “Trump being Trump” and making a point in a somewhat clumsy manner.  That’s far from the case. This is Trump forecasting the manner in which he will order our forces positioned in Europe to stand down if one or all of the NATO partners, do what Trump has signaled they have permission from him to do.  As is his standard modus operandi, Trump based it on a false claim – that being that member countries of NATO and NATO collectively, have not been contributing their fair share to maintain the operations.

NATO nations have, in fact, all appropriated a greater share of funding to support NATO and Trump had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do about it.  It was 11 years before Trump took office that  NATO leaders agreed that member countries (now 31 total) would commit a minimum of 2% of their gross domestic product that would bolster military readiness.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg also criticized Trump’s comments, arguing it “undermines all of our security. Any attack on NATO will be met with a united and forceful response.  Any suggestion that allies will not defend each other undermines all of our security, including that of the U.S., and puts American and European soldiers at increased risk.”  

As to what a Trump second term would mean as far as further destabilizing Europe, Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling writing in The New Republic summarizes it in these terms:

“Trump does have his own plan to institute peace in the besieged region. In June, Trump’s advisers announced that, should he win in November, Trump would facilitate talks between the two nations that would more or less force Ukraine to cede part of its territory occupied by Russian forces. The plan’s obvious benefit to Russia resurfaced concerns over Trump’s notoriously cushy—and sometimes subservient—relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.”  

Trump is fond of claiming that had he been in office when Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine, he, Trump, would have been able to persuade Putin to put the brakes on the invasion or that Putin would have either been so charmed by Trump, or so fearful of him that he never would have initiated the attack to begin with. Of course this is pure fiction and there is a strong counter argument against Trump’s assertion.  Jessica Pisano, writing in Politico, makes a very comprehensive and detailed case, and summarizes it thusly:  

In Trump, Putin had a fellow-traveler. Far from ensuring world peace, the Trump years instead offered Putin a useful pause he utilized to further military readiness and prime the Russian population for a hot war. Earlier this month, the Russian state adopted new standards for mass graves — not because of the coronavirus pandemic in Russia, but for situations that involve “urban destruction.”   Far from deterring Putin, Trump did the opposite. Thanks to Trump, Putin was able to take advantage of a period of apparent detente during which Trump actually pursued Putin’s own policies of weakening NATO and democracy and destabilizing the West — leaving Putin free to prepare his war against the free people of Ukraine and their democratically elected government.

Trump, who has repeatedly praised Putin, was loath to criticize the Russian leader during a Sunday interview on Fox News. Navalny died in one of Russia’s harshest penal colonies in February, and the international community, including President Joe Biden, has largely laid the blame for his death on Putin.

When asked if he thought Putin had a hand in Navalny’s death, Trump said, “I don’t know, but perhaps.  I mean, possibly, I could say probably. I don’t know.”

Host Howard Kurtz reset the fact that Navalny had survived a poisoning attempt in 2020 and that every intelligence agency outside of the orbit of the Kremlin, assigned responsibility of it to Putin, asking Trump, “How could anything like that happen without Putin and high-ranking Kremlin officials sanctioning it?”  Trump’s reply was to equivocate, “Well, I don’t know. You certainly can’t say for sure, but certainly that would look like something very bad happened.” 

Trump knows full well, that Putin ordered Navalny to be murdered and finally succeeded, so the question is, what is holding him back from being straightforward about that fact?  It doesn’t require a leap of imagination to conclude that Putin has control of Trump like he does various other puppets internationally.

“He (Trump) has a very clear vision,” Hungarian strong man President Viktor Orbán told Hungarian broadcaster M1 regarding Trump’s intentions vis a vis Ukraine’s fate, should Trump regain the US presidency,  “He says the following: First, he will not give a single penny for the Russo-Ukrainian war. That’s why the war will end, because it’s obvious that Ukraine cannot stand on its own two feet.”  

Trump openly admires tyrants, dictators, mass murderers

Trump chafes at the limitations of the office of President and his inability to silence critics and the media, who he dubs, “the enemy of the American people”. Trump sees these iron fisted men’s despotic behavior as accomplishments and respects them. Of  the despotic leader of North Korea, Kim Jong un’s iron fisted control of his populace, Trump waxes admiringly:

“He’s the head of a country and I mean he is the strong head,” Trump said to Fox News.  “Don’t let anyone think anything different. He speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.”  When this window into Trump’s psyche met with backlash, he tried to pawn it off with the explanation that it was merely “sarcasm.”  Kim Jong un knows better.

Kim is a “talented guy”

“Hey, when you take over a country, tough country, with tough people, and you take it over from your father, I don’t care who you are, what you are, how much of an advantage you have,” Trump said in the interview. “If you can do that at 27 years old, I mean that’s one in 10,000 that could do that.”

Catch the emphasis inserted with the reference of “and you take it over from your father.”   Is Trump consciously or otherwise conflating Kim inheriting the authoritarian mantle from his father, Kim John Il, with Trump’s own takeover of the Trump business empire from his father Fred? 

