Trump enters the stage

Thanks Mowk. Right now I’m a hotel room planning seeing sights of Hanoi and flying back to Manila tonight then party for 10 days . hope you are well .
Trying to break dependence on alcohol and flip back to days when I started at no sooner then 12 pm afternoon.

Well, An invitation. I am feeling rather punk. In this state, I shouldn’t comment
Stupid things I weep over. Was distracted by an episode of a tv show while cooking; a cute little girl uttered “it’s a metaphor doofus.” to why a whale was in a dream. It just took me over emotionally. Makes one pause and go HMMM?

I think I’m loosing my socks cause it felt good, like watching “it’s a wonderful life”. Emotional strings. Who can you trust, when even yourself is the cause of question?

Don’t wear a watch while on vacation. (ribbing)

An other thought was to drink all night and sleep past noon. That works too, but don’t take me too seriously.

I try to squeeze in a nap between the two.

I’m sort of oddly autistic, and this medium is rather cold, did the idea of “all in good time” come off at all? It was what I was aiming for.

I’ve never been comfortable as a traveler. It is an industry that applies a great deal of leverage on time.

The New York Times

F.B.I. Opened Inquiry Into Whether Trump Was Secretly Working on Behalf of Russia
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Following President Trump’s firing of James B. Comey as F.B.I. director, the bureau grew increasingly concerned about whether the president’s actions constituted anti-American activity.CreditSarah Silbiger/The New York Times
By Adam Goldman, Michael S. Schmidt and Nicholas Fandos
Jan. 11, 2019
WASHINGTON — In the days after President Trump fired James B. Comey as F.B.I. director, law enforcement officials became so concerned by the president’s behavior that they began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests, according to former law enforcement officials and others familiar with the investigation.

The inquiry carried explosive implications. Counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president’s own actions constituted a possible threat to national security. Agents also sought to determine whether Mr. Trump was knowingly working for Russia or had unwittingly fallen under Moscow’s influence.

The investigation the F.B.I. opened into Mr. Trump also had a criminal aspect, which has long been publicly known: whether his firing of Mr. Comey constituted obstruction of justice.

Agents and senior F.B.I. officials had grown suspicious of Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign but held off on opening an investigation into him, the people said, in part because they were uncertain how to proceed with an inquiry of such sensitivity and magnitude. But the president’s activities before and after Mr. Comey’s firing in May 2017, particularly two instances in which Mr. Trump tied the Comey dismissal to the Russia investigation, helped prompt the counterintelligence aspect of the inquiry, the people said.

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The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, took over the inquiry into Mr. Trump when he was appointed, days after F.B.I. officials opened it. That inquiry is part of Mr. Mueller’s broader examination of how Russian operatives interfered in the 2016 election and whether any Trump associates conspired with them. It is unclear whether Mr. Mueller is still pursuing the counterintelligence matter, and some former law enforcement officials outside the investigation have questioned whether agents overstepped in opening it.

The criminal and counterintelligence elements were coupled together into one investigation, former law enforcement officials said in interviews in recent weeks, because if Mr. Trump had ousted the head of the F.B.I. to impede or even end the Russia investigation, that was both a possible crime and a national security concern. The F.B.I.’s counterintelligence division handles national security matters.

If the president had fired Mr. Comey to stop the Russia investigation, the action would have been a national security issue because it naturally would have hurt the bureau’s effort to learn how Moscow interfered in the 2016 election and whether any Americans were involved, according to James A. Baker, who served as F.B.I. general counsel until late 2017. He privately testified in October before House investigators who were examining the F.B.I.’s handling of the full Russia inquiry.

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The F.B.I. investigated whether the firing of Mr. Comey was a national security threat.CreditErik S Lesser/EPA, via Shutterstock
“Not only would it be an issue of obstructing an investigation, but the obstruction itself would hurt our ability to figure out what the Russians had done, and that is what would be the threat to national security,” Mr. Baker said in his testimony, portions of which were read to The New York Times. Mr. Baker did not explicitly acknowledge the existence of the investigation of Mr. Trump to congressional investigators.

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No evidence has emerged publicly that Mr. Trump was secretly in contact with or took direction from Russian government officials. An F.B.I. spokeswoman and a spokesman for the special counsel’s office both declined to comment.

Rudolph W. Giuliani, a lawyer for the president, sought to play down the significance of the investigation. “The fact that it goes back a year and a half and nothing came of it that showed a breach of national security means they found nothing,” Mr. Giuliani said on Friday, though he acknowledged that he had no insight into the inquiry.

The cloud of the Russia investigation has hung over Mr. Trump since even before he took office, though he has long vigorously denied any illicit connection to Moscow. The obstruction inquiry, revealed by The Washington Post a few weeks after Mr. Mueller was appointed, represented a direct threat that he was unable to simply brush off as an overzealous examination of a handful of advisers. But few details have been made public about the counterintelligence aspect of the investigation.

The decision to investigate Mr. Trump himself was an aggressive move by F.B.I. officials who were confronting the chaotic aftermath of the firing of Mr. Comey and enduring the president’s verbal assaults on the Russia investigation as a “witch hunt.”

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A vigorous debate has taken shape among some former law enforcement officials outside the case over whether F.B.I. investigators overreacted in opening the counterintelligence inquiry during a tumultuous period at the Justice Department. Other former officials noted that those critics were not privy to all of the evidence and argued that sitting on it would have been an abdication of duty.

The F.B.I. conducts two types of inquiries, criminal and counterintelligence investigations. Unlike criminal investigations, which are typically aimed at solving a crime and can result in arrests and convictions, counterintelligence inquiries are generally fact-finding missions to understand what a foreign power is doing and to stop any anti-American activity, like thefts of United States government secrets or covert efforts to influence policy. In most cases, the investigations are carried out quietly, sometimes for years. Often, they result in no arrests.

Mr. Trump had caught the attention of F.B.I. counterintelligence agents when he called on Russia during a campaign news conference in July 2016 to hack into the emails of his opponent, Hillary Clinton. Mr. Trump had refused to criticize Russia on the campaign trail, praising President Vladimir V. Putin. And investigators had watched with alarm as the Republican Party softened its convention platform on the Ukraine crisis in a way that seemed to benefit Russia.

How the Mueller Investigation Could Play Out for Trump If Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, finds evidence that Mr. Trump broke the law, he will have decisions to make about how to proceed. We explain them.
Other factors fueled the F.B.I.’s concerns, according to the people familiar with the inquiry. Christopher Steele, a former British spy who worked as an F.B.I. informant, had compiled memos in mid-2016 containing unsubstantiated claims that Russian officials tried to obtain influence over Mr. Trump by preparing to blackmail and bribe him.

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In the months before the 2016 election, the F.B.I. was also already investigating four of Mr. Trump’s associates over their ties to Russia. The constellation of events disquieted F.B.I. officials who were simultaneously watching as Russia’s campaign unfolded to undermine the presidential election by exploiting existing divisions among Americans.

“In the Russian Federation and in President Putin himself, you have an individual whose aim is to disrupt the Western alliance and whose aim is to make Western democracy more fractious in order to weaken our ability, America’s ability and the West’s ability to spread our democratic ideals,” Lisa Page, a former bureau lawyer, told House investigators in private testimony reviewed by The Times.

“That’s the goal, to make us less of a moral authority to spread democratic values,” she added. Parts of her testimony were first reported by The Epoch Times.

And when a newly inaugurated Mr. Trump sought a loyalty pledge from Mr. Comey and later asked that he end an investigation into the president’s national security adviser, the requests set off discussions among F.B.I. officials about opening an inquiry into whether Mr. Trump had tried to obstruct that case.

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But law enforcement officials put off the decision to open the investigation until they had learned more, according to people familiar with their thinking. As for a counterintelligence inquiry, they concluded that they would need strong evidence to take the sensitive step of investigating the president, and they were also concerned that the existence of such an inquiry could be leaked to the news media, undermining the entire investigation into Russia’s meddling in the election.

After Mr. Comey was fired on May 9, 2017, two more of Mr. Trump’s actions prompted them to quickly abandon those reservations.

The first was a letter Mr. Trump wanted to send to Mr. Comey about his firing, but never did, in which he mentioned the Russia investigation. In the letter, Mr. Trump thanked Mr. Comey for previously telling him he was not a subject of the F.B.I.’s Russia investigation.

Everyone Who’s Been Charged in Investigations Related to the 2016 Election Thirty-seven people have been charged in investigations related to Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Even after the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, wrote a more restrained draft of the letter and told Mr. Trump that he did not have to mention the Russia investigation — Mr. Comey’s poor handling of the Clinton email investigation would suffice as a fireable offense, he explained — Mr. Trump directed Mr. Rosenstein to mention the Russia investigation anyway.

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He disregarded the president’s order, irritating Mr. Trump. The president ultimately added a reference to the Russia investigation to the note he had delivered, thanking Mr. Comey for telling him three times that he was not under investigation.

The second event that troubled investigators was an NBC News interview two days after Mr. Comey’s firing in which Mr. Trump appeared to say he had dismissed Mr. Comey because of the Russia inquiry.

“I was going to fire Comey knowing there was no good time to do it,” he said. “And in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself — I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story. It’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should’ve won.”

Mr. Trump’s aides have said that a fuller examination of his comments demonstrates that he did not fire Mr. Comey to end the Russia inquiry. “I might even lengthen out the investigation, but I have to do the right thing for the American people,” Mr. Trump added. “He’s the wrong man for that position.”

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As F.B.I. officials debated whether to open the investigation, some of them pushed to move quickly before Mr. Trump appointed a director who might slow down or even end their investigation into Russia’s interference. Many involved in the case viewed Russia as the chief threat to American democratic values.

“With respect to Western ideals and who it is and what it is we stand for as Americans, Russia poses the most dangerous threat to that way of life,” Ms. Page told investigators for a joint House Judiciary and Oversight Committee investigation into Moscow’s election interference.

F.B.I. officials viewed their decision to move quickly as validated when a comment the president made to visiting Russian officials in the Oval Office shortly after he fired Mr. Comey was revealed days later.

“I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Mr. Trump said, according to a document summarizing the meeting. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”

© 2018 The New York Times Company

20,679 views|Jan 7, 2018,5:00 pm
Donald Trump, Democrat?
Ralph BenkoContributor

FILE – In this Dec. 7, 2017, file photo, President Donald Trump accompanied by Vice President Mike Pence, listens as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of Calif., speaks before a meeting with congressional leaders including House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wis., Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of N.Y., in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

My headline employs “democrat” in its generic, rather than proper noun (partisan), definition. President Trump shifted his party registration back and forth (five times, according to the Washington Times’s report of a report by The Smoking Gun). Trump, Politico reports, also was a substantial donor to Senator Clinton, the Clinton Foundation, and many other Democrats.

This history does not make Donald Trump a Democrat. But I submit that Donald Trump is democracy’s smoking gun.

Trump won the presidency as the nominee of the Republican Party. Despite his occasional public flirtations with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi he works with the Congressional majority, Republicans, largely eschewing the Democrats’ progressive policy agenda.

That said, I submit that the election of Donald Trump as president is largely an outcome of “creeping democracy.” Democracy is routinely extolled by the left. It, along with “equality,” is frequently used by leftists as a vague synonym for anything good.

The left, however, is wrong about this. Democracy is a bad thing. Bad for the left too.

This remains unclear to the left. This is understandable. The word “democracy” sounds vaguely good. It has proved useful in advancing the progressive agenda. Thus, celebrations of democracy persist but the outcomes, even from their point of view, just are not looking so hot.

