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FTR #934 The Making of Donald Trump (Top Banana Republic), Part 3

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making-of-trumpIntro­duc­tion: In the after­math of the ascen­sion of Don­ald Trump to the Pres­i­den­cy, we are doing some­thing unprece­dent­ed in the long his­to­ry of For The Record. Ear­li­er in 2016, award-win­ning jour­nal­ist David Cay John­ston pub­lished a very well-writ­ten and researched, yet rel­a­tive­ly short and com­pact biog­ra­phy of Don­ald Trump–The Mak­ing of Don­ald Trump (Melville House [HC]; copy­right 2016 by David Cay John­ston; ISBN 978–1‑61219–632‑9.)

For some weeks, we have been–and will be–reading most of the book into the record, to pro­vide peo­ple with a mea­sure against which to eval­u­ate not just “The Don­ald,” as his first wife Ivana called him, but our soci­ety, its insti­tu­tions and its cit­i­zens. We can’t rec­om­mend strong­ly enough that lis­ten­ers buy this book, read it and use what­ev­er means avail­able to spread the word about it. (We note that nei­ther Mr. Emory nor any of the sta­tions that air this pro­gram get mon­ey from this book, its pub­lish­er or author.)

This third install­ment of the series com­mences with a review the sub­stance of an arti­cle that embod­ies the enor­mous and fun­da­men­tal flaw in our polit­i­cal and civic process: a poll short­ly before the elec­tion found that most of the prospec­tive vot­ers polled felt that Trump was more hon­est and trust­wor­thy than Hillary Clin­ton. As our read­ing of John­ston’s excel­lent book unfolds, the grotesque, spec­tac­u­lar­ly fal­la­cious char­ac­ter of this per­cep­tion will become uncom­fort­ably clear. Don­ald Trump is cur­rent­ly track­ing as the more hon­est of the two pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates in a poll, although fact-check­ing of his state­ments dur­ing the cam­paign have shown he’s lied sev­er­al times. The lat­est ABC News/Washington Post track­ing poll reports that 46 per­cent of like­ly vot­ers believe he is the more hon­est and trust­wor­thy can­di­date, while 38 per­cent believed it was Hillary Clin­ton. This marks the biggest gap between the two can­di­dates in five ABC News/Washington Post polls that asked the ques­tion, begin­ning in May.”

The pro­gram fea­tures a con­tin­u­a­tion of John­ston’s account of Trump’s “curi­ous” rela­tion­ship with con­vict­ed felon and drug deal­er Joey Weich­sel­baum. “Among the assort­ed crim­i­nals with whom Trump did busi­ness over more than three decades, his most mys­te­ri­ous deal­ings involved a drug traf­fick­er named Joseph Weich­sel­baum. Trump did unusu­al favors for the three-time felon, repeat­ed­ly putting his lucra­tive casi­no license at risk to help a major cocaine and mar­i­jua­na traf­fick­er for rea­sons that remain unfath­omable. . . .” (The Mak­ing of Don­ald Trump; p. 59.)

Where­as Trump had many oth­er places to turn to for the var­i­ous aero­nau­ti­cal, auto­mo­tive and sup­ple­men­tal ser­vices Weichels­baum and his broth­er pro­vid­ed, Trump con­tin­ued to use them and pro­vid­ed them and their asso­ciates with remark­able “perks.” (The Mak­ing of Don­ald Trump; pp. 59–65.)

With Trump poised to name a num­ber of Supreme Court jus­tices, we note that the venue of one of Weichels­baum’s cas­es was changed in a high­ly sus­pi­cious, reveal­ing and inaus­pi­cious man­ner. ” . . . When Weichels­baum made a deal with pros­e­cu­tors to plead guilty to one of the eigh­teen counts in the Cincin­nati case, some­thing very sus­pi­cious hap­pened. His case was trans­ferred out of Ohio for the guilty plea and the sen­tenc­ing. Log­i­cal­ly, the case might have gone to South Flori­da, where Brad­ford Motors [one of the Weich­sel­baum drug-traf­fick­ing fronts] was locat­ed, or to New York, where Weich­sel­baum lived. Indeed, that is exact­ly what Weich­sel­baum’s Ohio lawyer, Arnold Morel­li, sought in a Jan­u­ary 30, 1986 motion request­ing his case be trans­ferred to either Man­hat­tan or Mia­mi for ‘the con­ve­nience of human beings such as the defen­dant and wit­ness­es.’ Instead the Weichels­baum case was moved to New Jer­sey. There it was assigned to Judge Maryanne Trump Barry–Donald Trump’s old­er sis­ter.

Judge Bar­ry recused her­self three weeks lat­er, as judi­cial ethics required, but the mere act of remov­ing her­self from the case came with a pow­er­ful mes­sage: a sit­ting fed­er­al judge, as well as her hus­band (lawyer John Bar­ry) and fam­i­ly, repeat­ed­ly flew in heli­copters con­nect­ed to a major drug traf­fick­er. . . .When Judge Harold A. Ack­er­man replaced Trump’s sis­ter, Trump wrote him a let­ter seek­ing lenien­cy for Weich­sel­baum on the drug traf­fick­ing charge. Trump char­ac­ter­ize the defen­dant as ‘a cred­it to the com­mu­ni­ty’ and described Weich­sel­baum as ‘con­sci­en­tious, forth­right and dili­gent’ in his deal­ings with the Trump Plaza and Trump’s Cas­tle casi­nos. When asked about the let­ter under oath in a pri­vate 1990 meet­ing with New Jer­sey Divi­sion of Gam­ing Enforce­ment lawyers, Trump tes­ti­fied that he could not recall whether ‘he had writ­ten any let­ters of ref­er­ence to the fed­er­al judge who sen­tenced Weich­sel­baum.’ Sub­se­quent­ly, the divi­sion obtained such a let­ter, and Trump acknowl­edged that it bore his sig­na­ture. . . .” (The Mak­ing of Don­ald Trump; pp. 63–64.)