In a bizarre, but not particularly surprising resemblance to Trump’s equivocation about white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville, when he stated that there were “good people on both sides”, Trump refused to morally condemn North Korean dictator Kim Jong un’s track record of human rights violations. “Yeah, but so have a lot of other people done some really bad things,” Trump said, with the aplomb and panache of a 2nd grader in jeopardy of being held back from graduating. “I mean, I could go through a lot of nations where a lot of bad things were done.”  What is this? Is he suggesting that the regimes of inhumane strongmen, be graded on a curve?

Incredibly, Trump said of Kim, in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, that “His country does love him”, and that “you see the fervor” that Kim’s countryman have regarding Kim.

Either this is just Trump riffing offhandedly with the confidence that his voters are poorly informed enough to take that assessment at face value, or Trump legitimately does not know or understand that the “fervor” North Koreans display is only for show, given the fact that every single inhabitant of the Hermit Kingdom knows that if you don’t fake enthusiasm convincingly, you could wind up in one of country’s many Gulags, or worse – if there is something worse.  Speaking with Voice of America’s Greta Van Susteren following his historic summit in Singapore on Tuesday, Trump called Kim “funny” and “smart.”  

“He’s got a great personality. He’s a funny guy, he’s very smart, he’s a great negotiator. He loves his people, not that I’m surprised by that. I think that we have the start of an amazing deal. We’re going to denuke North Korea.” 

For some reason, this calls to mind the episode in “Goodfellas”, where Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) asks, ” I make you laugh? I’m here to f–kin’ amuse you? Waddya’ mean “funny”? Funny how? How am I funny?”

Kim is only a “funny guy”, if your funny bone is tickled by the antics of a fellow (Kim), under whom between himself and his father, close to 500,000 have died within their network of gulags or because of mass famines, between 900,000 and 2.4 million starved to death. Count me as one who sees no belly laughs in that or even muted chuckles.  And if Kim, according to Trump’s lights, “loves his people”, one shudders to think what a tyrant who hated his people, would do to them. 

Trump’s most likely handling of the North Korean threat to our allies

A keen observer of the geo political environment ranging from the Sea Of Japan, the Yellow and East China Seas, to the Korean Peninsula, the Philippines and all the way down to Taiwan and the South China Sea, Thomas P. Logan, literate in the Japanese language and conversationally fluent in Korean, has produced an outline of what could likely be expected of Trump’s calculus regarding U.S. foreign policy on North Korea would be, should he occupy the Oval Office for a second term. 

Logan, a longtime resident of Japan, who has made numerous visits since 1983 to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and has high level contacts with U.S. government officials across multiple agencies  responsible for the region, breaks down for National Compass the following scenario:  

Donald Trump’s unsettling vision for the Korean Peninsula boils down to three alarming ideas:

📌  He aims to fly to Pyongyang without any preconditions to sign a meaningless, if not perilous peace treaty to end the Korean Conflict, believing only “he can do it” and eager to be “the first.” He will withdraw U.S. troops from South Korea on the trust of a mere handshake and photo op.

📌  He seeks to share a Joint Nobel Peace Prize with Kim Jong-un as a result of this insane move.

📌  He plans to develop golf courses at the Wonsan-Kalma (원산시) beachside resort in North Korea, a pre-master plan proposal he quietly floated through his envoy in failed Stockholm negotiations five years ago. This would inevitably rely on North Korean KPA military personnel and prison labor to accomplish as in the famed Masikryong Ski Area (essentially a  Potemkin show village to milk/fool Western tourists) .

Transactional Real Estate Deal Donald Trump is a CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER, who shows no concern for the security of Free South Korea and Japan. He for years has viewed them both as “freeloaders” despite their commitments and sacrifices, ready to betray these democratic allies at the next flattering “love letter” from the DPRK Dictator, addressed to him as “Excellency.”

Trump Versus Trump - Hailing Nationalism While Undermining Democracy

Trump's messaging about his views on democracy, as he mixes into it enthusiasm about nationalism and authoritarianism, is concerning not only advocates of America's system of rule of law as versus rule of men, but our foreign allies.

As to Trump’s perceptions of the nature of the regime in Beijing, which maintains a stranglehold on its own citizens, Trump has no misgivings about the traditions and manner in which the Peoples’ Republic of China orchestrates  it’s authoritarian order and deals  harshly with internal political dissent. 

That was true with his past admiring comments about China’s premier Xi Jinping and China’s historical record of destroying political dissidents – most notably, the event many of us witnessed on live television; the Tiananmen Square Massacre.  Trump described the brutal assault on students in 1989 of which this year marked the 30th year since that shameful event – as a legitimate response to a “riot”:

“When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it, then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength.”