O Democracy!

The Washington Post earlier this year adopted the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” According to the Post’s own credible backstory, this was not aimed at President Trump but was derived from a line in a speech by its owner Jeff Bezos, adopted from Bob Woodward (who had used it for many years), itself appropriated from a coinage by appellate Judge Damon J. Keith.

Currently, the poster child book on this topic is How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (whose names are curiously omitted from the front cover of the book jacket). The New York Times’s David Leonhardt extols it in his recent column The Meaning of Bannon vs. Trump:

Democracy. Later this month, an alarmingly titled book, “How Democracies Die,” written by two political scientists, will be published. It is, as the book’s promotional material states, “a bracing, revelatory look at the demise of liberal democracies around the world — and a road map for rescuing our own.”

Let’s help the left out. America was unequivocally designed as a republic, not a democracy. There are reasons for this.

My friend Jonathan Rauch, Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings Institution, has wryly painted how wrongheaded have been the progressives in undermining the republican order. His assessment may be found, among other places, in a cover story at The Atlantic archly headlined The Case For Corruption. Progressives have, over more than a century, conscientiously eroded America’s republican structure, including the very political norms — the guardrails — they take Trump to task for violating.

Let them consider whether Trump’s presidency is the effect, not the cause, of their own century-long project of undermining republican safeguards.

Progressives? Meet the Law of Unintended Consequences.

A more democratic America has delivered unto you President Trump.

Happy?

Let’s take a deeper dive into democracy vs. republicanism to help understand where the left went so Wrong.

I have many dear progressive friends. I heart them for their commitment to justice among other things. I myself am neither a progressive nor a democrat. As Alcuin famously wrote to Charlemagne in 798 AD, “Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, Vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit.”

And do not listen to those who keep saying, ‘The voice of the people is the voice of God.’ because the tumult of the crowd is always close to madness.

Trump certainly plays to the tumult of the crowd. As I have pointed out here the remnants of the republican system – the electoral college (which progressives are now targeting for demolition) — worked as designed. The electorate — which is subtly but materially different from the “crowd” — chose the presidential aspirant who best, relative to the other 19 significant contenders in 2016, articulated its yearning for peace and prosperity.

The left would do better to seek to extract the log in its own eye than to condemn the mote in the eye of the right. “’You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,— mon frère!‘”

Notwithstanding their ongoing confrontation with the Law of Unintended Consequences the left continues to extol democracy. That’s a system of government America’s founders deplored. The Founders’ deploring it, one supposes, would have made them a basket of deplorables to the Hillary Clintons of their day. Such figures, then, were blessedly few.

Let’s go to the record.

The founders of America detested democracy, putting many guardrails against it into the Constitution. They made no bones about it.

Here are some representative quotes by some of the premier architects of our charter document:

At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787: A lady [one Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia] asked Dr. [Benjamin] Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy[?] — A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it[.]

James Madison, Federalist Paper No. 10:

From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.

A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking. Let us examine the points in which it varies from pure democracy, and we shall comprehend both the nature of the cure and the efficacy which it must derive from the Union.

Edmund Randolph, in the Constitutional Convention, said in speaking on the constitution of a Senate:

If he was to give an opinion as to the number of the [U.S. Senate], he should say that it ought to be much smaller than that of the first; so small as to be exempt from the passionate proceedings to which numerous assemblies are liable. He observed that the general object was to provide a cure for the evils under which the United States labored; that in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy; that some check, therefore, was to be sought for against this tendency of our governments, and that a good Senate seemed most likely to answer the purpose.

As John Adams wrote to John Taylor in 1814:

You Say “Mr. Adams calls our Attention to hundreds of wise and virtuous Patricians, mangled and bleeding Victims of popular Fury.” and gravely counts up several Victims of democratic Rage as proofs that Democracy is more pernicious than Monarchy or Aristocracy.” Is this fair, sir? Do you deny any one of my Facts? I do not say that Democracy has been more pernicious, on the whole, and in the long run, than Monarchy or Aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as Aristocracy or Monarchy. But while it lasts it is more bloody than either.

Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to Say that Democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious or less avaricious than Aristocracy or Monarchy. It is not true in Fact and no where appears in history. Those Passions are the same in all Men under all forms of Simple Government, and when unchecked, produce the same Effects of Fraud Violence and Cruelty.

America was very much designed to avoid democracy, The Constitution itself, at Article 4, Section 4 states:

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government….

“A Republican Form of Government.” Nowhere in the Constitution does the word democracy occur. This is not an oversight.

Fraud, Violence and Cruelty? John Adams, a member of the Committee that wrote the Declaration of Independence and our second president, thereby demonstrated prophetic qualities. The left, hoist with its own petard, would do well to take heed.

Comes now How Democracies Die. Its lead jacket blurb is from E.J. Dionne, Jr., who I respect greatly as one of the leading classical liberal public intellectuals working today notwithstanding that he bats (cleanup) for the Other Team.

How Democracies Die turns out to be an interesting work by two scholars who have deep knowledge of how authoritarians have taken power. They give special attention to the role of the establishment parties in facilitating that process, by connivance or negligence, thus paving the way for monsters such as Hitler, Mussolini, or Hugo Chavez to take power. They offer many interesting cautionary vignettes from world, and American, history.

They offer a soft, almost exculpatory, critique of some of FDR’s violations of political norms – prominently, threatening to pack the Supreme Court and violating the precedent of limiting himself to two terms. They gently chide, while exonerating, some of Barack Obama’s violations.

At base however, the authors blame the Republicans. They attribute the key erosion in what they call the political “guardrails” to the hardball tactics of Speaker Newt Gingrich and Majority Leader Tom Delay. There is some merit to this claim. However, they weirdly present a case that good Republicans are domesticated to the progressive agenda and protest, if at all, impotently. They seem oddly insensitive to the manifold examples of the violations by prominent Democrats such as Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi among many others. The sins of progressives are venial while comparable sins by conservatives are presented as mortal.

The left has a propensity to extol hardball tactics when used by Democrats and excoriate them when used by Republicans. Chris Matthews’s finest and most delightful book, Hardball: How Politics Is played, Told by One Who Knows the Game, for which his MSNBC show is named, provides a very nice Bill of Particulars.

In the eyes of progressives “democracy” is a great thing … so long as Democrats get elected and move the policies of America leftward. When the political system works to elect Republicans who move policy rightward it is ipso facto deemed demagoguery.

How Democracies Die displays many of the internal contradictions inherent within the left’s narrative. For example, the authors critique state defiance of President Obama’s (questionable) regulatory order limiting greenhouse gas emissions. They term it “a stunning undermining of federal authority.” Then the authors attack Trump for signing an executive order authorizing federal agencies to withhold funding from “sanctuary cities” that refused to cooperate with the administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants.

State resistance to federal authority is inherently either legitimate or illegitimate. They can’t have it both ways. The plenitude of these kinds of opportunistic arguments is one of the book’s greatest flaws. While I — on conservative philosophical grounds — oppose the withholding of federal aid to self-designated sanctuary cities one cannot logically reconcile how state resistance to the federal government is “a stunning undermining” while municipal resistance is legitimate.

The authors, blind to their own contradictions, paint themselves into many such logical corners. There are arguments to be made for their preferred policies here. This argument, however, is self-contradictory and thus contributes to the polarization which the authors, purportedly, deplore.

Senator Warren is right. The game is rigged.

Just, not necessarily in the way she propounds.

The Founders were not alone in their condemnation of democracy. H.L. Mencken, the Sage of Baltimore, a somewhat libertarian curmudgeon beloved by progressives for his ridicule of William Jennings Bryan for his attack on the teaching of evolution, was an intense and consistent critic of democracy.

Mencken devoted his Last Words to a rather definitive deconstruction of the pretense of democracy (and, let it be noted, of the Democrats of his day):

Democracy always seems bent upon killing the thing it theoretically loves. I have rehearsed some of its operations against liberty, the very cornerstone of its political metaphysic. It not only wars upon the thing itself; it even wars upon mere academic advocacy of it. I offer the spectacle of Americans jailed for reading the Bill of Rights as perhaps the most gaudily humorous ever witnessed in the modern world. Try to imagine monarchy jailing subjects for maintaining the divine right of Kings! Or Christianity damning a believer for arguing that Jesus Christ was the Son of God! This last, perhaps, has been done: anything is possible in that direction. But under democracy the remotest and most fantastic possibility is a common-place of every day. All the axioms resolve themselves into thundering paradoxes, many amounting to downright contradictions in terms. The mob is competent to rule the rest of us—but it must be rigorously policed itself. There is a government, not of men, but of laws – but men are set upon benches to decide finally what the law is and may be. The highest function of the citizen is to serve the state – but the first assumption that meets him, when he essays to discharge it, is an assumption of his disingenuousness and dishonour. Is that assumption commonly sound? Then the farce only grows the more glorious.

I confess, for my part, that it greatly delights me. I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing. Does it exalt dunderheads, cowards, trimmers, frauds, cads? Then the pain of seeing them go up is balanced and obliterated by the joy of seeing them come down. Is it inordinately wasteful, extravagant, dishonest? Then so is every other form of government: all alike are enemies to laborious and virtuous men. Is rascality at the very heart of it? Well, we have borne that rascality since 1776, and continue to survive. In the long run, it may turn out that rascality is necessary to human government, and even to civilization itself – that civilization, at bottom, is nothing but a colossal swindle. I do not know: I report only that when the suckers are running well the spectacle is infinitely exhilarating.

The many political and policy maladies and madnesses of which the left complains derive from democracy itself, not its death. For the sake of making tactical gains the left has (and continues) to kill the goose that lays the golden egg: republicanism. To fall doubly afoul of the metaphor: the chickens are coming home to roost. Down with democracy!

© 2019 Forbes Media LLC.

20,679 views|Jan 7, 2018,5:00 pm
Donald Trump, Democrat?
Ralph BenkoContributor

FILE – In this Dec. 7, 2017, file photo, President Donald Trump accompanied by Vice President Mike Pence, listens as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of Calif., speaks before a meeting with congressional leaders including House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wis., Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of N.Y., in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

My headline employs “democrat” in its generic, rather than proper noun (partisan), definition. President Trump shifted his party registration back and forth (five times, according to the Washington Times’s report of a report by The Smoking Gun). Trump, Politico reports, also was a substantial donor to Senator Clinton, the Clinton Foundation, and many other Democrats.

This history does not make Donald Trump a Democrat. But I submit that Donald Trump is democracy’s smoking gun.

Trump won the presidency as the nominee of the Republican Party. Despite his occasional public flirtations with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi he works with the Congressional majority, Republicans, largely eschewing the Democrats’ progressive policy agenda.

That said, I submit that the election of Donald Trump as president is largely an outcome of “creeping democracy.” Democracy is routinely extolled by the left. It, along with “equality,” is frequently used by leftists as a vague synonym for anything good.

The left, however, is wrong about this. Democracy is a bad thing. Bad for the left too.

This remains unclear to the left. This is understandable. The word “democracy” sounds vaguely good. It has proved useful in advancing the progressive agenda. Thus, celebrations of democracy persist but the outcomes, even from their point of view, just are not looking so hot.

O Democracy!

The Washington Post earlier this year adopted the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” According to the Post’s own credible backstory, this was not aimed at President Trump but was derived from a line in a speech by its owner Jeff Bezos, adopted from Bob Woodward (who had used it for many years), itself appropriated from a coinage by appellate Judge Damon J. Keith.