Dur­ing the cam­paign, Trump tar­get­ed dis­af­fect­ed, alien­at­ed blue-col­lar work­ers, chaf­ing under the effects of glob­al­iza­tion and lin­ger­ing dam­age from the finan­cial col­lapse of 2008. “The Don­ald” also, of course, made expelling ille­gal immi­grants a cor­ner­stone of his cam­paign. There could be no bet­ter bal­ance in which to hang the integri­ty of Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump than to exam­ine the chap­ter John­son titled “The Pol­ish Brigade.” (The Mak­ing of Don­ald Trump; pp. 69–76.)

When demol­ish­ing the old Bon­wit Teller build­ing in New York City to make way for one of his sig­na­ture projects, Trump not only broke a promise to sal­vage the valu­able art deco piece at the build­ing’s entrance (pro­vid­ing disin­gen­u­ous respons­es to crit­i­cism about this), but employed ille­gal Pol­ish immi­grants to dis­man­tle the struc­ture. The abuse to which Trump sub­ject­ed those immi­grants is strik­ing and bodes poor­ly for those ele­ments of “Mid­dle Amer­i­ca” who sup­port­ed him dur­ing the elec­tion.

The “Pol­ish Brigade” were not giv­en even ele­men­tary work­ing tools, nor basic safe­ty equip­ment such as hard hats. They worked long hours at very low pay under hor­ri­ble work­ing con­di­tions and were often not paid at all, until they threat­ened a top Trump assis­tant, Thomas Macari.

“Instead of hir­ing an expe­ri­enced demo­li­tion con­trac­tor, Trump chose Kaszy­c­ki & Sons Con­trac­tors, a win­dow wash­ing busi­ness owned by a Pol­ish emi­gre. Upward of two hun­dred men began demol­ish­ing the build­ing in mid­win­ter 1980. The men worked with­out hard hats. They lacked face­masks, even though asbestos–known to cause incur­able cancers–swirled all around them. They did­n’t have gog­gles to pro­tect their eyes from the bits of con­crete and steel that some­times flew through the air like bul­lets. The men did­n’t have pow­er tools either; they brought down the twelve-sto­ry build­ing with sledge­ham­mers. . . .

. . . . The demo­li­tion work­ers were not Amer­i­can cit­i­zens, but ‘had recent­ly arrived from Poland,’ a fed­er­al court lat­er deter­mined. The court also found that ‘they were undoc­u­ment­ed and worked ‘off the books.’ No pay­roll records were kept, no Social Secu­ri­ty or oth­er tax­es were with­held and they were not paid in accor­dance with wage laws. They were told they would be paid $4.00 or in some cas­es $5.00 an hour for work­ing 12-hour shifts sev­en days a week. In fact, they were paid irreg­u­lar­ly and incom­plete­ly.’ . . .

. . . . Fed up that their pay­checks kept bounc­ing, some of the work­ers cor­ralled Thomas Macari, Trump’s per­son­al rep­re­sen­ta­tive they showed him to the edge of one of the high­er floors and asked if he would like them to hang him over the side. The work­ers, like­ly hun­gry, demand­ed their pay. Oth­er­wise, no work.

When Macari told his boss what had hap­pened, Trump placed a pan­icked tele­phone call to Daniel Sullivan–a labor fix­er, FBI infor­mant, sus­pect in the dis­ap­pear­ance of Jim­my Hof­fa, and Trump’s per­son­al nego­tia­tor for the Grand Hyatt con­tract with the hotel work­ers’ union.

‘Don­ald told me he was hav­ing some dif­fi­cul­ties,’ Sul­li­van lat­er tes­ti­fied, ‘and he admit­ted to me that–seeking my advice–he had some ille­gal Pol­ish employ­ees on the job. . . .

. . . .There is no record of any fed­er­al, state, or city safe­ty inspec­tor fil­ing a report dur­ing the demo­li­tion. In a 1990 Tren­ton restau­rant inter­view. I asked Sul­li­van how a project of this size could have been erect­ed in the heart of Man­hat­tan with­out attract­ing gov­ern­ment job safe­ty inspec­tors. Sul­li­van just looked at me. When I widened my eyes to make clear that I want­ed an explic­it­ly answer, he said, ‘You know why.’ When I per­sist­ed, antic­i­pat­ing that Sul­li­van might spec­i­fy bribes to inspec­tors, he said that unions and con­crete sup­pli­ers were not the only areas where Trump’s lawyer, Roy Cohn, had influ­ence. . . . ” (The Mak­ing of Don­ald Trump; pp. 70–72.)

The text excerpts con­clude with a read­ing of most of chap­ter 10 of John­ston’s book, cov­er­ing how Trump’s esti­mates of his own net worth var­ied accord­ing to his mood at the time of the inquiry. This did not stop him from suing jour­nal­ist Tim O’Brien for alleged­ly mis-report­ing Trump’s worth. (The Mak­ing of Don­ald Trump; pp. 77–83.)

This pro­gram con­cludes with the read­ing of a poem by Robin­son Jef­fers, “Be Angry at the Sun,” which encom­pass­es Mr. Emory’s feel­ings about the recent elec­tion, as well as the peo­ple and insti­tu­tions that have pre­cip­i­tat­ed this event–one that fig­ures to be dev­as­tat­ing in its man­i­fes­ta­tions.