As far as Trump’s championing of religious liberties are concerned, they do not extend to the reported approximately 1 million ethnic Uighurs that China is warehousing in so called “re-education” camps in places such as the Western region of Xinjiang.   The other following examples have been compiled for us, courtesy of the Atlantic:

Russian President Vladimir Putin

What Trump said about him:  “If he says great things about me, I’m going to say great things about him. I’ve already said, he is really very much of a leader. I mean, you can say, ‘Oh, isn’t that a terrible thing’—the man has very strong control over a country. Now, it’s a very different system, and I don’t happen to like the system. But certainly, in that system, he’s been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader.”

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi

What Trump said about him:  “We agree on so many things. I just want to let everybody know in case there was any doubt that we are very much behind President el-Sisi.  He’s done a fantastic job in a very difficult situation. We are very much behind Egypt and the people of Egypt. The United States has, believe me, backing, and we have strong backing.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan

What Trump said about him:  “Frankly, he’s getting very high marks. He’s also been working with the United States. We have a great friendship and the countries—I think we’re right now as close as we’ve ever been … a lot of that has to do with a personal relationship.”

Trump vacillates between pointing the finger of responsibility at China and it’s leadership for the COVID-19 viral outbreak in America, and praising the nation’s government for handling it. 

China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 24, 2020

Two days earlier, Trump, in no uncertain terms, gave a ringing endorsement of Xi and his government. On Jan. 22, the first day Trump spoke publicly about the coronavirus, he told Fox News there was nothing to worry about. “It’s all taken care of. And China is working very hard on the problem. We spoke about it and China is working very hard on it.”

There it is, “It’s all taken care of.”  It’s all of a piece with the 38 times and counting that Trump has stated in various combinations of words the phrase that the coronavirus “will just disappear”, or it will “go away.”

“It’s going away. It’ll go away. Things go away. No question in my mind that it will go away.”   

-Donald Trump

Two months later, on March 24, Trump was still greasing up the Chinese President. “Look, I have a very good relationship with President Xi and they went through a lot. You know some people say other things. They went through a lot. They lost thousands of people. They’ve been through hell,” he told reporters.

For the last several months on the other hand, Trump tacked in the opposite direction, referring to COVID-19 in a manner that is shaped as a racial slur, the “China virus.”  

Here in Fall of 2024, we know how the reality of COVID 19 shaped up, both here and in China.  By the end of Trump’s term (although he claims it was not), the total deaths in the United States neared 400,000.  It never went away in China, despite the national authorities there under Xi, enforcing draconian lockdowns on the population for extended periods. Consequentially, the Chinese economy has contracted a fiscal virus and shows no signs of recovering.  It has “Long Economic Covid” and all the symptoms that accompany it. 

What changed? In January and March – all the way through the month of April, Trump was still trying to charm, muscle or cajole Xi, into giving him a sweetheart trade deal he could brag endlessly about and carp about how he used his vaunted “art of the deal” to get over on China.  He signaled that in April when he referred to Chinese negotiators having thrown him a bone in the form of an agreement to buy a quarter of a billion dollars of particular categories of goods from the U.S.  “Well, I did a trade deal with China, where China is supposed to be spending $250 billion in our country.”  About as reality based as that “beautiful wall”  that Mexico was going to spring for.

The Hamas Attack And Trump’s Mishandling Of Foreign Policy

Now, at the time of this update of the original e book, on October 12, 2023, where we are six days out from the horrific, murderous attack on Israel from Hamas militants that breached Israeli territory, slaughtered over a thousand Israelis, abducted and sexually abused women of all ages and allegedly decapitated even toddlers – Trump has reared his ugly head and his sewer of a mouth to add insult to trauma once again.

To attach the significance that this episode merits, it is essential to set the context of what preceded it. Less than a year into his term, Trump announced that the United States would move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.  This move was controversial, due to the fact that in the view of most foreign policy experts, it had the effect of slamming the door shut on discussions and negotiations on solving the issue of a separate state for Palestinians. They also believe that the move was the equivalent of putting the cart before the horse and the timing, if not the worst, far from ideal.  Trump announced at the time, nevertheless,  “I’ve judged this course of action to be in the best interests of the United States of America and the pursuit of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.  This is a long-overdue step to advance the peace process and to work towards a lasting agreement.” 

The unintended? consequences …

It has had the effect of raising the temperature of the long standing disputes and antagonisms from a scalding hot to a full boil. This is not to say there aren’t other components to the ongoing conflict, there are – Iran’s persistent destabilizing interference and support for the worst players in Gaza and the West Bank, but Israel was making progress in bringing other Arab nations in as mediators.

Another part of the impediment for peace in Israel and “Occupied Palestinian Territories” (OPT), was and is the rapid acceleration of the construction of Jewish settlements in areas that were prospectively to become part of the separate Palestinian state, particularly during Benjamin Netanyahu’s term as Prime Minister. With the premature declaration of the relocation of the embassy, all prospects, however slim they might have been for some traction for normalization and cooperation, was torpedoed.

