DDT: Week Fifty-one – ‘Unhelpful’

Almost 29 months ago, Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) gave this speech to kick off his campaign for the U.S. presidency. About people coming across the border from Mexico, he said, “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. When he became the last standing GOP candidate and then won the Electoral College, well-meaning people said to give him a chance, that he’s not an ideologue. In a few more days DDT will have been in control for a year, and he is an ideologue, never deviating from that first speech on June 16, 2015. Yesterday he continued to define his immigration policy in a meeting within the Oval Office:

“Why do we want all these people from ‘shithole countries’ coming here?”

“Why do we need more Haitians? Take them out.”

At that same meeting, he said, “We should have more people from Norway,” DDT said. Top in the world for happiness and personal freedom as well as one of the richest per capita, Norway has conception-to-death health care and other public assistance, unlike the United States which ranks 23^rd in income inequality and 21^st in personal freedom.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) did report, “I said my piece directly to [Trump] yesterday,” and Graham told Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) that the revelations made by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) are essentially “accurate.” Other isolated voices disturbed by DDT’s remarks are Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and John McCain (R-AZ). Yet most of the GOP responses to DDT’s comments are appalling: two Republicans attending the meeting suffered amnesia, two stayed mute, and one merely said he attended the meeting. White House spokesman Raj Shah defended DDT by saying, “Certain Washington politicians choose to fight for foreign countries, but President Trump will always fight for the American people.” Some White House staffers believe that DDT’s racist remarks will resonate with his base. Ann Coulter supported this belief when she said that DDT’s comments showed that “he’s trying to win me back.”

Today, DDT participated in a White House event with King’s nephew, Isaac Newton Farris, Jr. to honor Farris’ uncle, Martin Luther King, Jr. DDT refused to answer questions from the press, but Farris said that he talked with DDT about his comments before the ceremony. He denies that DDT is a racist and called him “racially ignorant.” Definition of racist: “a person who shows or feels discrimination or prejudice against people of other races, or who believes that a particular race is superior to another.”

The GOP leadership was pitiful. RNC chair Ronna Romney McDaniel and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) had no comments. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) called DDT’s remarks “unfortunate” and “unhelpful.” “Unhelpful” may become the popular response; it is the same word that Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR) used in an interview about DDT’s statements.

Two days before DDT’s temper tantrum about immigration, he concluded in a filmed 55-minute meeting with about two dozen legislative leaders from both parties that he would accept anything that Congress wanted. During the meeting, DDT kept changing his position and agreed with the last person who had spoken. He first agreed with Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) about DACA being a clean bill with no other issues. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) reminded him about border security (aka wall), the end to “chain migration” or family-based migration, and the elimination of the diversity visa lottery so he added those to the “clean” DACA bill. His proposal became a comprehensive immigration deal which he earlier said could be postponed.

People surmise that he allowed filming of the meeting to disprove the allegations in Michael Wolff’s book, Fire and Fury. Yet his incoherence was obvious, and the book’s publisher has shipped over 700,000 copies with another 1.4 million copies on order.

DDT’s immigration policy is illustrated by his deporting 200,000 El Salvadoran immigrants, some of them here since 2001, through ending their Temporary Protected Status (TPS). This action may break up families as parents may leave their 190,000 U.S.-born children instead of taking them back to the extremely dangerous El Salvador. A third of the people who DDT plans to deport are homeowners; mayors of Houston, Los Angeles and other cities with large number of Salvadorans are urging DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to consider the contributions of TPS recipients. The loss of TPS recipients will also cost U.S. employers almost $1 billion in hiring and retraining new employees. Over the past decade, TPS recipients have contributed $6.9 billion to Social Security and Medicare.

Another way to get rid of legal immigrants, Operation Janus revokes citizenship for naturalized citizens who lack proper fingerprint records. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) failed to appropriately use fingerprint records for 315,000 people, and they may be subject to having their citizenship revoked.