“Be Angry at the Sun” by Robin­son Jef­fers

That pub­lic men pub­lish false­hoods
Is noth­ing new. That Amer­i­ca must accept
Like the his­tor­i­cal republics cor­rup­tion and empire
Has been known for years.

Be angry at the sun for set­ting
If these things anger you. Watch the wheel slope and turn,
They are all bound on the wheel, these peo­ple, those war­riors.
This repub­lic, Europe, Asia.

Observe them ges­tic­u­lat­ing,
Observe them going down. The gang serves lies, the pas­sion­ate
Man plays his part; the cold pas­sion for truth
Hunts in no pack.

You are not Cat­ul­lus, you know,
To lam­poon these crude sketch­es of Cae­sar. You are far
From Dan­te’s feet, but even far­ther from his dirty
Polit­i­cal hatreds.

Let boys want plea­sure, and men
Strug­gle for pow­er, and women per­haps for fame,
And the servile to serve a Leader and the dupes to be duped.
Yours is not theirs.

Discussion

5 comments for “FTR #934 The Making of Donald Trump (Top Banana Republic), Part 3”

  1. Look who’s back! Or rather, look who nev­er crawled back under their scum-cov­ered rock of lies and mis­in­for­ma­tion: Roger Stone! Yes, it appears Stone has a mes­sage for Hillary Clin­ton about the Clin­ton cam­paign agree­ing to over­see the Wis­con­sin vote recount called for by Green Par­ty can­di­date Jill Stein: Because Stone is con­fi­dent that the mil­lions of dol­lars raised by Stein were actu­al­ly secret­ly fun­neled by George Soros or Hillary Clin­ton, Stone is pret­ty sure that Don­ald Trump is going to be “Lock her up!” back on the table:

    Politi­co

    Roger Stone: Clin­ton more like­ly to face pros­e­cu­tion after recount

    By Made­line Con­way
    11/28/16 06:34 PM EST

    Roger Stone, the Repub­li­can strate­gist and cam­paign con­fi­dant of Don­ald Trump, sug­gest­ed Mon­day with­out evi­dence that Hillary Clin­ton is more like­ly to face pros­e­cu­tion under the president-elect’s admin­is­tra­tion because her cam­paign is coop­er­at­ing with Jill Stein’s recount effort.

    Again offer­ing no evi­dence, Stone told Steve Malzberg that “we have to pre­sume” that the mon­ey fund­ing the Stein campaign’s call for a recount is from bil­lion­aire donor George Soros or from Clin­ton, who lost the White House to Trump this month in a major upset.

    “Now Hillary, I think, increas­es her chances of pros­e­cu­tion by act­ing this way,” Stone con­clud­ed.

    Stein has called for a recount in Wis­con­sin, has begun the process in Penn­syl­va­nia and may do so in Michi­gan as well, but Clin­ton’s cam­paign says it has found no evi­dence to sug­gest that the elec­tion results were com­pro­mised. Her lawyers, how­ev­er, will attend the recount pro­ceed­ings.

    ...

    Dur­ing an inter­view last week with edi­tors and writ­ers for the New York Times, Trump said, “I don’t want to hurt the Clin­tons.”

    Asked if he were tak­ing the idea of an inves­ti­ga­tion “off the table,” how­ev­er, Trump demurred.

    “No, but the ques­tion was asked,” he said, adding: “It’s just not some­thing that I feel very strong­ly about.

    It would be a major breach of the Jus­tice Department’s tra­di­tion­al inde­pen­dence from the White House for the pres­i­dent to order the pros­e­cu­tion of any indi­vid­ual as a means of polit­i­cal retal­i­a­tion. (The FBI rec­om­mend­ed against bring­ing charges against Clin­ton for her use of a secret email sec­re­tary of state in July and reaf­firmed that deci­sion a few days before the elec­tion.)

    Still, Trump’s senior advis­er, Kellyanne Con­way, also seemed to draw a con­nec­tion between the recount effort and the pros­e­cu­tion ques­tion dur­ing a TV inter­view on Sun­day.

    “He’s been incred­i­bly gra­cious and mag­nan­i­mous to Sec­re­tary Clin­ton at a time when, for what­ev­er rea­son, her folks are say­ing they will join in a recount to try to some­how undo the 70-plus elec­toral votes that he beat her by,” Con­way said to CNN’s Dana Bash.

    Stone, a for­mer acolyte of Richard Nixon, has a his­to­ry of float­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. He is a reg­u­lar guest on Alex Jones’ radio show, and in a tweet in late Octo­ber, he seemed to sug­gest that the Clin­tons were respon­si­ble for a num­ber of deaths.

    It would be a major breach of the Jus­tice Department’s tra­di­tion­al inde­pen­dence from the White House for the pres­i­dent to order the pros­e­cu­tion of any indi­vid­ual as a means of polit­i­cal retal­i­a­tion. (The FBI rec­om­mend­ed against bring­ing charges against Clin­ton for her use of a secret email sec­re­tary of state in July and reaf­firmed that deci­sion a few days before the elec­tion.)”

    Yeah, it seems like polit­i­cal retal­i­a­tion is a rather ques­tion rea­son for the Jus­tice Depart­ment to aban­don its tra­di­tion­al inde­pen­dence from the White House since it’s the Jus­tice Depart­ment, and not the Pres­i­dent, who decides who gets pros­e­cut­ed. But, hey, who cares about things like tra­di­tions of inde­pen­dence. Or estab­lish­ing prece­dents of jail­ing your oppo­nent if they par­tic­i­pate in a per­fect­ly legit­i­mate recount. Or threats of black­mail. This is the Trump era! Those things are ok now. As long as it’s Team Trump doing it.

