9

Not only is Trump totally unfit and unqualified for the most powerful office in the land, not only is he a racist, xenophobic authoritarian who abuses his power egregiously and profits from his office outrageously-not even touching the fact of his illegitimacy-but even on a personal, human level it’s astonishing: he is a so-called ‘President’ a so-called ‘man’ with virtually no redeeming characteristics.

Indeed, in a rare moment of clarity he joked that one of his very few positive traits is that he doesn’t drink, has never had a beer. 

“I’m not a drinker, I can honestly say I’ve never had a beer in my life,” Trump said in the Rose Garden press briefing. “It’s one of my only good traits.”

Trump joked that if he had been a drinker: “Can you imagine if I had, what a mess I’d be? I’d be the world’s worst.”

Fair point, though I guess it’s a question for moralists wether this can be construed as a positive virtue or a piece of fortunate constitution.

But why be uncharitable as this is virtually his only virtue? It’s striking when you realize that here is someone with almost no positive traits. He talks about how much he loves and has done for the military when in truth and in fact no one is more disrespectful and dismissive of it.

He values the military to the extent he can get it to give him a military parade. Think about it. HIs father, Fred Trump, got him out of Vietnam with the lie that Trump has bone spurs. Paul Waldman asked the question: Of course President Trump dodged the draft. Should we still care?

Yes for a few reasons. One is that he lied to dodge it. Another is because of the total hypocrisy of the GOP on the subject-remember the faux outrage over Clinton using a student deferment? To be sure there is a larger discussion about how only poor boys couldn’t get out of that war.

But the idea that Trump lied to get out of it is all too fitting and part of a bigger picture of his utter disregard for the military, his utter lack of honor and reverence for it. Remember how he failed to honor our WWI dead because it was raining?

Then the next day he did speak at another cemetery honoring this time WWI! vets but whined about the rain:

“At his final stop in Paris, President Trump sucked it up and got soaked — but didn’t seem happy about it.”

“A day after Trump was criticized for skipping a trip to an American cemetery due to inclement weather, the president spoke at a different US cemetery in the rain, and expressed jealousy that some of the veterans in the audience were seated under cover.”

“You look so comfortable up there. Under shelter. As we’re getting drenched,” Trump told a World War II vet. “You’re really smart people.”

Once again he displays his splendid cluelessness. This WWII vet was in WWII which is a little more adversity than simply getting a little wet. Perhaps these WWII vets earned the right to be under cover?

Again while Trump is always boasting of how much he loves the military and how much he’s allegedly done for them-for some reason he claims to have done ‘so much more than Obama did’; no doubt he bases this on his usual alternative facts-it wasn’t until very recently that he finally visited our military men and women overseas. Of course, he only did this under duress-it was after the furor of his sudden withdrawal of troops from Syria-apparently he withdrew them at the request of Turkey’s dictator Erdogan.

But, of course, Trump can’t even perform this simple task without messing the whole thing up-he was complaining yet again, this time because he had to take a windowless plane to visit the troops in Iraq. Again, these are members of our military he utterly fails to honor, he fails to even appreciate and certainly it never occurs to him that they regularly ride in military planes and face much greater physical hardships besides.

 

Indeed, it’s impossible to disagree with Malcom Nance who called Trump a physical coward-he is and he’s also a moral coward.

So what’s the basis for his claim to have done so much for the military? It’s based on-what else?-lies like when he falsely claimed he personally sent out his own plane to pickup stranded troops. 

So he’s a moral and physical coward who adds insult to injury by lying about all he has done for our troops. Indeed, it’s also impossible to disagree with Khizr Khan who rightly told Trump that you have risked nothing, sacrificed nothing. 

Speaking of Gold Star families like the Khans,  there is Trump’s failure to-unlike Obama, Bush, every other President in history-to meet with Gold Star families. He meets with fewer of them and. of course, has actually insulted some of those he’s met with-in a ‘total coincidence’ it tends to be African American Gold Star families where he really sticks his foot in his mouth. 