Currently, the poster child book on this topic is How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (whose names are curiously omitted from the front cover of the book jacket). The New York Times’s David Leonhardt extols it in his recent column The Meaning of Bannon vs. Trump:

Democracy. Later this month, an alarmingly titled book, “How Democracies Die,” written by two political scientists, will be published. It is, as the book’s promotional material states, “a bracing, revelatory look at the demise of liberal democracies around the world — and a road map for rescuing our own.”

Let’s help the left out. America was unequivocally designed as a republic, not a democracy. There are reasons for this.

My friend Jonathan Rauch, Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings Institution, has wryly painted how wrongheaded have been the progressives in undermining the republican order. His assessment may be found, among other places, in a cover story at The Atlantic archly headlined The Case For Corruption. Progressives have, over more than a century, conscientiously eroded America’s republican structure, including the very political norms — the guardrails — they take Trump to task for violating.

Let them consider whether Trump’s presidency is the effect, not the cause, of their own century-long project of undermining republican safeguards.

Progressives? Meet the Law of Unintended Consequences.

A more democratic America has delivered unto you President Trump.

Happy?

Let’s take a deeper dive into democracy vs. republicanism to help understand where the left went so Wrong.

I have many dear progressive friends. I heart them for their commitment to justice among other things. I myself am neither a progressive nor a democrat. As Alcuin famously wrote to Charlemagne in 798 AD, “Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, Vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit.”

And do not listen to those who keep saying, ‘The voice of the people is the voice of God.’ because the tumult of the crowd is always close to madness.

Trump certainly plays to the tumult of the crowd. As I have pointed out here the remnants of the republican system – the electoral college (which progressives are now targeting for demolition) — worked as designed. The electorate — which is subtly but materially different from the “crowd” — chose the presidential aspirant who best, relative to the other 19 significant contenders in 2016, articulated its yearning for peace and prosperity.

The left would do better to seek to extract the log in its own eye than to condemn the mote in the eye of the right. “’You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,— mon frère!‘”

Notwithstanding their ongoing confrontation with the Law of Unintended Consequences the left continues to extol democracy. That’s a system of government America’s founders deplored. The Founders’ deploring it, one supposes, would have made them a basket of deplorables to the Hillary Clintons of their day. Such figures, then, were blessedly few.

Let’s go to the record.

The founders of America detested democracy, putting many guardrails against it into the Constitution. They made no bones about it.

Here are some representative quotes by some of the premier architects of our charter document:

At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787: A lady [one Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia] asked Dr. [Benjamin] Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy[?] — A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it[.]

James Madison, Federalist Paper No. 10:

From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.

A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking. Let us examine the points in which it varies from pure democracy, and we shall comprehend both the nature of the cure and the efficacy which it must derive from the Union.

Edmund Randolph, in the Constitutional Convention, said in speaking on the constitution of a Senate:

If he was to give an opinion as to the number of the [U.S. Senate], he should say that it ought to be much smaller than that of the first; so small as to be exempt from the passionate proceedings to which numerous assemblies are liable. He observed that the general object was to provide a cure for the evils under which the United States labored; that in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy; that some check, therefore, was to be sought for against this tendency of our governments, and that a good Senate seemed most likely to answer the purpose.

As John Adams wrote to John Taylor in 1814:

You Say “Mr. Adams calls our Attention to hundreds of wise and virtuous Patricians, mangled and bleeding Victims of popular Fury.” and gravely counts up several Victims of democratic Rage as proofs that Democracy is more pernicious than Monarchy or Aristocracy.” Is this fair, sir? Do you deny any one of my Facts? I do not say that Democracy has been more pernicious, on the whole, and in the long run, than Monarchy or Aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as Aristocracy or Monarchy. But while it lasts it is more bloody than either.

Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to Say that Democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious or less avaricious than Aristocracy or Monarchy. It is not true in Fact and no where appears in history. Those Passions are the same in all Men under all forms of Simple Government, and when unchecked, produce the same Effects of Fraud Violence and Cruelty.

America was very much designed to avoid democracy, The Constitution itself, at Article 4, Section 4 states:

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government….

“A Republican Form of Government.” Nowhere in the Constitution does the word democracy occur. This is not an oversight.

Fraud, Violence and Cruelty? John Adams, a member of the Committee that wrote the Declaration of Independence and our second president, thereby demonstrated prophetic qualities. The left, hoist with its own petard, would do well to take heed.

Comes now How Democracies Die. Its lead jacket blurb is from E.J. Dionne, Jr., who I respect greatly as one of the leading classical liberal public intellectuals working today notwithstanding that he bats (cleanup) for the Other Team.

How Democracies Die turns out to be an interesting work by two scholars who have deep knowledge of how authoritarians have taken power. They give special attention to the role of the establishment parties in facilitating that process, by connivance or negligence, thus paving the way for monsters such as Hitler, Mussolini, or Hugo Chavez to take power. They offer many interesting cautionary vignettes from world, and American, history.

They offer a soft, almost exculpatory, critique of some of FDR’s violations of political norms – prominently, threatening to pack the Supreme Court and violating the precedent of limiting himself to two terms. They gently chide, while exonerating, some of Barack Obama’s violations.

At base however, the authors blame the Republicans. They attribute the key erosion in what they call the political “guardrails” to the hardball tactics of Speaker Newt Gingrich and Majority Leader Tom Delay. There is some merit to this claim. However, they weirdly present a case that good Republicans are domesticated to the progressive agenda and protest, if at all, impotently. They seem oddly insensitive to the manifold examples of the violations by prominent Democrats such as Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi among many others. The sins of progressives are venial while comparable sins by conservatives are presented as mortal.

The left has a propensity to extol hardball tactics when used by Democrats and excoriate them when used by Republicans. Chris Matthews’s finest and most delightful book, Hardball: How Politics Is played, Told by One Who Knows the Game, for which his MSNBC show is named, provides a very nice Bill of Particulars.

In the eyes of progressives “democracy” is a great thing … so long as Democrats get elected and move the policies of America leftward. When the political system works to elect Republicans who move policy rightward it is ipso facto deemed demagoguery.

How Democracies Die displays many of the internal contradictions inherent within the left’s narrative. For example, the authors critique state defiance of President Obama’s (questionable) regulatory order limiting greenhouse gas emissions. They term it “a stunning undermining of federal authority.” Then the authors attack Trump for signing an executive order authorizing federal agencies to withhold funding from “sanctuary cities” that refused to cooperate with the administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants.

State resistance to federal authority is inherently either legitimate or illegitimate. They can’t have it both ways. The plenitude of these kinds of opportunistic arguments is one of the book’s greatest flaws. While I — on conservative philosophical grounds — oppose the withholding of federal aid to self-designated sanctuary cities one cannot logically reconcile how state resistance to the federal government is “a stunning undermining” while municipal resistance is legitimate.

The authors, blind to their own contradictions, paint themselves into many such logical corners. There are arguments to be made for their preferred policies here. This argument, however, is self-contradictory and thus contributes to the polarization which the authors, purportedly, deplore.

Senator Warren is right. The game is rigged.

Just, not necessarily in the way she propounds.

The Founders were not alone in their condemnation of democracy. H.L. Mencken, the Sage of Baltimore, a somewhat libertarian curmudgeon beloved by progressives for his ridicule of William Jennings Bryan for his attack on the teaching of evolution, was an intense and consistent critic of democracy.

Mencken devoted his Last Words to a rather definitive deconstruction of the pretense of democracy (and, let it be noted, of the Democrats of his day):

Democracy always seems bent upon killing the thing it theoretically loves. I have rehearsed some of its operations against liberty, the very cornerstone of its political metaphysic. It not only wars upon the thing itself; it even wars upon mere academic advocacy of it. I offer the spectacle of Americans jailed for reading the Bill of Rights as perhaps the most gaudily humorous ever witnessed in the modern world. Try to imagine monarchy jailing subjects for maintaining the divine right of Kings! Or Christianity damning a believer for arguing that Jesus Christ was the Son of God! This last, perhaps, has been done: anything is possible in that direction. But under democracy the remotest and most fantastic possibility is a common-place of every day. All the axioms resolve themselves into thundering paradoxes, many amounting to downright contradictions in terms. The mob is competent to rule the rest of us—but it must be rigorously policed itself. There is a government, not of men, but of laws – but men are set upon benches to decide finally what the law is and may be. The highest function of the citizen is to serve the state – but the first assumption that meets him, when he essays to discharge it, is an assumption of his disingenuousness and dishonour. Is that assumption commonly sound? Then the farce only grows the more glorious.

I confess, for my part, that it greatly delights me. I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing. Does it exalt dunderheads, cowards, trimmers, frauds, cads? Then the pain of seeing them go up is balanced and obliterated by the joy of seeing them come down. Is it inordinately wasteful, extravagant, dishonest? Then so is every other form of government: all alike are enemies to laborious and virtuous men. Is rascality at the very heart of it? Well, we have borne that rascality since 1776, and continue to survive. In the long run, it may turn out that rascality is necessary to human government, and even to civilization itself – that civilization, at bottom, is nothing but a colossal swindle. I do not know: I report only that when the suckers are running well the spectacle is infinitely exhilarating.

The many political and policy maladies and madnesses of which the left complains derive from democracy itself, not its death. For the sake of making tactical gains the left has (and continues) to kill the goose that lays the golden egg: republicanism. To fall doubly afoul of the metaphor: the chickens are coming home to roost. Down with democracy!

© 2019 Forbes Media LLC.

The above is testament to the idea that idealism is alive and well, and those who claimed that action preceded essence were merely over focused on an ethereal presence, whereby middle class industrial nueve riches made a permanent mark on history. It is not too uncommon a veritable ironic nite. by no less then Heidegger to declare the death of philosophy, for those who have not learned its message are condemned to repeat them.

Irony is not merely lost on the shallow people.

Concerned over President Donald Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director James Comey, the FBI reportedly opened an investigation into whether Trump was secretly working on behalf of Russia, according to a New York Times report published Friday night.

The bureau opened the counterintelligence inquiry days after Comey was ousted in May 2017, the Times reported, citing several people, including former law enforcement officials, familiar with the probe.

Investigators were specifically looking into whether Trump’s firing of Comey posed a national security threat as well as whether it was an obstruction of justice, considering the FBI’s broader investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Former law enforcement officials told the Times that the criminal aspect (whether Trump obstructed justice) and counterintelligence aspect (whether Trump was working covertly for Russia) of the investigation were combined into one inquiry because it would have been considered a national security threat if Trump had indeed ousted Comey to impede the Russia investigation.

According to the Times, Trump at least twice linked his decision to fire Comey with the Russia investigation, prompting counterintelligence officials to probe the president’s actions.

First, two days after Comey’s dismissal, Trump told NBC News’ Lester Holt that he had “this Russia thing” in mind when he decided to fire the FBI director.

“In fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said: ’You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should’ve won,” the president told Holt at the time.

Second, Trump reportedly drafted a letter to Comey, slamming him for refusing to say that he wasn’t the focus of the Russia investigation.

Shortly after Comey was fired, special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed to oversee the broader investigation into Russia and the election. It’s unclear if Mueller is still investigating the counterintelligence inquiry into Trump.