    Also, since Stone is a reg­u­lar guest on Alex Jones’s radio show, it’s prob­a­bly also worth not­ing that the tweet Don­ald Trump sent out on Sun­day about how mil­lions of ille­gal vot­ers went to the polls and vot­ed for Hillary and that’s why he lost the pop­u­lar vote, was push­ing the same myth about vot­er fraud Jones has been push­ing of late. It’s a small world.

    In relat­ed and cos­mi­cal­ly iron­ic news, check out who Trump appears to be seri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing for Hillary Clin­ton’s old job:

    Politi­co

    Trump gives Petraeus a pass

    The can­di­date who threat­ened to lock up Clin­ton for mis­han­dling clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion con­sid­ers a retired gen­er­al who plead­ed guilty to leak­ing secrets to be his top diplo­mat.

    By Bryan Ben­der
    11/28/16 07:36 PM EST

    Don­ald Trump said Hillary Clinton’s use of a pri­vate serv­er for clas­si­fied State Depart­ment emails made her unfit for high office. But that isn’t stop­ping him from con­sid­er­ing David Petraeus, who pled guilty to know­ing­ly leak­ing secret gov­ern­ment files — and lying to the feds about it — for sec­re­tary of state.

    Trump’s hour­long meet­ing Mon­day with Petraeus, a retired gen­er­al and for­mer CIA direc­tor, to dis­cuss the Cab­i­net posi­tion is the lat­est in the president-elect’s out­reach to retired mil­i­tary lead­ers who have clashed with Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma on for­eign pol­i­cy and nation­al secu­ri­ty.

    But it also calls into ques­tion the sin­cer­i­ty of Trump’s stance on the impor­tance of safe­guard­ing the nation’s secrets, accord­ing to for­mer gov­ern­ment offi­cials and intel­li­gence experts — a stance that was dri­ven home with cam­paign trail chants of “lock her up.”

    “The very con­sid­er­a­tion of Petraeus for a senior posi­tion reveals that the Trump campaign’s rhetoric regard­ing Hillary Clin­ton was total­ly bogus,” said Steven After­good, a spe­cial­ist on gov­ern­ment clas­si­fi­ca­tion at the Fed­er­a­tion of Amer­i­can Sci­en­tists. “Can­di­date Trump was gen­er­at­ing hys­te­ria over Clinton’s han­dling or mis­han­dling of clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion that he like­ly nev­er believed or took seri­ous­ly him­self.

    “Petraeus admit­ted lying to the FBI, which dis­tin­guished his case from Clinton’s and made his case a good deal worse,” After­good added. “I think once again Pres­i­dent-elect Trump is revealed as a rather hyp­o­crit­i­cal fig­ure.”

    Petraeus’ stint as head of the CIA came to igno­min­ious end in 2012 when it was dis­cov­ered he was hav­ing an extra­mar­i­tal affair with Paula Broad­well, his biog­ra­ph­er, and had shared reams of clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion with her. He pled guilty to mis­de­meanor charges and was sen­tenced to two years of pro­ba­tion and forced to pay a $40,000 fine. Inves­ti­ga­tors also claimed that Petraeus sep­a­rate­ly shared clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion with jour­nal­ists.

    It is like­ly to be a major point of con­tention if he is nom­i­nat­ed and faces con­fir­ma­tion by the Sen­ate, where he has sig­nif­i­cant sup­port­ers but there is already some angst about hav­ing to grap­ple with his law-break­ing.

    A for­mer senior intel­li­gence offi­cial who was once Petraeus’ boss said he would not hire Petraeus for the top diplo­mat­ic post for sev­er­al rea­sons, includ­ing that his pro­fes­sion­al expe­ri­ence has most­ly been lim­it­ed to mil­i­tary oper­a­tions in the Mid­dle East.

    How­ev­er, his leak­ing of clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion seems an obvi­ous dis­qual­i­fi­er, said the for­mer spy, who spoke only on con­di­tion he not be iden­ti­fied.

    “The fact some­one who acknowl­edged com­mit­ting that would even be con­sid­ered is sur­pris­ing to me,” he said. “Espe­cial­ly since Trump made that such a part of his cam­paign against Clin­ton. It is ask­ing for trou­ble. [Petraeus] left the CIA in dis­grace.”

    Trump him­self fre­quent­ly used the retired general’s case to assert that Clin­ton was get­ting pref­er­en­tial treat­ment.

    “Oth­er lives, includ­ing Gen. Petraeus and many oth­ers, have been destroyed for doing far, far less,” Trump said at a ral­ly in Octo­ber of Clinton’s email trou­bles. “This is a con­spir­a­cy against you, the Amer­i­can peo­ple, and we can­not let this hap­pen or con­tin­ue.”

    Trump also sin­gled out retired Marine Gen. James Cartwright, who recent­ly pled guilty to lying to the FBI about alle­ga­tions he shared clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion with the news media on a high­ly clas­si­fied pro­gram to dis­rupt Iran’s nuclear weapons pro­gram.

    But while the FBI con­clud­ed Clin­ton was reck­less in her deci­sion to use a pri­vate com­put­er for gov­ern­ment busi­ness, her actions were not deemed seri­ous enough to war­rant pros­e­cu­tion.

    Con­verse­ly, the bureau con­clud­ed what Petraeus did was far more sig­nif­i­cant.

    “So you have obstruc­tion of jus­tice, you have inten­tion­al mis­con­duct and a vast quan­ti­ty of infor­ma­tion,” FBI Direc­tor James Comey told the House Over­sight and Gov­ern­ment Reform Com­mit­tee of Petraeus’ actions. “He admit­ted he knew that was the wrong thing to do. That is a per­fect illus­tra­tion of the kind of cas­es that get pros­e­cut­ed.”

    ...