DDT’s “unhelpful” statements will be useful to overturn bans on refugees as it was in California when U.S. District Judge William Alsup blocked DDT’s removal of protections for undocumented “dreamers” brought to the U.S. as children. When Alsup also left safeguards against deportation in place for almost 700,000 participants in the DACA program, he cited DDT’s support for the program as part of his justification. In September, DDT tweeted:

“Does anybody really want to throw out good, educated and accomplished young people who have jobs, some serving in the military? Really!”

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called the decision “outrageous” because DDT, who rules by executive order, “is committed to the rule of law.”

During his speech to the American Farm Bureau Federation, DDT lied about how small farmers will be getting a great deal of money from the $5.5 trillion tax package, another lie, and told them:

“Oh, are you happy you voted for me! You are so lucky that I gave you that privilege.”

He also asked for a standing ovation. Economists at the Department of Agriculture project lower farm output and increased taxes on the lowest-earning farms. Withdrawing from trade pacts will also hurt farmers if DDT follows through with his threats.

Unhelpful to DDT and the GOP was Sen. Diane Feinstein’s release of the Glenn Simpson’s ten-hour testimony about Fusion GPS, investigator Christopher Steele, and the investigation of DDT before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Earlier, its chair, Chuck Grassley (R-IA), and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) made Steele the first person accused of wrongdoing in the Russian connection when they lied about Fusion’s being involved only with Democrats. The action was taken without any Democrat’s involvement. For almost a year, the conservative Washington Free Beacon, financially supported by GOP Paul Singer, paid for the investigation before DDT took the lead for the GOP candidate in April 2016 and Democrats paid for the investigation. Grassley had reneged on a promise to release the testimony if Fusion was amenable.  Feinstein explained the testimony’s release:

“The innuendo and misinformation circulating about the transcript are part of a deeply troubling effort to undermine the investigation into potential collusion and obstruction of justice. The only way to set the record straight is to make the transcript public.”

Clarification of key GOP errors regarding the testimony:

• Despite Sanders description of Fusion GPS as linked to Democrats, the company has many GOP clients.
• Steele has “a Sterling reputation” for not exaggerating or fabricating who felt professional obligated to approach the FBI about his information because a security threat if a presidential candidate is being blackmailed by information from Russian cameras in luxury hotel rooms.
• The FBI already had other intelligence, some of from inside DDT’s campaign, that supported Steele’s information.
• Steele severed his connection with the FBI after the New York Times reported that the FBI had found no DDT connections to Russia a few days before the election for fear that the DDT’s people were manipulating the FBI for political ends.
• Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) became involved through his advisor David Kramer because Simpson and Steele “were mutually concerned about whether the United States had just elected someone who was compromised by a hostile foreign power.”
• DDT’s publicity described Carter Page as “a zero, a lightweight” (Simpson’s words), but he was discovered “to be an espionage suspect who was, in fact, someone that the FBI had been investigating for years.”
• Simpson said, “Most importantly the allegation that we were working for the Russian government then or ever is simply not true. I don’t know what to say. It’s political rhetoric to call the dossier phony. The memos are field reports of real interviews that Chris’s network conducted and there’s nothing phony about it. We can argue about what’s prudent and what’s not, but it’s not a fabrication.”
• The investigation concentrated on character and competence with no concern regarding political views. It was a search for the truth.

In short, the infamous Steele dossier was originally contracted by anti-DDT Republicans and shared with the FBI before the election, an agency that ignored any publicity about it while they widely publicized and debunked Anthony Weiner email connection with candidate Hillary Clinton only three weeks before election day. To cover for DDT, Republicans are still lying about the factual information in the dossier and former FBI director James Comey relationship with investigator Robert Mueller. Former Rep. Jason Chaffetz is peddling the lie that hiring a foreign national to do work for a campaign is illegal. News about the testimony’s release faded after DDT’s “shithole” description of many of the world’s countries, but the GOP will have more difficulty lying about its authenticity.

Much more happened in the past week. Tune in tomorrow.