National Security

Trump has concealed details of his face-to-face encounters with Putin from senior officials in administration
By Greg Miller

Politics

‘In the White House waiting’: Inside Trump’s defiance on the longest shutdown ever
By Robert Costa, Josh Dawsey, Philip Rucker, Seung Min Kim

January 12, 2019 at 5:32 PM

President Trump speaks to reporters during his visit to the Capitol to meet with Senate Republicans on Jan. 9. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
When President Trump made a rare journey to the Capitol last week, he was expected to strategize about how to end the government shutdown he instigated. Instead, he spent the first 20-odd minutes delivering a monologue about “winning.”

“We’re winning” on North Korea, the president told Republican senators Wednesday at a closed-door luncheon. “We’re winning” on Syria and “we’re winning” on the trade war with China, too. And, Trump concluded, they could win on immigration if Republicans stuck together through what is now the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history, according to officials who attended the presidential pep talk.

The problem was that Trump offered no path to victory — other than brinkmanship.

Talks between the two parties remained stalled this weekend after the president torpedoed his last negotiating session with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) by walking out of the room.

With Trump determined to deliver on his signature campaign promise of building a border wall and Democrats standing firm against what they view as an immoral and ineffective solution to illegal immigration, there is no end in sight to the dysfunction.

Trump was nevertheless confident on Saturday about his handling of the standoff. “I do have a plan on the Shutdown,” he tweeted. “But to understand that plan you would have to understand the fact that I won the election, and I promised safety and security for the American people.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) address reporters outside the White House on Jan. 9 after a meeting with President Trump. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The president who pitched himself to voters as a world-class dealmaker has proven to be an unreliable negotiator. Grappling for the first time with a divided government, Trump has contradicted himself, sent miscues and spread falsehoods. He has zigzagged between proudly claiming ownership of the shutdown and blaming it on Democrats, and between nearly declaring a national emergency to construct the wall without congressional approval and backing off such a legally and politically perilous action.

As Washington braced for a snowstorm on Saturday morning, Trump was hunkered down in his private quarters at the White House and tweeting taunts to Democrats. “I am in the White House waiting for you!” he wrote in one message. The president claimed in another that there was no chaos in his administration — “In fact, there’s almost nobody in the W.H. but me,” he wrote — and argued that the onus was on Democrats to buckle and agree to fulfill his demand for $5.7 billion in wall funding.

Out of work and behind on her bills, a furloughed food inspector for the FDA in Ohio says she may have to leave government service if the shutdown goes on much longer. (Ray Whitehouse/The Washington Post)
The government could reopen if Trump agreed to sign legislation funding the government, versions of which already have passed both chambers of Congress, and table the polarizing debate over border security.

In the weeks leading up to December’s deadline to fund the government, Trump was warned repeatedly about the dangers of a shutdown but still opted to proceed, according to officials with knowledge of the conversations.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told the president that he had no leverage and that, without a clear strategy, he would be “boxed in a canyon.” He tried to make the case to Trump that even if Pelosi and Schumer were interested in cutting a deal with him, they would be constrained from compromising because of internal Democratic Party pressures to oppose Trump’s wall, these officials said.

Then-House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) talked with Trump by phone for 45 minutes the day before the shutdown, warning that he saw no way to win as he paced in a Capitol hallway just outside a conference room where House Republicans were meeting. Then-House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) warned about the perils of a shutdown during the Christmas season.

Inside, some of the more hard-line members urged a showdown over border wall funding, arguing that Trump’s core supporters would revolt otherwise. But McCarthy asked, “Tell me what happens when we get into a shutdown? I want to know what our next move is.”

A senior White House official characterized Republican leaders as “supportive” throughout the shutdown.

President Trump salutes as a U.S. Customs and Border Protection helicopter passes over the Rio Grande on the southern border in McAllen, Tex., on Jan. 10. (Evan Vucci/AP)
Trump’s advisers are scrambling to build an exit ramp while also bracing for the shutdown to last weeks longer. Current and former aides said there is little strategy in the White House; people are frustrated and, in the words of one, “freaking out.”

The shutdown was born out of frustration. Angry that he was stymied by party leaders and his own aides from getting more money for the wall in 2018, rattled by conservative criticism and stung by his party’s midterm defeats, Trump decided in late December to plunge into a border fight after being encouraged by Reps. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), both hard-line conservatives. It was a startling decision to McConnell and others, who thought they had White House assurances that a shutdown would be avoided.

“He has no choice here,” said Newt Gingrich, a Trump supporter who was House speaker in the Clinton administration and during the second-longest shutdown, an episode widely viewed as a disaster for Republicans. “He has to win. His entire reputation, his entire relationship with the base, it’s all a function of being committed on big things and not backing down. If he backs down on this, Pelosi will be so emboldened that the next two years will be a nightmare.”

A federal employee with colon cancer grapples with complicated insurance problems as a result of the partial government shutdown. (Whitney Shefte/The Washington Post)
As the shutdown dragged on, aides said, Trump has bragged that he looked “tough” and that his supporters had his back. He has viewed the past three weeks more as an hour-to-hour public relations fight than as a painstaking legislative negotiation, trying to sway opinion with a prime time Oval Office address and a high-profile trip to Texas to survey the U.S.-Mexico border.

“He is determined, as he has been from day one, not to break faith with the people who brought him to the presidency,” said William A. Galston, a senior fellow in governance at the Brookings Institution. “I’ve never seen a president who is more indifferent to expanding his appeal.”

Trump has exhibited more determination than calculation. Over the holidays, he inhabited the White House largely alone, tweeting out his demands and grievances. Several senior West Wing officials described the building as a “ghost town” or a “no man’s land.”

Only after Christmas did administration officials begin realizing the full scale of the logistical problems a prolonged shutdown would cause. Aides said Trump has been largely uninterested in the minutiae of managing government agencies and services.

Farmer John Boyd, 53, of Baskerville, Va., is facing a double calamity: tariffs have sunk the prices of crops like soybeans, but financial relief from the federal government hasn’t come because the Department of Agriculture is closed. (Lee Powell/The Washington Post)
During negotiation sessions, Trump’s attention has veered wildly. At one such meeting with Pelosi and Schumer in the White House Situation Room earlier this month, the president went on a long diatribe about unrelated topics. He trashed the Iran nuclear deal, telling Democrats they should give him money for the wall because, in his view, they gave President Barack Obama money for the agreement with Tehran. He boasted about his wisdom in ordering the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria. And he raised the specter of impeachment, accusing Pelosi of wanting to try to force him from office — which she denied.

Eventually, he was moved back to the budget talks.

During last week’s Senate lunch, Trump praised his relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un while delineating his foreign policy accomplishments. “I don’t know why I get along with all the tough ones and not the soft ones,” he quipped, referring to dictators and allies, according to attendees.

Also at the lunch, Trump asked Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel to stand up for applause and thanked Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) for supporting him on TV. He obliquely knocked the late senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) for not voting to repeal the Affordable Care Act, attendees said.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) warned Trump that declaring a national emergency could set a precedent for Democrats to follow on other issues, should they win the White House. But Trump assured them he would win reelection in 2020.

Vice President Pence speaks to reporters on Jan. 9 after a meeting with congressional leadership at the White House. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Vice President Pence, after being roasted by critics last month for sitting idly during Trump’s contentious televised meeting with Pelosi and Schumer, jumped into the negotiations in recent weeks, doing what one of his longtime allies described as a “reimagining” of his dutiful and low-key approach.

But Pence’s efforts were challenged from the start as his initial pitch to Senate Democrats — in which he floated lowering the demand from $5.7 billion for wall funds — was dismissed by Trump days later, even though Pence delivered the offer at the president’s behest.

Still, Pence, whose aides say he has a preternatural calm, shifted and became a salesman for the president’s position and worked to lay the groundwork for possible executive action.

Democratic aides, however, were irritated by Pence’s dogged emphasis on a crisis during last weekend’s talks and the administration’s lack of preparation on the exact numbers of its requests.

“They’re sitting there going, ‘Where are the numbers? What is going on here?’ ” said a senior House Democratic aide briefed on the discussions.

Some White House officials privately groused that meetings were pointless and believed it was beneath the office of the vice president to negotiate with congressional staffers.

President Trump holds up a photo of a “typical standard wall design” as he speaks on Jan. 11 during a roundtable discussion on border security in the Cabinet Room of the White House. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Exasperated, a small group of Republican lawmakers tried to determine a way out last week. Led by Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), they met Wednesday in Graham’s office with White House legislative affairs director Shahira Knight and senior adviser and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner to discuss a broader immigration deal that could include protections for undocumented children in exchange for $5.7 billion in wall funding.

Graham saw an opening to broker an accord between Trump, whom he had come to call a friend, and Senate GOP moderates who were urging aggressive steps to reopen the government.

Following the passage of criminal-justice reform legislation that he championed, Kushner carried himself with the confidence of a White House chief of staff, according to congressional aides.

One GOP senator, who like other officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly, said he appreciated Kushner’s “good attitude” but said that senators “really doubt whether he can do anything” to convince Trump to soften his hard-line tactics and back a bipartisan immigration deal.

After meeting with McConnell last Thursday, Graham and three colleagues — Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) — presented their plan to Pence. He then relayed the idea to Trump, who was flying to Texas for his border tour.

But the president said no. Pence then told Graham and Alexander that Trump appreciated their proposal but was not interested in re-opening the government until the Democrats were willing to negotiate on the wall.

“I have never been more depressed about moving forward than I am right now,” Graham told reporters that afternoon. He then walked off, muttering: “I’m going to the gym.”

The next day, Graham called for drastic measures: “It is time for President Trump to use emergency powers.”

Damian Paletta, Sean Sullivan and Erica Werner contributed to this report.

Robert Costa is a national political reporter for The Washington Post. He covers the White House, Congress, and campaigns. He joined The Post in January 2014. He is also the moderator of PBS’s “Washington Week” and a political analyst for NBC News and MSNBC.

Josh Dawsey is a White House reporter for The Washington Post. He joined the paper in 2017. He previously covered the White House for Politico, and New York City Hall and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for the Wall Street Journal.

Philip Rucker is the White House Bureau Chief for The Washington Post. He previously has covered Congress, the Obama White House, and the 2012 and 2016 presidential campaigns. Rucker also is a Political Analyst for NBC News and MSNBC. He joined The Post in 2005 as a local news reporter.

Seung Min Kim is a White House reporter for The Washington Post, covering the Trump administration through the lens of Capitol Hill. Before joining The Washington Post in 2018, she spent more than eight years at Politico, primarily covering the Senate and immigration policy.

© 1996-2019 The Washington Post

???

Is he the man by choice by measure of his character, or, is his manifest destiny?

So many questions and so few answers, given the window of opportunity to solve them. Will AI be able to fine tune them, without taking over?

Black Mirror’s Charlie Brooker Predicted Trump—Here’s What He (and His Show) Have to Say About the Future
ANNA PEELE
December 12, 2017 11:25 AM

Maarten de Boer/Getty Images
Netflix’s tech cynic anthology Black Mirror has been oddly prophetic. The same goes for its creator Charlie Brooker. But the new fourth season of the spiritual Twilight Zone heir has moments that are, dare we say, optimistic? Brooker tells us why he’s “contrarily hopeful” about the world.
Four years before David Cameron was accused of performing a sex act on a (dead) pig, Charlie Brooker wrote an episode of Black Mirror where the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom performed a sex act on a (live) pig. Four years before Donald J. Trump was sworn in President of the United States, Brooker wrote an episode of Black Mirror in which a populist movement gets a lewd, inflammatory cartoon to run for public office. It almost makes you feel like you should set aside December 29 to watch the fourth season of Brooker’s Black Mirror (he runs the Netflix series with producer Annabel Jones) just to know what dystopic development to prepare for next.