When you look at his pattern regarding the military and what stands out from all this is his stunning lack of honor, his moral and physical cowardice, and most of all, his stunning lack of empathy. 

Ok I’m not sure I would like riding in a military plane either but I’m not allegedly the ‘Commander in Chief’ as Trump is though not legitimately. Trump doesn’t have a clue what being the President much less the Commander in Chief is about. It’s not that other Presidents never had any moments of discomfort with aspects of their duties but they would never refer to them publicly. You’d never hear Bush or Obama whining about rain or a windowless plane-if Obama had done so he’d probably have been impeached.

The idea that you put the needs of others before your own is something incomprehensible to Trump. We’ve never seen anything like this where the alleged ‘President’ whines about his own discomfort and fear. Again, all Presidents have had them but they never disgraced their office by discussing it publicly.

And when you look at it, the pattern couldn’t be more consistent-his insulting John McCain, making fun of him being a POW where McCain went through the kind of extreme pain and torture that Trump couldn’t deal with for one minute-as few of us could, but again he’s the ‘President.’

To be sure, in this book I emphasize that it’s not just Trump-the entire modern-post New Deal-Republican party has been willing to do whatever is necessary to win, including cheating and colluding with a hostile foreign power, along with more sedate versions of voter suppression, gerrymandering, etc.

But even if I will argue that others like Reagan and the two Bushes obtained their offices through suspect means, I would not go so far as arguing that they had no positive individual qualifies-certainly Bush Sr had a number of them and even W had some virtues-he did great things for AIDS research in Africa, he legitimately spoke out against Islamophobia after 9/11, etc.

I never saw him as legitimate, it’s true, because the GOP Supreme Court wrongly shutdown the Florida recount that the law called for and just awarded the Presidency to him on the basis of ‘But it’s already December 12, it’s too late. As it’s December 12, we are just going to disregard the law-for the good of the country, of course.’

But W on his own terms clearly has some positive personal traits. Nixon certainly had his number-for starters he was very smart and well read.

Trump-other than possibly his sobriety-has none, which is almost astonishing, contra Nixon he has zero intellectual curiosity, won’t even read his own briefings. And of course he’s a pathological liar to a degree almost stunning-he lies 73% of the time, he lies so much the Washington Post had to invent a new category of lies, the bottomless Pinocchio, the many liesTrump has  told more than 20 times.

But what stands out the most, as much if not more than even the lying is his stunning lack of empathy. It certainly showed the other night when the media decided to give him what was actually a campaign speech-Trump sent out fundraising emails in the lead up-primetime coverage-unlike Obama’s 2014 speech they decided was ‘too political’-wish we were kidding.

He unconvincingly attempted to express compassion for the refugees, the desperate mothers with children, etc. But he doesn’t even pretend to emphasize with the 800,000 government workers who now have to worry when they will next be paid, the millions of Americans waiting on their tax refund checks, the Americans who count on government services, etc. Indeed, even the government workers in border patrol are being hurt.

For Trump that simply doesn’t matter. Ezra Klein is most certainly right: Trump doesn’t care about the wall he cares about the fight over the wall. 

“The measure of a politician’s commitment to a policy isn’t how often he asks for it but how much he’s willing to trade away to get it. By that measure, President Trump has never seemed committed to the border wall.”

“When Republicans controlled Congress, Democrats offered Trump a deal: the wall for legalizing the young undocumented immigrants known as DREAMers. “I’ll take a bucket, take bricks, and I’ll start building it myself,” said Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-IL). “We will dirty our hands in order for the DREAMers to have a clean future in America. Then why haven’t we settled this?” They didn’t settle it because Trump refused the deal.”

Now that Democrats control Congress, Trump has offered them exactly nothing in exchange for the wall. In his Tuesday night speech, he didn’t make a new offer, or try to revive Democrats’ old offer. This isn’t the behavior of a president intent on finding the necessary votes for a policy he cares about, much less solving what he calls a humanitarian and national security crisis on the border.

Trump doesn’t care about the wall. He cares about being seen fighting for the wall. From that perspective — Trump’s perspective — Tuesday night’s speech was a success. His base saw him fighting for them. And that may have been all he really wanted.

