Now bombs are being sent to Trump’s political opponents. That bears repeating. Bombs are being sent to Trump’s political opponents. His vicious and unceasing hate speech, his insane lies and accusations, and his demonization of the opposition party have finally come home to roost.
A total of 10 bombs over 2 days were sent to former President Barack Obama, former President Bill Clinton and his wife, the former Senator, Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton who got 3 million more votes thanTrump, former Vice President Joe Biden, former Attorney General Eric Holder, Representative Maxine Waters, philanthropist billionaire George Soros, former CIA Director John Brennan by way of the CNN headquarters, and actor Robert DeNiro, all of them bearing the return address of former Chairperson of the Democratic National committee Wendy Wasserman-Schultz.
Besides being Democrats, what they have in common was their criticism of Donald Trump (and something they have in common with most of this nation), and all of them have been singled out by Trump in his rallies and on Twitter with unbelievably savage verbal abuse, threats to lock them in prison and the invention of outrageous lies about them. It was only a matter of time before one of his imbecilic partisans took violent action against these people.
Fortunately none of the bombs exploded, but the fact remains that Trump has now inspired a terrorist attack on rival political leaders. Two weeks before the Midterm elections we have a mad bomber targeting Democrats and an ideologically divided nation on edge as never before.
It is times like these when Presidents earn their keep, addressing the nation and calling for calm, unity and civility in our political discourse. Unfortunately, those guys are not president anymore, Donald Trump is.
What Trump did was attend yet another political rally the very same night this news was breaking, and after making a few remarks written by someone else condemning the attacks and calling for civility in our political discourse, he blamed our (!) free press for inciting these attempted bombings, then told crazy lies about the Democrats, blaming them for his own failure to unite and lead the nation that elected him to do just that.
On any other day this would be just one more disgraceful performance in an unending series of disgraceful performances by Trump, but this was the day when someone sent 10 bombs to his political rivals in the space of 24 hours, and something more thoughtful and calming was called for. America hoped against hope that Trump would finally rise to the occasion and say something presidential and sincere. Fat chance.
Instead, he repeatedly praised himself for “being nice,” absolved himself from any blame for inciting this horrific attack, then resumed his usual vicious rhetoric designed to inspire such attacks, completely indifferent to their potential for inciting violence and death and oblivious to his nation’s anguished outrage.
There was much at which to be outraged in Week #93 besides political bombings, and no shortage of pain. The week kicked off on Friday with Russian national Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova being indicted for conspiracy to defraud the United States for being the director of the organization responsible for Russia’s sabotage of the American 2016 presidential election on behalf of Donald Trump and who, authorities maintain, “continues to wage information warfare against the United States,” targeting our upcoming Midterm elections.
She runs Project Lakhta, in which her team creates online arguments and misinformation to spark division among Americans and spread the outrageously ridiculous falsehoods that are believed and repeated endlessly by Trump’s simpleminded and angry base. It was only this week that the Pentagon launched their first cyber-operation to counter these attacks, 2 years after they began.
It was a week where Trump at first accepted Saudi Arabia’s absurd “fistfight” explanation about the death of Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi before changing his tune, at first fumbling around for a lie he could settle on before throwing up his hands and just admitting the Saudis’ attempt to explain away Khashoggi’s murder and dismemberment was “the worst coverup story ever.” No one knows lies and coverup stories better than Trump, so he was in a unique position to judge their lame attempts.
Speaking of which, he insisted he was still not cancelling the Saudis’ armament orders over one reporter’s murder because he claimed the Saudi weapons sale would provide “100,000 jobs,” then upped the ante to 200,000 jobs, to half a million to “a million American jobs,” when in fact the figure (provided by the participating defense contractors) was 45,000 jobs.
Instead of sending his Secretary of State to confront the Saudis, he sent his inexperienced Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin to Saudi Arabia as a cosmetic gesture to make it appear he’s getting tough with the brutal royalty in charge of 20% of the world’s known oil reserves. Mnuchin is a lot of things; wealthy, arrogant, corrupt and irritating as hell, but no one has ever accused him of being tough.