Luckily, in Brooker’s hands a bleak sense of humor accompanies news of our nightmare future; each episode of the (truly super) funny anthology series has an entirely new plot and cast and explores the very human impulses that create technology, and the very human weaknesses that are enabled and exploited by it. In other words, we did this to ourselves—the Snapchat is coming from inside the house. Black Mirror is basically a televised version of the “This is fine” meme with extra panels where we find out how the be-hatted pup wound up in the room and accidentally set it on fire—maybe someone told him there was a rare Pokemon in there and he knocked over a festive scented candle catching it?—and realizing, too late, that he needs to get the fuck out.

The six new episodes of Black Mirror cover digital ills both current and upcoming—think video games, dating apps, and consciousness-uploading devices—and feature a bananas lineup of directors and actors that includes Jodie Foster, David Slade, Jesse Plemons, and Andrea Riseborough. Brooker took a break from working on his next, highly classified project to talk to GQ about Trump, Get Out, and why Batman is so depressed.

GQ: What’s this top-secret thing you’re working on now?

Charlie Brooker: I wish I could tell you. But you can probably guess what it is.

Is it the Twilight Zone?

I’m not allowed to say! I’m looking forward to the Twilight Zone from Jordan Peele…if anyone’s gonna reboot the Twilight Zone, then there’s the man to do it.

Did you see Get Out?

I loved Get Out. In fact, Jordan Peele did send me a message because he was a big fan—he’d seen [Get Out star] Daniel Kaluuya on Black Mirror. And I hadn’t had a chance to get out and see his movie, so I was embarrassed and I didn’t reply. It was so embarrassing. But I saw it and thought it was fucking brilliant and that Daniel was brilliant.

I’m so excited—he’s going to be in Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther.

As is Letitia Wright from [season four Black Mirror episode] “Black Museum.” We saw an audition tape [from her] and there was a voice reading the other lines off-camera. I was like, “Hang on…is that Daniel Kaluuya?” It must have been in a trailer on [the set of] Black Panther.

Watching newer Black Mirror episodes makes me feel like you’ve turned into a real romantic.

Do you think?

Your tender underbelly definitely shows in “Hang the DJ,” the dating app episode from the new season.

To be honest, it’s probably a consequence of us going from three episodes a season to six—you’ve gotta have a soft center in the chocolate box. With “Hang the DJ,” I was concerned that it was more comedic and much lighter than we normally do for Black Mirror. But that’s what people are picking out as one they enjoy. It’s interesting when we confound our own expectations of what the show is.

It’s not really that surprising, because “San Junipero” was the one everyone went nuts over last season. People like to feel good.

I mean, there are episodes where a giant fucking boot comes down and crushes everyone.

Yep.

But overall there’s probably a bit more hope in this season because it was being written from July 2016 to February 2017, and I didn’t know what state the world was going to be in by the time it aired. I didn’t want it to just be horrifying and awful, although obviously that’s also the thing that people tune in for.

People have been making the joke that 2017 is a viral marketing campaign for Season Four of Black Mirror. Because I don’t know if you’ve heard, but things aren’t so great over here, Charlie.

I picked up on that. Ours has always been a worried show, but I don’t see it as being particularly reactive to the moment in which it’s being written. I started writing this season just after Brexit, but I didn’t sit down and go, “What’s the Brexit episode?” Though it’s really weird—I sort of thought, Well, there’s nothing in this season that’s gonna come, like, remotely true. But we’ve got this memory device in “Crocodile,” and somebody showed me a device that you can connect to a mouse’s brain and show it a face and then pull out a likeness of that face like ten minutes later. So what do I know?

More than you think, apparently! When we talked last fall you told me Trump was going to win. So, since you’re a prophet: what happens next?

I get contrarily hopeful—when everyone in the world is worried, I think, Oh, I can take the day off. So there won’t be a nuclear war with North Korea, I’ve decided. With Trump in America, the fact that the lines are drawn and that everyone is so polarized and concerned and worried and fractious makes me feel like that has to solve itself somehow. I don’t think it’s going to end in a civil war, if that’s any consolation.

I’m thrilled to hear it.

I mean, is that your perspective?

I don’t know if I think we’re going to have a civil war, but the people who love Trump aren’t just going to calm down and feel good about things if, like, Elizabeth Warren beats Trump in 2020.

But haven’t they always been there and always been that angry?

Sure.

And of that 33% [who approve of Trump’s performance], how many are actually that furious? There are people who you can disagree with vehemently politically, but most people are fundamentally decent.

Plus, think of how much harder it is to actually fight in a civil war than to live your life just being kind of ambiently dissatisfied with the government.

Oh, my God, yeah. It would be such a pain in the ass. So what percentage of that percentage that you’re worrying about would actually [join a civil war?] What would happen if Trump was replaced by someone else is you’d get those people shouting at the TV and grumbling and complaining online. But that’s the hopeful view.

If this were an episode of Black Mirror and you were writing a story where the government had to try and appease those angry people, what would you have it do?

The basic problem is that the pie is not being sliced correctly, isn’t it? That is the thing that is driving everything. But don’t ask me how to solve that, ‘cause I ain’t got a fucking clue.

One of the things I love about Black Mirror is that the bad guys tend to wind up in a prison of their own making. I was thinking of which real-life villains would be good for that and imagining PayPal founder Peter Thiel having to be a banker forever, trapped in a virtual money gulag.

That’s a mean thought you’re having there, isn’t it?

I mean…yes. But you’re the one who came up with this concept!

Yeah, but I put fictional people in there. It’s like in “White Christmas.” Rafe Spall’s character ends up in eternal hell for like millions of years—someone worked out [the math]. It would be inhuman. You’re a terrible person! Just like the spectators in “White Bear.” That’s what you’re like. Would you not feel a glimmer of sympathy?

Okay, you could keep them in there until they learn their lesson, not actually for eternity. Maybe there’s a parole board…

You’re setting yourself up as a tyrant there, aren’t you? I mean, this is the problem. Often in Black Mirror someone’s got a technological thing that they believe they’re going to use in a good way, and they end up doing something terrible. So who’s to say that inflicting this cruel and inhuman…what’s that quote about gazing into the abyss? [“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.—Friedrich Nietzsche”] Careful what you wish for.

You’ve convinced me, Charlie! I’m bad; torture is bad. Would you trust yourself to be a moral arbiter?

No! Definitely not. Years ago, I did a show in the UK that was a Daily Show-esque thing [called 10 O’Clock Live]. And every so often people would say things like, “If [only] you guys were running the country…” And you’d think, “Are you joking? We’d be the worst people, just lazy and stupid.” I can’t complete the simplest strategy game. When I tried to play SimCity, it inevitably ended up being a fucking disaster. Roads didn’t even join up. So I should never be put in charge of any system ever.

I suppose if one person has too much control and isn’t taking in input, things always get screwed up. Like me torturing Peter Thiel, or Michael, the architect Ted Danson plays on The Good Place. Or Trump.

He’s odd, isn’t he? Because he, on the one hand, is incredibly opinionated, and on the other you can read interviews with him where he seems to just say what he wants the person to hear.

It’s because the thing that drives Trump is people liking him. So if he’s in a room with you, he says whatever he needs to get you to “yes.” If he’s on a stage, he says whatever he needs to get to you to chant.

But his approval ratings are low. Hasn’t anyone pointed out to him that if he suddenly decided to do the opposite of everything he’s doing, that might mean that suddenly 70% of people [would approve of him]? Imagine if he turned up on TV tomorrow and said, “Fuck all that!” Wouldn’t he be received rapturously as a hero by a huge swath of the people?

That’s literally an episode of Seinfeld. But Trump would never do that because he’s like a monkey. He sticks his hands through slots in his cage to pick up two grapes—that’s the 30% of people who like him. But then someone puts a bunch of bananas on his side of the cage, which is the 70%. In order to get the bananas he has to drop the grapes, but he won’t let go of the thing that’s already in his hand in order to get the better thing.

So what—you have to saw off his hand? Or you have to keep piling up bananas until it becomes irresistible. Or you just wait for the grape to rot.

There you go. On Black Mirror, characters tend to be driven by a fear of being found out.

Like Kelly in “Shut up and Dance,” who’s being blackmailed.

One thing that terrifies me about all the recent news of real-life sexual predators is that they don’t seem to be scared of being found out at all.

I suppose the thing is that all that stuff is about power, isn’t it? Or they’ve not contemplated it because of the power structure surrounding them. On Black Mirror, we don’t tend to deal with big, powerful people, because when you look at a Weinstein or something you think, “Is he capable of feeling anything?” We’ve always wanted the stories to feel very relatable. Having said that, our very first episode had a prime minister, but we immediately strip him of all his power, basically. If [an episode were going to be] about the high-flying CEO figure, I’d think, “Who cares about the fucking head of whatever multi-corp? I don’t give a shit.”

You even have to do that with superheroes now. Bruce Wayne is, like, clinically depressed.

It’s true. [When I was young] Bruce Wayne was someone you looked up to because he was rich. Whereas now you’d be like, “I’m never gonna be Bruce Wayne. Fuck that fucking asshole!” And that’s because the pie isn’t being sliced fairly.

Gimme some pie, Bruce!

Where’s my fucking pie?

© Condé Nast 2019

Durkheim

Observing like an outsider, it feels that when you know that everything you’re doing is being recorded, social facts tend to feel more and more coercive. This is so true that even in the aesthetics of the episode we can see that everything is extremely clean, uptight, a perfect environment boxed in social facts and cutting edge technology. Almost everybody acts like a perfect individual. Think about all the things you do, not because you really wanted to, but because it was expected from you. Going to med school to praise your parents, for example.

Of course, even with all of this plasticity, nothing can bend the drama and the conflict that humankind makes, and it happens here in this episode: lack of trust and paranoia.

Public vigilance — discipline power and social control

There’s an example of public use of the memory device right in the beginning of the episode. Liam’s going to the airport and a security guard stops him, he has to show the guard his last 24 hours and a little bit more. That’s the new tactic for anti terrorism and other criminal matters that could happen if a dangerous person got into the airport. It’s not shown, but it’s implicit that this method of crime preventing it’s a usual thing, probably working in many other different social ambient. In Black Mirror, through the memory device, there are many possibilities of control, of vigilance. It’s not only about cameras around, authority and institutions, it’s a camera literally inside you. Think about that: even if you’re completely alone, you will still record what you’re doing, and a random police officer can demand it to see fast-forward. There’s a huge camp for cyber criminology studies here, because when the institutions get advanced, the criminal elements tend to be one step ahead.

, talking about social coSontrol is talking about Michel Foucault. To him, in many different ways, society works as a chain of control. Almost everywhere, there’s a pre-established order, there’s some kind of authority, a center of power. Like in a classroom, for example, there’s a professor, a teacher, and students that should obey.

Our society work with many points of power and control, between two people, between the State and it’s people. Foucault says that this control is ready to make people “docile bodies”. In case somebody doesn’t know what a docile body is:

“Discipline manufactures submissive and exercised bodies, docile bodies, which are based on efficient gesture. It increases the force of the body in economic terms of usefulness and decreases those same forces, in political terms of obedience.” — Foucault.

Side-by-side were the dystopian and utopian trajectories facing modern civilization — the spectre of a nuclear apocalypse and shimmer of space-age apotheosis. Not surprisingly, The Twilight Zone featured episodes showing the horrors of nuclear war and bizarre journeys into outer space. Throughout its five-year run, The Twilight Zone depicted numerous scenarios related to existence in the then modern world and the vast universe.