Absolutely. This is true about many other silly fights he engages in like the fight he started over players kneeling during the national anthem. Ostensibly Trump is outraged by this and wants to see this practice curtailed. But here’s the thing. The Sunday before VP Mike Pence’s theatrics of storming out of the Colts game over kneeling players only six players actually kneeled.

The weekend after Trump and Pence made this huge fuss over it over 200 players and coaches-including a number of white players and coaches-kneeled. This totally validates Klein’s point-if the real objective was to crack down on kneeling players the best policy would have been to keep your mouth shut-as many had lost interest in the kneeling during prayers by then anyway. To the contrary, Trump’s antics actually led to what he ostensibly most feared-an epidemic of players-and even coaches-kneeling during the anthem.

Clearly what he wanted was the fight-that actually greatly exacerbated what he was ostensibly fighting against. This is further underscored by the later totally unsurprising revelation that Pence had planned to storm out before he even got to the stadium.

But then Shadi Hamid also made this point from a larger perspective: in general populists don’t have clear, coherent policy goals like liberals like me and Ezra Klein do but rather they just want a fight over goals. While Hamid describes populists very well, what he doesn’t anticipate is that Trump has led to a backlash against populism in itself.

Back to Trump’s stunning lack of empathy. It really doesn’t bother him in the least that many Americans are being hurt by this totally unnecessary shutdown-he argued at one point that he doesn’t care because they are Democrats. So the shutdown is a piece of political discrimination. 

Yet Congressman Eric Swalwell was on Ari Melber last night claiming that this isn’t an impeachable offense?

It seems to me that this could very well be an impeachable offense on two levels.

1. Maladministration. 

An example of how the current norms governing resort to the impeachment process seep into our understanding of the constitutional standards is the often-repeated view that “maladministration” is not a ground for either inquiry or removal. Much is made of very little constitutional history on this point. And some scholars, like the Cato Institute’s Gene Healy in his recently published study of impeachment, conclude on a close examination that this history has been badly misconstrued. While it is true the president should not be subject to impeachment over policy disagreements, or even administrative shortcomings, it is also true that extraordinary incompetence or gross irresponsibility can support impeachment. James Madison referred to impeachment as “indispensable… for defending the community against the incapacity [or] negligence” and not only the “perfidy” of a president.

What is a Prime A example of maladministration if not this needless, painful shutdown? The point is a President-much less ‘President’-can be impeached if he is clear and present threat-ie, he’s doing great harm to the country as Trump clearly is.

2. Clear abuse of power. If you are going to start using a government shutdown to hurt your political opponents-‘most are Democrats;-that certainly qualifies. You can add to this if he declares a national emergency-where there is none-to get funds for the wall.

I mean the only reason you might not include this government shutdown in his impeachable offenses is that there are already so many others.

But more than anything we have the specter of a faux ‘President’-who while he lacks legitimacy, he very legitimately currently possesses the awesome power of the US Executive machinery being totally lacking in the most basic empathy towards millions of his own citizens or concern about the pain his own actions are inflicting upon them.

But then, you don’t have to hate Donald Trump as I and millions of others most certainly do to assert he lacks empathy. His flack, Rick Santorum was on CNN’s Chris Cuomo the other night and came out and said it: ‘the President doesn’t really have empathy.’

Santorum seemed pretty unbothered by this lack of empathy, he said it with the tone of ‘Sure the President is a racist but what’s’ wrong with racism?’ But even Trump’s alleged friends agree he lacks empathy.

Which takes us to Donald Jr. Does his lack of empathy stop with his own family ? Even criminals and traitors like Michael Flynn put the welfare of their children ahead of their own-Mueller was able to get Flynn to cooperate by applying pressure to Flynn’s son.

 

Would Trump do the same regarding his namesake son-what would he do if there’s only one lifeboat? That it’s even a question that is really hard to answer speaks volumes. Chris Matthews always says that if they go after Jr/Kushner/Ivanka then you will see Trump use the pardon power-he won’t let them go after his family. That assumes that Trump cares about anyone more than  himself even his kids.