Palestinians have some legitimate grievances and some of them are accountable to Israel’s handling of its national security necessities.  However, much of what the suffering citizens of the occupied territories (Gaza and the West Bank) have experienced has been self inflicted in the sense that they have, in the majority, gravitated towards ideologically terrorist oriented groups like Hamas and Fatah, which have a long standing agenda and commitment to the total annihilation of the Jews and Israel as a nation.  The only organization that even pays lip service to co-existence is the Palestinian Authority and its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, and they have, up to the present, had little influence with the areas that have most been radicalized.

But the bottom line, is that while at the same time, neither Israel or any other democracy is perfect and devoid of error in actions and judgment – there is nothing in the entire history of the adverse relations between Israelis and Palestinians that even comes close to justifying the monstrous atrocities committed by Hamas militants in the Israeli settlements that border it.

There is no room for equivocation when innocent, unarmed and peaceful civilians have been shot down indiscriminately in masse, women have been sexually brutalized, the elderly beaten and kidnapped and children have been murdered and abducted. When the state of affairs devolves to inhumane, hateful, deliberate killing, very personal in nature, there can be no rationalization for it.

But why was Trump’s insistence on a premature relocation of our embassy, a betrayal for our troops and their commanders? Because instead of cooling down the tensions and taking leverage away from the outside antagonists, Trump tossed Kerosene on them for short term political gain and his Quixotic, foolhardy quest for some shiny object like the Nobel Peace Prize to paper over the failures of his presidency.

The Middle East is volatile in the best of times with all the outside elements constantly maneuvering to pull one or another of the countries within it into their spheres of influence or alternately seeking to block an adversary’s attempts to do same.  Making ill-advised, ill timed and precipitous foreign policy moves, especially from the nation (the United States) that is looked to and expected to make carefully thought out decisions, results in making the region more dangerous and thus needlessly risking the lives of Americans serving in the region.

The Trump foreign policy confusion and dysfunction, not only in this region, but virtually everywhere else, has caused befuddlement and consternation among our allies and emboldened our adversaries. Trump claimed the moving of the embassy to Jerusalem was all about peace.  It wasn’t. It had nothing to do with that. What then? Well, it might not come as much of a surprise that the relocation proclamation had everything to do with strengthening the hold he had on White Evangelicals, the core of his voting base.  Trump, stumping in Oshkosh, Wisconsin on August 17 of 2020,  let the open secret out into the open.

Trump didn’t like ‘Bibi’ dating other presidents

Despite Trump claiming that he could magically make the current conflict in Gaza and Southern Lebanon go away, simply by making some phone calls – Trump, because he was angered by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s diplomatic congratulations toward Joe Biden’s inauguration in January 2021, Trump has turned against Netanyahu.

Barak Ravid, author of “Trump’s Peace: The Abraham Accords and the Reshaping of the Middle East.”, recounts in the book and writing in Axios, having been told by Trump, that Trump was extremely angry about Netanyahu’s overtures to the incoming Biden administration.  He quotes Trump as saying:

“The first person that congratulated [Biden] was Bibi Netanyahu, the man that I did more for than any other person I dealt with. “I liked Bibi. I still like Bibi. But I also like loyalty. And not only did he congratulate him, he did it on tape… Bibi could have stayed quiet. He has made a terrible mistake.  He was very early — like, earlier than most. I haven’t spoken to him since. F**k him.”    

When prominent Republicans were still seeking to secure the nomination for the 2024 presidential contest, they were willing to push back against Trump’s spit wads against Israel.  Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis, was among them, remarking on a social media post, “it is absurd that anyone, much less someone running for President, would choose now to attack our friend and ally, Israel, much less praise Hezbollah terrorists as ‘very smart.’ As President, I will stand with Israel and treat terrorists like the scum that they are.”   

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, another GOP presidential contender and said to have been on Trump’s short list for the VP slot, previously had compared Trump’s comments to a foreign ally criticizing the U.S. in the aftermath of 9/11 or the attack on Pearl Harbor.  It’s hard to take these rejoinders toward Trump seriously, in light of how all of them have now closed ranks around Trump after he secured the nomination and showed up to the RNC coronation of Trump this year in Milwaukee.

Some unaligned Republican observers are willing to stand by their criticisms of Trump, one example being Erick Erickson. “I think it is another sign that Trump’s impulsiveness plays into the hands of those who are not his friends. He’s given a propaganda win to a terrorist group. That’s unfortunate.”  

The former president said the Oct. 7 Hamas assault on Israel “should have never happened” and blamed Netanyahu for not seeing it coming, upbraiding Netanyahu days after the attack for being unprepared.  “Two nights ago I read all of Biden’s security people … they said, ‘Gee, I hope Hezbollah doesn’t attack from the north, because that’s the most vulnerable spot.’ I said, ‘Wait a minute. You know, Hezbollah is very smart.’ They’re all very smart. They [Israel] have a national defense minister … if you listen to this jerk, you would attack from the north because he said that’s our weak spot,”  Trump said.