    After their meet­ing at Trump Tow­er in New York on Mon­day, Trump praised Petraeus on Twit­ter. “Just met with Gen­er­al Petraeus — was very impressed!” he wrote.

    Not to be out­done, Petraeus briefly stopped to talk to reporters, say­ing that in their meet­ing Trump demon­strat­ed an impres­sive under­stand­ing of world affairs.

    “He basi­cal­ly walked us around the world,” Petraeus said of Trump. “Showed a great grasp of a vari­ety of the chal­lenges that are out there and some of the oppor­tu­ni­ties as well. Very good con­ver­sa­tion and we’ll see where it goes from here. We’ll see where it goes from here.”

    ...

    ““So you have obstruc­tion of jus­tice, you have inten­tion­al mis­con­duct and a vast quan­ti­ty of infor­ma­tion,” FBI Direc­tor James Comey told the House Over­sight and Gov­ern­ment Reform Com­mit­tee of Petraeus’ actions. “He admit­ted he knew that was the wrong thing to do. That is a per­fect illus­tra­tion of the kind of cas­es that get pros­e­cut­ed.””

    So now that it’s becom­ing clear that the prin­ci­ples guid­ing the Trump admin­is­tra­tion are going to be com­plete­ly flu­id and real­i­ty is just a mal­leable ver­bal con­struct, it’s also becom­ing evi­dent that one of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s key polit­i­cal strate­gies going for­ward might actu­al­ly be an open embrace a gross cor­rup­tion and hypocrisy cou­pled with an expec­ta­tion that every­one adhere to what­ev­er the new offi­cial real­i­ty is declared to be. On a day by day or moment by moment basis. In oth­er words, maybe Trump isn’t act­ing like a hyp­o­crit­i­cal nepo­tis­tic mob­ster in the open­ing weeks of his admin­is­tra­tion because he wants every­one to come to terms with the fact that the next pres­i­dent is basi­cal­ly a unprin­ci­pled fas­cist mob­ster. Instead, per­haps act­ing like an unprin­ci­pled fas­cist mob­ster is part of a broad­er psy-op tech­nique for keep­ing his grip on the hearts and minds of the Trump-sup­port­ing Amer­i­cans by psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly soft­en­ing them up with a 1984-style post-fac­tu­al regime of prin­ci­ple-free non-real­i­ty lead­er­ship roller coast­er that nev­er ends and is just get­ting start­ed. To put it anoth­er way, we won’t be a ful­ly real­ized Trumpian banana repub­lic until the pub­lic can’t even define for itself what a banana repub­lic is any­more and turns to dear-leader for a def­i­n­i­tion. And what bet­ter way to real­ize that Orwellian dream than by behav­ing in a myr­i­ad of ways that are guar­an­teed to bring an avalanche of crit­i­cisms which will only be deflect­ed via Trumpian guile and used to dis­as­so­ci­ate Trump’s sup­port­ers from “the real­i­ty-based com­mu­ni­ty” even more.

    Could that actu­al­ly be part of a con­scious Trump strat­e­gy? It seems worth con­sid­er­ing at this point. Of course, maybe he’s just behav­ing the way he’s behav­ing because he’s an unprin­ci­pled fas­cist mob­ster. We’ll see!

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 28, 2016, 8:05 pm
  2. @Dave
    Con­gress­woman Tul­si Gab­bard you cov­ered at the begin­ing of FTR 934 pro­gram, as a “pro­gres­sive” Bernie Sanders backer and a Naren­dra Modi sup­port­er who met with Pres­i­dent-Elect Trump is also a strong sup­port­er of the The Stand­ing Rock Sioux in the cur­rent North Dako­ta Pipeline Dis­pute who went to the protest in North Dako­ta soon after you post­ed FTR 934.

    Do you think her sup­port should pos­si­bly be con­sid­ered in an Under­ground Reich/UNPO/Going Native FTR 550 Con­text? I heard about her vist in a NPR Inter­view. Tran­script is below.
    Thank you,
    GK

    http://www.npr.org/2016/12/04/504352885/thousands-of-veterans-travel-to-standing-rock-to-support-activists
    ————————————–
    AROUND THE NATION

    Thou­sands Of Vet­er­ans Trav­el To
    Stand­ing Rock To Sup­port Activists

    Decem­ber 4, 20165:15 PM ET
    Heard on All Things Con­sid­ered
    Con­gress­woman Tul­si Gab­bard of Hawaii joined thou­sands of vet­er­ans at the Stand­ing Rock protest in North Dako­ta this week­end. They trav­eled to show sol­i­dar­i­ty against the oil pipeline.

    MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

    Con­gress­woman Tul­si Gab­bard is with us now. She’s a Demo­c­rat from Hawaii. She is among the vet­er­ans who gath­ered at the camps this week­end — over the course of the week­end offer­ing to serve as human shields to pro­tect activists from pos­si­ble law enforce­ment action. And Con­gress­woman Tul­si Gab­bard is with us now. Con­gress­woman, thank you so much for speak­ing with us.

    TULSI GABBARD: Alo­ha. It’s good to be with you.

    MARTIN: What did you hear? What have you heard today?

    GABBARD: You know, I got a mes­sage this after­noon short­ly after we had a gath­er­ing of the vet­er­ans who have come here through­out the week­end. On my way back to camp, I got a mes­sage that the chair­man had an announce­ment to make and he was invit­ing me over to where he was, where I quick­ly learned that the Army Corps of Engi­neers had informed him that they would not approve the ease­ment for the pipeline to be built beneath the riv­er, in effect, by stat­ing that this approval would not take place. In effect, this will force a rerout­ing of the pipeline.

    MARTIN: So what was the reac­tion when this announce­ment was made?