Does he? Based on the record the best I can say is I don’t know. But we may find out soon:

 

And now the Democrats have announced that Donald Jr will be the first witness they subpoena. 

Member of the House Intelligence Committee, Jackie Speier, revealed that the first subpoena in the committee’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s collaboration with Russian operatives during the 2016 election would be served to Donald Trump Jr.

The California representative was fielding questions after speaking to the Woman’s National Democratic Club on Tuesday night, the Washington Examiner reported. She was asked who the House Intelligence panel would subpoena first once it reopened its investigation. Speier replied, “Donald Trump Jr.”

Democrats have vowed to reopen an investigation into the Trump campaign’s connections with Russian players after they were left dissatisfied with the investigation chaired by Devin Nunes.

“There are a number of persons that testified before the committee that I feel were not telling the truth,” Speier said.

House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff has already expressed interest in investigating the circumstances surrounding a 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a lawyer with links to the Russian government, including the identity of a blocked call that Don Jr. made in the run-up to the meeting.

Speier criticized the previous GOP report on the matter, lamenting that “documents were never subpoenaed by the Republicans and so they were able to just produce a whitewashed report that was probably written by someone on the presidential staff.”

Trump has maintained that his campaign did not collude with the Russian government to uncover dirt on his opponent, Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump Jr. has also denied any wrongdoing.

However, Speier recounted how after leaving a closed-door hearing in which the Trump campaign’s Russia links were discussed, a staffer approached her and told her, “they’re all lying.”

Speaking on Tuesday night, Speier expressed her faith in Robert Mueller’s investigation. She predicted, “I think in short order we’re going to see all of the dots connected in a way that shows there were people that were treasonous, there were people that were clearly conspiring to affect the election with the Russians, and it will go down in history as one of the real black eyes in our country.”

What will Trump do then?

In chapter A I noted that Trump’s ‘concern’ about Jr sounded more like he was trying to establish if his son did anything wrong regarding the Trump Tower meeting of June, 2016 it was without his knowledge.

Vanity Fair’s Emily Fox has also pointed out that Trump’s attitude towards his kids has been quite different than his own father’s was. Fred Trump did everything for him to protect him, to make sure he was setup for life financially, etc. For his part Trump has managed to place Jr, Ivanka, and Jared in the eye of the storm.

Let’s be clear I’m not necessarily saying Trump wouldn’t use the pardon power-ie, obstruct justice yet again if he thought he could get away with it.-he may realize he can’t. What I wonder more is would Trump say be willing to serve prison time or at least cooperate fully with Mueller if Jr was threatened with prison time?

If it’s him or Jr does he choose to protect Jr? As Rachel Maddow puts it watch this space. 

UPDATE:

Darrell Samuelsohn has an interesting and helpful deep dive into impeachment. Among his sources for his analysis he spoke to some GOP insiders. One GOP official suggests that  the red line for Trump is if the investigation focuses on Donald Jr, Ivanka, or Jared Kushner

Trump could dig himself in deeper, as well. Though he’s restrained himself from ending the Mueller probe, I spoke to one senior Republican official in touch with the White House who predicted Trump’s reaction could cause the president problems if the Russia investigation turned personal and Trump’s closest family members—his son Donald Trump Jr., daughter Ivanka Trump or her husband, Jared Kushner—faced criminal charges. “Everyone knows he surrounds himself with dirtbags and weak people and psychopaths,” said the official. “But the family is the family and that’s a lot closer to Trump than anything else.” That’s the situation where Trump might overreact, issuing blanket pardons or ordering up a Nixon-like Saturday Night Massacre, firing Mueller and the senior ranks of his own Justice Department.

“To me, that’s the red line,” said the official. “If that gets crossed, then everything changes in both parties.”

In other words if Trump were to fire Mueller or others-Rod Rosenstein?-he’d finally lose many of his GOP enablers.

Indeed you wonder what Trump is saying about Rosenstein now with the NY Times’ latest bombshell:

 

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