In an interview with Time magazine, Trump continued his critique. “They have the most sophisticated equipment. They had—everything was there to stop that. And a lot of people knew about it, you know, thousands and thousands of people knew about it, but Israel didn’t know about it, and I think he’s being blamed for that very strongly, being blamed.”  And with regard to a subject we’ve referenced elsewhere here, Trump recalled his displeasure in January 2020 when a U.S. operation to assassinate Iran General Qassem Soleimani was, according to him, supposed to be a joint attack until Netanyahu withdrew at the last second.  “I had a bad experience with Bibi,” Trump said. “That was something I never forgot.”

Trump Gaslights American Intelligence agencies

The American public, to a large extent, is unfamiliar with the fact that when we refer to the “intelligence community”, we are describing a constellation of agencies, (NSA, CIA, FBI, DIA, DHS, NGA, DEA), plus intelligence units for all branches of the armed forces – that are composed of analysts and operatives that, in the vast majority, are military officers on active duty.

That is something important to consider when you hear Donald Trump trash talking about or dismissing the work product of intelligence and classifying them as “traitors” and the “Deep State.” When Trump attacks the credibility, personal and professional reputation of men and women serving in our agencies under the aegis of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence – he is trashing military folks, whose collective loyalty to this nation is not legitimately subject to dispute. 

“Unelected, deep state operatives who defy the voters, to push their own secret agendas, are truly

 a threat to democracy itself.”   – Donald Trump                                                          

Trump could scarcely have better described his own conduct both during and following his term in office.  The only corrective I would issue, is that Trump’s agenda was far from secret to anyone actually paying attention.

The “Deep State”  – according to the alt-Right lexicon, “is a clandestine network entrenched inside the government, bureaucracy, intelligence agencies, and other governmental entities.”  The Deep State supposedly controls state policy behind the scenes, while the democratically-elected process and elected officials are merely figureheads.

The "Deep State" - Shallow, Entertaining And Hopefully Recovering As Well

by Keith Mines   I was born into an American union with 48 states. We added another two the year after I was born, and with that I thought we were finished. But of late we seem to be adding new states at a dizzying pace.  Here’s some thoughts on the recent acquisitions: The Deep State The image of “deep state” bureaucrats who have their own political agenda and resist that of their political masters is a regular crowd pleaser now at Trump rallies and part of a veritable tsunami of tweets.  In one case the victims had been out […]

This is the heart of the conspiracy theory and the Pandora’s box of pre-suppositions that accompany it, that Donald Trump, either subscribes to, or has been promoting to serve his political interests. And Joshua Geltzer and Ryan Goodman, writing in Just Security, concur:     

What might explain the President’s insistence on repeatedly dismissing, denigrating, and even denouncing the U.S. intelligence community? Two key drivers appear to be:

(1) Trump’s dogged pursuit of desired policies regardless of the assessments of the real world offered by the U.S. intelligence community and

(2) Trump’s elevation of his own political and personal self-interest over the nation’s security.

 

From the perspective of a global adversary – whether Trump is an enemy agent, or simply a belligerent fool,  a useful idiot – Trump is a counter-intelligence, agit prop, dream come true for such a foreign power. 

Carrie Cordero  – a Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, covers several bases in terms of why Trump’s contradictory pronouncements carry profound risks to national security:   

First, the president continues to indicate publicly that he believes what Russian President Vladimir Putin tells him one-on-one over the advice of the U.S. intelligence community and friendly foreign intelligence services.

Second, his refusal to acknowledge that a hostile nation-state took active steps to influence the 2016 election presents risks that federal and local officials will similarly not take the threat of foreign meddling in elections seriously or devote sufficient time and resources to protecting election systems from malicious attack and interference in the 2018 elections, and beyond.

Third, his rejection of the intelligence assessment places additional and unnecessary strain on our partnerships with allies, particularly those with whom the U.S. maintains important intelligence-sharing arrangements. These partnerships are critical for a host of reasons, including but not limited to counter-terrorism intelligence sharing.  Trust among nations—at both the intelligence service level but also at the political leadership level—is critical to maintaining these important sharing relationships.

Fourth, the president’s refusal to acknowledge the Russian influence campaign adds to—not detracts from—a perception that he, his campaign and his inner circle have something to hide regarding their communications with Russian government officials and surrogates during the election.

Had it been true, it would have been so easy for Trump campaign officials to present a narrative that they were the unwitting targets of a foreign intelligence effort. Had they reacted very differently for the past eighteen months, including having affirmatively reported the outreach from Russian affiliates to American law enforcement and intelligence agencies, they could have been logically assessed to have been victims of a sophisticated foreign intelligence operation.

Instead, by failing to be transparent about communications and meetings, and by disparaging the ensuing investigations (not to mention firing the chief investigator), they have increased the skepticism with which a reasonable observer contemplates their denials.