    GABBARD: I mean, there have been and con­tin­ue to be cheers through­out the camp in dif­fer­ent places as peo­ple learn of the news. And many peo­ple can’t believe it’s true. And Chair­man Archam­bault of the Stand­ing Rock Sioux tribe just went before a gath­er­ing of a few thou­sand to let them know that in fact it is true, and that their prayers and their peace­ful stand for pro­tect­ing water made the dif­fer­ence not only for the peo­ple here at Stand­ing Rock, but for lit­er­al­ly gen­er­a­tions to come.

    MARTIN: What’s your reac­tion?

    GABBARD: This is a his­toric moment. I’m grate­ful to be here, grate­ful to be here with peo­ple from all over this coun­try, grate­ful to be here with tribes from across Indi­an coun­try and with the peo­ple of Stand­ing Rock at a tru­ly momen­tous time, you know? This has come about because of many, many months of peo­ple com­ing here and gath­er­ing to pro­tect the water, and many, many years of the Stand­ing Rock Sioux bat­tling against this pipeline being built in a way that would affect and impact their water for gen­er­a­tions to come. I have trou­ble find­ing the right words. It just shows how pow­er­ful it is when peo­ple come togeth­er, over­come dif­fer­ences for our com­mon good. And there is noth­ing more pre­cious to life than water.

    MARTIN: What made you want to trav­el to Can­non Ball, N.D. this week­end?

    GABBARD: You know, like so many vet­er­ans, I got the call from Wes Clark Jr. He said, hey, I’m try­ing to put togeth­er this gath­er­ing of vet­er­ans to go and stand with Stand­ing Rock. Would you be avail­able to come? I had been want­i­ng to come for quite some time. For me per­son­al­ly, the issue of water pro­tec­tion has been an issue that’s been near and dear to my heart for a long time. It’s actu­al­ly what first got me involved with pol­i­tics in Hawaii many, many years ago, even as a teenag­er. In Hawaii at that time, they were plan­ning to build a land­fill over a major water aquifer, which, you know, made absolute­ly no sense.

    And that ignit­ed a fire with­in me many, many years ago, and felt in some ways kin­dred spir­it to the threat that the peo­ple here at Stand­ing Rock have been fight­ing against, which is not dif­fer­ent from the unfor­tu­nate lead poi­son­ing that the peo­ple of Flint, Mich. have been endur­ing, and is not dif­fer­ent from a threat that we face in Hawaii right now where one of our largest water aquifers sits beneath a fuel stor­age tank car­ry­ing mil­lions and mil­lions gal­lons of fuel that’s actu­al­ly leaked already tens of thou­sands of gal­lons of fuel, threat­en­ing the water qual­i­ty in our aquifer.

    So there are issues like this that are hap­pen­ing across the coun­try. And this vic­to­ry today here at Stand­ing Rock I know is giv­ing great hope to oth­ers who are fac­ing sim­i­lar bat­tles in their own com­mu­ni­ties.

    MARTIN: Where were you in fact will­ing to serve as a human shield? Was that your plan?

    GABBARD: My plan was to come here and stand in peace and in prayer with the peo­ple of Stand­ing Rock with all of our oth­er vet­er­ans. And that’s exact­ly what’s been hap­pen­ing. And that’s what has led to this moment.

    MARTIN: Do you think that your pres­ence and that of the oth­er vet­er­ans there is what turned the tide here?

    GABBARD: It’s hard to say. Again, thou­sands of peo­ple have been here for sev­er­al months. Vet­er­ans have been pil­ing in here and trick­ling in here over the last few days by the thou­sands. The Stand­ing Rock Sioux have been bat­tling this pipeline for years. Chair­man Archam­bault, as he spoke to the crowd, shared his grat­i­tude for all who have come and all who were not able to come, but have prayed from their homes in their mis­sion to pro­tect water in order to pre­serve and pro­tect the life and the future of their fam­i­lies and their com­mu­ni­ty and their tribe.

    MARTIN: What do you think will hap­pen now, Con­gress­woman? We think the Army Corps of Engi­neers announced that it won’t grant the ease­ment, so — cross­ing the riv­er. So does that mean that it will be...

    GABBARD: In effect, it will be rerout­ed. The oth­er vic­to­ry that came about today is that what Chair­man Archam­bault many oth­ers from the Sioux nation have been call­ing for is a com­plete envi­ron­men­tal impact state­ment on the entire pipeline. Thus far, there has only been an envi­ron­men­tal assess­ment, which he shared with me yes­ter­day. It looks at data and sta­tis­tics, where­as an envi­ron­men­tal impact state­ment is com­pre­hen­sive and ful­ly exam­ines the impact of this project on peo­ple and com­mu­ni­ties as a whole, along with many oth­er things. So they are look­ing at a few dif­fer­ent pos­i­tive devel­op­ments that have come about today through the Army Corps’ announce­ment.

    MARTIN: Before we let you go, Con­gress­woman, as you know, a new admin­is­tra­tion comes into office very soon, in six or sev­en weeks now. Is it pos­si­ble that the incom­ing Trump admin­is­tra­tion will reverse this deci­sion?

    GABBARD: Look, peo­ple here are very proud of what they’ve accom­plished, and they have no neg­a­tive thoughts towards the future. They have shared that whomev­er is in the White House, they will con­tin­ue to advo­cate for the pro­tec­tion of water and the pro­tec­tion of their peo­ple.

    MARTIN: That’s Tul­si Gab­bard. She’s a U.S. con­gress­woman. She rep­re­sents Hawai­i’s sec­ond dis­trict. She’s a Demo­c­rat. And she’s also a U.S. vet­er­an. She joined us from the Oceti Sakowin Camp in North Dako­ta today at the site of the protests against the Dako­ta Access Pipeline. We reached her by tele­phone. Con­gress­woman, thank you so much for speak­ing with us.