In many ways, Serling and The Twilight Zone were philosophically grounded in the mid-20th century existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre, yet the series repeatedly pointed toward issues that would soon be addressed by theorists and philosophers emerging in the 1960s: Marshall McLuhan, Guy Debord, Michel Foucault, and Jean Baudrillard, among others. By the end of the 1960s, there had been no nuclear war, but NASA had landed humans on the moon in a triumphal moment viewed on global television and celebrated worldwide as a great human achievement. “We did it” cheered the humans on planet Earth.

But once NASA pulled the plug on the Apollo missions and everyone realized they would not be drinking martinis at a hotel on the moon, a new utopian destination appeared on the horizon. Outer space was replaced by cyberspace as the next human destination. Personal computers and laptops thrived and began linking up via the internet and World Wide Web. Chat rooms evolved into social media echo chambers. Google, YouTube, and Facebook became the archivists of our information, imagery, and selves. Television eventually migrated online with digital users, their hands tightly gripped around their mobile phones, poised for a selfie moment or status update.

How can such ponderings into the Nietzchean Abyss that the Superman can reflect on in a burst of joyful Dionysus experience before plunging back , icarus was way ahead, not to feel betrayed?

How cannot Trump feel in his roller coaster ride, where , not given an opportunity to ever have gone underground, merely simulate, such, by figuring apprentices who really resembles himself?

He is acting as seen from a dark mirror, but not for his wealth of escape routes, may view himself as though a mirror, darkly?

Now this:

The Trump Impeachment
Unfit To Lead
Donald Trump’s Latest Psycho Tweetstorm: The BEST REASON YET to Invoke the 25th Amendment
By News Corpse / Daily Kos (01/12/2019) - January 12, 20191100

The Ring of Fire / YouTube
The rapidly declining mental state of Donald Trump has been the subject of untold numbers of articles and analyses, including by professionals who view the President as a malignant narcissist who is a danger to the nation and the world. But there is no better indicator of the hazards Trump’s psychoses represent than his own frenzied ravings on Twitter.

When Trump gets a full head of steam, it’s nearly impossible to keep up with the tsunami of lunacy that he unleashes. It’s pointless even to try. Take for example his outburst on Saturday morning. He was triggered by a report in the New York Times (which isn’t failing, it’s enjoying record success) that disclosed the existence of an FBI investigation into whether Trump was/is an asset of the Russian government.

There is abundant evidence to support that contention. Including his open infatuation with Vladimir Putin; his attacks on the media; his maligning of our allies in NATO and the European Union; his opposition to sanctions on Russia; his rejection of American intelligence in favor of information from Putin and the Kremlin; his refusal to accept that Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential election; his firing of FBI Director James Comey and others; his chumminess with Russian operatives in the White House; his threats aimed at his own cabinet for pursuing legitimate investigations into Russian espionage against the U.S.; and so much more.

However, to hear Trump tell it, it’s all a paranoid conspiracy against the greatest president of all time who is being attacked for his awesomeness and purity of heart. After reading the article in the Times (or having excerpts read to him), Trump mounted his Twitter machine and disgorged a steady stream of manic gibberish, almost all of which he has previously unfurled in numerous episodes of derangement. But reading it all of a piece is shocking, and not a little frightening. So buckle up:

Wow, just learned in the Failing New York Times that the corrupt former leaders of the FBI, almost all fired or forced to leave the agency for some very bad reasons, opened up an investigation on me, for no reason & with no proof, after I fired Lyin’ James Comey, a total sleaze!

…Funny thing about James Comey. Everybody wanted him fired, Republican and Democrat alike. After the rigged & botched Crooked Hillary investigation, where she was interviewed on July 4th Weekend, not recorded or sworn in, and where she said she didn’t know anything (a lie),….

….the FBI was in complete turmoil (see N.Y. Post) because of Comey’s poor leadership and the way he handled the Clinton mess (not to mention his usurpation of powers from the Justice Department). My firing of James Comey was a great day for America. He was a Crooked Cop……

……who is being totally protected by his best friend, Bob Mueller, & the 13 Angry Democrats – leaking machines who have NO interest in going after the Real Collusion (and much more) by Crooked Hillary Clinton, her Campaign, and the Democratic National Committee. Just Watch!

I have been FAR tougher on Russia than Obama, Bush or Clinton. Maybe tougher than any other President. At the same time, & as I have often said, getting along with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. I fully expect that someday we will have good relations with Russia again!

Lyin’ James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter S and his lover, agent Lisa Page, & more, all disgraced and/or fired and caught in the act. These are just some of the losers that tried to do a number on your President. Part of the Witch Hunt. Remember the “insurance policy?” This is it!

This sounds more like a mental patient who has been hospitalized after running through the streets naked shouting at random cars and store mannequins, than a president. He is consumed with paranoia and a devout belief in his superiority and goodness. And his perceived enemies are unambiguously evil, omnipresent, and determined to destroy him. That isn’t the profile of a world leader. It’s the diagnosis for a psychopath. And for the sake of the nation – and the planet – Trump needs to be removed from office and placed in a facility where he can either get medial attention and be punished for his obvious crimes.

Any other president, with any other controlled Senate, would have been impeached a year ago. Any doubt still exist that Republicans are traitors along with the moron-in-chief? Why haven’t people taken to the streets before this? We need to act, because congress sure isn’t. Our country, our way of life, our lives are in imminent danger.

Trump is mentally disable. The country maybe in shutdown, but is brain has always been shutdown. Time to go!

How credible is this view? I do not have tea leaves

U.S.
MUELLER DRAFT REPORT SAYS TRUMP ‘HELPED PUTIN DESTABILIZE THE UNITED STATES’, WATERGATE JOURNALIST SAYS
By Jason Lemon On Sunday, January 13, 2019 - 14:45

President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin shake hands during a joint press conference after their summit on July 16, 2018 in Helsinki, Finland
PHOTO: CHRIS MCGRATH/GETTY IMAGES

U.S. DONALD TRUMP RUSSIA INVESTIGATION
Legendary journalist Carl Bernstein has said that he’s been told that special counsel Robert Mueller’s report will show how President Donald Trump helped Russia “destabilize the United States.”

Bernstein, who is renowned for his coverage of the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of former President Richard Nixon, appeared on CNN’s Reliable Sources on Sunday to discuss two bombshell reports released this weekend, one from The New York Times and one from The Washington Post, which revealed new details about whether or not Trump and his aides have colluded with Russia.

The Post reported that Trump has gone to “extraordinary lengths” to conceal direct conversations he has had with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Times article revealed that the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation into Trump after he fired former bureau director James Comey in 2017, suspecting the president could be working on behalf of Russia. Trump has angrily denied allegations that he worked with Russia and has regularly attacked the media for reporting on the investigation. But Bernstein slammed Trump’s dismissal of the probe.

“This is about the most serious counterintelligence people we have in the U.S. government saying, ‘Oh, my God, the president’s words and actions lead us to conclude that somehow he has become a witting, unwitting, or half-witting pawn, certainly in some regards, to Vladimir Putin,'” Bernstein explained during his appearance on Reliable Sources .

“From a point of view of strength… rather, he has done what appears to be Putin’s goals. He has helped Putin destabilize the United States and interfere in the election, no matter whether it was purposeful or not,” the journalist added. He then explained that he knew from his own high-level sources that Mueller’s report would discuss this assessment.

“And that is part of what the draft of Mueller’s report, I’m told, is to be about,” he said. “We know there has been collusion by [former national security adviser Michael] Flynn. We know there has been collusion of some sort by [Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul] Manafort. The question is, yes, what did the president know and when did he know it?”

Trump has defended himself against such reports, arguing, inaccurately, that he has taken a hardline stance against Russia.

“I have been FAR tougher on Russia than Obama, Bush or Clinton. Maybe tougher than any other President. At the same time, & as I have often said, getting along with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. I fully expect that someday we will have good relations with Russia again! [sic],” he wrote on Twitter on Saturday.

However, the president’s 2016 campaign remains the subject of a special investigation led by Mueller. Several former high-ranking Trump aides have been indicted in the probe and last week, it was revealed that Manafort shared confidential polling data with an associate linked to Russian-intelligence.

RELATED STORIES
Expert: Trump ‘Aiding & Abetting’ Russian Intelligence
Trump Says NYT Report Is “Insulting”
FBI May Have Classified Evidence on Trump: Former Chief
Trump’s administration recently moved to remove financial sanctions on an ally of Putin, and has recently pulled troops out of Syria – a long-standing demand from the Russian President.

© Copyright 2019 NEWSWEEK

One off the wall scenario:

Remember the ’ better be red than dead’ cliche of the 50’ s and the 60’s in a vastly longer perceived U.S. time then Euro-Russian?

Given all the perceived hoopla of advanced Russian weaponry, or even without credibility of such , is it even remotely possible that the agreement/collusion was in fact made, in order to escape the ideological struggle, which was described in c. 1982-86, as a forgone assessment?

Could this be ledgered as a preemptive attempt describing as among leading possibilities?

And now, because unforseen and uninformed hi partisan information sharing, had to be slowly abandoned do to political pressure?

Both Trump and Putin may be heading for the Nobel Peace Prize, if they are able to pull it off!

As uncertain such possibility , given what has been happening, it can not be entirely ruled out.

But then:

washingtonpost.com/amphtml/ … 20%251%24s

And this:

President Trump went to ‘extraordinary lengths’ to hide details of Putin meetings, report says
President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin at a joint press conference after their summit on July 16, 2018, in Helsinki, Finland.
President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin at a joint press conference after their summit on July 16, 2018, in Helsinki, Finland.
CHRIS MCGRATH, GETTY IMAGES
WILLIAM CUMMINGS | USA TODAY | 4 hours ago

President Donald Trump went to “extraordinary lengths” to keep details from his conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin secret – even from officials within his own administration, The Washington Post reported this weekend, citing unnamed sources.

After meeting with Putin at the 2017 Group of 20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, Trump took his interpreter’s notes and told him not to discuss the meeting with anyone, including other U.S. officials, the Post reported.

The paper said Trump’s handling of the Hamburg meeting was “part of a broader pattern by the president of shielding his communications with Putin from public scrutiny and preventing even high-ranking officials in his own administration from fully knowing what he has told one of the United States’ main adversaries.”

No detailed record exists from five of Trump’s interactions with the Russian leader since taking office, the Post reported. It was unclear if that was the only time Trump took his interpreters’ notes, but the paper said several administration officials have been unable to obtain a readout from his meeting last year with Putin in Helsinki.

New York Times: FBI investigated President Trump for possible secret Russian favors

Trump: NYT report on FBI fear that he worked for Russia is ‘most insulting article’ ever

Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was present at the meeting in Hamburg. The Post said Tillerson did not answer questions about Trump asking the interpreter to keep details of the meeting quiet, or if Trump took the interpreter’s notes.

Fiona Hill, a senior Russia adviser on the National Security Council, and former State Department official John Heffern asked Trump’s interpreter for more information about the Hamburg meeting, which is how they learned of the president’s request to keep the details under wraps, the Post reported.

In a news conference after the meeting, Tillerson said Putin denied interfering in the 2016 election, but refused to say how Trump responded to the denial, per the Post. Officials told the Post that the only detail from the meeting that the interpreter did share was that Trump told Putin, “I believe you.”