Some imagine that the most damaging information we might learn from the release of Trump’s taxes, might be that we discover (as we have), that Trump’s tax attorney’s are extraordinarily adept at facilitating his tax avoidance. But what we might learn about how he might be compromised by foreign debt, might, at least in part, explains a lot about his duplicitous behavior.

Ms. Cordero also weighs in on that question:

The denial only of intelligence pertaining to Russian influence efforts casts further doubt on the president’s assertions that he has no financial entanglements with the Russian government or Russian government- affiliated persons or organizations.

After all this time, the president and his advisers still have not offered a reasonable explanation for his unwillingness to accept the community’s assessment. Financial entanglement has long been a counterintelligence red flag.

In light of her comments, this is an interesting and revealing story.  Since Trump was, by various estimates, up to a billion dollars in debt to various banks, most notably among them, Deutsche Bank – where did the money come from for this shopping spree of Trump’s, going out and loading up on golf properties?  The explanation for that, comes by way of James Dodson. Dodson, a noted journalist on the East Coast, not James Dobson, of the religious right cabal and a notorious evangelical Trump enabler.  Dodson, outlines:   

“I knew Trump was very interested in golf,” Dodson says. “I knew he was buying up golf courses. His M.O. was to find a financially distressed property, buy it, keep it in bankruptcy, do a half-a-million-dollar renovation, fire the entire staff and hire a third back.”…

“Trump was strutting up and down, talking to his new members about how they were part of the greatest club in North Carolina,” Dodson says. “And 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 $100 million.”

“So when I got in the cart with Eric,” Dodson says, “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.’ 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.‘

“We have all the funding we need out of Russia.” So the money was not merely dropping from the sky or by virtue of some refinement of alchemy.  

Trump decided to cut his appointed Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats in July of last year, on the basis that Coats contradicted Trump’s fables following the Singapore summit, when he said in a Senate hearing that, “We currently assess that North Korea will seek to retain its WMD capabilities and is unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons and production capabilities because its leaders ultimately view nuclear weapons as critical to regime survival.”

Director Coats also rankled Trump by declining to play along with Trump’s absurd denials about Russia’s interference with the 2016 Presidential election.

You will recall that in a press conference following his secret meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland, Trump dismissed the warnings and reports of the American intelligence experts in favor of Putin’s assurances, saying, “My people came to me, Dan Coats came to me, some others, they said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this, I don’t see any reason why it would be.”

At the time, Trump’s comment was assessed as a response to Coats’ earlier statement that, “We have been clear in our assessments of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and their ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy, and we will continue to provide unvarnished and objective intelligence in support of our national security.”

Another instance of Coats not backing Trump’s ignorant comments as Commander-in-Chief, was when Trump tweeted, “The Intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of Iran. Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!”

Trump would have expected Coats to either remain mum or certainly not undermine his assessment of Iran’s compliance with the nuclear agreement which commenced during the administration of Barack Obama. Instead Coats told senators that, “We do not believe Iran is currently undertaking activities we judge necessary to produce a nuclear device.”

Dan Coats had strong fundamentals for the job that Trump originally nominated him to – a reputation for objectivity and loyalty to his oath of office as a member of Congress.

While he had no direct, personal experience with intelligence work, he at least had a background of service in the Army, service as an Ambassador to Germany, a deep understanding of the role of America’s intelligence architecture plus work as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee for close to a decade.

My view of all of this is insignificant.  What is significant is the collective view represented by the statement of a group, (National Security Leaders for Biden), of nearly 500 former national security leaders, including three senior officers who served under Trump, in their signatures on a letter backing Democratic candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden as “a good man with a strong sense of right and wrong.”

This sort of massive endorsement in the final days of a national election, is unprecedented. But the extent of Trump’s antagonism toward and corrosive attacks upon America’s intelligence team, puts us in uncharted territory, and actions that their fraternity might ordinarily shy away from, are seen now as a survival strategy. 

Signatories included Trump’s former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired Air Force General Paul J. Selva, retired Navy SEAL Vice Admiral P. Gardner Howe, III, who served as CIA’s director of military affairs, and retired Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Paul Zukunft.

Stamping a personal political brand on the military, is against American tradition

Trump has endeavored to politicize the military. Is this a problem? Well, according to retired Major General Charles J. Dunlap (USAF), it is.

In an essay on Lawfire, he details how active duty servicemen and women are prohibited from involving themselves with election politics. What he argues is the risks associated with this, is the following:

The public’s positive perception of the armed forces is especially important in an era of an All-Volunteer Force.  The military needs to draw the best and brightest from all parts of the citizenry, and to do that it must be welcoming to people with differing political views.  There can be no fact or perception of any sort of political litmus test for military service.

The same principle that applies downward, to the lowest rank, applies upward – all the way up to the Commander-in-Chief, despite the fact that the president can only be disciplined and demoted by by American voters. Maj. General Dunlap points out that:

Even when the behavior of a military officer falls short, politicians – and especially the Commander-in-Chief – still have responsibilities.  