It was a week where he invented “riots in California’s sanctuary cities” (an insane lie), saying that some Californians were (!) “begging to be released,” claimed illegal immigrants were being given gifts of luxury cars, and that ISIS fighters had infiltrated a refugee caravan of Guatemalans, Hondurans and El Salvadorans walking the entire length of Mexico to seek asylum in America and that “Mexican police are unable to stop them” (they didn’t even try to stop them, but protected them and gave them humanitarian aid), whoppers worthy of an imaginative toddler who got into Mommy’s supply of pep pills.
When pressed by reporters for proof that Middle Easterners had infiltrated the caravan, he had to admit he had no proof at all, “but there very well could be” (there “very well could be” zombie unicorns too by that standard of proof), then added the very self-revealing “there’s no proof of anything” (yes there is, there’s absolute proof of a great many things), his attitude towards any facts that run counter to his desires, from politics to science to actual events.
To add insult to injury, he threatened to cut foreign aid to Central American nations in such bad shape that their people are willing to walk 2,000 miles to escape the danger and abject misery. Indeed, Trump has been using this caravan of wretched poor people as a tool to inspire fear in stupid Americans, playing the racist card that got him elected over and over. He is even dispatching 1,000 soldiers to the border to confront the caravan and refuse them entry to America, or even the chance to apply for asylum. We can only hope Trump does not kidnap their children and put them in cages in one of his profitable Kiddie Koncentration Kamps.
It was also a week where it was revealed that both China and Russia were regularly tapping Trump’s private phone calls since he refuses to use a secure line. He of course denied this, insisting he uses a secure government-issued phone. He Tweeted his denial too, which was was clearly labeled as originating from the compromised phone he just denied using.
To be clear, the President of the United States is having his telephone calls regularly tapped by rival foreign powers (in case you were wondering how they stay one step ahead of us) and he shrugs it off, preferring the convenience of his personal iPhone for feeding his Twitter addiction over not giving away America’s secrets to enemy spies. Priorities…
Speaking of kowtowing to our enemies, this was a week where he announced (at yet another political rally, where else?) he would be doing Vladimir Putin’s bidding once again by pulling America out of the INF Treaty with Russia, a pact designed to limit the world’s supply of medium range nuclear missiles. Putin tried to abrogate this treaty in 2007, but President George W. Bush would not allow it, and his successor Barack Obama saw right through Putin’s ambitious megalomania and kept him marginalized and powerless to assume the dominant leadership role on the world stage he so craves.
Enter President Donald Trump, Putin’s creation and puppet, and the man who owes this Russian tyrant his presidency. Putin’s fortunes and global influence have grown exponentially since Trump was elected (installed) as Russia’s power to manipulate American politics in its favor increases daily. Indeed, even as Secretary of State Pompeo and American Ambassador to Russia John Huntsman were in Moscow fawning over him, Putin made a speech declaring that America’s global influence was waning, the equivalent of Trump humiliating Senator Ted Cruz into being his humble vassal in return for his blessing.
In a transparent “condemnation” of alleged Russian violations of the INF treaty, Trump vowed to “build up our nuclear forces” (already large enough to incinerate human civilization a dozen times over and undergoing a modernization program initiated by Obama to ensure their safety and viability), signaling his eagerness to revisit the Cold War that terrorized the planet for 45 years and wasted untold trillions of dollars on weapons only a madman would think of using.
Well, guess what? There’s a madman in the White House who is already on record wondering out loud “if we have them why can’t I use them?” and repeatedly threatening North Korea with nuclear annihilation.
Trump has shown himself again and again to be desirous of going down in history for his great deeds and visionary leadership. In the absence of the the intellectual capacity to formulate any visionary policies or exhibit any hint of statesmanly leadership, he has settled on history’s worst monsters as his role models, declaring this week that “I am a Nationalist,” at once further empowering America’s racist savages and alienating the majority of humanity.
It was no accident or “expected adjustment” that the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted another 600 points this week after least week’s free fall, wiping out all the economic gains made in 2018 and threatening to derail the booming economy he inherited from Obama.
Undaunted, he continues to crisscross the country campaigning hard for his party to remain in control of Congress by playing the racist card, condemning our free press as “enemies of the people” and demonizing political rivals with a series of unbelievably insane lies and accusations, and now sending soldiers to the US – Mexico border to confront unarmed refugees whose only crime was taking the inscription on the State of Liberty seriously:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”
Well, guess again, huddled masses. There is a Nationalist madman in the White House that only a decisive election can stop in his tracks. Or perhaps Robert Mueller and the rule of law.