    GABBARD: Thank you. Alo­ha.

    Posted by GK | December 10, 2016, 7:51 am
  3. @GK–

    Good call. That may very well be the case.

    I will be delv­ing into her sit­u­a­tion and that of Saint Bernard (Sanders) in the near future.

    Gab­bard is net­worked with the RSS, the Hin­du nationalist/fascist par­ty from which Naren­dra Nodi drew all of his cab­i­net appoint­ments.

    The RSS was mod­eled after Hitler’s NSDAP and Mus­solin­i’s black­shirts.

    Its para­mil­i­tary cadre was based on the Nazi SS.

    Gab­bard was deeply involved with arrang­ing Mod­i’s trip to the U.S.

    Her sup­port for Mod­i’s BJP and the RSS for which it is a front is pred­i­cat­ed on her oppo­si­tion to Daesh, the ISIS.

    She blast­ed Oba­ma for not call­ing ISIS an “Islam­ic orga­ni­za­tion.”

    She weak­ened Hillary Clin­ton’s can­di­da­cy by resign­ing as Deputy chair of the DNC so she could sup­port Saint Bernard.

    She sup­ports “Boinie,” in part, because she is against wars of inter­ven­tion and “regime change.”

    Yet, she is sup­port­ive of Trump’s appoint­ments of gen­er­als to key cab­i­net posts–all of whom are in favor of re-engag­ing in the Mid­dle East and the same types of oper­a­tions to which “Boinie” is opposed.

    Although she sup­ports the RSS for their oppo­si­tion to Mus­lims, she sup­ports African-Amer­i­can Mus­lim Kei­th Elli­son for head of the DNC!

    It would be dif­fi­cult to imag­ine any­thing that would under­mine what’s left of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty than to have Elli­son as the face of the par­ty.

    Elli­son, BTW, is heav­i­ly net­worked with Mus­lim Broth­er­hood front orga­ni­za­tions such as the INSA.

    He may not real­ize that is what they are–the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood has been allowed to assume point for the Amer­i­can Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty.

    They will come to regret this, believe me.

    Now, Gab­bard’s dra­mat­i­cal­ly con­flict­ing stances don’t com­pute if we take them at face val­ue.

    IF, how­ev­er, we look at Saint Tul­si as an under­cov­er infil­tra­tor of the DNC, with sub­ver­sive intent and actions, she makes a GREAT DEAL of sense!

    I will be talk­ing more about her in upcom­ing pro­grams.

    Also: She is report­ed to be a Hin­du. That is not strict­ly speak­ing, accu­rate.

    She is a mem­ber of the Hare Krish­na cult!

    More about this in an upcom­ing show.

    Best,

    Dave

    Posted by Dave Emory | December 10, 2016, 2:53 pm
  4. CIA Con­cludes Russ­ian Inter­fer­ence Aimed To Elect Trump
    http://news.wgbh.org/2016/12/10/news/cia-concludes-russian-interference-aimed-elect-trump

    The CIA has con­clud­ed that Rus­sia inter­vened in the 2016 elec­tion specif­i­cal­ly to help Don­ald Trump win the pres­i­den­cy, a U.S. offi­cial has con­firmed to NPR.

    “Before, there was con­fi­dence about the fact that Rus­sia inter­fered,” the offi­cial says. “But there was low con­fi­dence on what the direc­tion and inten­tion­al­i­ty of the inter­fer­ence was. Now they [the CIA] have come to the con­clu­sion that Rus­sia was try­ing to tip the elec­tion to Trump.”

    The offi­cial adds: “The rea­son the assess­ment changed is that new infor­ma­tion became avail­able” since Oct. 7, when the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty and the Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence released a joint state­ment accus­ing Rus­sia of inter­fer­ing with the Amer­i­can elec­tion process.

    The Wash­ing­ton Post first report­ed the CIA’s new assess­ment on Fri­day.

    In addi­tion to hack­ing into Demo­c­ra­t­ic orga­ni­za­tions, Rus­sians hacked the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee’s com­put­er sys­tems, accord­ing to a sep­a­rate report from The New York Times — but they did not release any infor­ma­tion that might have been retrieved from Repub­li­can net­works.

    “Intel­li­gence agen­cies have iden­ti­fied indi­vid­u­als with con­nec­tions to the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment who pro­vid­ed Wik­iLeaks with thou­sands of hacked emails from the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee and oth­ers, includ­ing Hillary Clin­ton’s cam­paign chair­man, accord­ing to U.S. offi­cials,” the Post reports. “Those offi­cials described the indi­vid­u­als as actors known to the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty and part of a wider Russ­ian oper­a­tion to boost Trump and hurt Clin­ton’s chances.”

    Cit­ing anony­mous offi­cials briefed on the issue, the Post says the CIA shared its find­ings with sen­a­tors in a closed-door brief­ing last week, say­ing it was now “quite clear” that Rus­si­a’s goal was to tip the pres­i­den­cy in Trump’s favor:

    ” ‘It is the assess­ment of the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty that Rus­si­a’s goal here was to favor one can­di­date over the oth­er, to help Trump get elect­ed,’ said a senior U.S. offi­cial briefed on an intel­li­gence pre­sen­ta­tion made to U.S. sen­a­tors. ‘That’s the con­sen­sus view.’ ”

    In a pre­vi­ous assess­ment, CIA offi­cials had thought Rus­sians inter­vened with the inten­tion of under­min­ing Amer­i­cans’ elec­toral sys­tem, Adam Entous, one of the Post sto­ry’s reporters, tells NPR’s Scott Simon.