Politicians have a role to play here as well.  I understand why they want to align themselves with the nation’s most respected institution, but in the long run a politicized military – or one perceived to be politicized – serves no one. 

In my opinion, all commanders-in-chief – including President Trump – need to be very sensitive to the importance of a politically-neutral military. 

  

While the motive behind Trump attempting to blur the political lines of separation between his presidency and the military is manifestly obvious – the popularity of the U.S. Armed Forces as an institution – the numbers behind this illustrate both the incentive and the moral hazards of his maneuvering.

According to Gallup public opinion surveys based on “Confidence in Institutions”, in 2017, 72 percent of Americans had a “great deal” or “quite a lot of faith” in the military—far more than in Congress (12 percent), the presidency (32 percent), or even the Supreme Court (40 percent).

“Trump has constantly tried to use the military as a political prop,” said Michele Flournoy, former Undersecretary of Defense for policy under President Obama, citing, among other examples, the president’s interference in the military justice system pardoning two convicted war criminals and his decision to prevent the Navy from punishing a third — Navy Seal – Eddie Gallagher.

Is it reasonable to believe, in light of the horrendous personal attacks that Trump openly launches against persons he either disdains or disrespects (or harbors feelings of inferiority regarding), that he is not capable of trashing in private settings – military service and those who serve if he assumes that the comments will never be repeated publicly?  We think not.

In fact, the profilers on our team are regularly perplexed at Trump’s propensity to lie about even things that most people view as relatively trivial, much less of the political magnitude of Trump’s slurs against KIAs, MIAs and wounded in combat. They believe that there is an underlying psychological component to the hostility he expresses regarding them in private as opposed to the effusive praise he exhibits in public settings. They further speculate that Trump may be profoundly conflicted about the lack of courage he identifies in himself, in contrast to the bravery and self sacrifice of troops killed or wounded in battle.

Military valor reflects back to him, his personal cowardice and he harbors resentment. We see a contrast – a marked contrast between Trump’s tributes to the armed forces and that of most other presidents in our nation’s history.  Trump, in the estimation of everyone outside his cult followers, displays exaggerated and smarmy hyper patronizing behavior that is also often associated with insincere automobile salespeople and real estate agents.

That’s actually a pretty good analogy. How many of you for whom this is not your first trip around the bases, have dealt with a real estate agent, who when they saw a fat commission in their immediate future, was more chummy with you than your most enthusiastic close friend, until you asked for a commitment in writing about repairing that structural defect you discovered on the walk through. Then the fangs came out in, shall we say, a most adversarial way.  Or maybe it was when you informed the car salesman what your firm offer on the vehicle is and that you already have your own financing. Ugly, right?

It suggests a conscious attempt at camouflaging hidden emotions and sentiments. And like the trope of the ingratiating real estate agent and auto dealership swamp denizen, the moment Trump senses his motives are being thwarted, he immediately reacts with venom and spite. 

A majority of enlisted and officers don’t plan to re-up on their Trump subscriptions

Retired U.S. Army general and Pierce County resident Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton posted a video to his Twitter account on September 3, quickly went viral.

Read Jeff Goldberg’s article in The Atlantic. How could anyone support Trump? pic.twitter.com/xqfnklmCBq

— Major General (ret) Paul Eaton (@PaulDEaton52) September 4, 2020

Maj. General Eaton didn’t spare any words, other than the ones that might or might not be printable here:

“You have shown disrespect to the military on countless occasions. I am stunned that anybody in the United States military would consider you anything but a ‘loser’ or a ‘sucker.’ You’re no patriot.

When it comes to civil military relations, Trump is a disaster. He came in loving the trappings of the military — the parades, the bands, the uniform — but he doesn’t understand who we are.

You insult brave men and women who have done our nation’s bidding, and you are reflecting upon yourself the very words you’re using to describe those men and women. You are demonstrating cowardice.”

Trump’s Jones about the military. It just ain’t so – it’s just a show.

We told you that former Marine Corp General John Kelly, would have a response to Trump. It seems that he has. CNN’s production team that assembled the special presentation, “The Insiders: A Warning from Former Trump Officials” – includes a segment in which Kelly, in a candid discussion with some colleagues, delivers, what is by his standards, a scathing assessment of Donald Trump:

In addition to the more high profile ex Trump officials and cabinet members, the Guardian reports that:

More than 700 national security leaders and former military officials publicly endorsed Kamala Harris for president in a letter released on Sunday, calling her a candidate who “defends America’s democratic ideals”.  They also said her Republican rival, Donald Trump, was “unfit” for the job.

The letter, signed by retired US navy R Adm Michael Smith and hundreds of others, criticized the former president’s remarks about “terminating” the US constitution over his lie that the 2020 election was stolen and his suggestion of becoming a “dictator” if re-elected.