Trump denied the report during an interview with Fox News host Jeanine Pirro on Saturday. He called the Post “basically the lobbyist for Amazon,” because it is owned by the tech giant’s CEO Jeff Bezos, a Trump critic.

“I’m not keeping anything under wraps,” Trump said. “I couldn’t care less.”

“I have a one-on-one meeting with Putin like I do with every other leader. I have many one-on-one, nobody ever says anything about it,” Trump told Pirro. “But with Putin, they say, ‘Oh, what did they talk about?’”

“I meet with Putin, and they make a big deal. Anybody could have listened to that meeting. that meeting is up for grabs,” Trump said, adding that he and Putin spoke about Israel and “lots of other things.”

Trump dismissed the “whole Russia thing” as a “terrible hoax” and said he won in 2016 because he “was a better candidate than Hillary Clinton,” not because of collusion with Russian efforts to undermine her campaign.

“The fact is, I was obviously a good candidate. I won every debate. I won everything I did, and I won, and I won easily – 306-223, I believe,” Trump said, referring to his performance in the Electoral College.

Democrats were alarmed by The Washington Post report.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., has sought details from Trump’s meetings with Putin and, after the 2018 Helsinki meeting, called for the president’s interpreter to testify before Congress.

Trump’s interpreter: Should she be compelled to tell what she heard during private meeting with Putin?

In August, she and Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., sent Secretary of State Mike Pompeo a letter requesting records from that meeting, including the interpreter’s notes. They cited the “extraordinary and, to our knowledge, unprecedented circumstances of President Trump’s two hour, one-on-one meeting with a leader identified as a threat to the United States by President Trump’s own National Security Strategy.”

“When he takes the interpreter’s notes and wants to destroy them so no one can see what was said in written transcript, you know it raises serious questions about the relationship between this president and Putin,” Sen. Dick Durbin said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said if the Post’s report is accurate, Trump “broke all protocol.”

“The American government does not know what was discussed between Trump and Vladimir Putin in that, frankly, pathetic, embarrassing encounter where Trump was kowtowing on the world stage to Vladimir Putin in Helsinki,” Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Analysis: Friends or foes? Trump’s embrace of Putin prompts backlash

Helsinki transcript: White House says it was not ‘malicious’

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., plans to seek more information about Trump’s meetings with Putin.

“It’s been several months since Helsinki and we still don’t know what went on in that meeting,” Engel told the Post. “It’s appalling. It just makes you want to scratch your head.”

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said Sunday that he accepted Trump’s denial and said those one-on-one meetings are part of the president’s personal style.

“He likes to create a personal relationship, build that relationship, even rebuild that relationship like he does with other world leaders around,” McCarthy said on “Face the Nation.”

When asked if thought Trump’s interpreter should be asked to testify, McCarthy said, “I want this president to be able to build the relationship, even on a personal level, with all the world leaders.”

Donald Trump’s relationship with Vladimir Putin
Originally Published 9 hours ago
Updated 4 hours ago

© Copyright Gannett 2019

Vow:how long do we need to be kept in stiches until Mueller is finished. I’m beginning to feel that they are really using him. How long until something real be done besides merely throwing in possibilities? Everybody likes a happy end, of course.

And now:

MarketWatch
Trump taunts Jeff Bezos, lashes out at Elizabeth Warren amid new Russia revelations
By Mike Murphy
Published: Jan 13, 2019 10:16 pm ET
President praises National Enquirer
President Donald Trump attends a Cabinet meeting on Jan. 2.
President Donald Trump attends a Cabinet meeting on Jan. 2.
As questions about his relationship with Russia continue to swirl, President Donald Trump spent his Sunday night lashing out at perceived enemies, taunting Washington Post owner — and Amazon.com Inc. AMZN chief executive — Jeff Bezos over his divorce and mocking Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s Native American heritage.

“So sorry to hear the news about Jeff Bozo being taken down by a competitor whose reporting, I understand, is far more accurate than the reporting in his lobbyist newspaper, the Amazon Washington Post,” Trump tweeted.

A little background: On Saturday, the Post reported that Trump has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal notes and transcripts of his one-on-one meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Post noted that withholding details of those potentially important meetings was prevented “even high-ranking officials in his own administration from fully knowing what he has told one of the United States’ main adversaries.” (Separately, the New York Times reported Friday that the FBI opened an investigation into whether Trump was working for Russia after he fired FBI Director James Comey in 2017. In an telephone interview with Fox News on Saturday, Trump was asked if he has ever worked for Russia, but dodged answering the question.)

Meanwhile, Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie, who have been separated for months, announced their divorce last week ahead of a series of National Enquirer exposés, which included text messages and photos documenting his relationship with another woman.

The Enquirer has long been friendly to Trump, offering “catch-and-kill” deals to kill potentially embarrassing stories about Trump, and the Enquirer and David Pecker, chairman of Enquirer publisher American Media Inc., were implicated in the Michael Cohen case. In December, the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office said it would not prosecute American Media for suppressing a story from a former Playboy model who claimed to have a years-long affair with Trump, in exchange for cooperation with the investigation.

Last week, some had speculated that the Enquirer targeted Bezos because of Trump’s animosity toward him. Sources with ties to the Enquirer said Bezos was targeted “because he’s the world’s richest man and a newsworthy subject,” according to CNN.

About 20 minutes after his attack on Bezos, Trump lashed out at Warren, D-Mass., a vocal critic of the president, mocking an Instagram video she did and again calling her by a derisive nickname.

“If Elizabeth Warren, often referred to by me as Pocahontas did this commercial from Bighorn or Wounded Knee instead of her kitchen, with her husband dressed in full Indian garb, it would have been a smash!”

Trump deleted his original post, but posted an identical one soon after.

While apparently stewing at the White House, Trump was also facing no easy way to resolve the 23-day-old government shutdown, which a majority of Americans blame him and the GOP for, according to new polls released Sunday.

Trump taunts Jeff Bezos, lashes out at
Copyright ©2019 MarketWatch, Inc.
All rights reserved.

Another twist

nytimes.com/2019/01/13/us/p … 20%251%24s

China is still the world’s No. 2 economy and is still the monster of emerging markets, but regardless of those bonafides, Xi Jinping’s country is losing the trade war in nearly every way imaginable.

Reported Forbes. The particulars may not be too much of interest, but its noteworthy that, this one could be perceived as a Trump win, and bringing overall performance on a personal, as well as on a partisan level of involvement. If enough Republican wins come through, it will enhance Trump’s personal favor, and give him added political capital to boost his effort to at least compromise on the wall.

WW3 THREAT: China develops ‘impenetrable’ system too strong for hypersonic missiles
WW3 news: Xi Jinping

WW3 news: Xi Jinping (Image: GETTY)
A TOP Chinese defence strategist claims to have created an “Underground Steel Great Wall” defence to nullify the threat of future hypersonic weapons destroying their arsenal.
By BILL MCLOUGHLIN
PUBLISHED: 02:27, Tue, Jan 15, 2019
UPDATED: 02:38, Tue, Jan 15, 2019
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on Google+Share with EmailShare via Whatsapp
Qian Qihu, 82, won the prestigious 2018 State Preeminent Science and Technology Award due to his contributions to national defence for the system which he described as the country’s “last national defence line”. The system is a series of elaborate defensive facilities located deep under the mountains and reduces the vulnerability of entrances and exists to those facilities. Qian told the Chinese Communist Party’s official newspaper The Global Times: “The development of the shield must closely follow the development of spears.

WW3: Top Russian diplomat warns US missile bases in Japan fall-out

World War 3: Iran blasts meddling France over missiles programme

“Our defence engineering has evolved in a timely manner as attack weapons pose new challenges.”

If the country’s missile interception system, anti-missile system or air defences fail, this steel wall will be able to thwart attacks.

The defence system is a huge addition for Beijing as it can withstand hypersonic missiles - weapons which America and Russia are heavily developing.

Qian also added that hypersonic weapons can penetrate any other current anti-missile installation in the world, putting China once step ahead of its competitors.

READ MORE: WW3: US Navy head travels to China for talks to avoid ‘miscalculation’

WW3 News: DF-21D missile

According to a report from CNBC last March, Vladimir Putin debuted new nuclear and hypersonic weapons which he described as “invincible”.

Mr Putin apparently unveiled the Kinzhal hypersonic cruise missile, touted as hitting Mach 10 - 10 times the speed of sound - speeds, while the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, is said to be capable of travelling up to Mach 20.

In August, China ’s Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics announced that it had tested a missile which they described was capable of riding its own shock waves and reached a speed of Mach 6 - six times the speed of sound.

The US is still trying to keep up in the race for the new missile and US Deputy Secretary of Defence Patrick Shanahan said: “We are going to fly sooner and more often than people have ever expected.”

World War 3 FEARS: Turkey REFUSES to reject deal with Russia

Washington is also planning to loosen US nuclear weapon constraints and is developing low-yield nuclear warheads.

As America looks to try and keep up with it’s two major rivals, relations between America and the other two powers have eroded.

Washington has accused Moscow of intervening in sovereign affairs while the FBI is also investigating claims that Trump worked on behalf of Putin.

In terms of US-China relations, the two countries remain locked in a trade war while China has continued to flex its muscle in the South China Sea.

Copyright ©2019 Express Newspapers.

Russian media threatens Europe with 200-megaton nuclear ‘doomsday’ device
Alex Lockie Jan 14, 2019, 5:00 PM

RIA Novosti/Reuters
Russian media appeared to threaten Europe and the world by saying that a new nuclear torpedo could create towering tsunami waves and destroy vast swaths of Earth’s population.
A Russian professor told a Russian paper that the new torpedo could create waves 1,300 to 1,600 feet high and wipe out all life nearly 1,000 miles inland with an alleged 200-megaton nuclear warhead.
The US has no defenses against such a weapon.
Russia and its media often overstate the capability and meaning of their nuclear weapons, but Russia really did build this new nuclear weapon, which suggests they take the hype seriously.
Russian media appeared to threaten Europe and the world with an article in MK.ru, saying that a new nuclear torpedo could create towering tsunami waves and destroy vast swaths of Earth’s population.

Russia’s “Poseidon” nuclear torpedo, which leaked in 2015 before being confirmed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in March 2018, represents a different kind of nuclear weapon.

The US and Russia have, since the end of World War II, fought to match and exceed each other in a nuclear arms race that resulted in both countries commanding fleets of nuclear bombers, submarines, and silos of intercontinental missiles all scattered across each country.

But Russia’s Poseidon takes a different course.

“Russia will soon deploy an underwater nuclear-powered drone which will make the whole multi-billion dollar system of US missile defense useless,” MK.ru said, according to a BBC translation, making reference to the missile shield the US is building over Europe.

“An explosion of the drone’s nuclear warhead will create a wave of between 400-500 (1,300-16,00 feet) meters high, capable of washing away all living things 1,500 (932) kilometers inland,” the newspaper added.

Previously, scientists told Business Insider that Russia’s Poseidon nuke could create tsunami-sized waves, but pegged the estimate at only 100-meter-high (330 feet) waves.

While all nuclear weapons pose a tremendous threat to human life on Earth because of their outright destructive power and ability to spread harmful radiation, the Poseidon has unique world-ending qualities.

What makes Poseidon more horrific than regular nukes
An LGM-30 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile being serviced in a silo.Department of Defense via Federation of American Scientists
The US designed its nuclear weapons to detonate in the air above a target, providing downward pressure. The US’ nuclear weapons today have mainly been designed to fire on and destroy Russian nuclear weapons that sit in their silos, rather than to target cities and end human life.