    On Fri­day evening, the Trump tran­si­tion team fired back with a state­ment dis­miss­ing the report of the agen­cy’s con­clu­sion.

    “These are the same peo­ple that said Sad­dam Hus­sein had weapons of mass destruc­tion,” the state­ment said. “The elec­tion end­ed a long time ago in one of the biggest Elec­toral Col­lege vic­to­ries in his­to­ry. It’s now time to move on and ‘Make Amer­i­ca Great Again.’ ”

    In fact, Trump’s per­cent­age of the elec­toral vote in the 2016 elec­tion ranks 46th among pres­i­den­tial elec­tion win­ners in U.S. his­to­ry, accord­ing to factcheck.org.

    Trump’s claim is a ref­er­ence to the CIA’s flawed intel­li­gence on Iraq, in the run-up to the U.S.-led inva­sion in 2003. The CIA and oth­er spy agen­cies judged that Sad­dam Hus­sein had weapons of mass destruc­tion — a judg­ment that proved to be false. While the lead­er­ship of the CIA has changed hands sev­er­al times in the years since then, many intel­li­gence offi­cers and ana­lysts who worked on the Iraq intel­li­gence still serve at CIA and in oth­er parts of the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty.

    But whether or not Trump’s top offi­cials acknowl­edge the report as a pos­si­ble threat, the Post’s Adam Entous points out Trump will soon be in com­mand of the intel­li­gence agen­cies.

    “I’m sure they’re going to declas­si­fy some ele­ments of the report and I’m sure there will be leaks,” he adds, but the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion can’t dis­close the full details of the case, because it would be “com­pro­mis­ing what’s known as ‘sources and meth­ods,’ which would then make it hard­er for the CIA and the NSA and oth­er spy agen­cies to get more infor­ma­tion in the future.”

    Ear­li­er Fri­day, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma ordered the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty to con­duct a “full review” of “mali­cious cyber activ­i­ty” timed to U.S. elec­tions, as we pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed:

    “In the 2016 elec­tion, U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cials charged that Rus­sia had inter­fered. In ear­ly Octo­ber, they released a strong­ly word­ed state­ment say­ing they were ‘con­fi­dent that the Russ­ian Gov­ern­ment direct­ed the recent com­pro­mis­es of e‑mails from U.S. per­sons and insti­tu­tions, includ­ing from U.S. polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions.’ The state­ment went on to say ‘these thefts and dis­clo­sures are intend­ed to inter­fere with the U.S. elec­tion process.’ ”

    The U.S. offi­cial says that “there is a deter­mi­na­tion to do some­thing” before the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion leaves pow­er. “It’s still being dis­cussed exact­ly what to do. And as we’ve said before, some of it you may see and some of it you will not.”

    Sen. Ron Wyden, a Demo­c­rat on the Sen­ate Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee, says the response from Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump is “very mis­guid­ed.”

    “When you have strong evi­dence that a for­eign pow­er has inter­fered with the Amer­i­can elec­tion, with Amer­i­can insti­tu­tions, then what you do is keep dig­ging. You get all the facts out,” Wyden says. “You respond to the Amer­i­can peo­ple with the kind of infor­ma­tion that they have a right to know.”

    He also advo­cates releas­ing more infor­ma­tion on the cyber­at­tacks.

    “I do believe there is impor­tant infor­ma­tion that the Amer­i­can peo­ple have a right to know. It ought to be declas­si­fied prompt­ly.”

    “It’s very impor­tant that the Amer­i­can pub­lic knows what hap­pened, not nec­es­sar­i­ly to re-lit­i­gate this elec­tion, but to look for­ward,” says Sen. Angus King, an inde­pen­dent sen­a­tor from Maine. “What wor­ries me is the extent to which this is an ongo­ing pat­tern — which, by the way, is the Rus­sians’ pat­tern in oth­er parts of the world.

    “And is that going to be the case in our elec­tions? Four years from now, are we going to have the Democ­rats, the Repub­li­cans, the inde­pen­dents and the Rus­sians?” King asks. “I mean, this is very seri­ous stuff.”

    Posted by John | December 10, 2016, 5:36 pm
  5. The entire Gab­bard fam­i­ly deserves seri­ous scruti­ny, includ­ing polit­i­cal par­ents Car­ole and Mike. Tul­si and all of her sib­lings were home
    schooled. AND Car­ole served on the state board of edu­ca­tion AND believes in the Hin­du faith. Tul­si’s Catholic father Mike was elect­ed to
    the state sen­ate as a Repub­li­can yet switched to Demo­c­rat. Both father and daugh­ter have expressed anti-gay pro “tra­di­tion­al mar­riage”
    sen­ti­ments.

    Then there are the ques­tion­able ties of the Gab­bard fam­i­ly (as well as Tul­si’s hus­band Abra­ham Williams” ties) to guru Chris But­ler and the
    Sci­ence of Iden­ti­ty Foun­da­tion, a Krish­na cult mix­ing busi­ness, veg­e­tar­i­an­ism, yoga and opposed to homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. The only thing miss­ing
    here is UFO beliefs. But pho­tos of But­ler reveal the dazed glazed look of a shoplifter ala the late Mar­shall Apple­white of the Heav­en’s Gate/
    Hale Bopp cult, so maybe that base too is cov­ered.
    .
    Yes ris­ing star Tul­si, a mil­i­tary vet­er­an crit­i­cal of Oba­ma yet full of praise for the anti-Mus­lim Mod­il and con­sult­ing with old Sev­en Days In
    May Trump, may have a great polit­i­cal future.
    Look for­ward to your upcom­ing analy­sis.

    Posted by Dennis | December 11, 2016, 3:38 pm

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