The letter also referenced Trump’s history, as we have outlined it extensively, of the former president having given aid and comfort, rhetorically and otherwise, to every foreign adversary that threatens freedom around the globe as well as condemning his violation of the oath of office he took upon being inaugurated. “Mr Trump denigrates our great country and does not believe in the American ideal that our leaders should reflect the will of the people,” says the letter. “Mr. Trump is the first president in American history to actively undermine the peaceful transfer of power, the bedrock of American democracy.”

The signatories include 15 retired four-star generals, 12 former Cabinet-level officials, eight service secretaries, more than 120 ambassadors and three Trump-era officials: Retired U.S. Army Gen. Peter Chiarelli, former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff retired four-star Gen. Paul Selva and retired Maj. Gen. Eric Thorne Olson.

Our summation to the jury

Trump, as we earlier stated, has the right to speak atrocities and defame all sorts of people he has contempt for. What he doesn’t have the right to do, is to evade the consequences of the disapproval of the majority of the American public.   

Republicans are not exactly in the dark about the writing on the GOP bathroom wall, as evidenced by former Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse’s comments, in which he speaks out loud the sentiments that other members of his party will only dare whisper. This audio was from an October 14, tele-conference speaking to 17,000 donors and party members in the state. As a side note, Sasse incurred the wrath of Donald Trump in 2020, due to the fact that Sasse declined to endorse Trump’s run for a second term. 

The point that we have been heading towards throughout, is this – well, let me frame it in the the form of a question.  Suppose that you discovered for certain that anyone you deal with; your husband, wife, sibling, Uncle, auto mechanic, attorney, banker, best friend – is not only a serial liar, but has been lying to you, about matters of consequence.  Would you trust them or would you fact check everything they say going forward? Would you want to have anything more to do with them, if you had a choice in the matter? Would you believe them if they claimed to be extremely fond of you, much less that they really “loved you”? 

I think I just asked a question I already know the answer to, unless you are deeply invested into the illusion of Trump.

It’s beyond the sweep here, to present all the evidence we’ve compiled to support charges of treacherous and indecent conduct by the president as it pertains to the statements about the fallen in combat, prisoners of war and missing in action. For an eBook, I have probably, if you will pardon the expression, beaten the proverbial dead horse.  There was and is enough material to easily consume an online publication such as this at 5 times the length and that would be true on any of the inter related sub topics explored here.

Another aspect of the challenge of when to call it a day with a subject matter as broad as the unfitness for any public office and the treachery of Trump, is that because there exists no one who has the standing with Trump to advise him to put the brakes on his insanity, there really is no end point to be seen and so there is new crazy on a daily – really, an hour to hour basis.

Here’s an example of the latest that emerged just as I was attempting to button things up.  Special Counsel Jack Smith, within the past day, filed a 160 brief to the court and Judge Tanya Chutkan in the case “United States Of America Vs. Donald Trump” in the United States District Court for the District of Colombia. This is the case that charges ex-president Trump of crimes related to his attempts to subvert the outcome of the 2020 Presidential Election,  prevent the transfer of power, foment a seditious attack on the Capitol and obstruct the process of certifying the Electoral votes. 

There is a lot of damning material in those 160 pages, but one of them has garnered a lot of attention in particular.  In one section, the filing reports that on Nov. 4, 2020, a campaign employee and Trump ( the “co-conspirator”),  tried to sow confusion about the vote count that was underway at the TCF Center in Detroit, which “looked unfavorable to” Trump.

The filing said that when the co-conspirator was told that a batch of votes appeared to be heavily in favor of Biden, he (Trump) replied, “find a reason it isn’t,” so as to “give me options to file litigation,” adding, “even if it [is].”  When a colleague suggested to the co-conspirator that this could risk creating a scene reminiscent of the so-called “Brooks Brothers Riot” — an episode in 2000, intended to interfere with Florida’s vote-counting effort in that year’s presidential election — the co-conspirator (Trump), “responded, ‘Make them riot’ and ‘Do it!!!,’” according to the filing.   

I unpacked as much as I did on this topic, because some people inclined to hold the position that everything that questions the character and conduct of Trump, must be “fake news”.  I wish it was fake news, but the danger we face is real, all too real.  If someone needed more to convince them of the inauthenticity, the crimes and treachery of Donald Trump – we might as well also take a Mag light with us out in the back yard to help them view the sun at 12:00 noon. 

Meanwhile, we have arrived at the conclusion that we already have an ample amount of evidence to present to the grandest Grand Jury in the nation – the American Electorate and we will recommend that their indictment of him, come in the form of sending Donald J. Trump and his brood of vipers packing on November 5, 2024.  At least this time, we won’t have to expel him from the White House.

And with that, I’ll give Military veteran and famed US Airways pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger III the last word:

“We owe it not only to those who have served and sacrificed for our nation, but to ourselves and to succeeding generations to vote him out.”

 

Thank you for reading and sharing,

– Richard Cameron     

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