But detonating the bomb in an ocean not only could cause tsunami waves that would indiscriminately wreak havoc on an entire continent, but it would also increase the radioactive fallout.

Russia’s Poseidon missile is rumored to have a coating of cobalt metal, which Stephen Schwartz, an expert on nuclear history, said would “vaporize, condense, and then fall back to earth tens, hundreds, or thousands of miles from the site of the explosion.”

Potentially, the weapon would render thousands of square miles of Earth’s surface unlivable for decades.

“It’s an insane weapon in the sense that it’s probably as indiscriminate and lethal as you can make a nuclear weapon,” Hans Kristensen, the director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, told Business Insider.

Can Russia take over the world with this weapon? No.
A briefing slide of the alleged Status-6 nuclear torpedo captured from Russian television.BBC
MK.ru quoted a professor as saying the Poseidon will make Russia a “world dictator” and that it could be used to threaten Europe.

“If Europe will behave badly, just send a mini-nuclear powered submarine there with a 200-megaton bomb on board, put it in the southern part of the North Sea, and ‘let rip’ when we need to. What will be left of Europe?” the professor asked.

While the Russian professor may have overstated the importance of the Poseidon, as Russia already has the nuclear firepower to destroy much of the world and still struggles to achieve its foreign-policy goals, the paper correctly said that the US has no countermeasures in place against the new weapon.

US missile defenses against ballistic missiles have only enough interceptors on hand to defend against a small salvo of weapons from a small nuclear power like North Korea or Iran. Also, they must be fired in ballistic trajectories.

Read more: US ballistic missile defense just doesn’t work - but we keep spending billions and billions on it

But the US has nuclear weapons of its own that would survive Russia’s attack. Even if Russia somehow managed to make the whole continent of Europe or North America go dark, submarines on deterrence patrols would return fire and pound Russia from secret locations at the bottom of the ocean.

Russia’s media, especially MK.ru, often use hyperbole that overstates the country’s nuclear capabilities and willingness to fight.

But with the Poseidon missile, which appears custom-built to end life on Earth, Russia has shown it actually does favor spectacularly dangerous nuclear weapons as a means of trying to bully other countries.

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WASHINGTON — There are few things that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia desires more than the weakening of NATO, the military alliance among the United States, Europe and Canada that has deterred Soviet and Russian aggression for 70 years.

Trump Discussed Pulling U.S. From NATO, Aides Say Amid New Concerns Over Russia
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Last year, President Trump suggested a move tantamount to destroying NATO: the withdrawal of the United States.

Senior administration officials told The New York Times that several times over the course of 2018, Mr. Trump privately said he wanted to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Current and former officials who support the alliance said they feared Mr. Trump could return to his threat as allied military spending continued to lag behind the goals the president had set.

Now, the president’s repeatedly stated desire to withdraw from NATO is raising new worries among national security officials amid growing concern about Mr. Trump’s efforts to keep his meetings with Mr. Putin secret from even his own aides, and an F.B.I. investigation into the administration’s Russia ties.

A move to withdraw from the alliance, in place since 1949, “would be one of the most damaging things that any president could do to U.S. interests,” said Michèle A. Flournoy, an under secretary of defense under President Barack Obama.

“It would destroy 70-plus years of painstaking work across multiple administrations, Republican and Democratic, to create perhaps the most powerful and advantageous alliance in history,” Ms. Flournoy said in an interview. “And it would be the wildest success that Vladimir Putin could dream of.”

MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle implied on Tuesday without citing evidence that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is being blackmailed by President Trump.

Ruhle hosted a panel discussion about why Graham has pivoted from being a past critic of Trump to one of the president’s biggest allies in the Senate.

“It could be that Donald Trump or somebody knows something pretty extreme about Lindsey Graham,” Ruhle said before quickly ending the segment. “We’re gonna leave it there.”

And Pelosi’s take now on Tump’s State of The Union address:

Live TV
Nancy Pelosi just pulled a major power move on Donald Trump’s State of the Union
Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large
Updated 2:22 PM EST, Wed January 16, 2019

(CNN) Sometimes the best power moves in politics are conveyed in the most mundane language.

“Sadly, given the security concerns and unless government re-opens this week, I suggest we work together to determine another suitable date after government has re-opened for this address or for you to consider delivering your State of the Union address in writing to the Congress on January 29,” wrote Speaker Nancy Pelosi to President Donald Trump on Wednesday.

Make no mistake: Pelosi’s decision to disinvite Trump from delivering his “State of the Union” address to Congress is a total power play designed to remind Trump that a) Congress is a co-equal branch of government and b) his willingness to keep the government shuttered until he gets money for a border wall is going to have impacts on him, too.

Just in case you missed that message, Pelosi delivered it again in an interview with CNN’s Ashley Killough. “This is a housekeeping matter in the Congress of the United States, so we can honor the responsibility of the invitation we extended to the President,” said Pelosi. “He can make it from the Oval Office if he wants.”

“He can make it from the Oval Office if he wants(!)”

What Pelosi is saying there is, essentially, this: Look, Trump can give a speech if he wants. But we are not giving him the platform of a bipartisan session of Congress to do it unless and until he reopens the government. (House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland went a step further in an interview with CNN’s Kate Bolduan Wednesday afternoon, declaring that “the State of the Union is off.”)

This is the longest shutdown in US history
This is the longest shutdown in US history
And from a logistical standpoint, Pelosi is well within her rights to rescind the invitation. As CNN’s Phil Mattingly and Ted Barrett explain:

"It’s the House speaker’s prerogative to invite the President to give the State of the Union. While there’s no precedent for it (that we’re aware of), if Pelosi decides the President shouldn’t go to the Capitol to speak on January 29, the President will not go on January 29.

“Keep in mind, in order to green light the State of the Union, both the House and the Senate have to pass resolutions. Neither have done so yet — and Pelosi controls whether the House passes one at all.”

It’s in keeping with her repeated and pointed emphasis – in public and private – that the new Democratic majority in the House stands on equal footing with Trump, and will remind him of that fact whenever she/they deem it necessary.

In her initial letter inviting Trump to deliver the “State of the Union” on January 29, Pelosi made sure to note: “The Constitution established the legislative, executive and judicial branches as co-equal branches of government, to be a check and balance on each other.” And, when asked by The New York Times earlier this month whether she considered herself to be Trump’s equal, Pelosi responded: “The Constitution does.”

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Pelosi’s latest effort to assert the power of the House – and her party – over Trump will play extremely well with her base who wants maximum confrontation with and embarrassment of Trump.

There’s an argument to be made, however, that it could backfire on Pelosi – and in the process hand Trump a much-needed foothold in a debate he is very much losing at the moment.

Donald Trump Jr., in an interview with the conservative Daily Caller website, gave a preview of what the argument coming out of the White House might sound like when he said this Wednesday:

“Speaker Pelosi is clearly attempting to block my father from giving his State of the Union speech, not because 20% of the government is shut down, but because she is terrified of him having another opportunity to speak directly to the American people about her party’s obstruction, unfiltered and without her friends in the media running interference for her.”

Pelosi – and Democrats – will, of course, scoff at that logic. They will note that Kirstjen Nielsen, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, was the one who designated the SOTU speech as a special security event. And that it is Trump who continues to demand $5 billion for his border wall – keeping the government closed until he gets it. And that Pelosi is doing what she feels is the best course to keep everyone safe under the current circumstances.

But the question is whether voters who may not like Trump but who just want the government to reopen and politicians to get back to working for the people who voted them into office will see Pelosi’s move to effectively cancel the State of the Union as an unnecessary provocation. And whether Trump, who is desperately in search of a life preserver in this whole mess, can seize on Pelosi’s decision as evidence that the left is trying to silence him.

My guess is he’s going to try like hell to make that case.

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Juliani’s fine tooth comb:

Rudy Giuliani says Trump didn’t collude with Russia but can’t say if campaign aides did
By Caroline Kelly, CNN
Updated 10:55 PM EST, Wed January 16, 2019

article video
(CNN) Rudy Giuliani said Wednesday that he never denied President Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with the Russian government during the 2016 campaign, only that the President himself was not involved in collusion.

In an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo on “Cuomo Prime Time,” Giuliani, a former New York mayor and Trump’s attorney, said he doesn’t know if other people in the campaign, including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, were working with the Kremlin during the 2016 presidential race.

“I never said there was no collusion between the campaign, or people in the campaign,” Giuliani said.

He added, “I said the President of the United States. There is not a single bit of evidence the President of the United States committed the only crime you can commit here, conspiring with the Russians to hack the DNC.”

It’s another remarkable statement from Giuliani, given that the President and his supporters have repeatedly denied any collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. A person familiar with the matter told CNN last week that Manafort, while serving as Trump’s campaign chairman, tried to send internal polling data from the Trump campaign with two Kremlin-supporting Ukrainian oligarchs through his associate Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian national who is linked to Russian intelligence.

When Cuomo asked if Manafort sharing such data with foreign agents constituted collusion, Giuliani said Trump never shared the polling data himself and only found out about it recently in the news.

“Donald Trump wasn’t giving polling data to anyone,” Giuliani said, adding, “he did not know about it until it was revealed a few weeks ago in an article.”

Trump himself has tweeted at least 13 times directly saying there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. The latest such denial came on December 10.

“Democrats can’t find a Smocking (sic) Gun tying the Trump campaign to Russia after James Comey’s testimony. No Smocking (sic) Gun…No Collusion.’ @FoxNews. That’s because there was NO COLLUSION. So now the Dems go to a simple private transaction, wrongly call it a campaign contribution,” Trump tweeted, referencing a quote that was said on Fox News.

The President reacting to a filing in the court case of his former attorney, Michael Cohen, and the money paid to two women during the 2016 campaign who allege they’ve had extramarital affairs with Trump. Trump has denied both allegations.

Trump later added, “Which it was not (but even if it was, it is only a CIVIL CASE, like Obama’s - but it was done correctly by a lawyer and there would not even be a fine. Lawyer’s liability if he made a mistake, not me). Cohen just trying to get his sentence reduced. WITCH HUNT!”

In the interview with Cuomo, Giuliani challenged special counsel Robert Mueller to provide evidence of wrongdoing by the President.

“Let’s see if he’s got anything – I challenge him to show us some evidence that the President was involved in anything approaching criminal conduct,” Giuliani said.

He added, “If you want to do an ethics investigation fine, do an ethics investigation. But you don’t need a special prosecutor for that.”

Later in the interview, Giuliani shot down reports that he had said Trump’s legal team should get to edit Mueller’s report before it goes public.

Giuliani told Cuomo that he only meant Trump’s legal team should get to see Mueller’s final report before it goes public in order to write a response, but stressed that he does not want to alter the report and supports as much of it being published as national security allows.

“Of course I should (be able to view it first), I should be allowed to respond,” Giuliani said, adding that “it’s fair that we get an opportunity to do that.”

“I don’t want to change the report, I want to respond to the report,” he added.

Giuliani said that he would ideally like the report to be published unredacted so that he and fellow Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow could provide a complete counterargument, and that he would not be able to edit the report regardless.

“As his lawyer, I’d honestly like you to see the whole report because I think Jay and I could knock the hell out of it,” he said.

“First of all, they wouldn’t let me change the report. Secondly; I’ve been a lawyer too long to think I’d ever do that. Third, I want them to write the garbage they’re going to write because I want to answer it,” Giuliani added.

This is a breaking story and will be updated.

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